The boots crunched on gravel. Not one man. A squad. The sound was precise, disciplined. Ordo Umbrarum. Sineus grabbed the oilcloth roll from the workbench. The schematic. Anja already had her pistol out, its dark metal a solid certainty in the dusty air. The faint, dry clicking in his skull returned, a quiet metronome counting down the seconds they did not have. The Ticker’s Rattle.
— We have to move, — she said, her voice low and tight. She did not look at the door. She looked at the boarded-up windows.
There was nowhere to go.
The world erupted. The door did not open, it disintegrated, blown inward in a shower of splinters and iron filings. Simultaneously, two of the boarded windows shattered, and heavy-booted figures in grey coats crashed through. They moved low and fast, spreading out to cover the room in a textbook assault. Muzzle flashes, brilliant orange-white strobes in the gloom, lit the scene in fractured, violent snapshots.
Anja was already firing. Her pistol cracked, a sharp, angry sound against the deeper roar of the attackers’ automatic weapons. A man went down, clutching his throat. She used the hulking shape of a dead lathe for cover, her movements economical and brutal. She was not trying to win. She was buying time.
— Go! — she yelled, not looking at him.
Sineus did not hesitate. He lunged back to the hidden compartment in the wall. The artisan’s last secret. He reached inside, his fingers closing not just on the oilcloth roll, but on a thin, leather-bound ledger tucked behind it. He pulled them both out. The price of his hesitation was a storm of bullets chewing through the brickwork above his head, showering him with dust and mortar.
He saw the leader of the kill team. A mountain of a man with a face like scarred granite and the dead eyes of a predator. Sergeant Gregor Stahl. He ignored Sineus. He ignored Anja. His objective was somewhere else. Stahl moved with a brutal purpose to the other side of the workshop, kicking over a stack of crates.
Anja’s pistol clicked empty. She dropped the magazine, her hand already moving for a fresh one. Two more soldiers were advancing on her position, their weapons tracking.
Stahl found what he was looking for. A small, reinforced case of dark steel, hidden beneath a loose floorboard Sineus had not noticed. The sergeant scooped it up, his movements efficient, his expression unchanging. He had his prize.
— Move! — Anja shouted, her pistol alive again. She fired twice, forcing the soldiers advancing on her to dive for cover.
Sineus scanned the room. No exits. Only entrances, all of them filled with men who wanted him dead. The air was thick with the smell of cordite and hot metal. The Ticker’s Rattle was a frantic beat against the roar of gunfire, a sound of reality under siege. His eyes darted across the floor. Dust, debris, and dark stains of old oil. And rot.
Near the base of a silent, rust-eaten stamping press, the floorboards were darker than the rest. They sagged slightly, the wood soft with a century of damp. It was not a door. It was a weakness.
— Floorboards! — Sineus yelled, pointing. — By the press!
Anja glanced, understood immediately. She laid down another two shots, a precise rhythm of violence that gave them a second of breathing room. It was all they would get.
— Now! — she commanded.
Sineus ran. He sprinted across the open space, the ledger and schematic clutched in one hand. Bullets tore through the air where he had been a moment before. He reached the press, Anja right behind him. He stomped his heel on the rotten wood.
The floor gave way with a wet, splintering crack. A black hole opened beneath them. The smell that rose up was foul. The smell of a century of waste and decay. The smell of the city’s forgotten guts.
Anja shoved him. — Go!
He fell. He landed hard, his shoulder striking something solid before he tumbled into a river of cold, thick sludge. The darkness was absolute. Anja landed beside him a second later, her breath a sharp gasp.
Above them, the hole of light was filled with muzzle flashes. Bullets hammered into the filth around them, sending up foul splashes. Then the light was gone as a heavy machine was dragged over the hole. They were in a sewer tunnel. They were safe. For now.
The dripping of water was the only sound. The air was thick with the smell of a century of rot.
Sineus pushed himself up, the cold sludge sucking at his boots. He still had the schematic. He had the ledger. They had escaped. But Stahl had not left empty-handed. He had taken the steel case.
