“I stayed where he said.” Lina looked from Mara to Elias. “Then the sounds changed. I did not want the sounds alone.”

“This isn’t a market lane,” Mara said. “You don’t get curious and trail after.”

Lina’s chin lifted, small and stubborn. “I was quiet.”

Mara’s voice went flat. “You were lucky.”

Before Elias could step between them, the conduit answered for all three of them. Far off, somewhere beyond the next bends, came a measured tapping through metal. Not random. Three beats, pause, two, pause, then three again. It moved through the old trunks and ducts and came back thinner from another direction.

Mara’s face shut hard. “They know.”

She seized Lina gently but without softness, turned her toward the deeper run, and said, “Stay between us. If I say down, you go down. If he says stop and I say move, you move.”

Lina nodded once.

Elias opened his mouth to object to the order of command. Mara was already moving.

The conduit narrowed and rose by a broken service ramp where roots had cracked the grating into uneven teeth. Mara led them under a collapsed spray frame and through a curtain of wet vine that smelled of old plant sugar and rust. Beyond it, the chamber opened around a bank of maintenance housings sunk into the wall behind a thick fall of pale roots.

Mara stopped there, breathing once through her nose as she listened. “Help me.”

Elias stepped closer to the root-choked wall. “With what?”