The air inside the vault went stale in less than ten minutes.
The spinning red alarm crystal bathed the small, lead-lined room in a panicked, pulsing glow. Mara was on her knees, ears against the vault door, her hands searching for any openings.
"It's a dead-drop system," Mara gasped, her chest heaving as she tried to pull oxygen from the thinning air. "When the alarm tripped, it fired solid iron pins into the surrounding stone. The gears are disconnected. There's nothing to pick."
Elian leaned heavily against the steel door, his revolver hanging uselessly in his hand. He had already tried firing a round into the hinge joints. The bullet had simply ricocheted, nearly taking his own ear off, leaving nothing but a shallow dent in the dwarven steel.
The heat was rising. Without ventilation, the ambient warmth of their bodies and the frantic exertion were turning the vault into an oven.
"They built this to contain a weaponized sunbeam," Elian said, his voice raspy. He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor beside her. "We aren't breaking out with a pair of pliers and a six-shooter."
Mara dropped her lock picks. The metal clattered loudly in the tight space. She pulled her knees to her chest, the defiant fire in her eyes dimming under the crushing weight of the claustrophobia.
"I'm sorry, Elian," she whispered, the tough-rebel facade finally cracking. "I dragged you into this. I thought I was fighting the system. I didn't know the system was just using us."
Elian reached over and gripped her hand. His own vision was starting to swim, black spots dancing at the edge of his sight. "You didn't pull the trigger on the Prince. We found the truth. We just... ran out of time to tell it."
The red light spun. Five more minutes passed. Then ten. Every breath felt like inhaling warm cotton. Elian closed his eyes, the edges of his consciousness fraying.
Then, a sound cut through the heavy silence.
Clack. Hiss.
The massive pneumatic seals of the vault were disengaging.
Elian's eyes snapped open. Adrenaline, raw and desperate, flooded his system. He hauled himself up, pulling Mara to her feet.
"They're opening it," Elian choked out, leveling his revolver at the center seam of the door.
Mara unslung her father's rifle, her hands shaking from oxygen deprivation but her grip steady. She aimed right beside him. "If we're going down, we take as many of these dogs with us as we can."
The heavy locking pins retracted with a series of mechanical thuds. The two-foot-thick steel door began to swing outward, letting in a blinding rush of fresh, cool air.
Elian took a massive gulp of oxygen, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Watch, drop your—!"
He didn't get to finish the sentence.
The door hadn't even opened halfway when a metallic cylinder bounced off the vault frame and landed directly at their feet. It emitted a high-pitched, deafening whine for a fraction of a second.
BANG.
It was a concussive flash-charge. The world erupted into blinding white light and a physical wave of sound that ruptured Elian's equilibrium. His eardrums shrieked. He fired blindly into the whiteout, but the recoil of the gun slipped from his numb fingers.
He felt a heavy, armored body slam into him, driving him hard into the unyielding stone floor. The breath he had just taken was driven instantly from his lungs.
Through the ringing in his ears and the starbursts in his eyes, he heard Mara scream in frustration, followed by the sickening thud of a rifle butt striking flesh. Her scream was cut short.
"Restraints," a cold, professional voice commanded through the ringing. It didn't sound like a street thug. It sounded like military cadence. "Check them for arcane triggers. Bag their heads."
Rough, gloved hands seized Elian's arms, wrenching them painfully behind his back. Thick, alchemically hardened zip-ties bit into his wrists, tightening with a vicious zip. He tried to struggle, to kick out, but a heavy boot pressed down on the back of his neck, pinning his face to the vault floor.
"The girl is secure. We have the ledger, sir."
"Good," the cold voice replied. "The Lady will be pleased. Move them to the transport."
A thick, suffocating canvas hood was yanked violently over Elian's head, plunging him back into total darkness. He was hauled to his feet by his bound arms, his shoulders screaming in protest.
He was dragged forward, his boots dragging over the pristine cobblestones of the Artisan District. He heard the heavy, rhythmic chugging of a steam engine idling nearby.
"A steam carriage?" Elian thought.
He was hoisted up and thrown roughly onto a hard metal bench. A second later, a smaller body was thrown in beside him. Mara. She was breathing, but unresponsive.
The heavy iron doors of the transport slammed shut, the sound ringing with terrifying finality. The steam engine whistled, gears grinding as the vehicle lurched into motion, carrying them away from the scene of the crime and deep into the unknown belly of the city.
As the wisps of steam billowing from the armored carriage melded into the dense Aurion fog, the street outside Warehouse 4B fell dead silent once more. The corporate mercenaries had operated with terrifying, practiced efficiency. In less than three minutes, there was no sign Elian and Mara had ever been there.
But they hadn't been the only ones watching.
High above the pristine cobblestones, crouched on the copper-plated roof of a neighboring guildhall, a silhouette detached itself from the gloom. The figure was wrapped in a weather-beaten duster, the collar pulled high against the river chill. A pair of brass-rimmed lenses caught the fading amber light of the streetlamps below, gleaming like a predator's eyes.
The stranger watched the transport take a hard left at the end of the cul-de-sac, mentally calculating its trajectory toward the upper rings of the city.
Slowly, the figure stood up. From beneath the heavy coat, they drew a sleek, pneumatic grappling launcher—a piece of tech far too advanced for the Sump, but too customized for the City Watch.
With a sharp hiss of compressed air, a steel-barbed line shot out into the dark, biting deep into the masonry of the next building over. Without a sound, the stranger stepped off the ledge, swinging out into the foggy night.
The Watchman and the rebel were captured, but they weren't entirely alone. A phantom was on their trail.