Dara's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

The blue lamp lit the grate, but the air had turned foul. Dara's mask filter had clogged with tunnel damp. Each breath came slow and wet. She sucked hard, and only a thread of air came through. The cracked rubber pulled tight against her face. Her chest burned. Beyond the bolted grate lay Kael. She could not reach him if she choked here first. "My filter's dead," she said. Her voice rasped inside the mask. "I can't breathe." Eli grabbed her shoulder. "Take it off." "The air down here is worse than the tunnel above." She coughed. "It'll drop me." He pointed at the clogged filter with a shaking finger. "Then clean it. The damp packed the mesh. Scrape it out." Dara pried the filter loose. Her fingers slipped on the wet rubber. Inside, the mesh was choked with black sludge. She dug at it with her thumbnail. It smeared but did not clear. Her lungs screamed for air. Spots swam in the blue light. Eli tore a strip from his stained white coat. "Wrap this over the housing. Cloth breathes. Sludge doesn't." She held her breath and worked fast. She scraped the worst of the sludge onto the tunnel floor. Then she stretched the coat strip across the empty housing and pressed the filter back over it. Her hands were black to the wrist. She fit the mask to her face and pulled in a breath. Air. Thin, but clean. It moved. She dragged in another and another. Her vision cleared. The burn in her chest eased. "It holds," she said. "For now." Then a voice came down through the vent. Not Wren's. A man's, flat and clipped, giving orders to guards above. "Check the shed. Lamp's not on its hook." Boots crossed the stone overhead. "Somebody moved it. I want to know who." Dara froze. She knew that voice from the checkpoint line. Garn Kessler. The broad enforcer who barked at the crowd outside Iron Regime Hall. His words came right through the vent, close enough to touch. "Nobody passed my post," Garn said. A pause. His voice dropped, harder. "Nobody. That's what the report says." A door slammed above. Dara heard him stop, half a breath, before he spoke again. "Search the tunnel mouth. If it's flooded, good. If it's not, you go down." Eli pressed against the wall. "They're coming for the tunnel." Dara stared at the bolted grate. The sludge from her filter lay in a black smear on the floor, plain as a footprint. Guards with lamps would read it in a second. She could breathe again. But now the blue lamp was missed, and a search was moving toward them. The grate was still locked, and the enemy was closing from behind.