The inside of the Titan's leg was not designed for human infantry. It was a vertical shaft of moving parts—pistons the size of redwood trees sliding silently in oil-slicked sheaths, and bundles of fiber-optic nerves pulsing with faint, dream-like light.
"Keep moving!" Isolde shouted, firing her harpoon gun blindly into the darkness below.
SCREE-THUD.
A Cryo-Spider shrieked as the spear pinned it to a hydraulic strut. But there were more skittering sounds echoing in the shaft. Hundreds more.
"They're swarming!" Skid yelled, hauling herself up a maintenance ladder with one arm, her face pale with pain.
Julian led the way, climbing the central spinal cable. The Black-Iron ring was heavy on his finger, but he didn't dare take it off. The ambient energy in here was too high. If he opened his mind fully, the Titan's agony would crush him.
"We need a choke point," Julian panted, looking up.
Fifty feet above, the shaft narrowed into a massive junction box—the Knee Joint Assembly.
"There!" Julian pointed. "Get to the platform!"
They scrambled up the last stretch of cabling. Lyra pulled Skid onto the metal grating of the platform just as a spider leaped from the shadows.
BLAM.
Lyra's shotgun—scavenged from the White Raven—roared, blasting the machine into shrapnel.
"Seal it!" Julian yelled.
Isolde spun a heavy wheel-valve on the wall. A circular iris-hatch slammed shut beneath them, cutting off the shaft.
BANG-BANG-BANG.
The spiders hammered against the metal from below, their welding torches hissing as they tried to cut through.
"That won't hold them forever," Isolde said, checking her ammo. "This door is thick, but those torches are plasma."
"It doesn't need to hold forever," Julian said, turning to face the center of the room. "Just long enough to change the plumbing."
The Junction
The platform they stood on surrounded a massive, beating artery.
It was the Titan's main Aether-conduit. A transparent tube made of diamond-glass, ten feet wide. Inside, thick, viscous blue liquid flowed slowly upward.
But grafted onto this elegant tube was a parasite.
A rusted, ugly iron pipe had been drilled directly into the diamond-glass, clamped tight with bolts. It was sucking the blue fluid out, diverting it into a series of pumps marked with the Imperial crest.
WARNING: HIGH PRESSURE EXTRACTION. DESTINATION: BLACKGATE-ZERO.
"That's the leech," Skid spat, looking at the pumps. "They're drawing the raw Aether up to the prison's boilers."
Julian walked up to the junction. He placed his crystal hand on the diamond-glass.
He felt the flow. It was sluggish. Weak. The Titan was anemic, its life-force being drained to warm a prison warden's bathwater.
"Skid," Julian said. "If I reverse the pressure... what happens to those pumps?"
Skid looked at the rusted Imperial machinery. She grinned—a sharp, feral expression.
"Those pumps are rated for suction, not injection," she said. "If you force the fluid back up the line at high pressure... the check-valves will blow. The boilers upstairs won't just overheat. They'll detonate."
"Good," Julian said.
"But Julian," Lyra warned. "You're talking about pushing against gravity and Imperial machinery. You need a massive surge."
"I'm not going to push it," Julian said, looking at the blue liquid. "The Titan is."
He looked at the dormant nerve endings clustered around the conduit.
"When a doctor hits your knee with a hammer, your leg kicks. It's a reflex."
Julian climbed onto the conduit. He knelt directly over the cluster of nerves.
"I'm going to be the hammer."
He raised his crystal hand. He began to charge it. Not with harmony. Not with mechanics. But with a sharp, stinging spike of electricity.
"Cover your ears!"
Julian slammed his hand into the nerve cluster.
ZZZZZTTTTT!
The reaction was instantaneous.
The Titan didn't wake up. It flinched.
A massive spasm rocked the entire leg. The walls of the shaft groaned. And inside the conduit, the blue liquid stopped flowing up.
It stopped. It vibrated.
And then, triggered by the machine's defensive reflex to flush the parasite, it surged.
WOOOOSH.
The flow reversed violently. The blue liquid turned white-hot with pressure. It slammed into the Imperial pumps.
CRACK-BOOM.
The rusted pipes bulged. Bolts popped like bullets, ricocheting off the walls.
"It's working!" Skid screamed over the roar. "The pressure wave is hitting the prison!"
Blackgate-Zero - The Boiler Room
Two miles above, in the bowels of the prison spire.
A prisoner—a gaunt man with frostbitten fingers—was shoveling coal into a backup furnace. He stopped.
The main Aether-pipes running along the ceiling began to sing.
Whiiiiiiiine.
The pressure gauges on the main tank redlined instantly. The glass cracked.
"Take cover!" the prisoner screamed.
KA-BOOM!
The main intake valve exploded. A geyser of super-pressurized Frost-Aether erupted from the floor, blasting through the reinforced concrete ceiling.
The blast wave tore through the lower levels of the prison. Alarms began to wail.
The Knee Joint
Julian was thrown back by the force of the surge. Lyra caught him.
"The pipe is open!" Isolde shouted, pointing at the ruptured Imperial extraction line.
The pumps were destroyed. The pipe leading up to the prison was now a smoking, empty tunnel, stripped clean by the blast.
"That's our elevator," Julian gasped, clutching his smoking hand. "The suction is gone. We climb the extraction shaft straight into the boiler room."
"Into the fire?" Skid asked.
"Into the chaos," Julian corrected.
They climbed into the ruined pipe. It was still hot, smelling of burnt ozone and victory.
They ascended rapidly, using the ladder rungs welded inside the pipe. The sound of alarms from above grew louder.
Ten minutes later, they reached the top. The pipe opened into a room filled with steam and debris.
Julian pulled himself up over the jagged lip of the floor.
They were in Blackgate-Zero.
The room was a wreck. Pipes were hissing. Guards were running around shouting orders, trying to contain the leaks.
Julian stepped out of the smoke. His coat was torn, his face smeared with grease, his eyes glowing with the cold light of the ice.
Lyra, Skid, and Isolde flanked him, weapons raised.
A guard saw them. He froze, dropping his fire extinguisher.
"Intruders in the Boiler Room!" the guard screamed, reaching for his radio.
Lyra didn't hesitate. She pistol-whipped him before he could speak.
"We're not intruders," Julian whispered to the unconscious guard. "We're the demolition crew."
He looked at the door leading to the cell blocks.
"Isolde. Find your sister. Lyra, Skid... we're going to find the Warden."
"And Blitz?" Lyra asked, chambering a round.
Julian twisted the Black-Iron ring.
"Blitz is mine."