The flume was sixty centimeters of cold iron channel sunken flush into the ballast, carrying four inches of icy industrial runoff toward the sump pumps.
Arin lowered himself in feet-first, his boots breaking the dark water with barely a ripple.
The clearance was merciless. To keep beneath the rusted iron plates bridging the trench, he had to lie nearly flat on his belly, pulling his weight forward on his forearms. The cold runoff soaked through his canvas trousers and shirt within seconds, the chilled water stinging the bandaged graze on his calf like crushed ice.
He unclipped the salvaged pike head from his pack frame, holding the heavy forged socket in his right hand so the leaf-blade rested flat against his forearm. Dragging it loose across the iron floor would have scraped like a chisel on an anvil.
Behind him, Mira slipped into the channel with fluid, soundless precision.
They crawled twenty paces through the dark.
> [LOW-CLEARANCE CONCEALMENT: ACTIVE]
> [COLD IMMERSION: CORE TEMPERATURE BUFFERED]
> [CURRENT STAMINA: 74 → 66/105]
Overhead, through the gaps where the flume plates had rusted through, the sweep of Devlin’s bullseye lantern passed across the ceiling trusses in wide, amber arcs. Every time the beam tracked toward their trench, Arin froze, pressing his cheek into the shallow current.
The light washed over the corrugated iron, caught the rusted edge of a trench plate six inches above his hair, and swept past toward the idle ore hoppers.
Arin pulled forward another five paces.
The flume terminated beneath the raised timber apron of the workshop.
Through the spacing of the floor joists three feet above them, Arin caught the smell of stale tallow grease, kerosene, and unwashed wool. Harlan was standing less than two paces from the flume's exit, leaning over his iron cart as he sorted through a tray of heavy rail-spikes.
The long-handled boarding axe rested against the side of the cart, its broad iron blade glinting under the dim work-lantern.
Above them, on the elevated catwalk of the dispatch tower, the brass acoustic horn clattered again.
Devlin’s boots stamped across the timber platform toward the open shack door. "Wire’s buzzing from the lower core," Devlin shouted over the railing. "I'm checking the punch-register! Keep your eyes on the yard!"
The screen door of the upper shack slammed shut.
The dead angle.
With Devlin inside the shack, the elevated catwalk was empty. For fifteen to twenty seconds, the workshop floor was completely cut off from the tower’s line of sight.
Arin met Mira’s eyes in the flume's murk.
She held up two fingers, then closed her fist.
No weapons on iron. A single blade strike ringing off the grease cart or the stone floor would bring Devlin to the window with the alarm cord in his fist.
Arin surged out of the flume.
He didn't stand up into the open. He drove his boots into the stone lip of the trench, exploding upward beneath the timber apron in a low, lunging tackle:
> [ANAEROBIC BURST: SURPRISE CLOSURE]
> [CURRENT STAMINA: 66 → 52/105]
Harlan turned at the rush of displaced water, his hand dropping toward the boarding axe.
He never reached it.
Mira cleared the flume a fraction of a second behind Arin, moving like a coiled spring. Her gloved left hand clamped over Harlan’s mouth and nose from behind, her forearm locking his head against her shoulder to choke off any sound.
Simultaneously, Arin slammed his shoulder directly into Harlan’s midsection, using his low center of gravity and the force of his entry to fold the larger man backward over the grease cart.
Harlan’s heels kicked out, but Arin had already driven the heavy, blunt socket of the salvaged pike head hard into the junction of the loader's collarbone and neck—a brutal, localized pressure clamp, forcing Harlan's right shoulder down and spoiling his grip before his fingers could close around the axe haft.
Harlan thrashed, his eyes wide with sudden terror, the iron rings of his collar scraping against his wool coat.
Arin didn't let him fight the leverage. He locked his left forearm across Harlan's chest, pinning him against the heavy iron cart, and drove his knee into the man's hip joint to collapse his base.
With Harlan immobilized, Mira drew her bone-handled utility knife—not the combat blade, but the short, rounded skinning taper—and pressed the flat cold steel against the carotid pulse behind his ear.
"One sound," Mira whispered, her voice colder than the flume water, "and I open your neck to the bone."
Harlan froze. The violent tremor in his chest slowed to a shuddering, terrified tremble. His hands rose slowly away from the cart, palms flat, fingers splayed.
He held the iron socket locked against the man's shoulder while they waited, his Perception sweeping the space:
> [HOSTILE RESTRAINT VERIFIED: PLAYER HARLAN (LEVEL 3)]
> [ALARM STATE: DORMANT]
> [CURRENT HP: 84/125]
> [CURRENT STAMINA: 52 → 58/105]
Upstairs in the dispatch shack, the muffled clatter of the punch-register continued, uninterrupted.
Devlin was still at the desk.
Arin reached to his pack strap, pulled a length of waxed cord from his utility kit, and secured Harlan’s wrists behind the frame of the grease cart with three rapid, binding turns. He shoved a wad of clean grease-rag deep into the man’s mouth, securing it tight with a strip of canvas torn from Harlan's own work apron.
He dragged the bound loader deeper into the shadows beneath the workshop apron, out of sight from the tracks.
Arin stepped back, picking up the long-handled boarding axe from the cart.
> [SALVAGED BOARDING AXE]
> [MATERIAL: FORGED STEEL / ASH SHAFT]
> [WEIGHT: 2.1 kg]
> [DURABILITY: 22/25]
A solid industrial tool. But it was too long and too heavy to swing inside the cramped confines of the dispatch shack without catching the ceiling balks. He leaned it quietly against the stone wall, keeping his grip on the shorter, faster salvaged pike head.
He looked up at the iron spiral staircase leading to the dispatch platform.
Five meters above the yard, the amber glow of the kerosene mantles cut through the frosted glass of the shack window. Inside, the silhouette of Devlin was leaning over a desk, a pencil in his hand, entirely unaware that the floor below him had been taken.
Beside the window, hanging on an external iron bracket directly above the top stair, was the heavy bronze alarm bell—its trip-wire running straight down through the ceiling into Calder’s garrison circuit.
Arin wiped the cold flume water from his eyes and looked at Mira.
"One hostile left," Arin whispered. "He's between us and the winch."