Chapter 22 · Beneath the Memory Anchors

The maintenance decks had no sky, no windows, and no room for panic to breathe.

Brom Hark moved through them anyway.

His left leg dragged behind him, the knee brace clicking with every step. Blood had dried beneath his collar and turned the edge of his shirt stiff. The emergency lights painted the corridor in pulses of red, then black, then red again. Somewhere above, the city’s defense grid was awake and screaming.

Rail cannons cycled in the upper towers. Shield arrays groaned under the strain of stolen commands. Through the hull, Brom felt the distant vibration of weapons locking onto the Northern Compact fleet.

The whole city had become a gun pointed at the sky.

Below it, people were still trapped in the dark.

“Brom,” a woman whispered over the maintenance channel. “You’re going the wrong way.”

He stopped beside a junction box and pressed two fingers against his earpiece. “That depends what you call wrong.”

“Your locator says the testing bay is behind you. The old coolant exchange.”

“Locator’s reading metal.” Brom looked at the corridor ahead. A section of the bulkhead had been welded shut from the outside. Fresh welds. “I’m reading people.