Mothbreaker's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Mothbreaker climbed out of the flooded pump room onto a steel catwalk and stopped. Water ran off her boots in loud drips. The plant stretched away in every direction, a maze of pipe runs and dark corridors, and she did not know a single hallway of it. The node hummed somewhere above her. Guards walked somewhere between. If she picked a door at random, she would trip a sensor before she found the right one. She had maybe five hours left, and no map. She crouched behind a valve housing and thumbed her earpiece to the crew channel. Jolt Jinx picked up first. "You alive?" "Inside," Mothbreaker said. "Blind. I need the layout." A second click. Storm Grit was on the line too, breathing rough. "Talk," Storm Grit said. Mothbreaker described the room, the catwalk, the pipe gauges, the stencil on the wall reading SOUTH INTAKE 3. "South intake three," Jolt Jinx said. "Hold." Mothbreaker heard paper move. "One of my crew ran salvage here before he went missing. His notebook's on my bench. Give me a minute." The minute felt long. A flashlight beam crossed the far end of the catwalk and moved on. Then Jolt Jinx came back. "Got it. From your stencil, you go left, not right. Left takes you to a service corridor under the old chlorine tanks. Right takes you past the guard room. Follow the corridor to a stairwell marked with a red X. Up two floors. The node room is behind a door his notebook calls the dry lab. He said the door has a card reader, but the frame is soft. Pry it." Storm Grit cut in. "Neon Sentinel is on the channel with me. She's pulling the plant's old permit filings right now. She'll feed you camera positions as you move." A new voice, Neon Sentinel, clean and quick. "First camera is twelve meters up the left corridor, ceiling mount, sweeping east. Move when it turns." Mothbreaker moved. She counted the camera's sweep, crossed under it, and reached the service corridor. Neon Sentinel called each turn a beat before she needed it. The red X was where the notebook said. The stairwell was empty. Two floors up, she found the dry lab door and worked the frame with the pry end of her light until the bolt tore free of soft metal. Inside, banks of relays blinked in rows, and the control node sat at the back on a raised plinth, unguarded. She was at the node. She keyed the channel. "I'm in the room." Neon Sentinel answered fast. "Then you have a new problem. The permit filings pinged when I opened them. Someone on the surface council knows a query hit this plant. They are moving on you now."