The winch cable hummed, a low vibration that traveled through Vost's gloves and settled in the marrow of his wrists. He ignored it. The cable was old—braided wire stripped from the interior of the Upper Shell three generations ago—but it held the weight of two men and a sled of scrap. It always had.
"It's loose," Vost said.
Above him, braced against the iron lip of the ventilation shaft, Jekka didn't argue. The tension eased. Vost kicked off the wall, swinging out over the gray expanse of the Weep.
The wind hit him instantly, smelling of wet stone and sour ozone. Below, the mist obscured the ground, hiding the miles of vertical drop into the Basin. Vost didn't look down. There was no profit in the drop. He focused on the wall face. It was a sheer cliff of black, seamless material, slick with the condensation that gave the Weep its name.
"Ten meters down," Jekka called out. His voice was tinny, distorted by the brass speaking-tube woven into their hoods. "You see the blister?"
"I see it."
Vost arrested his swing, driving his crampons into a seam. The metal shrieked, then bit. He hung there, breathing the thin air. To his right, a section of the wall had peeled away like dead skin, revealing the amber machinery beneath. That was the blister. A wound in the structure. A payday.
He locked the winch brake and unslung the pry-bar.
"It's bubbling," Vost said into the tube. "The seal is blown."
"Does it glow?"
Vost squinted. The amber machinery pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light. It wasn't the steady, angry red of a thermal vent, nor the dead white of a power leak. It was soft. Inviting.
"No," Vost lied. "It's cold."
"Okay, then cut it."
Vost jammed the pry-bar under the edge of the black casing. He didn't wonder what the casing protected. He didn't wonder why the wall hummed, or why the machinery inside beat like a slow heart. He knew that the amber glass—resin, the traders called it—traded for three weeks of food at the Sluice Gate. If he could pry it loose without shattering it, they could buy filters for the water pump.
He leaned his weight into the bar. The black material groaned.
"Heave," Vost grunted.
The casing snapped. A plate of the wall, heavy as a tombstone, tumbled away, disappearing into the mist below. There was no sound of impact.
Vost swung into the cavity.
It was warmer here. The air tasted metallic, lacking the wet rot of the outside. Rows of crystalline rods lined the interior, pulsing in sequence. Vost didn't look at the patterns. He looked for the copper brackets holding them in place.
"Status?" Jekka asked.
"Jackpot. Four rods. Heavy mounts."
"Cmon, make it quick. The fog is rising. If the Damp gets in the winch gears, we're walking up."
Vost pulled a heavy wrench from his belt. He fit the jaws over the first bolt. It was a hexagonal shape, machined to a tolerance that no smith in the Basin could replicate. Vost hammered the wrench handle with the palm of his hand. The bolt didn't budge. He hit it again, harder.
Clang.
The sound rang pure and sharp, vanishing into the depths of the machine.
Vost muttered a curse and reached for the cheater pipe to extend the wrench's leverage. He didn't think about the delicate balance he was disturbing. He just needed the torque. He slotted the pipe, braced his boot against a glowing glass panel, and pulled.
The bolt screamed—a high, tearing noise—and sheared off.
"Damn it," Vost hissed.
"What's wrong?"
"Sheared the head. I'm cutting the bracket."
"Vost, the mist."
"I know."
Vost ignited the acet-torch. The blue flame roared to life, indifferent to the sanctity of the chamber. He applied the heat to the bracket. The metal darkened, then glowed cherry-red. He wasn't careful. Slag dripped onto the pristine glass floor, hissing and pitting the surface.
He worked with the efficiency of a butcher. Cut, pry, snap. The first crystal rod came free. It was heavy, humming against his chest as he wrapped it in burlap and strapped it to the sled hanging below him.
He moved to the second. The third.
By the fourth rod, the light in the chamber began to change. The gentle amber pulse stuttered. It turned a flat, hard yellow. A mechanical thrumming started deep in the wall, separate from the wind.
"Vost," Jekka said. "The cable is vibrating."
"Wind."
"No. It's coming from the wall. You woke it up."
"It doesn't wake up," Vost said, cutting through the last bracket. "It just breaks. We're looting a corpse, Jekka. Corpses don't wake up."
"This one is twitching. Leave the fourth and come up."
"I'm not leaving a week's wage."
Vost kicked the bracket. It snapped. The fourth rod slid free, sliding into his arms.
The moment the rod left its socket, the yellow light died.
Pitch blackness flooded the cavity.
Vost froze. His torch was the only light, casting long, jumping shadows against the complex geometry of the inner machinery.
Then, a sound.
Click.
It came from deeper inside the hole he had made. Not a mechanical clank, but a distinct, pneumatic hiss, like a door unsealing.
"Vost!"
"I've got it. I'm pulling out now."
Vost threw the rod onto the sled and lashed it down. He grabbed the winch line, disengaging the brake. "Pull."
The line went taut. Jekka was cranking hard. Vost walked his feet up the wall, the sled scraping against the black face behind him. He looked back once.
In the hole he had gutted, deep in the dark, a row of small, green lights flickered on. They weren't illuminating the room. They were tracking.
"Faster," Vost said.
"The gears are slipping!" Jekka grunted. "It's too much weight!"
"Don't drop the sled."
"I might have to drop you."
They ascended in jerks. Five meters. Ten. The wind howled, tearing at Vost's cloak. The Weep was living up to its name; water slicked the wall, making his boots slip. He slammed his knees against the stone to stabilize, ignoring the bruise.
They reached the lip. Jekka grabbed Vost's harness and hauled him over the edge onto the iron grating of the gantry. They collapsed, breathing hard. The sled hung suspended below them, swaying in the void.
Jekka scrambled to the winch and locked the ratchet. He was a small man, wiry and scarred, his face hidden behind a rebreather mask that he never took off outside the Sluice.
"You took too long," Jekka said, checking the tension on the drum.
Vost stood up, wiping the grease from his gloves onto his trousers. "We got four. It's clean glass and no cracks."
"The wall was shaking, Vost."
"It's stopped now."
It had. The vibration in the grating was gone. The Weep was silent again, save for the wind.
Jekka walked to the edge and looked down. "Did you close the blister?"
"No time. Who cares? It's a hole in a wall."
"Birds get in," Jekka muttered. "Nest in the gears. Grinds the whole sector down."
"Not our sector. Not our problem."
Vost walked to the sled and checked the lashings. The crystal rods were dull and gray now that they were disconnected from the machine. They looked like oversized glass ingots. Just dead weight. He felt a vague disappointment, which he instantly suppressed. Dead weight sold. Live weight got you killed.
"Help me maximize the load. We need to drag this to the railhead before the sun drops."
They worked in silence, shifting the load from the vertical sled to a wheeled cart. The gantry they stood on was a rusted skeleton of steel, jutting out from the massive wall. Above them, the wall continued up—endlessly, disappearing into the upper cloud layer. Below, it vanished into the mist. They lived on a vertical slice of infinity, and their world was ten meters wide.
"Vost," Jekka said. He had stopped working. He was staring at the rod Vost had pulled last.
"What?"
"Look at the base."
Vost leaned in. The base of the rod, where it had connected to the machine, was capped in a silver metal that didn't tarnish. Etched into the silver were symbols. Tiny, precise lines.
"Manufacturer marks," Vost said. "Scrap value only."
"No," Jekka pointed. "It's warm."
Vost touched it. The silver was hot to the touch. Not burning, but feverish.
"Residual heat," Vost dismissed it. "Pack it."
"It's pulsing."
Vost looked closer. Jekka was right. A faint tremor ran through the silver cap. It wasn't light; it was a physical vibration, so fast it blurred the edges of the metal.
"It's a battery," Vost said. "Or a capacitor. It's holding a charge. We need to ground it before we sell it, or the Merchant will dock us."
"How do you ground that?"
"Stick it in the earth. Let it bleed out."
"There's no earth here, Vost. Just iron and rust."
Vost looked around. The gantry, the wall, the rails—everything was artificial. The only "earth" was miles below in the Basin.
"Then we bridge it," Vost said. "Wire it to the rail. The track runs all the way to the Sluice. Let the whole station take the charge."
Jekka hesitated. "If it's high voltage, it'll weld the cart to the track."
"If we don't, it might blow up in our faces. Do it."
They rigged a copper wire from the rod's cap to the steel wheel of the cart. Vost expected a spark. A pop.
There was nothing.
The vibration in the rod stopped. The heat faded instantly.
"Done," Vost said. "It's empty. Let's move."
They began the trudge toward the railhead. The cart rattled over the uneven grating. The wind pushed at their backs, cold and relentless.
Vost didn't look back at the Weep. If he had, he might have seen the hole he left open. He might have seen that the darkness inside wasn't empty anymore.
A single, geometric shape—a drone, smooth and featureless as a river stone—drifted out of the cavity. It hovered in the gale, unaffected by the wind shear. It rotated once, scanning the empty air where the crystals had been.
Then it rose, silent and white, tracking the heat signatures left on the grating.
The railhead was a grandiose name for a dead-end spur of track where the autotrams used to turn around. Now, it was just a flat spot where scavengers camped.
The sun was setting, casting long, bruised shadows across the metal plates. Vost and Jekka unhitched the cart and sat on their packs, chewing on strips of dried fungus.
"We have enough for the season," Jekka said, counting on his fingers. "If the rate holds."
"It won't," Vost said. "Scarcity is up. But so is the tax."
"We could hold onto one rod and wait for the winter price."
"And get caught with contraband? The Wardens verify every ounce."
Vost took a swig from his water skin. The water tasted of iodine and recycled sweat. He looked at the horizon. To the west, the silhouettes of other Spires rose like broken teeth against the purple sky. They were miles away, separated by the fog ocean. Vost knew people lived on them, too. He had seen their fires. But there was no way to cross. The bridges had fallen centuries ago.
"You ever think about where the power comes from?" Jekka asked. He was looking at the rods again.
"The core."
"The core is dead, Vost. That's why we're freezing."
"The core is deep. It takes time for the heat to rise. That's what they say."
"Who says?"
"The people who pay us."
Jekka tapped the glass of the rod. "I think it comes from the sky. I think these catch the light."
"Don't be a mystic. It's bad for business."
Vost stood up. "Sleep. I'll take first watch."
Jekka curled up on the grating, pulling his cloak tight. Within minutes, his breathing evened out.
Vost walked to the edge of the platform. He lit a small lantern, keeping the shutter low. He checked the cart. The wire they had used to ground the rod was cold.
He reached out to disconnect it.
As his finger brushed the copper wire, the world tilted.
It wasn't a physical stumble. It was a sensation of sudden, vertical vertigo. For a microsecond, Vost wasn't standing on a rusted gantry. He was standing in a hall of blinding white light, surrounded by towering figures made of glass and sound.
Then it snapped back.
Vost gasped, pulling his hand away. He was back in the dark. The wind was still blowing.
He stared at his hand. His glove was smoking.
He looked at the rail track.
The steel rail, usually dull with rust, was glowing. A faint, blue luminescence was spreading from the cart's wheel, traveling down the line. It moved fast, like liquid fire, racing away toward the main line, toward the Sluice Gate.
It wasn't a discharge. It was a signal.
Vost grabbed the wire and yanked it free. The glow on the track didn't stop. It accelerated, disappearing into the distance.
"Jekka," Vost whispered.
He looked at the rod. The silver cap was cold. The symbols were dark. But the feeling of the white hall—the crushing weight of a space too big for his mind—lingered in his teeth.
He kicked Jekka awake.
"Up. Now!"
"What? Warden patrol?"
"Worse," Vost said, slinging his pack. "We rang a bell."
"What bell?"
"I meant the track. We sent something down the line."
Jekka rubbed his eyes, looking at the dark rails. "I don't see anything."
"It's gone. But someone at the other end is going to see it. We need to move the stash."
"To where? There's nowhere to go but the Sluice."
"We go down," Vost said. "To the maintenance crawlspace."
"That's suicide. The air is bad."
"Staying here is suicide."
Vost grabbed the handle of the cart. He didn't know what he had seen. He didn't want to know. He just knew that the machine he had scavenged from wasn't a corpse. It was a dormant limb, and he had just pricked it with a needle.
As they dragged the cart toward the access ladder, the wind changed. The steady howl dropped to a whisper.
From the darkness above them—high up the wall, where the clouds obscured the peak—a sound rolled down. It was deep, mournful, and terrifyingly loud.
GONG.
It resonated in Vost's chest.
"What was that?" Jekka hissed, eyes wide.
"Shift change," Vost said, forcing his voice to be steady. "Just the structure settling."
"That wasn't settling. That was a bell."
"Keep moving."
Vost pushed the cart. He knew Jekka was right. It was a bell.
He had never heard a bell from the Summit before. No one had. The Summit was dead.
But as they descended into the rust and the dark, Vost couldn't shake the image of the white hall, or the terrifying thought that refused to be suppressed:
The lights were on.