The rising chemical vapor from the canal hissed softly against the undersides of the iron catwalk, filling the damp air with an odor like charred hair and scorched copper.
"Move," Mira said, her voice sharp and low. "The vapor is venting into the ceiling seam. We don't have long before the air in this pocket turns caustic."
Arin didn’t waste a second. He unslung his pack, uncapped his empty plastic bottle, and plunged it beneath the thin, crystal-clear curtain flowing from the cracked condensation conduit. The water was frigid, chilling his fingers to the bone, but it filled the vessel with clean, uninterrupted efficiency. He sealed the cap, thrust it into a side pocket, and held out his second bottle.
Beside him, Mira topped off her dented tin canteen, sealed the screw-top, and immediately scanned the catwalk in both directions.
"Look at the walkway," Arin said, gesturing with his chin toward where Jaxon had been standing before his plunge.
Lying on the algae-slicked slate was Jaxon’s second bone dagger. Knocked loose from its sheath when Arin’s flashlight clipped his ankle, it had skittered against the stone basin instead of following its owner into the chemical abyss.
Arin picked it up. A blue pane flickered into focus:
> [HOUND-BONE DAGGER]
> [DAMAGE: 5–9]
> [DURABILITY: 19/25]
> [WEIGHT: 0.4 kg]
> [Trait: Serrated Edge — Inflicts Minor Laceration on unarmored flesh.]
Five to nine damage, Arin calculated. Nearly double the rusted knife's lower threshold, with significantly higher durability.
He slipped the bone dagger into his belt beside his corroded blade. It wasn't modern steel, but the bone was dense, sharpened along a calcified seam that felt surprisingly balanced in the hand.
"Down the seam," Mira urged, tugging his elbow. "Now."
They moved swiftly along the narrow catwalk, keeping their backs flat against the drill-scored wall. Ten paces past the basin, the catwalk broke off where an ancient iron section had sheared away, replaced by an open drainage flue cut directly into the rock.
Mira ducked inside. Arin followed, dropping onto hands and knees as the narrow, concrete-lined culvert swallowed them.
Behind them, the white vapor began drifting across the catwalk, curling lazily into the vents. Through the grating overhead, distant, guttural bellows echoed from the upper shafts—scavengers drawn by the sudden spike of thermal and chemical activity.
They crawled for fifty meters. The frantic pace and cramped crawl space took a steady physical toll; with his heart rate elevated, passive recovery remained suppressed, and every heavy push against the concrete dragged another fraction from his reserves.
By the time the culvert rose into a dry, dead-end junction box, his breath was coming in ragged gasps. Thick, inactive pneumatic cables hung from the ceiling like dead vines, and the floor was covered in a dry layer of slate dust.
Arin slumped against the concrete wall, feeling the dull sting across his cheek where the flying bone splinters had cut him, alongside the hot, rhythmic pulse in his shoulder.
He pulled up his status:
> [CURRENT HP: 83/100]
> [STATUS: LACERATION (UNTREATED) — Sepsis risk accumulating.]
> [CURRENT STAMINA: 34/80]
Eighty-three health. The two points lost to Jaxon's bone shrapnel were minor, but the untreated claw gouge from the upper cavern was worsening. Left open to the mineral dust and industrial filth caking the rock, the wound would turn septic without direct intervention.
Arin reached into his canvas pack and pulled out one of the two sterile white bandages issued in his starter kit.
> [COMPRESSION BANDAGE]
> [Quality: Standard Tier]
> [Effect: Halts Bleeding. Neutralizes Sepsis progression on wounds below Grade 2. Restores +10 HP over 60 minutes upon clean application.]
He used his rusted knife to slit the bloody fabric of his sleeve, exposing the four jagged furrows the hound's claws had carved into his deltoid. The skin around the tears was angry, swollen, and caked with dark stone dust.
Arin unhooked his newly filled water bottle, twisted the cap, and poured a precise, conservative stream directly over the torn flesh.
Pain flared white-hot through his nerves, making his jaw clench until his molars ground together. He rinsed away the grit, patted the margins dry with the clean tail of his undershirt, and wrapped the bandage firmly around his shoulder. He anchored the end with the adhesive strip, pulling the weave tight enough to compress the damaged capillary beds without cutting off arterial circulation.
A clinical system prompt acknowledged the field dressing:
> [MEDICAL ACTION VERIFIED]
> [STATUS REMOVED: LACERATION]
> [SEPSIS ACCUMULATION: CLEARED]
> [HP RECOVERY INITIALIZED: +1 HP / 5 minutes]
Arin leaned his head back against the cold concrete, breathing through the lingering burn.
"You've patched wounds before," Mira observed from across the junction box. She was sitting with her knees drawn up, a whetstone scraping rhythmically along the edge of her iron blade.
"Industrial inventory," Arin said quietly, keeping his voice steady. "Tool plants. Machining workshops. People drop drill bits, get caught on lathe chucks, or slip on slick coolant. If you don't dress a cut immediately, grease and metal filings poison the blood within hours."
Mira paused her sharpening stone, studying him with those cold, evaluating eyes.
"You don't think like a soldier," she said. "Soldiers come in here looking for something to shoot or an order to follow. When neither shows up, they freeze. You treat everything like a malfunctioning assembly line."
"Because it is," Arin replied, meeting her gaze. "A machine has inputs, tolerances, and wear limits. Jaxon thought his Level 3 status meant he was the apex operator. He forgot that friction and gravity don't care about your character sheet."
Mira’s lips twitched with that faint, humorless smirk.
"Don't get cocky because one man took a dive into the soup," she warned, sliding her stone back into her belt pouch. "Jaxon was a scout. A border dog. The people who run the lower platforms aren't scavengers clinging to scraps. They're veterans who have spent weeks studying every spawn pattern between here and the river."
Arin adjusted his newly bandaged shoulder, testing the range of motion. The dressing held firm.
"Then we have about twenty minutes before someone realizes Jaxon missed his check-in chime," Arin said. "Tell me about the people running this floor."