Chapter 26 The Traverse

Kaelen stared at him, his eyes wide above the neckerchief. "Rowan... you can't carry me on a traverse. The wall is crumbling shale. If a handhold gives—"

"I've read worse rock than this," Rowan said. "It'll hold if I place my weight right. Stay close, stay still, and let the harness do its work."

"That's not an answer to what I said." Kaelen's jaw was tight, but he was already reaching for the harness straps, because there wasn't another way across and they both knew it. "You never think the rock's going to be the one that's wrong."

Rowan didn't argue the point. He didn't have one that would satisfy either of them.

He unbuckled the harness straps around Kaelen's waist, shortening the loop until Kaelen was bound tight against Rowan's back, the junior handler's arms wrapped securely over Rowan's shoulders, his splinted right leg held clear of the ground.

"Hold my collarbones," Rowan ordered, his voice echoing with that strange, wet resonance from his altered throat. "Do not let your feet dangle into the gas. If you drop a boot into the low layer, the weight will drag us both off the seam."

Kaelen clamped his arms around Rowan's neck, his chest pressed tight against Rowan's back, his breathing fast and shallow against Rowan's ear.

Rowan stood up on the edge of the depression, the added ninety pounds of Kaelen's mass settling heavy onto his frame.

His spine compressed slightly, his bruised ribs aching under the sudden load. He called on the [Tendon Leverage Surge] architecture woven through his back and calves, and the high-tensile flexors answered, tightening to brace against the strain and channel the ninety-pound burden down through his hips and core instead of his knees. The harness itself did as much work as his arms, pulling Kaelen's weight down into Rowan's hips rather than letting it hang off his shoulders.

***[Tendon Leverage Surge: Active]***

Rowan stepped up to the shale wall bordering the depression.

He removed his boots, tying them to his belt.

He placed his bare right foot against a two-inch shale ledge eight inches above the gas line.

Click.

The micro-spines on his right sole deployed from between his skin seams, driving through the damp mineral dust to lock directly into the porous shale.

He loaded his foot, transferring his weight—and Kaelen's—onto the single leg, his hip pressed in close to the rock so the wall itself took some of the load off his ankle.

The micro-spines held. The sub-dermal elastic cushion beneath his plantar fascia compressed, absorbing the two-hundred-and-seventy-pound total load without his skin shearing off the bone.

He placed his dark, calcified right palm flat against the upper wall, three feet above the gas.

Click.

His palmar micro-spines bit deep into the shale seam.

Rowan began the traverse.

He kept his body angled flat against the rock, his chest and knees close to the shale so no single point of contact ever had to bear the full weight alone. He worked laterally in a steady rhythm, hips leading, shifting his center of gravity along the wall rather than letting it swing free over the gas below. Kaelen held his breath against Rowan's back, legs tucked tight, trusting the harness to carry his weight into Rowan's hips instead of dragging at his shoulders. Each time Rowan freed a hand, he reached, found the next seam, and drove his weight down through his palm to reset the mechanical lock before he ever committed his foot to follow.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The strain on Rowan's Energy reserves was brutal.

***[ SYSTEMIC LOAD WARNING ]***

Total Chassis Mass: 122.5 kg (Subject + Cargo)

Capability Active: [Micro-Spine Friction Grip] (Structural Strain High)

***Energy Reserves: Critical***

Hydration Status: CRITICAL

Sweat didn't pour from his skin; his body's fluid reserves were too depleted for normal sweating. Instead, a thin, bitter film of catalytic fluid oozed from his upper chest as the lingering gas vapors from the dip drifted up around his chin.

His right forearm throbbed violently as the high-tensile flexor loops held Kaelen's weight against the wall.

Five feet. Ten feet.

Twelve feet across.

Three feet from the far edge of the depression, the shale ledge under Rowan's right foot gave way.

It wasn't a failure of his micro-spines. The rock itself was rotten there—weathered and fractured, weakened by whatever slow seep had worked through the fault below it long before Rowan ever touched it. The two-inch ledge sheared clean off the wall, dropping into the deep gas bowl below with a soft plop.

Rowan's right leg fell into thin air.

The sudden, two-hundred-and-seventy-pound drop hit his left arm and palm full force—but his chest and shoulder stayed pinned flat against the rock, and it was that contact, as much as his grip, that kept them from swinging out over the gas.

Rowan didn't scream. He didn't let his body swing away from the rock.

He triggered his flexor architecture at full capacity.

***[Tendon Leverage Surge]***

A sudden, fierce surge of mechanical force shot through his left shoulder, forearm, and back muscles.

His calcified left palm, locked into a narrow seam three feet above the gas line, took the brunt of the shock load, his body weight braced hard against the wall to share it. The micro-spines found solid purchase in the limestone behind the shale face, holding firm like forged iron pitons.

Rowan's left arm locked at ninety degrees, his shoulder jammed into the rock, holding both of them from swinging free over the gas bowl.

"Rowan!" Kaelen gasped, his arms tightening violently around Rowan's neck.

"Hold... still..." Rowan gritted out through clenched teeth, his face turning dark red as his veins stood out like thick cords along his temples.

He didn't panic. He swung his right leg inward, planted his bare sole against a fresh, un-rotted limestone outcrop two feet to the right, and loaded his heel.

CLICK.

The micro-spines bit.

Rowan drove his right leg down, using the high-tensile flexor loops in his calf and the fresh foothold to push up and in toward the wall, hauling himself and Kaelen over the rim of the depression onto the solid, dry limestone of the southern ridge.

They hit the flat rock together, tumbling onto their sides clear of the gas basin.

Rowan lay on the cold stone, his chest heaving in short, ragged gasps, his mouth open as he drew in long, deep gulps of the cool, oxygen-rich draft pushing from the southern tunnel.

Kaelen unbuckled his harness, scrambling off Rowan's back and collapsing onto the rock beside him, his hands shaking violently as he pulled off his cloth mask.

"We... we cleared it..." Kaelen rasped, staring back at the five-foot gas lake behind them. "Rowan... your arm held us there against the wall..."

Rowan couldn't answer immediately.

He lay flat on his back, his eyes staring up at the dark, high ceiling of the vault.

A pale blue status line flared briefly across his optic nerve before fading.

***[ POST-EXERTION STATUS ]***

***Energy Reserves: Critical — Baseline Failing***

Hydration Status: CRITICAL — Severe Vascular Depletion

Metabolic State: Acute Strain, Left Shoulder / Right Calf

Rowan slowly pushed himself up onto his elbows.

His left shoulder throbbed with a deep, sickening ache, his right calf was sore from the metabolic cramp, and his mouth tasted like pure salt.

He reached for his canteen, unstoppered the plug, and took two slow, careful swallows of clean water, handing the rest to Kaelen.

"Drink," Rowan rasped, his voice deep and wet. "We're out of the gas."

He looked back across the two-hundred-yard basin they had just crossed.

The dark, invisible lake of heavy Vane-Gas sat quiet and still behind them, blocking the Lower Faults from the upper sinkhole. As far as Rowan knew, no unmodified person, no guild timber-crew, and no Vane-Hollow enforcer he'd ever heard of could cross that basin without a specialized catalytic filter or twenty feet of sealed breathing hose.

They had cut the line behind them.

Rowan pulled his boots back on over his scale-patterned feet, tying the hemp laces tight. He checked his tracking knife, clipped his diagnostic kit to his belt, and stood up on the solid limestone floor.

He turned toward the south.

The southern vault did not end at the ridge.

It opened into a vast, dark subterranean canyon that sloped steadily downward into the unmapped depths of the Living Basin. The cool draft pushing up from the canyon was stronger now, carrying the damp, rich scent of unfamiliar underground vegetation, rushing water, and unfamiliar, highly adapted biological life.

Rowan stood at the edge of the canyon, his dark, scale-patterned hands resting flat against his thighs, his eyes sharp in the dim yellow light of the flint casing.

They had survived the fall. They had survived the heat trap. They had survived the hounds, the beetles, the vertical wall, and the gas basin.

They were no longer just escaping.

They were entering the deep Basin.

Rowan looked at Kaelen, his voice calm, flat, and absolute in the quiet dark.

"Pack the line, Kaelen," Rowan said. "We're going down.”