Chapter 7

Morning arrived as usual without light, announced instead by the plasticky tang of ration bricks softening on cheap coil warmers.

Raelin laid out the gear on their table and ordered his thoughts along with the inventory. Foam-lined carriers, empty. Insulated gloves. Coil meter. Two pry bars, one narrow, one with the bent lip he’d filed himself. A roll of cloth to keep metal quiet. Chalk. Spare filters. Water. The trauma kit Lily had shoved at him last run sat awkwardly at the edge of the table, her stern lecture about core safety still ringing in his ears. He kept it there like it might bite.

Kiri sat opposite him with an old notebook open, pencil tapping the margin where she kept her lists. The medication made her breathing even, the tremor in her fingers a ghost now. She ticked boxes in a column titled This Week and another labeled Next. Pills were circled. Rations were underlined. Forty points went in a neat downward arrow toward MEDS.

“How are the numbers looking?” Raelin asked, eyes still on his work.

“Unreasonably well.” She frowned.

Raelin looked up at his sister. “Then why the face?”

“We’re making more now in a week than we did in months before,” she began, dragging her fingers through her hair. “Even with the meds, we’re on the fast track to the Habitation Blocks. It just seems too good to be true…”

Kiri sighed and slumped over her notebook. Raelin sat beside her and laid a hand over hers.

“Ki… We’ve spent months researching and failed many times over before we finally found a worthwhile spot,” Raelin said. “This is the payoff, finally our time to be lucky.”

Kiri smiled, and he grinned back. She shifted over to lean her head on his shoulder, eyes closed. They spent a few minutes in silence until the coil hob beeped itself hoarse, declaring the sludge bricks officially at dining temperature.

Raelin groaned, pushed up from the bench, and crossed to the sputtering hob in the corner they called a kitchen. He stirred the viscous ration sludge until it loosened, then split it between two dented tin plates, the steam smelling faintly of burnt plastic. With an exaggerated bow he presented one plate. “Milady’s slop.”

Kiri snorted, tapped his wrist with the spoon, and nodded toward his share. “Sir’s deluxe swill,” she replied, taking the offering like it was palace fare.

They ate mostly in silence, spoons scraping tin, punctuated now and then by their deadpan reviews.

“Truly gruel fit for kings,” Kiri muttered after a bite.

Raelin countered with, “Five stars, would chew again.”

She jabbed her spoon toward the corner of the ceiling where an Eye would be if they were people who mattered. “Saw this place on the Oracle’s top picks,” she added, and they both chuckled while grimacing through the taste.

When the plates were bare, Raelin wiped them with a strip of cloth and stacked them by the basin.

“Feast is over,” he announced. “Let’s finish packing and get going.”

Kiri closed the notebook with a soft thump and slid the pencil into her braid.

“Time to go earn more meals just like this one,” she answered, pushing back from the table.

The Old Freight District was stirring when they stepped outside. Water dripped steadily from the gaps in the ceiling far above, rainwater runoff from the Habitation Blocks pooling in the uneven floor. Two doors down, a young woman hung laundry between converted loading bays, working around the wet patches, her movements slow and hollow. Somewhere a door scraped open and shut, then footsteps faded toward Undertown and whatever shift was waiting. The warehouses here were never meant for people, but then, neither was most of the Substructure. These makeshift shacks were as permanent as temporary housing could be.

They wound through the district’s uneven passages, past doorways where people had carved homes from spaces meant for cargo, past walls still bearing faded logos of companies from before the Collapse.

The corridors grew busier as they approached Undertown proper, the empty quiet of the freight district giving way to bodies and noise.

Undertown swallowed them. The market crowd moved in a dense, steady current, bodies shifting past each other, streams of people flowing around stalls and merging back. Vendors called out prices, haggled, argued over quality. One had fallen asleep in his chair, arms crossed, his spread of salvaged tools untouched in front of him.

Raelin set their pace at the usual notch below hurry, and Kiri matched him without thought. They moved through the crowd like water through familiar channels, stepping around a woman hauling a cart of scrap fabric, dodging a boy’s outstretched arm as he haggled too enthusiastically over a handful of copper wire.

Then The Shaft came into view.

It rose from its three domed bases like a fist thrust upward through the levels, massive and indifferent. Kiri slowed as they passed into its shadow, then caught herself and matched his pace again. Her eyes traced the structure upward until it vanished into the cavern ceiling above.

“Do you think we’ll ever actually see it?” she asked. “The Greenbelt?”

Raelin followed her gaze. The Shaft hummed faintly with the movement of cargo somewhere in its guts, goods flowing up and down between the tiers. “Maybe,” he said. “Someday.”

“I want to see the sky,” she said. “Not through gaps in the ceiling. Actual open sky, going on forever.” She kept walking, but slower now. “And living plants everywhere. Not roots or mushrooms. Real ones. Trees.”

“So they say.”

“Grass, Rae. Imagine walking on grass.” She scuffed her boot against the worn stone beneath them. “They say it’s soft. Cool. That it smells like life.”

“Instead of dust and rust,” he muttered.

She shot him a look, eyebrows raised. “Yeah. Exactly.”

“And fruit,” Kiri continued. “Not dried. Not processed into bars. Actual fruit, with juice that runs down your chin when you bite into it.”

“Sounds messy.”

“Sounds amazing,” she countered, bumping his shoulder. “Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it. After breakfast this morning?”

The memory of the morning’s ration brick sat heavy in his stomach.

“Vegetables you can actually chew,” he admitted. “With colors other than brown.”

“See?” She grinned at him. “There’s a dreamer in there somewhere.”

“There’s someone who’s tired of food that tastes like the container it came in.”

They walked on. The market noise faded to echoes as they left Undertown’s heart behind. The air grew cooler, damper, carrying the mineral smell of deep stone. Ahead, the tunnel widened into the checkpoint space of the Iron Threshold.

The guard post stood empty, but raised voices carried from the inspection building. Zane’s rumble, Gerard’s sharper tone, and a third voice Raelin only recognized as someone else’s problem.

“Sounds like they’ve got their hands full,” Kiri said.

“Lucky us.” Raelin ducked under the barrier. No inspection needed for heading out, just coming back. “We’ll catch Zane on the return.”

They passed through.

They clicked their headlamps on as they entered the Steelroots, beams swallowed quickly by the dark.

“Which way today?” Kiri asked, her voice low.

“The Rusty Ladder. Been a while since we visited ol’ rusty.”

“Feeling nostalgic?”

“Feeling cautious. Keeps us clear of the storm drains.”

Kiri nodded, pulling out her hand-drawn map to confirm the route.

They moved through the tunnels with the ease of long practice, picking out landmarks like old friends. The collapsed beam they ducked under at the first junction. The old drainage culvert they never used because it flooded. The scattered debris where someone had tried and failed to clear a side passage.

“Remember when you got your boot stuck in that?” Kiri whispered, nodding toward the debris.

“Remember when you laughed so hard you probably alerted every scavenger in the Steelroots?”

“Worth it.” She stifled a laugh behind her hand.

Raelin shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched.

Kiri’s whispered jokes came further apart the deeper they went, then stopped. By the time they reached the pipe junction crusted with mineral deposits, neither had spoken for several minutes.

Raelin stopped and held up a hand. Kiri halted behind him. He checked the ground. Their prints from previous trips had faded to smudges in the dust. No fresh tracks overlaid them. He nodded to Kiri, and they moved on.

The Rusty Ladder waited beyond, its corroded rungs descending into deeper darkness. Raelin went first, testing each step before committing his weight.

“Trusty rusty,” he murmured as the metal groaned, but held.

Kiri’s quiet snort echoed down after him.

At the bottom, the air changed. Colder. Heavier. Kiri marked their position on the map while Raelin scanned the passage ahead.

They continued through the lower passages, the air carrying its usual mix of rust and deep stone. Raelin swept his headlamp methodically: ground for tracks, walls for fresh marks, the old maintenance hatches that should stay closed. Kiri watched their backs, pausing now and then to listen.

The tunnel widened into the final stretch before the factory’s main chamber.

Then Kiri stopped, touching his arm. She pointed down.

Boot prints in the dust, emerging from a side passage. Heavy treads, multiple sets, cutting across their path toward the factory.

Raelin crouched, studying the impressions. The edges were crisp. Recent.

“Five,” he murmured. “Maybe six.”

Kiri had crouched beside him, angling her headlamp to catch the tracks at a sharper angle. She traced the direction with her finger, then pointed to another set. “These two double back.”

“We turn around,” he said. “Now.”

They rose together. As they began walking back the way they had come, the beam of a headlamp cut across the tunnel ahead.