Chapter One: The Gate
The eastern scrubber was making a noise Nadia Shevak hadn’t heard in six years, and she knew exactly what it meant.
She pressed two fingers against the casing. The vibration travelled through the metal. The machine gave another ugly knock. On her diagnostic screen the pressure reading jumped, settled, then climbed again.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
She struck the side of the panel with her palm before remembering that hitting equipment never fixed anything. Silas had taught her that years ago, after she’d nearly broken a sensor with a wrench. He’d laughed so hard he’d spilled coffee over the ventilation schematics. She’d been furious with him for a week.
The memory came and went.
“Come on,” she muttered, connecting the diagnostic lead. “Just give me the bypass.”
Her credentials were rejected.
Nadia blinked at the screen, wiped rain off it with her sleeve and tried again. The same red message appeared.
ACCESS REVOKED.
“No. No, that’s wrong.”
She checked the connection, then the local maintenance log. The shelter’s eastern return line was pulling contaminated air towards the residential wing, and the backup regulator wasn’t engaging. If she could access the internal controls she could isolate the damaged section long enough for the other engineers to repair it. She had designed the emergency sequence herself. It wasn’t complicated.
Someone had disabled the bypass.
She found the override buried beneath three layers of maintenance records, along with a timestamp from eleven minutes before her credentials were withdrawn. The system hadn’t failed on its own. An authorised operator had locked the emergency circuit out on purpose.
For a moment Nadia forgot the rain soaking through her coat.
There were only a handful of people who could make that change. She knew who they were. What she didn’t know was which of them had decided the eastern wing could survive without a functioning backup.
Her radio crackled against her collar.
“Ms Shevak, you need to step away from the panel.”
Helena Cross. Even through the static the director sounded impatient.
“Restore my access first.”
“That isn’t going to happen.”
“Helena, the return line is failing. I’m looking at the readings right now.”
“We have engineers monitoring the situation.”
“Then one of them can explain why the bypass was manually disabled.”
A pause. Nadia glanced at the log again, as if the numbers might have changed while she wasn’t looking.
“Your employment dispute with Mr Renn is not relevant to this emergency,” Helena said.
Nadia almost laughed. “My employment dispute? Is that what we’re calling it now?”
“Your access was revoked following the transfer of your technical rights. Any objections should be directed to the legal department.”
“The transfer I never agreed to?”
“I’m not discussing that with you.”
“There are people in that wing!”
“I am aware of the number of residents currently inside Haven-9, Nadia. I suggest you stop behaving as though you’re the only person capable of keeping them alive.”
The words landed harder than Nadia expected. She had spent months warning them about the alterations to her original designs, and Helena had treated every warning as an inconvenience. Now the system was failing exactly where Nadia had said it would, and the woman still managed to make her sound unreasonable.
She swallowed the response forming in her throat.
“Just let me in. You can argue with me afterwards. You can call security, have me arrested, whatever makes you feel better. But if that regulator drops out completely, you won’t have enough time to move everyone out of the eastern wing.”
“We’ll manage our own operations.”
The radio clicked off.
Nadia stood there with it pressed against her ear long after the connection died. She wanted to throw it against the concrete. Instead she tucked it into her pocket and went back to the panel, because there was still a manual isolation valve on the western service route.
If the mechanism hadn’t flooded, she could reach it.
If the gate guards let her through the outer service corridor.
She was halfway towards the entrance when the inner doors opened and Soren Bathlew stepped into view.
Relief came so quickly that she hated herself for it.
He was carrying a tablet, his dark uniform damp at the shoulders. He said something to the guard beside him, then looked up and saw her. His expression changed. Not dramatically. Just enough that she knew he’d been expecting this conversation and had hoped not to have it.
“Soren!” She hurried to the glass. “Thank God. Listen, the eastern bypass has been disabled. I need you to get me access to the manual valve.”
He looked at the screen in her hand. “You’ve seen the override?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. Somebody locked it out eleven minutes before my credentials disappeared. Tell me you know who did it.”
His eyes moved briefly towards the security camera.
That tiny movement bothered her more than his silence would have.
“You do know,” she said.
“Nadia, not here.”
“Where would you prefer? Somewhere private, so you can explain why you’re letting people breathe contaminated air?”
“Keep your voice down.”
She stared at him, genuinely thrown. “Are you serious right now?”
A guard glanced in their direction. Soren lowered his voice, and she had to lean closer to hear him.
“I raised concerns about the revised system. I did. But the final decision came from Helena, and the security override was approved above my level.”
“Then escalate it.”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” The word came out too loudly. She caught herself and tried again. “You knew yesterday, and you didn’t tell me?”
His jaw shifted. “I was going to.”
“When? After the doors closed?”
He looked away.
Nadia felt something hot crawl up her neck. She wanted to slap the glass. She wanted to ask him whether the late-night calls, the arguments over schematics, the stupid coffee he’d brought her during the first winter of construction had meant anything to him at all. Instead she held up the diagnostic screen.
“Look at the readings. Please, Soren. Just look at them and tell me I’m wrong.”
He did.
She watched his face as he read the numbers. His brow furrowed at the pressure differential, and for a second she saw the engineer she’d known before Haven-9 became a place where every decision came with a price attached.
“It’s worse than the report said,” he murmured.
“Because the bypass is disabled.”
“I can see that.”
“Then open the door.”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth. Behind him the guard spoke into his radio, waiting for an answer. Soren didn’t respond immediately, and Nadia found herself searching his expression for the man who had once stayed on a call with her until sunrise because neither of them could bear leaving a problem unsolved.
“I can’t override the lockdown,” he said at last.
“You mean you won’t.”
“I have orders.”
“And I have people who are going to die if I can’t reach that valve.”
His face tightened. “Do you think I don’t understand that?”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
He flinched, and she regretted the question almost as soon as it left her mouth. Not because he didn’t deserve it, but because she could see how badly he wanted her to stop asking.
The guard stepped closer. Soren turned to speak to him, blocking Nadia’s view of the security desk. She heard a short exchange, then the guard moved away.
When Soren faced her again he looked frightened.
“There’s a service route on the west side,” he said quietly. “But the lower access is flooded. Don’t go down there.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I don’t want you getting killed.”
“Then let me in.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
That was when she understood. He wasn’t waiting for permission. He had already made his choice and was hoping she would make it easier for him by leaving.
Nadia stepped back from the glass. “You know what? Forget it.”
“Nadia—”
“No, honestly. I don’t know why I keep doing this.”
She turned before he could answer, furious that her eyes were burning. She had come here expecting resistance, perhaps even hostility. She hadn’t expected to find herself pleading with a man who knew exactly what was happening and still wouldn’t open the door.
The western service route lay beyond a narrow concrete walkway. Halfway along it Nadia spotted the external isolation housing beneath a maintenance awning. She could reach the manual wheel from the platform if the mechanism was still intact. It was a terrible idea. The wind was worsening, the water was rising, and the warning lights above the access trench were already flashing.
She went anyway.
The wheel was stiff with corrosion, and the first turn nearly tore the skin from her palm. Nadia braced one boot against the housing and tried again, swearing when the mechanism refused to budge.
“Come on, come on.”
Behind her the outer warning siren began to pulse.
She could hear the storm pushing against the structure. She could feel the platform trembling through the soles of her boots. If she abandoned the attempt, the eastern wing would remain exposed to the failing ventilation loop. If she stayed, the next surge might wash her into the service trench.
She thought of the nurse behind the glass, the woman who had brought her a sandwich after that overnight repair. She thought of the children she’d seen being led through the corridor.
One more turn.
The wheel moved.
Then the platform lurched beneath her.
Nadia caught the housing with both hands, but the concrete edge crumbled under her right foot. Her shoulder struck the railing, and pain shot down her arm. She tried to pull herself upright. The metal gave a sharp groan, the railing tore free, and suddenly there was nothing beneath her.
As she fell she saw the narrow strip of light beneath Haven-9’s gates.
She thought, absurdly, that she should have taken the safer route.
Then the water swallowed her.
* * *
Nadia woke on the floor beside her bed, coughing so hard she couldn’t draw a proper breath.
She grabbed at her ribs. They were intact. Her shoulder moved when she told it to, and her hands were dry, with no torn skin or blood beneath her nails.
For a few seconds she couldn’t make sense of the room around her. The familiar wardrobe stood against the wall. Her charger was tangled beneath the desk. A glass of water sat beside her laptop, where she’d left it the previous night.
She crawled towards her phone and checked the date.
Then she checked it again.
Ninety days before Blackfall.
“No.”
The word came out thin. She opened the calendar, checked the year, then searched for the date she’d died. It was still in the future. Silas’s transfer documents were waiting in her inbox. Haven-9 was still preparing for the catastrophe, and somewhere Soren Bathlew was alive, with ninety days left before he stood behind those gates and watched her die.
She dropped the phone.
For a while she couldn’t move. Then she started laughing, an ugly, breathless sound that turned into a sob before she could stop it. She pressed both hands over her face, furious at herself for crying, furious that she was alive, furious that the first thing she wanted was to hear Soren explain himself.
When she finally stood, her knees felt unreliable.
Her laptop screen was still open. Silas’s email sat at the top of her inbox, asking her to approve the transfer documents. She read it, felt the old familiar urge to call him and demand an explanation, then shut the laptop before she could act on it.
Not yet.
She needed information before she needed revenge. She needed somewhere to work, equipment she controlled, and people who couldn’t have their access revoked by a single order. She needed to find the research complex she’d glimpsed in the old technical archives, the one whose name had appeared beside records that Silas had insisted were irrelevant.
Project Meridian.
Nadia opened a fresh document. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, and for one brief, miserable moment she couldn’t remember what she’d meant to type.
Then she saw the date on her phone again.
Ninety days.
She began writing.
