The air in the technical tunnel of Sector Zero was thick—hot steam, saturated with the smell of rust and ozone, settling on my skin like a sticky film. I hung from safety tethers right up against the ceiling, trying to tighten a magnetic clamp on a distribution hub.
The Order's mages called it an "unstable ether fluctuation." I called it what it actually was: a ruptured high-pressure pipe spewing concentrated mana.
My hands were shaking. Yesterday's reactor incident was still making itself known with a dull, throbbing ache deep in my bones.
"Give me the seventeen wrench," I rasped over the roar of the turbines.
Zeno, standing on the metal catwalk beneath me, unerringly placed the heavy tool into my palm. He didn't complain about the heat, though his dark coat was soaked through with sweat. He kept watch, carefully tracking the shadows in the tunnel while I did the dirty work.
I gritted my teeth and threw my weight into the wrench until it clicked. Something thumped hollowly inside the pipe; the blue glow leaking through the fissure in the metal flickered and died. The pressure normalized.
"Done," I exhaled, unclipping my carabiner and dropping heavily onto the platform. My legs buckled for a second, but I held on, grabbing the railing.
Zeno silently handed me a canteen. The water tasted metallic, like copper, but it was perfect. I downed half of it in three massive gulps.
"You look like hell," Zeno said quietly, taking the canteen back.
"Just about how I feel," I said, closing my eyes to tune in to what was happening inside. Total emptiness. A sharp, hollow hunger that no standard ration could ever satisfy. "This skill... it scares me, Zeno."
I looked down at my palms, clenching and unclenching my stiff fingers.
"It... it operates like an emergency protocol. It doesn't care about my comfort; it just rebuilds whatever gets broken, devouring all my internal resources in the process. Glucose, fat, muscle tissue. Yesterday in the reactor, I could feel the skill literally burning me away from the inside, just so I wouldn't drop dead on the outside."
Zeno leaned his back against the hot tunnel wall and crossed his arms over his chest. "Everything has a price, Iron. Nothing comes free."
A few meters away, behind a massive structural pillar where the steam tangled with soot, stood Richter.
In his well-groomed hand, a recording crystal gleamed dimly, its facets drinking in their every word. Richter tilted his head slightly as Iron mentioned that the skill "rebuilt" him. A barely perceptible, subtle smile touched his lips.
"A part of the mechanism," he mouthed, echoing Zeno's earlier words. No, my dear Zeno. Far more than that.
He retreated silently into the corridor before they had even finished gathering their tools.
An hour later. Richter's private office.
The room smelled of old parchment and expensive tobacco. Richter sat at a blackwood desk, twirling the crystal between his fingers. Before him, a shimmering magical projection of a letter hung in the air, addressed to the High Council of the Order and Master Valt himself.
"Subject Iron demonstrates a unique form of adaptive regeneration," Richter dictated, the words manifesting on the parchment in golden sparks. "Preliminary analysis confirms: the subject does not merely heal; he acts as a living energy damper. He is capable of channeling critical volumes of mana, using his own body as a conduit and stabilizer."
Richter paused, a predatory gleam in his eyes.
"I deem it necessary to immediately reclassify the subject from technical personnel to 'Alpha-Group Resource.' I recommend conducting a stress test under live combat conditions against an Abyssal entity. Sector Four, the Dead Quarter, serves as an ideal proving ground."
He pressed down on the crystal, saving the recording of their conversation in the tunnel as an appendix to the report.
"You have no idea, Iron, what a favor you're doing me," he whispered, sealing the letter with wax stamped with the Order's crest. "If you survive, I'll have the perfect weapon. If you burn out, I'll have invaluable data on the limits of human flesh. Either way... I win."
He rang a silver bell. A courier materialized in the doorway instantly.
"Urgent, to the upper tiers. Straight into Master Valt's hands. And prepare a convoy for the morning."
Richter leaned back in his chair, staring out the dark window, beyond which pulsed the lights of the great and ruthless machine of the Lower Horizon.
While Richter was deciding Iron's fate in his office, down on the lowest levels—in an abandoned collector shaft past the Fifth Sluice—it was dark and smelled of damp. Zeno stood in the shadows, his hand resting on the hilt of his knife.
Time was running out.
A figure in a worn internal guard uniform detached itself from the darkness of the corridor. The man moved twitchily, constantly looking over his shoulder.
"You're taking a massive risk, Jerald," Zeno said quietly, stepping forward.
"Risking? That's putting it mildly." Jerald breathed heavily, his face pale in the light of sparse luminescent fungi. "Listen to me, and listen fast. Your engineer has been written off."
Zeno frowned, his voice turning cold. "What do you mean 'written off'? His qualifications are higher than any technician's in this sector."
Jerald twitched his shoulder nervously. "An hour ago, a dispatch left Richter's office for the Upper Horizon. A direct report to Valt. Your Iron has been moved to 'Alpha Resource' status. Do you understand what that means? They aren't going to protect him. They're planning to use him as live bait."
Richter... that bastard caught wind of something after all, Zeno thought.
"Tomorrow morning, they're sending them to the Dead Quarter. There's a Shadow there, Zeno. And they plan to throw Iron into the absolute epicenter of the surge, just to see how much he can handle. Valt has already greenlit 'field trials'."
Jerald grabbed Zeno by the sleeve and yanked him close.
"You don't have time to run; patrols have been doubled. Richter won't give him time to recover from yesterday. To them, he's no longer a person—he's a battery with limitless capacity. If you want him to see tomorrow evening, don't leave his side for a single second. The Order is already sharpening its knives."
Jerald dissolved back into the dark as quickly as he had appeared.
Zeno was left standing alone, watching heavy drops of water fall from the ceiling of the collector shaft.
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