Tiamat came through a fold in the dome at the start of the night shift, looked once at Kade's map, and put her finger on the circle under the oldest dome without being told where it was.
"You have built your locks," she said. "Now we go and see what they're for."
We went down through the station's own foundations first—service shafts the Tower had cut fifteen years ago and never needed below the first few hundred metres—and then through the Moon's. Old lava tubes run under Tycho like veins under skin. Tova had mapped the nearest of them from the return of the belt, and Kade had given me a printout with one line drawn on it in red and a note in the margin: If it narrows, stop. If it sings, run.
Rachel stayed at the head of the last shaft with two Redeemers, a med kit and a lantern turned low. "I'll hear you," she said. "Come back up the same way you go down."
