Chapter 13 – A Friend in the Pipes
1232 Words
The city never really slept. Even after the lights on the surface went dark to conserve energy, there was always the distant thrum of pumps underfoot, the gentle hiss of condensation reclaimers in the walls, the steady drip of water somewhere behind a bulkhead. Faris had grown up with those sounds; to him, they were the city's heartbeat.
Tonight, the beat was wrong.
He trailed a tight maintenance catwalk with Layla a step ahead of him, the air thick with the smell of damp rock and corroded metal. The algae bloom data she'd shown him still cycled through his mind like a repeating code. The patterns weren't random—someone was crafting them. But he couldn't shake the question: why involve her? Why let the trail lead this close to someone like him?
Layla moved like a person who'd walked these hidden pathways for years. Her boots barely made a sound on the grating, and when she halted at an intersection, she didn't need to consult a map. "You said you know someone," she murmured over her shoulder.
"I do," said Faris. "But I have to warn you—Adil doesn't work for the League anymore. He. works around them, I suppose."
"Meaning?
"Meaning if you hate rules, he's your man. If you need tidy paperwork, he's not."
Layla gave a faint smile. "I'm not here for paperwork."
They descended a rung ladder into the sublevel where the ancient aqueduct arteries spiderwebbed below the base of the dome. The air was cooler here, seasoned with the mineral tang of untreated groundwater.
There was a low whistle in the darkness.
"Password?" a voice called from somewhere ahead of them.
Faris cupped his hands around his mouth. "The pipes never sleep."
A faint scratching sound, and a section of the wall slid open to reveal a wiry man with a nest of curly hair and a permanent grease stain on his cheek. Adil grinned widely when he saw Faris.
"Ah, well, well. If it isn't the vault's most unruly inspector. You bring a visitor?" His eyes flicked to Layla, reading her in a single glance the way underground people could.
"This is Layla," Faris started. "She's—"
"I can speak for myself," Layla cut in, her gaze steady. "I'm here because I think someone is poisoning the water cycles. And I think you can help us catch them."
Adil's eyebrow rose. "Down to business. I already like her."
---
Adil's den was a cramped utility bay converted to a workshop. Spools of cable hung from hooks. Drone chassis were gutted on the floor, their carcasses scattered around them like skeletons. In the middle of it all, a workbench jutted bristling with tools, sensors, and a portable hydro-monitor the size of a child's coffin.
Faris bumped against the device. "We need this. And we need it where no one will see it."
Adil's grin expanded. "I assume this is not for routine leak testing."
"Hardly," Faris said. "We've got strange algae blooms near the old aqueduct in Sector Delta. If they're running into the Vault intake before filtration—"
"—then someone's bypassing the League's flow control," Adil finished. "Yeah. Know the trick, saw it before, pre-dome treaties days. You'd be surprised how much you can smuggle through pipes if you know the bends."
Layla stepped in. "We don't just need to measure contamination. We need to know who's causing it. Can your drones do underground sorties?"
Adil leaned back in his stool, feigning deliberation, but Faris knew he was already bitten. "My babies can crawl through a ventilation shaft half their diameter and still broadcast you live footage. The question is, what's in it for me?"
Faris lifted an eyebrow. "Do I need to spell it out for you?"
Adil grinned. "Okay. But I'm not patching you into the city's main grid again—last time almost got me imprisoned."
---
By midnight, they were deep below Sector Delta, wading knee-deep through runoff channels older than the war. Adil moved quickly, bolting the hydro-monitor to a curved section of pipe that dripped continuously into the channel. Slender fiber lines snaked up into the darkness, to a drone silently perched like an insect.
Monitor's live," Adil said. "Any deviation in mineral profile, temp, or flow rate will ping directly to your wrist unit. And the drone will tail anyone who gets near it."
Layla checked over the readings. "Baseline's good. Let's hope we catch them before they change valves again.".
Faris swept the darkness outside their headlamps. Down here somewhere, masked laborers were transporting sealed tanks through the undercity. If they could catch them on camera once, perhaps they could establish the entire operation.
"Be careful what you wish for," Adil said under his breath, as though he had heard Faris thinking. "The farther in you go into somebody's pipe, the less chance you have of getting back out."
Faris's eyes locked onto Layla's. For an instant, he might have sworn the same shadow crossed her face—the understanding that this wasn't an investigation anymore. This was a risk. One they might not win.
---
Adil's workshop smelled of scorched copper and damp dust, an aroma only someone who spent half their life under leaking pipes would find comforting.
You sure you want me in on this, Faris?" Adil asked, voice low as he disassembled a drone chassis with a screwdriver. "You've already got the League on high alert. I can sense the sensors pivoting whenever you walk past.".
"We're past the point of safe options," Faris said, meeting Layla's gaze where she leaned against the wall, arms folded. "We need continuous readings—flow rate, chemical makeup, and any heat irregularities near the aqueduct juncture. And we can't let the League witness it."
Adil snorted. "So… you want a ghost monitor."
"That's right."
He gave them a long, considering look. “You do know the old channels still have active vermin bots, right? And some of those things aren’t just mechanical—some were programmed with deterrence protocols.”
Faris didn’t flinch. “Then we’ll stay quiet and keep to the shadows.”
Adil ducked under the workbench and dragged out a battered black case. Inside was a portable hydro-monitor, pieced together from scavenger and mismatched League tech. "This will give you a real-time feed on your comms. But…" He knocked on the casing. "…the antenna's been tuned to bounce off decommissioned repeater nodes. That's slower data—but almost impossible to track unless someone's specifically hunting."
Layla stooped, inspecting the monitor. "And you can keep it calibrated?"
Adil's grin was asymmetrical. "I can keep it breathing. Calibrated's a bonus."
As they stepped from his shop, sunlight was leaking through the dome's upper glass, tinting the air a faintly sickly gold. The aqueduct entrance yawned before them—a dark, ribbed tunnel where water hummed like a distant organ note.
Adil ordered the drone to hang close to the surface. It beeped with gentle sensor sounds, and the hydro-monitor shimmered with green bars. "Alright," he muttered, half to himself, half to them, "let's go hunt us some ghosts in the pipes."
They were turning to leave when a shadow undulated along the far wall—too fluid for machinery.
Layla halted dead. "Did you see—?"
Faris nodded once, his jaw tightening. "We are not alone down here."
—
- Writer
