Nerve looked up at her. He saw the way the Dot pulsed beneath her rags, glowing with a sickly, anti-light. He saw the way her hands twitched around the handle of her cleaver. She was disturbed by Voi's power, diminished by it. She hated him not just because of what he was, but because he made her feel small.

"The grate," Nerve said, forcing himself to focus. "Look at the grate."

They were standing before a massive, circular opening in the base of the wall. It was five meters wide, barred by thick, reinforced translucent pillars. It was the "Glass Throat" of the city—the primary output for the chemical filtration systems of the inner laboratories.

Behind the glass, a thick, viscous sludge moved sluggishly in the dark. It glowed faintly with radioactive decay.

"This is it," Nerve said. "The old filtration output. Pragna sensors don't scan this deep because the toxicity levels are supposed to dissolve organic matter in minutes. They assume nothing can swim up the throat of the beast."

"But we are not organic matter," Nolif said. "We are the sickness."

"Can you open it?" Nerve asked. "It's reinforced polymer glass. Bulletproof. Bombproof."

Nolif stepped up to the bars. She raised her cleaver.

"No!" Nerve hissed, grabbing her wrist.

The contact burned him. Her skin was fever-hot. She snarled at him, baring her teeth, ready to take his hand off.

"Don't strike it," Nerve whispered rapidly, letting go and backing away. "If you hit it hard, the vibration sensors will trip. You have to break it the way they would break it. With pressure. With flaws."

He stepped up to the glass. He removed his glove.

His hand was pale, the green veins pulsing violently under the skin. He placed his palm against the cold, smooth surface of the bar.

He closed his eyes.

He wasn't pushing. He was connecting. The bioluminescent chemicals in his blood were the same isotopes used in the Pragna energy grid. He was a child of their laboratories, and he spoke their language.

He felt the structure of the glass. He felt the tension in the molecules. He felt the microscopic fractures caused by years of acid erosion.

"Here," Nerve whispered, his voice straining with effort. The green light flared, traveling from his neck, down his arm, and illuminating the glass from the inside. "And here. And here."

He pointed to three specific spots on the bars.

"Hit these. Simultaneously. And do it quietly. Use the flat of the blade to resonate."

Nolif looked at him. For a second, the madness in her eyes cleared, replaced by a cold calculation. She saw the utility of the coward. She saw the strategist emerging from the survivor.

She nodded.

She moved with terrifying speed. It was not a heavy swing. It was a blur of motion.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

Three precise taps.

The sound was high-pitched, like a tuning fork.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then, the glass groaned. A web of white cracks appeared at the impact points, spreading instantly across the entire surface of the bars.

With a sound like falling sand, the massive bars crumbled. They didn't shatter; they disintegrated into dust, dissolving into the toxic sludge at their feet.

The smell hit them instantly.

It was a wall of stench—ozone, chemical runoff, rotting biological waste, and antiseptic. It was the breath of the machine. It was the smell of a city that was slowly digesting its own humanity.

"Welcome to the inside," Nerve said, pulling his gas mask up over his face. His voice became muffled, mechanical. "If we touch the liquid, we melt. Stay on the maintenance ledge. It's narrow. It's slippery. Don't fall."

Nolif stepped into the darkness of the pipe. She breathed in the toxic air deep into her lungs, savoring the burn. It tasted like progress.

"Listen," she whispered.

From the speakers mounted high on the walls above them, a sound began to play.

It was a deep, rhythmic thrumming. Drums. Synthesizers. A heavy, mournful brass section that sounded like a dying whale.

Bum-bum-BUM. Bum-bum-BUM.

The "Sister Castle" symphony.

The music vibrated through the pipe walls. It shook the sludge. It was a song of total war, a melody designed to make men march into machine gun fire without fear.

"They are playing music for their death," Nolif said, a cruel smile twisting her scarred lips. "They are announcing us."

"They are playing it for Voi," Nerve corrected, stepping into the gloom behind her. "High Er is calling his battle cry. He is focused on the front door."

"Good," Nolif said. The darkness of the tunnel swallowed her. "While they look at the sun, we will cut their feet off."

They moved deeper into the veins of the Capital. Above them, the sky burned with rockets and music. Below, in the dark, the real infection began to spread.

END OF CHAPTER VIII