The Grand Tunnel was not a clean, modern highway. It was the ancient, soot-stained gullet of the city.
Built during the height of the First Expansion two centuries ago, it was a cavernous tube of blackened brick and cast iron. Massive brass ribs supported the curved ceiling, leaking heavy condensation that mixed with the oil on the cobblestone road below. The lighting didn't come from modern aether-bulbs, but from thousands of flickering, electric gas-lamps housed in iron cages, casting long, dancing shadows that the fog couldn't quite chase away.
Rowan sat in the cab of the Fake Titan, the heat of the massive boiler warming his boots. The dashboard was a chaotic mix of twitching analog pressure gauges and brass valves. The leather of the steering wheel creaked under his tight grip.
"Convoy inbound," Ivy's voice crackled through the copper-wire earpiece, sounding tinny and distant due to the magnetic interference of the tunnel walls. "Three minutes to the Dead Zone."
"Copy," Rowan whispered, his eyes fixed on the dark road ahead.
He looked in the side mirrors. The Ash-Runner escort vehicles—modified, stripped-down steam-carriages with exposed boilers and spiked tires—were holding a perfect, aggressive formation behind him.
"Dorothy?" Rowan checked.
"Positioned," Dorothy's voice came back steady. She was perched precariously on a maintenance gantry high above the tunnel entrance, hidden completely within the thick steam venting from a massive pressure valve. Her coat whipped wildly in the subterranean wind.
"Remember," Rowan said, his jaw tight. "We have ninety seconds of absolute darkness. If we're not done and detached when the telegraph lines come back online, the Syndicate will know, and we're dead."
The rumble started first.
It wasn't the high-pitched whine of a light cycle. It was the deep, rhythmic, earth-shaking thrum of the real Titan-Class Transport.
It rounded the curve.
The vehicle was an absolute monstrosity. It looked like a bank vault welded directly to an armored locomotive. Black iron plating was bolted together with rivets the size of dinner plates. Steam hissed violently from vents along its side, creating a mobile fog bank that traveled with it. The front was reinforced with a jagged, blood-stained cowcatcher designed to literally plow through barricades and traffic.
"Target acquired," Jack said from the passenger seat, his eyes wide. "It's ugly as sin. I love it."
The convoy—consisting of two elite outrider cycles and the massive Titan—entered the tunnel.
"Now!" Rowan shouted.
Up on the gantry, Dorothy closed her eyes. She reached deep into the well of Ancient Magic singing in her blood. She didn't throw a bolt of lightning; she envisioned a star going supernova.
FLASH.
A sphere of pure, blinding, liquid-gold light erupted in the mouth of the tunnel.
It was utterly devastating. It overloaded the alchemical optical sensors of the automatons instantly. The human drivers were blinded, throwing their hands over their eyes with screams of pain. The entire tunnel went a blinding, sterile white.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Rowan slammed the Fake Titan into its highest gear, opening the steam valves to maximum capacity.
He roared out of the side-access service tunnel, violently cutting off the blinded escort cycles. The Ash-Runners swarmed like angry hornets, boxing the cycles in and forcing them to the stone shoulder with precise, aggressive bumping.
Rowan pulled up perfectly alongside the real Titan.
They were doing eighty miles per hour on slick, wet cobblestones. The massive, iron-banded wheels of the transports screamed in protest, throwing sparks against the brick walls.
"Engage magnetic clamps!" Luca shouted from the roof of the fake truck, the wind tearing at his clothes.
Luca and Luna were strapped to the top, wielding heavy alchemical cutting torches that burned with a furious blue flame.
CLANG.
The two massive trucks locked together magnetically, side-by-side, barrelling down the narrow tunnel like a terrifying, two-headed iron beast.
"We're coupled!" Luna yelled over the deafening roar of the wind and engines. "Initiating physical swap!"
The original plan was to use a localized transposition sigil—a piece of high-end magic stolen by the Phantoms—to seamlessly swap the cargo containers.
"Sigil active!" Ivy called out over the radio. "Transfer in 3... 2..."
"Wait!" Ivy's voice suddenly spiked with sheer panic. "Abort! Abort transfer!"
"What?" Rowan fought the heavy wheel as the locked trucks drifted dangerously toward the brick wall. "We're committed, Ivy!"
"There's a physical Hard-Line Tracker!" Ivy screamed, her fingers flying across her difference-engine. "It's not a magical signal! It's a physical aether-crystal wired directly into the iron frame of the chassis! If you swap the cargo boxes, the crystal stays with the old truck! The Spire will know instantly that the box is moving away from the chassis!"
"Damn it!" Jack cursed, slamming his hand against the dashboard. "Victor Velox, you paranoid, brilliant snake."
"We can't abort," Rowan saw the large brass timer ticking down on his dash. 60 seconds remaining. "We have to take the tracker with us."
"It's welded solid to the frame!" Ivy cried.
"Then we cut the bloody frame!" Luca roared from the roof.
He fired up his cutting torch. The blue flame hissed, burning hot enough to melt impervium.
"Luna! Cut the section! Sector 4-B near the rear axle! I'll weld it to our truck!"
"Are you completely mad?" Luna yelled back, her heavy goggles reflecting the shower of sparks. "At eighty miles an hour?"
"Do it!" Rowan ordered, his muscles burning as he fought to keep the massive vehicles driving in a perfectly straight line. "Hold her steady!"
The Twins went to work. It was sheer, unadulterated madness. Sparks showered down like violent fireworks as they sliced directly into the iron frame of the moving vehicle. Molten metal dripped onto the cobblestones, leaving a trail of glowing orange slag.
"Thirty seconds!" Jack counted down, his eyes glued to the brass timer.
The metal groaned. Luca kicked the cut section of the chassis with his heavy boot—a heavy iron plate containing the glowing red crystal tracker. It snapped free.
"Catch!" Luca shoved the searing hot metal plate across the dangerous gap between the two speeding trucks.
Luna caught the glowing iron with her brass-plated, pneumatic gauntlets. The heat immediately scorched the leather underneath, but she didn't drop it. She slammed it down onto the iron frame of the fake truck.
"Welding!" she screamed.
She drove her torch into the seam. The metal fused rapidly, the aether-crystal now permanently attached to the decoy.
"Done!" Luna shouted, her voice hoarse. "Tracker is secure on the decoy!"
"Decouple!" Rowan yelled, grabbing the release lever.
The heavy magnetic clamps released with a massive hiss of depressurization. The trucks separated, bouncing heavily on their suspensions.
"Fifteen seconds to the end of the Dead Zone!" Jack warned, bracing himself against the dash.
Rowan hit the mechanical brakes, drifting the Fake Titan expertly behind the real one.
"Take the wheel!" Rowan grabbed his satchel from the floorboard. "Jack, you drive the decoy. Finish the official route. I'm taking the prize."
"What?" Jack's eyes went wide. "Rowan, are you crazy?"
"Jump!" Rowan kicked his door open. The brick wall rushed by in a terrifying blur of gray stone.
He leaped.
He cleared the gap, his hands violently grabbing the iron ladder welded to the side of the Real Titan. The automated driving system, having recovered from the flash, thought it was still on its correct course.
Rowan climbed swiftly into the cab, smashed the glass window with his elbow, and threw the heavy brass manual override switch.
"Ten seconds!"
Rowan grabbed the wheel of the Real Titan and steered it violently toward a hidden, rusted service ramp—an old, forgotten coal chute leading deep down into the Ash-Dregs.
As the Real Titan vanished into the shadows of the lower tunnels, Jack—now driving the Fake Titan carrying the tracker—continued straight, bursting out of the tunnel just as the telegraph signals returned.
Ping.
On a massive board in the Synapse Spire, a tracking dot blinked a reassuring green.
Convoy on route. Status: Normal.
In the dark of the coal chute, Rowan exhaled a long, shaky breath, resting his bleeding forehead against the cool iron of the steering wheel.
"We did it," he whispered into the dark.