CHAPTER 24 — Extraction Protocol
Lower Underway → Surface Breach → The Price of Carrying a Conscience
They walked for seventeen minutes without speaking.
Rio knew the number because Aurora was counting time inside his skull the way a medic counts bleeding: not to frighten you, to keep you alive.
Seventeen minutes to the surface vent,if they don’t collapse it.
Her voice didn’t feel like a passenger anymore. It felt like a compass—not pointing where to go, but reminding his nervous system that going anywhere was still a choice.
The lower artery they’d dropped into was older than Stone Quarter itself. The concrete had a different grain, the cables a different braid. This wasn’t part of Authority’s neat loop.
This was pre-ASH Underway—municipal bones from the era when cities were built
