The descent was a nightmare of verticality and fire.
Kael Light clung to the external maintenance ladder of the Design Tower, the metal rungs searing his palm through the leather of his glove. Below him, three hundred feet of empty air separated him from the chaos of the crater. The air was a tangible thing, thick with ash and the screaming wind of the thermal updraft generated by the volcano.
The tower groaned—a sound like a dying whale—as another support strut buckled deep within its foundation. The entire structure lurched five degrees to the south.
Kael swung wildy, his boots scraping for purchase on the smooth cladding of the tower. He slammed against the metal, the breath knocked out of him. He looked down.
The "Gantry of Progress," a massive steel bridge connecting the Design Tower to the basalt cliffs of the island's rim, was fifty feet below. If he could reach it, he could cross to the solid ground of the perimeter and make for the docks.
He released the ladder and slid down a conduit cable, the friction burning his boots. He hit the grating of the gantry with a bone-jarring impact, rolling to absorb the momentum.
He scrambled to his feet, checking the path ahead. The bridge was intact, though the paint was blistering from the heat. The cliff was two hundred yards away.
"Calculation complete," a voice amplified by external speakers cut through the roar of the wind.
Kael froze.
Stepping out from the smoke at the cliff-end of the bridge was a nightmare of brass and hydraulics.
Baron Vance had not fled. He had suited up.
He was encased in the "Artificer's Frame"—a prototype exo-skeleton Kael had seen only in blueprints. It stood eight feet tall, a hulking suit of polished copper and steel. Steam vented rhythmically from the pauldrons. The right arm ended in a spinning rotary saw; the left housed a glowing blue aperture—a Flux-Cannon.
Vance's face was visible through the reinforced glass of the helmet. It was a ruin of blood and bandages where Kael had smashed him, but his remaining eye was wide, manic, and dilated with stimulants.
"Variable 734," Vance's voice boomed, metallic and god-like. "I ran the simulation. The probability of you surviving the initial blast was 4%. The probability of you escaping the Spiders was 0.8%."
Vance took a step forward. The gantry shuddered under the tonnage of the suit.
"You are a statistical anomaly," Vance hissed. "And I hate anomalies."
Kael stepped back, his hand instinctively going to his belt. He had a pry-bar, a wrench, and a dead radio. Against a tank.
"The tower is falling, Vance!" Kael shouted, gesturing to the leaning skyscraper behind him. "The stress fractures are critical! If you stay here, you die with your math!"
"I do not die!" Vance roared, raising the Flux-Cannon. "I am the architect of this age! I will purge the flaw, stabilize the core, and rebuild!"
The cannon whined—a high-pitched capacitor charge.
Kael threw himself to the right, behind a structural I-beam.
ZZAAP.
A beam of concentrated super-heated plasma struck the spot where Kael had been standing. It didn't just burn the metal; it vaporized it. A clean, glowing hole appeared in the deck plating.
Kael pressed his back against the beam, his heart hammering. He's insane. He's not trying to survive. He's trying to correct the equation.
"Come out, healer!" Vance taunted. Clank. Clank. He was walking closer. "Let me excise the infection!"
Kael looked at the bridge. It was a suspension design, held up by thick steel cables anchored to the tower and the cliff. The floor was a lattice of steel grates.
Physics, Kael thought. Mass. Heat. Tension.
Vance's suit was heavy. At least two tons. The bridge was designed to hold fifty tons of cargo. But the bridge was also being twisted by the leaning tower. The cables on the left side were slack; the cables on the right were singing with tension, stretched to their breaking point.
Kael peeked around the beam. Vance was thirty yards away, closing the distance.
"You treat the world like a machine," Kael shouted, trying to draw his focus. "But machines have limits! You're exceeding the load-bearing capacity of your own ego!"
"Wit is the resort of the desperate," Vance sneered. He fired again.
The beam sliced through the top of the I-beam, showering Kael with molten sparks. Kael scrambled backward, crab-walking toward the edge of the bridge.
"Stop running!" Vance yelled, activating the rotary saw. REEEE. "Stand still and accept your obsolescence!"
Kael wasn't running blindly. He was running toward the tension.
He reached the right-hand side of the bridge, where the main suspension cable—a bundle of steel wires as thick as a man's torso—was anchored to the deck. The cable was vibrating, humming a deadly note. It was holding the weight of the twisting bridge.
Vance turned, tracking him. "Cornered."
"Not cornered," Kael muttered, gripping his heavy wrench. "Positioned."
Vance charged. For a suit that size, he was terrifyingly fast. The hydraulics hissed as he raised the saw, intending to bisect Kael.
Kael waited. He needed Vance closer. He needed the weight.
Ten yards.
Five yards.
Kael could smell the ozone coming off the suit. He could see the madness in Vance's eye.
"Die!" Vance shrieked.
Kael didn't strike Vance. He struck the anchor pin.
The locking pin of the main suspension cable was under immense torque. It was already sheering. Kael didn't need to cut the cable; he just needed to help the pin fail.
He swung the wrench with both hands, putting every ounce of his strength into the blow.
CLANG.
He hit the release lever of the cam-lock.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then, a sound like a gunshot magnified a thousand times split the air.
SNAP.
The anchor pin sheared. The main cable, under millions of pounds of tension, whipped free.
It lashed upward with the speed of a striking cobra.
Vance was standing directly in its path.
The cable caught the Artificer's Frame across the chest. The force was astronomical. It didn't cut the suit; it swatted it. The two-ton exoskeleton was launched backward as if it were a toy soldier kicked by a child.
Vance screamed as he flew through the air, his suit smashing through the railing of the bridge.
But the cable snapping did something else. It destroyed the bridge's equilibrium.
The gantry twisted violently. The floor tilted to a forty-five-degree angle.
Kael lost his footing. He slid toward the edge, clawing at the grating. He managed to hook his prosthetic arm—the metal stump—into the lattice of the floor, jerking to a halt with a grunt of pain.
He looked over the edge.
Vance was dangling.
The Artificer's Frame had caught on a tangle of severed wires hanging from the underside of the bridge. Vance was swinging two hundred feet above the magma, the heavy suit straining the wires.
"Help me!" Vance screamed, the god-complex vanishing instantly. "Unit 734! Engineer! Pull me up! The command codes! I'll give you the codes!"
Kael looked down at the man who had enslaved him, tortured his friends, and tried to turn the world into a clockwork hell.
"The load is too heavy, Baron," Kael called down, his voice cold.
"I can purge the weight!" Vance yelled, frantically trying to jettison the armor plates. "I can fix it! Just... give me a hand!"
Kael looked at his own missing arm.
"I don't have a hand to give," Kael said. "And neither does the machine."
The wires holding Vance began to unravel. Ping. Ping.
Vance stopped struggling. He looked up at Kael, his eye wide with the realization of his own mortality.
"You... are... a variable," Vance whispered.
The last wire snapped.
Vance fell. The heavy suit plummeted like a stone, disappearing into the smoke and the red glow of the crater below. There was no splash. Just a brief, bright flare as the suit's power core breached in the heat.
Kael pulled himself back onto the center of the twisted bridge. The tower behind him gave a final, mournful groan.
He scrambled up the inclined deck, his lungs burning, his limbs shaking. He reached the cliff edge and vaulted over the railing onto solid rock just as the Design Tower finally surrendered.
With a roar that shook the entire island, the massive structure sheared off its foundation. It collapsed into the crater, taking the bridge with it.
Kael lay on the basalt, watching the dust cloud rise. He coughed, spitting out black phlegm.
He was alive.
He stood up, swaying slightly. He turned his back on the ruin of Cinder.
In the distance, the ship's whistle blew again. The Iron Lung was waiting.
Kael started to run. He ran with a limp, he ran with one arm, but he ran toward the sea.
The Engineer had done his job. Now, he just had to survive the water.