The Long Crawl Back
The retreat through the maintenance duct was even more harrowing than the entry. Before, they had been moving toward an unknown objective; now, they were carrying a fragile, explosive truth, and the weight of it seemed to press in on the very walls of the narrow tunnel. Every scrape of a boot, every clink of a buckle, was a potential death sentence. Anja's mind raced, replaying the schematics, the access codes, the chillingly casual voice of Voss discussing crop yields and acceptable losses.
When they finally emerged back into the wider service tunnel, the relative openness felt both like a relief and a new kind of exposure. They were no longer in the coffin, but they were still deep in the graveyard.
Elara was waiting for them in the shadows, her form materializing as if from the rust and gloom itself. Her eyes asked the question her lips did not.
"We have what we came for," Jaya said, her voice a low, clipped whisper that offered no further detail.
A flicker of profound relief crossed Elara's face, so quick Anja might have missed it. "Good," she breathed. "Then we must move quickly. A shift change is due in the lower sectors. The passages will be less predictable."
A Shift in the Veins
She led them back into the veins of iron, but their path was different this time, a more direct route toward the outer hull. The urgency was a palpable thing, a current that pulled them forward. They moved in a tense, silent rhythm, a single organism focused on escape.
They had been moving for nearly twenty minutes when Elara suddenly froze, pressing them all back against the cold, weeping wall of the tunnel. Up ahead, where their passage intersected with a larger maintenance corridor, a light bloomed—the harsh, swinging beam of a hand-lamp.
Voices echoed, bouncing off the hard surfaces, sharp and angry.
"…don't care what the manifest says," a rough voice grumbled. "The regulators in Sector Beta are failing. Another week and the air filters will be choked. My crew is getting sick."
"And I'm telling you, the Leader's orders are absolute," a second, colder voice replied. "All non-essential power is routed to the Hydroponics Bay. No exceptions. No repairs without his direct authorization. Now get back to your post."
The light receded, and the voices faded, leaving a thick, anxious silence.
"Overseers," Elara whispered, her face pale in the gloom. "They're extending their patrols. Looking for dissenters. We can't go that way now."
The Water's Edge
She reversed their course, leading them down a series of narrower, more constricted tunnels that sloped steadily downward. The air grew heavier, thick with the smell of brine and decay. Anja could hear the faint, rhythmic slap of water against steel. They were nearing the refinery's waterline.
Elara finally stopped at a heavy, rusted hatch set into the floor, a large iron wheel locking it in place. "This is a storm drain," she explained, her voice low. "It opens directly into the bay, below the waterline. It's the only way out now without crossing a patrol route."
Jaya and Kenji put their shoulders to the wheel. With a collective, groaning effort that seemed impossibly loud in the enclosed space, the wheel began to turn. Salt-laced air, fresh and clean, hissed through the seals—the first real air they had breathed in hours.
With a final, deafening clang, the hatch swung open, revealing a square of absolute blackness and the sound of gently sloshing water. Freedom was just a few feet below.
An Unforeseen Complication
Kenji, as the scout, went first. He secured a line and dropped silently into the darkness, his feet finding the submerged ladder rungs with practiced ease. A moment later, a quiet splash signaled he was in the water. One by one, they followed, the cold, oily water of the bay a shocking but welcome embrace.
They were in a wide, cavernous drainage pipe, the moonlight from the far end a distant, shimmering promise. Their skiff was hidden in a cluster of mangrove roots just fifty meters away. They had made it.
Then, as Jaya was pulling the heavy hatch closed above them, a new sound echoed from deep within the refinery—the sharp, unmistakable bark of an alarm. It was not the loud, blaring klaxon of a full security breach, but a more localized, rhythmic chime.
Elara's head snapped up, her eyes wide with a new, sudden terror. "No," she breathed. "That's the pressure alarm for the storm drains."
"Someone knows the hatch was opened," Jaya finished, her voice grim. The heavy hatch clicked shut above them, plunging them into near-total darkness.
"They don't know who we are," Anja said, her own voice trembling. "Just that the seal was broken."
"It doesn't matter," Kenji's voice came from the darkness ahead. He was treading water near the mouth of the pipe. "Look."
Anja swam forward, her eyes straining. Through the shimmering curtain of moonlight at the pipe's exit, she saw a new obstacle. A heavy, iron grate, something that hadn't been there before, was slowly descending, its thick bars casting a cage-like shadow over the water. A security protocol, automatically triggered by the alarm.
With a final, deafening clang, the grate locked into place, sealing the mouth of the storm drain. It sealed their only exit. They were trapped. Not in the refinery, but in a flooded, metal tomb, with the bay just inches away on the other side of the bars. And somewhere in the darkness behind them, the wolves were coming.