Chapter 58 - Root Tea and Locked Doors

The ascent up the demolition breach with the two sacks of naval steel scales and the Tier Three ferrite core demanded over an hour of hard labor on the nylon lines.

Nicole climbed in the center of the formation, her strides mechanical and tight. Her grip on the rope knots was firm, but the stiffness in her neck and the absence of her usual fluid grace made it plain that her body was still coping with the chemical hangover of hyperventilation.

The brass lockbox she had salvaged from the Fourth Division's lead vault was lashed with two loops of webbing at the bottom of her narrow rucksack. It was not large, measuring a foot wide by four inches deep, sealed with gray wax bearing First Century serials that none among them attempted to breach in the muck.

When the three finally cleared the circular iron hatch of the exit and stepped onto the pavement of the cooling complex, the fine soot drizzle had turned the sidewalk dirt into a cold, black slurry. Dante's watch read two in the afternoon.

Nicole halted beside the concrete block where they had met hours earlier, resting a hand on her hip with her head down. She looked toward the street leading to the tenements of Canal Five, then hitched her rucksack strap with a hesitant tug.

"I... I'm heading back to my room," Nicole muttered, her voice hollow from the strain on her lungs. "The sector four armorer buys these naval steel scales at double the rate tomorrow morning."

Maria stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned her six-foot-three frame to face her, and folded her heavy arms over her brigandine cuirass, which was streaked with serpent blood.

"You can't make four blocks to that reeking flophouse, girl," Maria said in her customary blunt rasp. "You're white as slaked lime and your legs are shaking beneath that lizard leather."

"I'm fine," Nicole countered immediately, but her amber eyes blinked twice, sluggish, stripped of their earlier sharpness. "Just... the fall from the gantry. My stamina is already coming back."

"You look like hell, that's what," Maria unfolded her arms, stepped forward, and seized the top carry handle of Nicole's pack with one hand, tossing the load over her own shoulder without asking. "You're coming to our townhouse in the Boilermakers' Village. You're going to take a hot shower with municipal steam, eat food that doesn't come out of a gutter, and sleep in a dry bed until morning."

Nicole tried to keep her grip on the strap with her gloved hand, fingers locking into the canvas. "I didn't ask you for shelter."

"And I didn't ask for your opinion," Maria hauled the rucksack away with the leverage of thirty-three Strength, ripping the load from Nicole's fingers with a snap of webbing that nearly knocked the huntress off balance in the mud. "Pass out in the middle of Canal Five with that brass lockbox on your back, and the first scavenger who walks by slits your throat for your boots. I didn't nearly snap my ribs holding off five tons of tail just to have you turn into street rat chow two hours later."

Dante watched the exchange with his usual composure, adjusting the forty-five-pound ferrite core inside his own canvas bag. "Maria is technically correct, Nicole," Dante said, his analytical cadence cutting through the girl's resistance. "Your biological regeneration rate is throttled by respiratory shock. The townhouse has thirteen-foot basalt walls, cast-iron deadbolts, and running water at a hundred and forty degrees. It's the safest position in the Third District to spend the night without anyone knowing where you are."

Nicole looked at her empty hand, then up at Maria's resolute scowl, and finally into Dante's calm eyes. She lacked the physical reserve to resist the two of them. Her joints ached from the violent deceleration of the fall, and her mind was still ringing with that suffocating terror that seemed to cinch her throat whenever the cold wind blew hard. She drew her hand back slowly, sliding her fingers into the pockets of her black-scaled coat.

"Fine," she yielded in an almost inaudible murmur, turning her face aside to hide her vulnerability. "I'm out at six tomorrow morning, though."

"You leave whenever you want once you've eaten like a human being," Maria tossed back, already striking out toward the avenue with long strides.

The walk to the Boilermakers' Village took twenty minutes of quiet footsteps. When Maria swung open the iron side gate of townhouse forty-two and locked the double padlocks behind them, Nicole stopped in the center of the slag cobblestone courtyard, scanning the thirteen-foot basalt walls with guarded scrutiny.

She noted the reinforced masonry joins, the absence of low ground-floor windows facing the alley, and the sheer density of the workshop's double doors fitted with a cast-iron crossbar.

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"This structural fortification is military-grade," Nicole murmured, genuine surprise breaking through her tone.

"I paid five hundred and fifty scrip a month to make sure nobody overhears what we discuss in here," Dante replied, pushing open the workshop door and flicking on the overhead arc lamps.

The gentle warmth of the cast-iron radiator hit them the moment they crossed the threshold. Maria headed straight to the back of the workshop, racking her forty-pound greatsword with a resonant crash of relief, and jabbed her thumb toward the timber stairs leading up to the second floor.

"Bathroom is the first door on your left upstairs," Maria instructed, shoving a thick, clean cotton towel into Nicole's hands. "Left valve draws steam-heated water from the street line, right valve draws cold water from the tank. Strip off that muddy leather and scrub your head clean."

Nicole clutched the cotton towel to her chest with both hands. She looked small without her loaded crossbow and stripped of her sewer huntress stance. She climbed the timber steps with hesitant tread, as though walking across a surface that might fracture beneath her boots at any moment. The upstairs bathroom door clicked shut, followed by the slide of the brass latch from within and the steady roar of pressurized water filling the clawfoot tub.

Maria dropped onto a stool by the workbench, kicking off her boots with two quick tugs.

"The girl is wound tight as a spring, Dante," Maria said, massaging her tired feet. "She walks like she's waiting for a sledgehammer to the back of the neck every three paces."

"She spent four years assuming every living soul around her was a threat," Dante laid the sack containing the ferrite core onto the bench, opening his tool kit to begin cleaning the mineral. "When you spend your entire youth hunted by people wielding laboratory needles, your brain doesn't just switch off survival mode because a door has a deadbolt."

"I know what that's like," Maria answered, her voice softening as she looked down at her calloused hands. "When I lived in the slums back on Earth and my mom couldn't cover the apothecary tab, I slept with an iron bar under my mattress convinced the grocer was going to kick down the back door and seize her sewing machine."

She rose from the stool, barefoot, and walked over to the cast-iron stove in the corner. Filling a brass kettle with tap water, she set it on the hot plate and reached for a glass jar of dried chamomile and plain ginger root she had picked up at the market two days earlier.

Twenty minutes later, the click of the bathroom door echoed from the floor above.

Nicole walked down the timber stairs slowly.

She had left her black-scaled coat and muddy boots in the guest room. She wore a pair of baggy gray sweatpants Maria had lent her and a black long-sleeved shirt that hung loose across her narrow shoulders. Her dark hair was damp, raked back with her fingers, leaving the two rounded horn buds completely exposed above her pointed ears. Her skin remained pale, but the feverish flush across her throat had cleared under the hot water.

She paused on the bottom step, hands shoved deep into the sweatpant pockets, looking between the bench where Dante was scouring the ferrite core and Maria stirring the brass kettle with a wooden spoon. She looked unmoored, uncertain of where to hold herself in an environment that had neither dirt on the deck nor ruptured steam pipes hissing along the walls.

"Sit down," Maria gestured with the wooden spoon toward the oak stool beside the bench.

Nicole padded over on bare feet, slipping onto the tall wooden stool. She hooked her heels over the bottom rung, pulling the shirt sleeves down over her hands until they covered half her fingers.

Maria placed a steaming earthenware mug of tea before her, flanked by a plate holding thick slices of malt bread toasted with ash butter and cold strips of roasted peccary meat.

The steam of ginger and chamomile rose straight into Nicole's face, releasing a sweet, warm vapor that opened her airways on the first breath.

"Drink it while it's hot," Maria ordered, taking the neighboring stool with her own mug. "And finish the bread. We aren't discussing the twelve thousand scrip or that brass box until you clear the plate."

Nicole looked down at the mug in her hands, feeling the warmth of the clay bleed through the cotton sleeves into her palms. She brought the rim carefully to her lips, taking a tentative sip.

The tea washed hot down her throat, settling into her chest with a heavy, steady calm that finally brought her breathing into an even, natural rhythm.

"The tea is good," she murmured, her amber eyes pinned to the dark surface inside the mug.

Dante kept working his wire brush over the grooves of the ferrite core on the bench, not lifting his head so as not to crowd her with questions. The steady rasp of the steel bristles across the raw ore filled the ground-floor workshop with an easy, rhythmic drone.

Nicole picked up a piece of toasted bread with her left hand, chewing slowly.

The tension in her shoulders began to surrender, millimeter by millimeter. With each bite of warm food and every swallow of root tea, the iron-plated posture of a trench huntress loosing venomous bolts in sewer darks gave way to the simple reality of an eighteen-year-old girl who had spent far too long running beneath the earth.

She looked at the dense basalt walls, then over to the forty-pound greatsword resting clean on its wall mount, and let out a long breath through her mouth, allowing her back to lean against the frame of the oak bench for the first time since crossing the threshold.

She asked no questions about Earth, asked nothing about Maria's monstrous strength, and did not bring up the secrets locked inside the brass box upstairs.

On that cold afternoon in the Boilermakers' Village, the quiet of that locked workshop was the only thing she truly needed to remain whole.