Chapter 20- The Lock(2)

Chapter 20: 20- The Lock(2)

Dozens of Voss’s mutated fighters moved around them as bright yellow shapes, passing around cold blue tin jugs of liquor, their voices loud and sloppy against the damp stone ceiling.

Sol turned his head, scanning the edges of the cavern. Only about ten men were laid out on the tables by the cold blue wall. In his thermal sight, he could see the bright, angry red lines of their injuries as slum-medics stitched them up.

Sol stopped at the edge of the crowd. His bare chest, still crusted with dried blood and ash where his shirt had burned away, rose and fell in a slow, heavy rhythm.

"Look at the wounds," Valera murmured beside him. In Sol’s vision, she was a calm silhouette of deep blue and soft gold.

She had pulled a torn piece of canvas over her shoulders like a cloak to hide the Night-iron gauntlets on her forearms, keeping her hands tucked out of sight. "Shallow cuts. Frost-burn on the arms and legs. Not a single core injury among them."

"He didn’t commit," Sol said, his voice a low rumble. "I can see their cores. None of them are even flickering. He threw pebbles at the gates and waited."

Across the cavern, sitting on an overturned iron vat, Voss spotted them. In Sol’s thermal vision, the Slum King’s massive, jagged purple aura flared with sudden amusement as he stood up and raised a cold tin mug in the air.

"Make way!" Voss roared over the noise, kicking an empty crate out of his path.

The heavy pressure of his Level 1 Peak core rolled over the crowd, shutting up the nearest drunks. "The lockpicks are back! And by the look of the boy’s chest, they cooked the kitchen on the way out!"

The yellow shapes of the slum fighters parted. Sol couldn’t see their faces or where their eyes were pointing, but he could see their postures stiffen and their heart rates tick upward as they took in his scarred stomach and the heavy burlap sacks slung over both of their shoulders.

Word had clearly traveled back from the lookouts about the alarms going off at Sector Four.

Sol walked forward, navigating by the cold, dark outline of the rusted planning table in the center of the room. He dropped the second burlap sack onto the metal. It landed with a heavy crunch of shifting crystal.

"Twelve refined inner-city shards," Sol said, untying the twine and pulling the mouth of the bag open.

In his vision, the pure crystals looked liketwelve dense, freezing blue stars sitting against the warm yellow of Voss’s hands. "Plus the raw stock from the left racks. Forty percent. Count it."

Voss didn’t reach for the bag right away. Through his thermal sight, Sol could see the hot, pulsing artery in the giant’s neck as Voss leaned in, staring first at Sol’s blind, glowing eyes, and then down at the thick knot of fresh scar tissue right below Sol’s navel.

"You ran into Kael," Voss said. It wasn’t a question.

"He was sitting on the vault stairs," Sol replied, staring straight through the giant’s chest at the violent purple knot of his core.

"And you’re standing here," Voss let out a low whistle, finally reaching a thick finger into the sack to touch one of the cold crystals.

"That bastard took half my face off six years ago when I tried to jump a supply cart. Late-Stage monster, very well-trained dog of the Vane family. I figured when the inner-city horns blew ten minutes early, Kael had hung your skins on the slaughter-line."

"Ten minutes early," Valera stepped up to the table, her voice cold and sharp. "You promised us twenty minutes at the gates, Voss. The reinforcements were coming down the stairs at fourteen. Where were your two hundred men?"

Around the cooking fires, the heat signatures of Voss’s lieutenants tensed, their warm handsdrifting down toward the cold iron weapons at their belts.

Voss raised two fingers without looking back, halting his men. He picked up his mug and took a slow drink.

"Two hundred men against wooden fences and slum guards is a raid, little girl," Voss said, his tone dropping its loud boom, turning dry and serious.

"Two hundred men against three armored carriages of Vane Hound-Masters coming down the main street is suicide. When we cracked the front gates and let the hogs out, we tripped a secondary wire. A flare. The Vanes had a strike team sitting two blocks away in the merchant quarter, waiting for someone to hit the pens."

"You pulled back without sounding a signal down the pipe," Sol said quietly.

"How the hell was I supposed to signal down three hundred feet of iron?" Voss barked, leaning his heavy hands on the table so the rusted legs groaned. "Send a runner into the basement to die with you? Look around, butcher. I lost six boys holding that courtyard for fourteen minutes so you two could fill those bags. You got your sixty percent. You bumped your core up , I can feel that dirty energy from miles and the girl walked out with Night-iron on her wrists."

Valera’s blue aura flared slightly beneath her cloak.

"I know what Vane keeps on his center racks," Voss grunted, picking up his sack of crystals and tossing it to a fighter standing behind him.

"We had a deal. I provided the distraction and the map. You cracked the box. Nobody stabbed anybody in the back here. You took the heat down below, I took the heat up top. The ledger is clean."

Sol focused on the giant’s chest. In his thermal sight, Voss’s heart was beating at a slow, steady rhythm. The Slum King wasn’t lying about the strike team, and in his own gutter morality, he genuinely believed fourteen minutes was a fair trade.

"You’re moving," Sol said. He had been watching the back of the cavern, dozens of warm yellow figures were dismantling the cold blue barricades near the tunnels and loading heavy crates onto hand-carts.

Voss laughed, though it sounded flat. "Damn right we’re moving. You killed Kael. Do you know who Kael was? He wasn’t some cousin working off a debt in the slums. He was Lord Vane’s personal dog from the third ring. By sunrise, the Vanes won’t be sending Enforcers down here. They’ll be sending the Family."

Voss reached into his coat and tossed a small piece of iron onto the table. Sol tracked the tiny, warm arc of metal as it left Voss’s hand and clattered against the cold steel. A key.

"On sub-level six, old boiler station I used as a base back in my youth. When you reach the floor, turn right then straight ahead, look for the 758 Mark I left on the walls" Voss said, turning his back on them to shout orders at his men.

"It’s got a heavy door and a clean water trickle. Take your cut, go lock yourselves in the dark, and eat your rocks for a month. Don’t come looking for me in Purgatory, because by noon, Purgatory is going to be an empty hole."

Sol reached out, his fingers closing cleanly around the key on the first try.