The Steel-Wraith's engine gave one final, metallic cough before the Pressure-Core went cold. We were deep in the "Sump-Basins," a part of the Deep-Sinks where the city's plumbing met the natural limestone caverns. The air was thick with the smell of stagnant mana and rotting iron.
I sat in the cockpit for a long minute, my hands still fused to the steering levers. The silence of the Sinks wasn't like the silence of the Dead-Zone. It was a wet, heavy thing, filled with the dripping of pipes and the distant, rhythmic thumping of the city's heart far above.
"Out," I croaked.
The hatch hissed open, releasing a cloud of acrid, violet steam. The father stumbled out, his expensive boots ruined by the black sludge on the cavern floor. He clutched the vial like a holy relic. The golden mist inside was calm now, swirling in slow, graceful loops that mirrored a heartbeat.
"Where are we?" he whispered, staring at the walls of junk and discarded machinery that towered around us.
"The Rust-Garden," I said, climbing down. My left arm was a dead weight at my side, the skin over my fractured core charred a faint, silvery grey. "It's a graveyard for things the Spires couldn't fix. Including people."
I looked at the Steel-Wraith. The matte-black armor was scorched by lightning-bolts and scraped raw by the tunnel walls. It looked like a wounded predator. I couldn't leave it here; the Watch would find the heat signature within hours.
I reached into the cockpit and pulled a manual release lever. A hidden compartment in the floorboards popped open, revealing a row of Corrosive-Amps.
"What are you doing?" the father asked, his eyes wide.
"Erasing the trail," I said.
I cracked the glass amps and tossed them into the engine block. The acid began to hiss instantly, eating through the reinforced iron and melting the serial numbers off the Pressure-Core. In ten minutes, the Wraith would be nothing but a pile of slag. Marta would kill me, but a dead driver can't pay his debts anyway.
"We need to move," I said, grabbing a tattered canvas tarp from a pile of junk and throwing it over the remains of the vehicle. "The 'Rat-Catchers' failed, which means the High-City is going to stop sending mercenaries. They're going to send The Hollowed."
The father flinched. Everyone knew about the Hollowed—criminals whose souls had been surgically removed and replaced with "Command-Runes." They were tireless, painless, and they didn't stop until their target was a memory.
"The girl," I said, looking at the vial. "Marta stabilized her, but that glass won't hold forever. She needs a 'Vessel.' A permanent one."
"A body?" the father gasped. "You mean... we have to find a—"
"No," I cut him off, my voice turning sharp. "Not a human body. That's Necromancy, and I don't deal in that filth. We need a Doll-Frame. A high-grade clockwork construct with a 'Heart-Chamber' pure enough to hold a human frequency."
"And where do we find such a thing in a gutter like this?"
I looked toward a flickering neon sign deep in the cavern, half-buried under a collapsed ventilation shaft. It depicted a pair of golden hands holding a gear.
"The Orphanage," I muttered.
It wasn't a school. It was a workshop run by The Widow, a woman who collected the broken mechanical toys of the rich and rebuilt them into something... different. If anyone had a frame that could hold a Soul-Key without shattering, it was her.
We started walking, our boots splashing through the shallow, iridescent pools of mana-runoff.
...Kaelen...
The voice was a faint ripple in my mind, no louder than a thought.
I stopped, my hand going to my hilt. "Did you say something?" I asked the father.
"No," he said, shivering in the damp cold. "I didn't say a word."
I looked at the vial. The golden mist pulsed once, twice.
...Thank you for... the ride...
I looked away, my chest tightening. I wasn't a savior. I was a ferryman. I moved things from point A to point B. That was the deal. I didn't get thanked, and I didn't get involved.
"Don't thank me yet," I whispered, the words lost in the sound of the dripping pipes. "The fare isn't fully paid. And the road only gets darker from here."
As we approached the flickering neon sign, a shadow moved on a rusted catwalk three stories above us. It didn't have a heartbeat. It didn't breathe. It just watched with eyes that glowed like twin blue embers.
The Hollowed had arrived.