The outer chamber screamed as the final brace gave. Emergency light dropped out in one wall strip, then the next, leaving the room in alternating bars of white and amber. Mara turned and crossed to the maintenance mouth beside the trunk, where loose conduit and a heat-buckled access panel leaned against the wall. She picked up a scavenged shock bar from somewhere in the run back, tested its charge, then wedged the panel as cover.

"What are you doing?" Elias said, though he knew.

"Buying your four-point-eight seconds." She crouched at the conduit box, stripped two wires with her teeth, and touched them together until the insulation smoked. "These heat lines are already damaged. Push them one step more and the whole mouth becomes a stove. They won't like that."

He locked the audit core into the machine mount with both hands. The latch fought him, then snapped home. He shoved the satchel into the side clamp, nearly missed, corrected, secured it. Every movement felt underwater.

The chamber door burst inward with a shower of sparks. A team in dark gear flooded the threshold, low and disciplined, lights cutting through smoke. Mara slapped the conduit bridge into place.

Heat roared out of the maintenance mouth in a hard invisible wave. The lead entrants flinched back as the air itself turned vicious. One dropped behind the broken door slab. Another fired blind. The shot burned a black line across the machine housing.