Chapter 14 – Drone Footage
1747 Words
The city's underbelly was another thing at night. The drone of water pumps softened to a lower, steadier hum, and the watchtowers seemed less interested in the dusty crevices between their beams.
On the rooftop of a ruined maintenance shack, Faris crouched alongside Layla, eyes fixed on the holo-projection flickering from Adil's handheld console. The drone—a tiny thing that could be clutched in a child's fist—scurried through darkness like a silver insect, adhering to walls as it descended into the off-limits lower ring of Vault 6.
"Keep it low to the ground," Layla whispered, her hand resting lightly on the console to steady it. "They're running thermal sweeps tonight."
Adil smiled faintly. "They won't detect this. I ghosted its signal into a janitor's ID badge. As far as the League's scanners can tell, we're a mop on wheels."
The feed tilted as the drone banked. A grimy subterranean platform stretched out in the darkness—dim overhead strips sputtering to life as a small convoy rumbled in. The cars were industrial, wheels protesting under the weight of metal tanks sealed with black resin.
"Those aren't League issues," Faris said, leaning forward. The tanks were bigger, older—dates stamped into the steel decades earlier than the current rationing laws.
Workers in black half-masks and grey hoods stepped out of the darkness. In silent cooperation, they shifted the tanks from freight lift to cart without a word. No markings, no insignias. Just the same repetitive loading, one after another, into the open mouth of the tunnel.
Layla zoomed in on a symbol stenciled faintly in red on the side of one of the tanks—a faded sigil of interlocking waves, slashed through with a black line. Her breath hitched.
"That's not supposed to exist anymore," she said.
"What is it?" Faris asked.
"An old faction mark—pre-war. They were known as the Black Flow."
Before Faris could ask her any more, one of the masked workers suddenly looked up. Directly at the drone.
Adil swore under his breath. “No way. They can’t see it—”
But the figure reached into his cloak, pulled out a long, thin device, and aimed it skyward. The screen fractured with static.
“Adil!” Faris barked.
“I’m trying—”
The feed went black.
In the silence that followed, the hum of the city above felt far away. Layla’s voice was barely more than a breath:
“They know someone’s watching.”
---
Just the generator's hum prevented the silence from taking them whole. Faris was pressed against the wall, his gaze darting between the shifting shadows in the narrow corridor of the Vault. His shirt clung to him, damp with stagnant heat that always seemed to collect here after nightfall.
Layla's tone was low, even but strained.
"You saw them too?"
"Yes." He did not need to say another word. The memory of the hooded figure bending over the pipes—deliberate, meticulous, like a surgeon working in the dark—was still clear in his mind. The image lingered with him the way the smell of algae and wet iron did.
Layla gestured toward the hatch that led into the bowels of the maintenance system.
"If they're back tonight—"
"They will be," Faris interrupted. "And if they're not, it's because they've done what they came to do already."
She leaned in closer, whispering a bare strand. "You think this is about water theft."
He didn't answer immediately. Theft was too small a word for what he'd discovered in the records. Three times the reported drainage rate wasn't an accounting mistake—it was a bleed-out, slow and deliberate. The kind of bleed-out you didn't survive.
What he said instead was, "I think someone is dismantling the Vault piece by piece through its future flows. And nobody wants to see it."
A dull clang reverberated from farther within the maintenance shaft. They both froze.
Layla silently formed the words: They're here.
Faris's heart rate spiked. His father's notes forced themselves into his head—the ones he'd discovered secreted away in the maintenance manual. Flow diverted. under pressure. They threatened Layla's mother. The writing had been rushed, angular. A warning? A confession? He'd had no time to determine.
Which one had it been?.
He touched Layla’s arm and gestured for her to stay back. She shook her head immediately.
“You’re not going in there alone.”
He didn't argue this time. Two sets of eyes were better than one. Together they walked along the corridor, following the faint metallic noises. Faris led the way, his hand skimming the cold metal wall, mapping the turns in his head. The maintenance tunnels twisted like veins—once you lost direction, it took hours to orient yourself again.
They reached a grated observation deck over the east basin chamber. Below them, in the faint greenish glow of light from the algae vats, the hooded figure was back. Same lean build, same precise movements. But this time Faris could see what he had not been able to discern before: they were taking out a section of main distribution pipe and inserting a slender, flexible tube—one that glowed with embedded copper filaments.
Layla's hand brushed his sleeve. "That's a siphon."
"I know." His voice was tight. Whoever this was, they weren't merely diverting water—they were piping it elsewhere. Somewhere that could hide or store that much flow without activating immediate alarms.
They kneeled, watching. Faris tried to memorize every movement, every small detail. The way the person tilted their head slightly after every adjustment, as if they were listening for some sound that no one else could hear. The small silver catch on their glove. The soft hiss of pressure released as the siphon locked into place.
And then—something happened that made Faris's blood run cold. The figure rummaged in their pocket and pulled out a folded piece of scrap paper. Even from this distance, Faris could identify the rough ink scribbles of his father's handwriting.
Layla saw his face change.
"What is it?" she whispered.
"That's my father's.".
The figure tucked the paper back into their pocket and began retracting the conduit. They worked quickly now, almost as if they had sensed they were being watched.
Faris’s muscles tensed. “We have to follow them.”
Layla’s eyes widened. “You’re serious?”
"Yes." He was already moving, sliding back from the grate and heading for the closest access ladder. If they waited, the figure would be gone into the maze of tunnels, and their only clue would vanish with it.
The ladder clanged beneath their feet as they descended to the basin floor. The hooded figure was finishing its work when Faris stepped into the light.
"Hey!"
The figure stopped for a fraction of a second—then fled.
Faris sprinted off, Layla right behind him. They chased the shadow down the maintenance tunnel, their feet splashing in ankle-deep water. The tunnels seemed to go on forever, but Faris wouldn't slow down. He could hear the thief gasping ahead of him, fast and strained, but they were fast—faster than he'd expected.
The figure darted into a side passageway. Faris followed without hesitation, but halfway down realized his mistake—the passageway was narrowing, the floor slick with algae drip. His foot slid out from beneath him, and he slammed into the wall, teeth clenched against the pain.
Layla caught his arm, kept him on his feet. "They're getting away—"
And then they heard it: a metallic clang ahead, followed by a hollow boom.
They broke into a small intersection room in time to see the figure disappearing up a vertical shaft, climbing with the ease of one who had done the trip a hundred times. The shaft burrowed in the direction of the ancient east pump station—long retired, closed off for decades.
Faris and Layla looked up. There was no hope of catching up with them now.
Layla muttered a curse under her breath. "They know these tunnels better than anyone."
Faris's fists clenched. He could still see that paper in their pocket. His father's paper. That changed everything.
By the time they finally managed to struggle their way back to the basin, the bit of pipe where the siphon had been attached was already replaced and taped. No sign of tampering—if someone checked tomorrow, they'd find nothing wrong.
Layla bent over the tank of algae, dipping her fingers in the water. She tasted it briefly, spat. "Concentrate's high. They've been tapping off the clean output."
"Which means the Vault's stores are worse than the numbers I found," Faris growled. "If they keep this up, we'll be dry months before anyone will be willing to admit it."
Layla stood up, brushing her hands against her pants. "And no one will believe you without evidence."
Faris looked at the plugged pipe. Evidence was exactly what they needed—but evidence was a question of catching the thief in the act, and tonight had shown them how skilled they were at slipping away.
"We'll find it," he said finally.
Layla stared at him for a while. "Your father's notes. you think he knew who this was?"
Faris hesitated. "I think he knew more than he could say. And now—" He caught off, choking back the lump in his throat. "Now I think someone made sure he stayed silent."
A low growl echoed through the tunnels—the primary pumps switching cycles. It sounded to Faris like a heartbeat, steady but weak. Sever that heartbeat, and everything the Vault maintained—the farms, the homes, the fragile life above—would fall apart within a week.
He turned to Layla. "We stake out the east pump station tomorrow night. If they're pumping the water anywhere, that's where it's going."
"And if they don't show?"
"Then we tear the place apart until we find out where it's going."
Layla nodded fractionally, grimly. "Okay. We do it your way."
They started their slow walk back towards the surface, their footsteps leaving wet marks on the metal grating. Faris never said it out loud, but he felt it pressing down on him with every step: the Vault was dying, and someone had decided to kill it quietly.
And now he and Layla were the only ones who seemed to hear the knife.
- Writer
