The load strap snapped halfway down the descent, even though Ossian had checked that webbing twice at the staging line. The crate swung off his back and drove into the side of his neck.
'That strap held the whole way from the yard... and it quits on the descent, of course it does,' he got a shoulder under it, 'the buckle can wait, get the crate up first.'
Two hunters walked past him without looking down, their arm plates clean at every joint in a way that meant neither of them had carried anything all week.
Once the crate stood upright, Ossian found the cut, six strands sliced through under a fresh heat seal somebody had melted over the damage to hide it.
'Somebody put a knife through my strap... then sealed it up after, real craftsmanship,' the seal was soft under his thumb, 'work out who did it later, get down the slope first.'
The raid paid nine hundred credits, of which four hundred went straight to rent, leaving him short of the thousand his mother's treatment cost every month.
'Four hundred for the room, a thousand for her medicine, nine hundred coming in...' Ossian moved the crate onto his other shoulder, 'shit, that math's never worked and I keep doing it anyway.'
Ivory Banner had told him that this raid was going to be his last trial. Passing it meant a permanent logistics contract with a guild badge on the end of it.
The badge mattered to him more than the money on the job did. A guild clinic rate came with it, and that discount would cut his mother's thousand a month in half.
Perris came down the slope backward, watching Ossian's feet instead of his own. He had the newest armor on the team and a rifle nobody had made him clean yet.
"First drink's on me when they hand you that badge," Perris promised, hopping down the last section without checking where the passage narrowed.
'He means the drink too... he'll mean it right up until Ruan tells him otherwise,' Ossian had carried this same boy out of Verrick four months ago, 'nothing to say to that, just lift.'
"Keep your sight lines clear," Ossian pushed the crate higher against his neck instead of saying the rest of it.
Ruan came up the line from forward staging with a glass wrist screen turned toward Ossian's face.
"Sign the addendum before we cross into the primary zone," Ruan instructed without stopping, and the screen followed Ossian instead of waiting for him.
Ossian read down to the third paragraph, where the contract called him a recoverable support asset, a name that let the team push their own fatigue and wounds into his body during a fight.
'Recoverable, meaning whichever piece of me still works after... somebody typed that, with a coffee,' the crate ground into the bruise on his collarbone, 'sign the damn thing, the badge pays the clinic rate.'
A support asset earned less than a porter did, so the signature dropped his share from nine hundred credits to six forty.
'Six forty covers the room or the medicine... pick one, apparently that's the game now,' Ossian handed the screen back, 'say something, he's standing right there.'
He said nothing at all, and the right answer arrived in his mouth four steps later, too late to use.
They crossed into the Gate through the registered entry, where the air was thick with crushed stone.
Ossian looked up while the others checked their weapons, finding claw marks along the ceiling well above the height a spiked hound could reach, four grooves deep enough to hold a finger.
'Nothing on the survey sheet climbs that high... so either the guild mapped this wrong or something took up gymnastics,' he tilted his chin while the crate fought him for balance, 'and that fluid's warm.'
Warm shell fluid dripped off the rock onto the top of his foot. Something had shed its skin in here after the survey team wrote the room down as empty.
Then he felt a second pulse come up through the floor, slow and deep, from somewhere underneath the Heart the guild had mapped.
"There's a second one under the floor," Ossian put his palm flat on the stone so somebody else could feel the pulse for themselves.
Ruan waved it off with an armored hand and kept his head pointed at the sealed tunnel ahead.
'He looked right at that fluid... then waved it off, in that order,' Ossian watched the captain's helmet turn back toward the tunnel, 'Ruan knows what's under us and he's walking us in.'
"Turning back voids the broadcast bonus," Ruan told the tunnel instead of the man who had spoken.
The larva woke underneath them before the argument finished, lifting the floor in one slow swell that put three hunters onto their knees.
Its guardian pack came out of the passage behind the team while the boss the guild had mapped blocked the way forward, leaving the squad with monsters at both ends.
Three spiked hounds hit the front shields, dragging a man out of his brace before the second rank could set their feet.
Ruan drove The Standard into the floor at the centre of the formation and opened Consensus. That network shared the vanguard's injuries out across everyone linked to the contract.
'The clause is doing its work... their cuts are landing on my ribs, exactly like the wording promised,' cuts opened along his ribs under a uniform nothing had touched, 'shit, I signed up for this.'
Pain arrived in waves instead of one hit, a bruise coming up under his forearm, then a deep ache settling into a knee that had not moved wrong.
A woman on the second rank kept fighting with an ankle that had stopped bending an hour ago, hiding it in the way she planted her spear.
'Four of them are hurt... five now, and I'm the one keeping score,' the count kept changing against his skin, 'call the turns, they can't see the seam from up there.'
Ossian put the crate down and called the retreat route anyway, left at the fallen column, then through the low seam that came out under the ascent.
Two of the juniors on this team had never used the low seam before. Marker tape came off his harness onto that column at head height.
When the ledge came apart under Perris, Ossian hooked two fingers through the boy's harness loop and hauled him backward against the rock.
'Second time I've pulled him off a ledge... he's never once asked, I just keep doing it,' Ossian let go of the loop and put him back on his feet, 'move, the seam's closing.'
They reached the final ascent with the pack still working the passage behind them. Ossian could hear it feeding on the man from the front rank.
"Cut the excess support weight before Consensus takes the fighters," Ruan called from forty feet up the rope.
'Excess support weight, that's me... they've got a crate word for a person, lovely,' Ossian looked up at Perris, who had a survival blade out over the line, 'he won't do it, he owes me.'
"I carried you out of Verrick," Ossian closed both hands on the rope, tilting his chin up so the boy would have to look at something other than the buckle.
Perris looked at the buckle, apologized once in a voice too small to carry down the shaft, then cut through the strands.
The rope end whipped upward past Ossian's hands while the team rose toward the extraction point without him.
He fell backward through the false Heart floor and hit the bottom of the nest with his left shoulder folded under him.
'I signed that addendum myself... eleven seconds of reading, best deal I ever made,' copper filled his mouth where a tooth had opened his cheek, 'get up, the water's coming.'
'Perris apologized first... haha... his blade didn't show the same kindness tho,' the word came down the shaft after him with nothing else attached, 'no, the floor.'
His comm unit lay in pieces beside him with the guild channel still open, carrying Ruan's voice down from the surface.
The last emergency flare burned out against the far wall, showing a carved face set deep into the stone before the dark came back over it.
Behind that carved face, something inside a wet translucent egg opened one pale eye shaped like a person's.