Chapter 6

Dawn’s pale light slipped through fractures in the concrete sky, scattering into shafts that pierced the perpetual fog of the Washerworks. Each beam struck the steam-choked air and fractured again, refracting against droplets until the whole district shimmered. Vapor pooled in hollows between pipes the size of streets, curling and twisting with each mechanical exhale. The plastisteel sweated; the metal sweated; even the floorplates sweated, beading moisture that carried the sour taste of lye and the sharp sting of disinfectant. The air was hot enough to taste, heavy enough to chew, and every breath came back damp against the skin.

Raelin noticed none of it. His attention had narrowed to the pack on his shoulders and what lay inside: two power cores wrapped in cloth and foam, nestled together like sleeping animals. Or so he hoped. Every few steps, he thought he felt something else. A vibration too faint to be sure. He told himself it was the Washerworks’ machinery trembling through the walkways. He’d been telling himself that for the last twenty minutes.

Kiri kept pace at his shoulder, eyes narrowed against gusts of steam curling from relief valves, vanishing in the rafters. She glanced at his pack every few steps, and he knew she heard it too. A whine, faint as a bad tooth.

“How much further?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

“Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen.” He kept his voice steady. They walked the yellow-chevron maintenance path where the grating was less warped and the handrails were less likely to snap loose in their grip.

The Washerworks rumbled around them. Beneath it all, the deep churn of intake pumps. Over that, the clack of baffles opening and closing. And threading through, human sounds: a shouted reading, a wrench knocked against steel, a hoarse laugh that died under a siren’s two-note warning. The industrial symphony should have drowned out everything else, but Raelin’s ears kept searching for that other sound.

Vapor narrowed the corridors into tunnels of white. The Eyes above the main lanes pulsed and faded as the steam rolled past their lenses, and the fans that guarded control rooms filled the air with a steady, clean noise. The hostile environment made easy things harder, but hard things safer to do unseen. Raelin preferred that kind of bargain. Here, where steam blurred the Eyes and the tangle of wire and pipes confused their sensors, the Washerworks offered cover they couldn’t afford to waste.

“Hotter than last time,” Kiri said, shrugging her jacket open a notch. She paused, tilting her head. “Rae…”

“I know.” He cut her off gently. “Good thing it’s loud here. Fog helps too.”

She nodded. Whatever was happening in his pack, they couldn’t stop here. Not in the middle of the Washerworks, surrounded by workers and Eyes.

They crossed a bridge which ran above a row of settling tanks. The surface below them churned, brown sludge shifting in slow waves. Halfway across, Raelin felt it clearly. A hum rising through the foam padding, traveling up his spine like a tuning fork pressed to bone. He forced himself not to speed up. A whistle sounded, and a column of workers in patched gray coveralls shifted lanes without looking up. No one spared them a second glance. There were readings to log, valves to turn and always more to clean.

A warning lamp blinked to amber at the far end of the bridge. Raelin paused, counted the cycle, and moved when it returned to green. The hum peaked as they passed under the lamp, and for one terrible moment he thought the Eye watching from atop might register it, might sense the wrongness in his cargo somehow. Behind them the lamp ticked back to amber and a vent coughed a hot cloud into the air. He and Kiri both turned their faces aside and kept walking, faster now.

Finally, the corridors thinned, and the industrial roar softened until it was only a tremor underfoot. Without the machinery’s cover, the hum from his pack became unmistakable. A thin, high note that seemed to drill straight through his core. They stepped out of the wet breath of the Washerworks and into the Technical Quarter, where the air tasted like warm tin and rosin. Lily’s shop was three levels up, four alleys over. Five minutes if they hurried. Maybe less if they ran. But running would draw attention, and attention was the last thing they needed with a singing power core on their backs. Shops clung to the rock in stacked alcoves, each with a canvas front and a name stenciled in a steady hand. Spools of wire hung like vines, while bench lamps made islands of bright white on scarred tables.

The sound changed here. No more churning tanks. No more siren coughs. Here was the precise chatter of a drill easing into ceramic, the soft burr of a micro-lathe, the quick, impatient click of a soldering iron returned to its cradle. Sparks from a welding mask stitched light along a seam and died. Someone tested a relay, and the relay answered with a clean, satisfied snap.

By the time they reached Lily’s, Raelin’s nerves were as frayed as the cores’ casing.

The canvas awning hung taut, its hazard icons bright and deliberate against the faded surroundings. Lily had looked up from her work, already tracking their approach through the workshop levels. When she saw the careful way Raelin carried his pack, her expression shifted from familiar greeting to professional concern.

She stood with economical precision, her copper hair catching the light from her work lamps. Burn freckles dotted her hands, and her jacket bore an array of hazard-icon patches like a decorated general’s ribbons. She lifted the canvas barrier without ceremony.

“Inside. Now.” The authority in her voice came from experience. “Whatever you’re carrying is humming loud enough for me to hear from here.”

The transition from public stall to private workshop happened in seconds. Past the insulated curtains, they found themselves in a space that spoke of serious technical work. Proper benches lined with precision tools. Safety equipment mounted at regular intervals. Monitoring devices hummed with quiet efficiency.

The workshop smelled of flux and ozone, with the bite of industrial solvents beneath. Warning signs covered every surface, and the constant whir of the ventilation fan would drown out most quiet conversations.

“Lily, I…” Raelin started.

“Save the greetings, loot boy.” She pointed at his pack. “Whatever’s making that sound needs attention before we catch up.”

Kiri bit back a grin at the nickname. Raelin’s jaw tightened, though the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. He carefully removed the wrapped bundles from his pack and placed them on her workbench with practiced reverence. Slow hands, quiet breaths. Steady. Damaged cores treated like newborns.

Lily put on and flipped down a magnifier visor and began her examination. Her movements were deliberate, hands steady as she rotated the first core to catch the light at different angles. When the hairline fractures became visible, spider-webbing across what should be seamless ceramic, she sucked in air through gritted teeth.

“Hairline through the sleeve.” She didn’t look up from the core. “That’s not a power source, boys and girls. That’s a grenade with delusions of grandeur.”

Raelin’s hands went cold. He thought of the bridge over the settling tanks, the column of workers shifting lanes around them. The maintenance crew eating breakfast in the alcove where the steam thinned. All of them one stumble away from whatever a cracked power core did when it stopped being patient.

He looked at Kiri. She’d carried the other one for the first half of the journey.

Lily picked up the second bundle from the bench. A quick rotation, a grunt. “This one’s fine. Surface wear, nothing more.” She set it aside without ceremony.

“Can you show me how the fracture pattern affects the containment field?” Kiri leaned forward, technical curiosity bright in her eyes.

“Not now, spark.” Lily’s raised hand stopped her cold. “You want to learn? First lesson: respect the danger. These aren’t teaching aids. They’re looking for an excuse to redecorate my shop.”

She guided them to the workshop’s reinforced corner, past racks of salvaged components organized by type and danger level. Ceramic insulators in one section, pre-Collapse circuit boards in another, each tagged with Guild certification stamps that meant the difference between legal salvage and prosecution. The discharge station occupied its own blast-resistant alcove at the back, surrounded by burn marks on the floor telling stories of past mistakes. Emergency suppression nozzles jutted from the ceiling like metal teeth, ready to flood the space with foam at the first sign of uncontrolled release.

She activated the discharge station with the kind of muscle memory that came from years of practice. The control panel lit up in sequences Raelin recognized from old technical manuals, though Lily’s equipment was several generations newer.

“You.” She positioned Raelin’s hands on the first core, her fingers briefly covering his to show the exact pressure needed. “Hold here. Steady pressure while I calibrate the rig. It vibrates, you tell me. Gets warm, you yell. You see any light at all…” She didn’t finish the sentence. Raelin swallowed heavily and nodded.

The seconds stretched while Lily adjusted clamps and alignment guides, her movements precise but unhurried. Raelin barely breathed. When she finally took the core from his hands and locked it into the containment rig, his fingers kept the shape of it.

“Now we bleed the charge slowly,” Lily said, settling onto a stool before the control panel. “The ceramic is compromised, but the matrix is stable. If we’re careful, we can keep the stress away from the fracture plane.” She glanced at them over her shoulder. “Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t bump anything.”

Twenty minutes of silence followed. Lily watched the gauges, occasionally reaching out to adjust a dial or tap a valve. Small movements that seemed to take enormous concentration. Through the containment glass, the fractured ceramic glowed faintly, like coals dying in a forge.

Raelin had frozen mid-step when she’d given the order. Now his weight sat wrong on his left foot, his knee locked at an uncomfortable angle. He didn’t shift it. Beside him, Kiri leaned forward slightly, her eyes tracking every adjustment Lily made, every flicker in the readings. Fascination. Raelin recognized the look. She was already cataloging the process, filing it away. All he saw was the glow behind the glass, the hairline fractures, and how close they’d come to scattering themselves across the Washerworks.

The air grew thick with ozone, that burnt-metal smell that meant energy returning to where it belonged. The monitoring equipment chimed in patterns. Low hums, rising whistles, sharp pings. Each tone a threshold Raelin couldn’t interpret but Lily clearly could. Her shoulders stayed tight the entire time.

Then, finally: “There.” She stepped back, and for the first time in twenty minutes, her shoulders dropped. “Congratulations. We now have expensive ceramics instead of expensive bombs.”

The cores clicked into their storage cradles with the finality of bullets sliding into chambers. Safe for now, but never truly tame. Lily pulled off her magnifier visor and ran a hand through her hair, leaving it standing like wire filament.

“So.” She leaned against the workbench, arms crossed, studying them with the same intensity she’d given the cores. “Power cores from deep salvage. The kind that hasn’t been touched since the Collapse. You two either found something special or you’re trying to get yourselves killed.”

Raelin kept his expression neutral. “Old factory. Pre-war manufacture.”

“We’re being careful,” Kiri added, though her eyes kept drifting to the complex equipment surrounding them.

“Careful.” Lily tested the word like she was checking for cracks. “Careful is checking your salvage before you haul it through half the Substructure. What you did was lucky.”

She studied them both, then her gaze settled on Kiri. “Word is you’ve been sick. You’re not doing deep runs in that condition?”

“Dr. Voss got me sorted.” Kiri straightened. “Proper medication. I’m not dead weight anymore.”

“Dead weight.” Lily’s frown deepened, creating lines around her eyes that spoke of too many hours squinting at small components. “Kid, anyone who can wrap cores with that kind of precision was never dead weight. Your wrapping probably saved you both. Though next time, maybe save the good work for cores that aren’t trying to kill you?”

She moved to a storage locker marked with hazard symbols that Raelin recognized: caustic, reactive, temperature-sensitive. The sealants she pulled out were worth more than most families saw in a month, unless requisitioned through official channels. Ceramic patches that could only be shaped once, molecular bonders that worked at the atomic level. Guild supplies, not the crude fixes most scavengers relied on.

“Lucky for you, I enjoy impossible projects.” She laid out the materials with the reverence of a surgeon preparing tools. “Clean the fractures, reseal the matrix, run full stability tests. When I’m done, they’ll hold charge better than factory spec.”

“What do we owe?” Raelin asked.

“Same deal as always.” She shrugged. “Favors, not points. You two found me that pre-Collapse voltage regulator last month. Today I return the favor by keeping you from decorating my walls. Community math.”

Kiri stepped closer to the workbench, her eyes shining with curiosity. “Could you show me how the repair process works? I mean, when it’s safe?”

Lily watched Kiri lean closer to examine the fracture patterns. Kiri’s eyes tracked the spider-web of cracks with an intensity Raelin knew well. The same focus, the same hunger to understand how things worked and why they failed.

“You really want to learn this?” Lily’s voice had lost its usual edge.

“More than anything.” Kiri’s fingers hovered over the core, not touching but tracing the damage in the air. “These fractures, they follow the crystalline structure, don’t they? The weak points where the ceramic wasn’t properly sintered?”

Lily’s eyebrows rose. “Where did you learn about ceramic sintering?”

“My father. Aita Kestrel.” Kiri’s voice steadied, the way it always did when she talked about him. “He taught us that components fail at their joining points first. Always at the seams.”

Lily looked at Kiri appraisingly, then nodded slowly. “Looks like you picked up a thing or two.”

“As for you, torquey.” Lily turned to Raelin, and something in the workshop’s harsh light softened her features. Or maybe it was the way she looked at him, like she was seeing past the careful neutral expression he wore like armor. “Stop looking like you’re calculating escape routes. We’ve been doing this dance for months now.”

Heat crept up Raelin’s neck despite his best efforts to stop it, the same betraying flush that Kiri had noticed since their first visit here. “I trust you.”

“Do you?” She stepped closer, close enough that he could smell the flux and solder on her clothes, see the faint burn scar along her jaw from some long-ago accident. “That why you’ve been sending Kiri alone with the small trades? Standing outside like you’re casing the place while she handles business?”

“I don’t…” But the denial died in his throat. She was right. He had been avoiding her, ever since that day a month ago when she’d smiled at him and his mind had gone completely blank.

“Relax. I’m teasing.” Her smile softened the jab. “Mostly.” She tapped a terminal, logging the cores under her Guild license. “Three days. They’ll be perfect. Worth every point they should be, plus a few they shouldn’t.”

She glanced at a work order pinned above her bench. “Now get out. I’ve got Guild inspections to prep for, and you two are very much off the books.”

At the canvas barrier, Raelin paused, looking back at the workshop. Tools and components filled every surface, each one placed with purpose. Lily had already begun preparing for her next task, her back to them.

“See you in three days,” Raelin said.

She glanced over her shoulder, grinning and holding his gaze. “I’ll be counting the hours, torquey.”

He was through the canvas before she could see the flush creeping up his neck.

They took a maintenance shaft that looped through the Technical Quarter’s edge, adding ten minutes to avoid the morning crowds.

“I like her,” Kiri said as they walked.

“She knows her work,” Raelin said carefully.

“She knows her work,” Kiri mimicked. “She also knows how to make you blush. She’s getting bolder, by the way. The nicknames. The looks.”

Raelin scowled at her. “She’s useful. We need connections like that.”

“Connections.” Kiri stretched the word out. “Is that what we’re calling it when you forget how to talk? Because last month you could actually finish sentences around her.”

Raelin didn’t answer. Kiri let the silence stretch for a few paces before bumping his shoulder.

“Next time, maybe she’ll let me help.”

Raelin looked at her. “She’d be lucky to have you.”

Kiri glanced at him, surprised. Her teasing grin softened into something quieter, and she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm the way she used to when they were smaller, holding it there as they walked the rest of the way home.