The bowels of Cinder were hot enough to kill a normal man in an hour. Adam was not a normal man, but even he felt the heat cooking the sweat in his pores.
He stood waist-deep in the ash-pit of Sector 9, wielding a sledgehammer that weighed as much as a small anvil. He swung it in a rhythmic, terrifying arc. Clang. Clang. Clang. With each strike, he shattered the hardened slag clogging the intake vents of the magma siphon.
Around him, other slaves worked in a daze, their skin blistered and grey. They gave Adam a wide berth. To them, he was "The Titan." A mute giant who could lift a steam-piston unassisted.
Adam paused, wiping ash from his eyes. He looked at his hands. They were calloused, scarred, and filthy.
I used to hold galaxies, he thought, the memory distant and dull, like a dream fading upon waking. Now I hold a hammer.
He didn't hate it. In fact, there was a strange, brutal honesty to it. As the Progenitor, his will had been absolute. Here, the rock fought back. The iron resisted. He had to earn every inch of movement.
"Hey. Big Man."
The whisper cut through the roar of the furnaces.
Adam didn't turn immediately. He kept his rhythm, swinging the hammer. Clang. On the backswing, he leaned slightly to the left, glancing toward the shadows behind the main boiler.
Kael was there.
The engineer was pressed into a crevice between two pipes, looking like a soot-stained specter. He held a bundle wrapped in oily rags.
Adam grunted—a low rumble in his chest that served as his acknowledgment. He signaled for a break, feigning a cramp in his shoulder, and moved into the steam-shadow of the boiler.
"We have two minutes before the overseer cycles back," Kael said, his voice tight. He unwrapped the bundle.
Inside was a heavy brass valve, gleaming dully in the red light. It looked normal, but Adam noticed the threads were cut at a strange, aggressive angle.
"This is the Flux-Valve," Kael explained, holding it up. "I stole it from the scrap heap and re-threaded it. It looks like a standard pressure release, but it's not."
Adam stared at the object. A piece of brass. It seemed so small.
"When you install this on the main intake," Kael continued, speaking fast, "it won't release the steam when the pressure hits the red line. It will feed it back into the chamber."
"Boom?" Adam asked. His voice was deep, gravel grinding on glass. He spoke rarely, still finding human language clumsy and slow.
"Big boom," Kael confirmed. "But only if you install it right. You can't just jam it in. The threading is reversed. You have to turn it left to tighten it. Counter-clockwise."
Adam took the valve. It was heavy, dense.
"Left," Adam repeated.
"If you strip the threads, the seal fails early, and we just get a steam leak," Kael said, grabbing Adam's massive forearm with his one hand. "The timing is everything. It has to hold until the pressure maximizes. You have to feel the metal, Adam. Don't force it. Physics isn't like magic. It doesn't care who you are. It only cares about leverage."
Adam looked at the valve, then at Kael. He remembered Kael as a healer—soft, spiritual. Now, Kael spoke of metal and leverage with the same reverence he used to speak of souls.
"I will do it," Adam said.
"Tonight," Kael commanded. "During the shift change. The maintenance hatch is behind the slag-pit. You have a three-minute window while the cooling fans spin down."
A whistle blew somewhere above them—a shrill, mechanical shriek that signaled the rotation of the guards.
"Go," Adam said.
Kael hesitated. He looked up at the former god, his eyes hard behind the goggles. "Adam. When this thing blows... the magma won't stop. It's going to flood the lower levels first. Where we are standing."
"I know."
"You have to be at the lift," Kael pressed. "Don't try to save the equipment. Don't try to hold the wall up. Just run."
Adam smirked, a rare, terrifying expression on his stone-carved face. He hefted the sledgehammer in one hand and the valve in the other.
"I do not run, little engineer. I endure."
Kael nodded once, then vanished back into the steam.
Adam turned back to the slag-pit. He tucked the valve into the waistband of his trousers, beneath the heavy leather apron. He gripped his hammer with both hands.
The overseer walked onto the catwalk above, cracking an electrical whip against the railing. "Back to work, dogs! The Sultanate needs its fuel!"
Adam swung the hammer. Clang.
Left to tighten, he thought. Counter-clockwise.
He looked at the main intake pipe—a massive artery of iron pulsing with the heat of the earth. In five days, he would give this machine a heart attack.
He swung again, harder this time, cracking the slag. He felt the vibration travel up his arms, into his bones. He felt... alive.
The Progenitor was dead. But Adam was just getting started.