The safe house wasn't actually a house.
It was a hollowed-out boiler inside a derelict smelting plant on the edge of the slag pits.
It was a rusted iron sphere, twenty feet across, half-buried in a mountain of black, glassy waste.
The air inside smelled of sulphur and old ash, but it was dry, warm, and defensible.
Wren kicked open the hidden hatch and dropped her pack on the floor with a heavy thud. She looked around the grim, metal space with a look of genuine comfort.
"Home sweet hellhole," she muttered, lighting a second lantern, and hanging it from a rusted pipe.
Zane climbed in after her, the cold stone of Essence in his gut making his movements heavy and deliberate.
He looked at the curved iron walls and the single, grime-streaked porthole that looked out over the glowing, mol
