The Rusty Spire didn't sleep.
Even at night—or whatever passed for night under the millions of tons of concrete sky—the fortress was alive with the sound of grinding metal. Hammers struck steel plates. Generators coughed and sputtered. It sounded like the inside of a dying engine.
I sat on a crate near the loading dock, watching Mink work.
The kid was a blur of motion. She was wiring a jagged piece of circuit board into a bulky, rusted earpiece. Her goggles reflected the sparks of her soldering iron.
"Hold still," she mumbled, shoving the device into my ear. It felt cold and greasy.
"What is this?" I asked, wincing as static screeched in my skull.
"Short-wave radio," Mink said, tapping a few keys on her wrist-comp. "Vex found it on a dead pilot three years ago. It's analog. The Obelisk scanners can't pick it up because they stopped listening to these frequencies a decade ago."
She looked at me, her oversized goggles magnifying her eyes.
"If you get inside the depot, this is your lifeline. If the turrets activate, I'll scream at you to run. If I scream, don't ask why. Just duck."
"Reassuring," I muttered.
Lyra was standing by the railing, staring out into the dark void of the cavern. She had cleaned the grease off her face, but she looked paler than usual. The damp air of the Underside didn't agree with her. Or maybe it was the lack of a connection to the main Grid. She looked like an addict going through withdrawal.
I walked over to her.
"You okay?"
She didn't look at me. "It's quiet down here, Kairo. Too quiet. Up above, the Echo stream is a constant noise—millions of futures buzzing in the background. Down here… it's just silence."
She tapped her temple.
"I feel blind."
"Maybe being blind is better," I said. "At least you're looking at the present for once."
She finally turned to me, a small, tired smile touching her lips. "That's easy for you to say. You've been blind your whole life."
Before I could answer, a roar echoed through the loading dock.
An engine. A big one.
A massive, six-wheeled vehicle rolled out of the shadows. It looked like an armored personnel carrier that had been chewed up and spat out by a monster. Steel plates were welded haphazardly over the windows. A heavy plow was mounted on the front, stained with dark fluids.
Vex hung out the driver's side window, grinning manically.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" he shouted over the engine's roar. "Welcome aboard The Coffin! Zero safety rating, zero comfort, one hundred percent chance of tetanus!"
Jax, the giant, was already mounting a heavy machine gun to the roof turret.
"Mount up!" Vex yelled. "We burn daylight! Or… whatever light we have!"
The drive was a nightmare.
The Coffin didn't have suspension. Every rock, every piece of scrap metal we ran over sent a shockwave up my spine. We sat in the back, strapped into rusted bucket seats. The air inside smelled of ozone and stale sweat.
Mink sat opposite me, her face glowing blue from her tablet screen. She was running simulations of the turret grid.
"The Static Field is basically a microwave for Echoes," she explained, not looking up. "It detects the quantum signature of a future projection. If it senses one, the turrets fire a high-velocity slug at the source."
She looked at Lyra.
"That's why you stay in the truck. If you step one foot inside the perimeter, you'll be Swiss cheese before your Echo even sees the bullet."
Lyra nodded, her hand resting on the hilt of her knife. She hated being sidelined. I could tell.
I looked out the reinforced slit that served as a window.
We were driving through what Vex called "The Boneyard."
It was a graveyard of technology. Massive, rusted server towers—some thirty stories high—lay toppled on their sides like fallen giants. Cables as thick as subway trains snaked through the debris, stripped of their copper by generations of scavengers.
And everywhere, there were the red eyes.
Scavengers.
They watched us from the tops of the trash piles. Wolf-like machines. Crab-like drones. Things that had no name. They skittered away from The Coffin's headlights, hissing at the intrusion.
"Don't worry about the small fry," Jax grunted from the turret seat above us. "They know the sound of this engine. They know Vex bites back."
We drove for an hour, deeper into the dark, until the terrain changed. The trash piles smoothed out into a flat, concrete plain.
And in the center of the plain sat a massive, black cube.
The Supply Depot.
It was monolithic. Seamless black metal, untouched by rust. It looked alien amidst the decay of the Underside. The Government built things to last.
Vex killed the engine. The silence rushed back in, heavy and oppressive.
"We're at the kill line," Vex whispered over the comms. "Two hundred meters out."
I peered through the slit.
Surrounding the black cube was a shimmering distortion in the air. A ring of humming pylons circled the building.
The Static Field.
Inside the ring, I could see them. Four automated turrets, mounted on rails, scanning back and forth with relentless precision. Their sensors glowed a dull, angry orange.
"Okay, Null," Vex's voice crackled in my earpiece. "Showtime."
The back door of The Coffin hissed open. The smell of ozone hit me instantly.
I unbuckled my straps. My hands were shaking, just a little.
Lyra grabbed my wrist. Her grip was tight.
"Kairo," she said softly.
I looked back.
"Don't die," she whispered. "I can't see your future, so I can't warn you. You're on your own in there."
"I'm used to it," I lied.
I stepped out of the vehicle and onto the cracked concrete.
The air hummed with lethal energy. The turrets spun, their orange eyes sweeping the perimeter. They were looking for ghosts. They were looking for futures.
I took a breath.
And I walked straight toward the firing line.