Ch. 76
The case stayed light all the way up.
Caleb had carried heavier groceries. He'd carried heavier wrenches. The titanium handle gripped his off-hand the way an empty toolbox gripped it, and that was the part he kept noticing on the climb out of the artisan level. Money looked like work he wouldn't be paid for.
The corridor at the top opened into the main shift-change traffic. Mechanics with carts. A medic running the wrong direction. Two First Division aides moving with the kind of unhurried pace that meant they were where they needed to be already.
Elara was at the third pillar from the stairs.
She wasn't waiting for him. She wasn't pretending not to be either. He stepped out of the foot traffic and stopped at her shoulder, the case still in his off-hand, the harness over his right.
She looked at the case once. She didn't ask.
"Walk with me," she said.
He walked with her.
