Chapter 264: Please Keep Your Arms Inside the Crime

Breathing underwater was wonderfully easy until I remembered that the room trying to crush me didn’t care how long I could hold my breath. I slid beneath the lowering outlet door and pulled the safety line after me, keeping clear of its teeth as the gap narrowed.

The mechanism ground loudly enough for me to feel the vibration along my scales, which made getting crushed seem an increasingly well-advertised possibility. My thermal sight gave me little useful detail through the cold flood, so I followed the visible cable instead of pretending warmth could draw a map through concrete.

[System: Your breathing’s sorted, mate, but the rest of you still needs somewhere to fit. Don’t wedge your face in the door and call it a clever use of natural resources. I’m the koala, champ, so leave getting stuck halfway up things to the qualified professional.]

You’re welcome to demonstrate your climbing qualifications once the pub opens, but right now I’d prefer advice that keeps my head attached. The loose maintenance frame had caught beneath the sluice wheel, preventing it from turning while the outlet door continued following its separate closing cycle.

I formed a solid coil around the frame and pulled it away from the wheel, but a bent support held fast beneath a floor bracket. There was room to break it, although swinging debris around the mechanism seemed like a poor introduction to operating expensive machinery.

Instead, I let part of my body become mist inside an air pocket beneath the control shelf, slipped through the frame and reformed on its other side. From that angle, I could lift the bent support out of the bracket without needing to win an argument with the entire floor.

The frame came free suddenly enough to strike my bruised flank, which reminded me that being adaptable wasn’t the same as being difficult to hurt. I pushed it along the channel until it caught against a dry shelf, then returned to the wheel before the gap disappeared.

The wheel resisted the first turn and complained throughout the second, but the closing door stopped with enough clearance remaining for a small vehicle. I kept turning until its marker reached the maintenance-open position, then pulled the locking pin through its bracket with a narrow tendril.

[System: Look at that, champ, you’ve used the supplied equipment instead of becoming part of it. Somewhere a council engineer just felt briefly appreciated and won’t know why.]

If he left a maintenance invoice down here, I’m feeding it to whatever lives behind that pipe. Water began draining through the lower channel, exposing the road surface in uneven strips while I swam back towards Bridget’s safety line.

I surfaced beneath the hatch with a clump of old plastic hanging from my chef’s hat, which I had stubbornly kept through every sensible opportunity to abandon it. Bridget removed the plastic before telling me that the hat now looked less like catering and more like a wildlife warning.

"It’s become a practical uniform, and I’d appreciate you respecting how much damage the fabric has prevented to my reputation," I said. She said she’d remove it herself once everyone was safe, then enjoyed how quickly I agreed to get moving. Apparently my reward system had acquired outside management.

Seventeen minutes remained on the strike warning when Pike inspected the exposed channel from the hatch. The road surface could support the bus, but a deep service trench crossed it near the outlet, and the old bridge plate had been removed with the maintenance equipment.

Lukas found a low flatbed cart beside the pump room, built to carry machinery heavy enough to flatten any of us. Its deck could span the trench if we lowered it sideways, which sounded considerably better than making passengers jump while somebody threatened to shell their homes.

He showed the plan to Pike, then fastened web-lines around the deck while the mechanic released its retaining bolts. I helped guide it down with solid coils, leaving the truck’s winch to take the actual weight rather than pretending confidence supplied a lifting rating.

The plate settled across the trench with a noise that brought every nearby guard looking towards us. Hollis checked its supports, drove her empty patrol vehicle over first and reported that the route held without asking the bus to provide the experiment.

[System: Spider boy’s finally using the winch, mate; hold the applause or he’ll start a bloody victory lap up the ceiling with half a rib cage.]

I’m considering a medal shaped like a chair, because reminders work better when the recipient can sit on them. Lukas directed the first utility vehicle into the channel while Bridget guided people away from the wheels and kept the loading order moving.

The bus followed slowly, its roof just clearing the lowest pipe once Pike lowered a loose aerial. Passengers ducked anyway, which I understood despite my own recent history of surviving entirely through being the wrong shape for ordinary furniture.

A boy near the front asked whether I worked for the bus company, and I told him management had lowered its standards after the driver stopped getting paid. His mother apologised for the question, but I asked him to watch the pipe clearance instead, giving him something useful to do with the eyes he’d been keeping on the road behind us.

The boy called each low pipe before it reached the windscreen, earning a quiet [System: Better employee than you, mate, and he hasn’t asked for a meal allowance.]

Give him ten minutes with our management and he’ll be negotiating dental.

I moved ahead to check the outlet while Hollis remained at the camp gate with the last waiting residents. Beyond the door, the channel opened into a service yard below the quarry road, sheltered from the automatic gun by the embankment we’d hoped would hide us.

For several seconds, it looked as though we’d found the one useful thing nobody had remembered to ruin. Then a bronze-uniformed guard stepped from behind a fuel trailer and raised a weapon connected by a thick hose to the tank on his back.

He told me the drainage exit was closed under the captain’s order, then sent a short burst of flame across the concrete in front of my head. Heat rolled through the doorway towards the bus, and I realised that turning myself into an unbreakable wall wouldn’t make the people behind me fireproof.