The maintenance tower sat lower than comfort and higher than mercy, ribbed with metal ramps and hook cranes that swung like patient predators. Rain fell in threads through the grating overhead, fine enough to stitch the air shut. Two boxy trucks idled under the lattice, tarps half-peeled, exhaust pooling. Men in gray coats—the cultists—rolled crates down aluminum lips. The stenciled labels said SUN CYLINDERS, but that wasn't tonight's job. Tonight's job wore a name that tasted like money and knives: Valeris.
Breuk, Tara, and Limar stood in the shadow of a bundled pipe run. The bundle sweated. The yard hummed. Far across the open, up on a catwalk, a single figure leaned into the rain and didn't flinch: the cult head—dark coat, hands folded on the rail like he was blessing inventory. Beside him, speaking low, was Kane—stillness in a coat, a darker shape against a dark rail, words measured so they wouldn't blow away.
"They're carrying that stuff like it's holy water," Tara said under her hood. Her damp fringe kept trying to reclaim her eyes.
"For them, it is," Limar muttered, chewing gum like it owed him rent. Grease lived in his lines even through gloves; the gloves just looked dirtier for it.
A porter in gray chalked a sign on a crate—a circle with three short lines feeding it—then palmed the chalk like a prayer. Tara clocked it, tilted her head. "Run it by me again. What do they actually believe?"
"Angels on the surface," Limar said, not taking his eyes off the arms moving in rain. "Running a great tap. We get water because they keep turning the wheel."
"Right," Tara said. "And we're meant to thank the angels for making us live in a wet furnace."
Breuk said nothing. He smoked and watched—Kane, not the crates. On the catwalk, the head listened like stone listens, accepting weather, refusing to change for it. Then—blink—a private tick at the corner of the mouth. A smile too small for anyone below. Kane didn't see it. Or pretended not to.
"Everybody 'knows' the surface is dead," Tara added, tiredness hiding in the shrug. "Ash, wind, and the part where you die."
"'Know' is just what you shake hands on," Limar said. "Pick different hands, get different knowledge."
"I believe in gaskets that hold," Tara said, looking at the cylinders like she could unthread the world with a wrench. "And clocks that beep when they should."
She tipped her chin at the catwalk. "What about him?"
"He believes in people who pay," Limar said. Not cruel. Just inventory.
One of the gray coats paused mid-movement, lifted his face into the threadfall, and murmured a name. He didn't cross himself. The rain did that for him.
Breuk flicked his cigarette into a puddle and moved. "Get the rest ready," he said. "I want Lig found by the time I'm back."
Tara's mouth did a small, unhappy thing. Limar's gum slowed. Breuk didn't wait for agreement. He climbed.
Up on the third walkway the rain felt thinner, like money got to pick drop size. Kane met him at the switchback, a folded map in one hand out of habit. Breuk didn't take it. They fell into step along the wet grate, the yard ringing below like a low bell.
Breuk drew on his cigarette; the smoke braided with steam. "They say you people up top drink the stuff from the pipes straight," he said. "No filter."
Kane's mouth tugged into a light smile. "If you believe the water's holy, it purifies itself."
Breuk grinned without warmth. "Sure. And if it kills you, guess you were impure, huh?"
Kane looked out at the dripping ribs of the tower. "Maybe. Or maybe it was simply my time."
Breuk studied him. No foam, no froth—no fanatic's fever. Just a calm that made the fanatic part worse.
They passed a junction where two pipes argued and the rain thread-stitched the gap. Kane said nothing. The cult head across the way stood motionless, a switch not yet thrown.
"You don't sound like the spiral crowd," Breuk said after a beat, voice almost idle. "The ones who scream about cleansing."
"I'm not with them," Kane said, almost pleasantly. "We're… different."
"'We,' huh? So a sect. What do you believe?"
Kane set both palms on the rail, spoke gently. "That rain doesn't come from above. It comes from below. Water is an echo—from a world that still lives."
Breuk frowned. "From below? We're below."
"Not quite," Kane said. "No one knows how deep it goes. Perhaps the surface isn't over us, but under."
Silence. The yard's breath. Somewhere a chain coughed.
Breuk laughed softly, a sound closer to a cough. "I like when hopeful people talk. Gives the rest of us something to laugh at."
"Then laugh," Kane said, mild. "But tell me—what do you live for, Breuk?"
Breuk's answer took a moment to arrive. "Breathing. Eating. The next job. That's enough."
Kane nodded as if he believed him and didn't. "Enough to survive. Not to live."
The grate shivered. A stray tremor ran through the steel like a rumor you couldn't quite catch. Above them, the reactor-light flickered in warm, chaotic intervals—as if sunlight were trying to break through a river.
They both looked up.
"When the light dies," Kane said softly, "we'll see the real sky."
Breuk watched him a fraction too long. No joke this time. "You're missing a screw," he said, and let the line breathe. "But at least you don't talk stupid."
Breuk filed the smile with the head's. Same drawer, different tools.
They walked three paces more without speaking. Below, a porter tipped his face to the rain and traced the circle with three lines on his chest.
The yard blurred at the edges and, as yards do when a man is busy deciding who to be, decided to become another day.
A road along a rusted cliff, the mid-tiers' spine. A van rolling slow through fog. Four years earlier. Kane on the passenger side, watching droplets rope down from above. Breuk at the wheel, silent long enough to make words valuable.
"When I was a kid," Breuk said, and it sounded like he was borrowing someone else's mouth, "rain days were a festival."
In the mirror, his eyes were darker than the road. "Everyone ran out with bowls. Old ones. Kids. Everyone. Laughed, yelled, fought for every drop."
Kane said nothing. Listened like a priest who refused to bless and would still hear your confession.
"My mother boiled it," Breuk said. "Same pot every time. Said the light was in it." He took a drag; smoke filled the cabin. "I believed her."
He let out a dry laugh that scraped the paint. "Now I think it was just a show. Keep us quiet down there. Let 'em drink and pray, and they'll never ask who's got their hand on the valve."
Kane kept watching the rain. "And yet," he said, "you still remember the pot."
The van slid deeper into fog. The reactor flickered like memory.