Chapter Three: Level Zero Is Not a Floor

They levered the grille with her wrench. It did not move. On the second attempt, Zhou’s pencil snapped. Three meters. Lin pushed the brass nut into the wrench joint, compensating for the worn gap. On their third effort, the grille flipped open. They rolled into the conveyor duct as the teeth scraped Lin’s boot and met behind them with the muffled crack of breaking bone. She recovered the nut. The character Han had been crushed flat. Only a blurred fragment of Tuo remained. “I used his name to open a door,” she said. “Then we make the door worth it,” Zhou answered. The conveyor carried them to the lower level of Maintenance Spine. Black Tide was six days and nineteen hours away, but disaster had already reached the city.