Elias climbed faster and nearly missed a rung. His boot skidded. Metal screamed under the scrape. For a horrible second he hung by both hands and one knee with the shaft yawning below. He forced his foot onto the next bar and kept going while dizziness lapped at the edges of his sight.

Something touched his boot.

He kicked down on instinct. His heel hit a wrist or fingers; he could not tell which. A sharp cry snapped up the shaft, human and furious. The hand vanished. Then the ladder shook as someone below struck the rails.

He climbed in blind rhythm after that, using pain as timing. Pull. Step. Pull. Step. The red strips thinned above him. Gray light widened. Cool air from the garden slid down the shaft and met the heat below like two different worlds touching at a wound.

A final hand shot up from beneath and caught his ankle as he reached the top lip. The grip was hard, bony, real. Elias twisted, slammed his free foot down, and kicked until the hold broke. He rolled out through the vine-hidden opening onto wet moss and soil, dragging half the shaft’s stink and grease with him.

For a few seconds he stayed on hands and knees, head down, dragging in air that no longer felt clean. The dome above had brightened to full morning. Birdsong played from hidden speakers in the orchard rows. Water glittered in the nearest channel. Somewhere not far off, voices drifted light and easy from the commons.

He pushed himself upright and looked back.

The vines swayed once, then settled over the slit as if nothing had passed through them at all.