Only One Window

The chamber door gave with a deep metal boom. Dust shook loose from the white ceiling, and the machine frame shuddered. Elias caught himself on the edge of the platform before his knees folded, lungs raw from old smoke, vision briefly washed in amber alarm light. The return track still glowed in ugly uneven bands from his last jump. One tooth in the timing ring clicked, slipped, clicked again. It sounded wrong, and the warning ran straight through him.

Mara was already moving. Her gaze flicked once around the chamber—wall cabinet, rear hatch, machine pit—and fixed as the shape of a plan arrived. She had the audit core under one arm, the packet of copied pages stuffed into her jacket, and a coil of old relay wire dragged from a wall cabinet Elias had not even seen. She crossed to the rear maintenance hatch beside the machine pit, kicked loose a warped panel, and looked back at him through a veil of soot and sweat.

"You said one clean interval," she said. "Make it clean. I'll make it loud through the maintenance relays if any of the old lines still answer."

Another impact hit the chamber door. Not random. Three strikes, a pause, then two in quick order. Methodical. Someone outside was working hinges or lock bolts, not throwing themselves in blind.