I kill the overheads in the panic-shaft until only the red edge lights burn. The dark folds in close—metal, breath, the faint iodine tang the river threads through ventilation. I count off the ritual anyway because ritual keeps people alive.
“Harness check,” I say. “Waist belt snug, double-backed. Leg loops even. Hardpoints mirrored.”
I run my knuckles under the webbing at his hips to feel for slack, not trust my eyes. The shaft is a throat of steel and echoes; small lies get loud in here. His jacket whispers against the wall. Water ticks somewhere below like a slow metronome.
“Carabiner gate?” I ask.
“Locked,” he says. The word lands steady, but the breath after it frays.
“Descender orientation?”
“Handle down, brake strand to my dominant,” he says, offering me the rope tail. I tug, listen for the scrape that means the device bites. It does. My shoulders let a millimeter of tension go.
“Helmet,” I say.
“On.” He taps it; the thock echoes like a soft knock on a closed door.
I fix the last strap under his chin with the intimacy of someone tying a tie. The proximity presses up against the part of the job that isn’t in manuals. My gloves smell faintly of citrus cleaner and metal. Above us, the algae-lit glass of the Spire gives everything a distant aquarium glow through the grille—green blurring into red, like breath held too long.
“Rehearsal path is sublevel three to river hatch, then arches,” I say. “No stops for poetry. We do a clean down, a clean traverse, a clean up. On Thursday, the storm window gives us a favor we don’t deserve. We don’t spend it.”
He nods; I feel it through the strap my fingers still touch. “Copy,” he says. Then softer, “Mara—”
“Check-in cadence is every ten meters,” I say, because cadence is safer than his name in the tight dark. “Say ‘clear’ or ‘need.’ No hero vocabulary.”
“Clear or need,” he repeats.
I clip him to the primary line and myself to the belay. The shaft stinks of cold steel and old dust, with the aftertaste of ozone from the emergency strips. Drone rotors thrum beyond the façade like summer cicadas that learned to love plastic. My chest counts them anyway, because sound maps patrols even when you can’t see the sky.
“Ready to drop on three,” I say. “One. Two—”
“Wait,” he says. The word scuffs the metal like a shoe toe dragging. “I—can we do one thing out of order?”
I shift my weight to my heels and let the rope hum in my hand. “Talk fast.”
He inhales through his teeth, and the air in the shaft changes shape. Not fear of height. He’s been steady on rooftops and catwalks since week one. This tremor comes from somewhere tenderer and more dangerous.
“This,” he says. “Us. The rehearsals. The staged anything. The…fake.” His voice catches, then steadies like he forces a knot through it. “It stopped being fake for me a while ago.”
The line goes quiet between us. The red lights pixellate his face into planes—cheekbones, mouth, the stubborn line of a man trying to be brave and precise at once. I hold the brake strand automatically, muscle memory saving me while my brain fails to.
“We do not have time for—” I start, because schedules keep people upright.
“I know,” he says. “That’s the problem. We’re about to spend everything we have on people who won’t know our names. That’s correct. But before that bill comes due, I need you to know I’m not playing my part anymore because it’s smart optics. I’m playing it because I can’t not. And if that gets me hurt, okay. If that burns the part of my inheritance that still buys me protection, okay. I’ll light it myself.”
The words flare in the dark. In another life, in another hallway, I would make a joke and move us along. In this one, my mouth goes dry, and the metal under my palm turns cold enough to sting. The red lights put a rim of heat on his lashes. I can’t name what moves in my chest because naming makes things true, and truth breaks bystanders.
“You can’t burn your exit route,” I say. I hear the rasp, and I hate that it betrays anything but professionalism. “The money is the only part of your family that listens to you.”
“Then I’ll make it listen one last time,” he says. He lifts his hand, stops before my cheek like I’m a hot surface he’s measuring without touch. “I don’t want to buy a life where Sable still wins.”
The shaft breathes around us. The taste of metal gets stronger. I do the only thing that’s ever shut down panic in tight places: I move. I close the last centimeter and fit my mouth to his.
It starts like a tactic, because that’s the only safe door I know how to open. Hands on his webbing, leverage calculated, a kiss angled to cover the helmet camera that isn’t on right now—but my body has trained to block cameras even in the dark. The plan says two beats, then a step back, then a quip to cue the drop.
I don’t step back.
He makes a surprised noise that finds the fault in me I pretend isn’t there. The kiss drags past the timecode, past the moment I should care about drafts and gates. Salt from the river’s breath clings to his lips. The shaft’s cold becomes background to the heat where our mouths argue the new terms. My glove squeaks against his descender; his fingers fist in the strap on my shoulder, not to own me but to anchor himself.
I break first and hate it and need it. I leave my forehead against his, helmets knocking once, gentle. The red light hums. Our breath fogs and mingles and erases the inch of air between.
“That was not in the drill,” I say. The sentence is steadier than my knees.
“No,” he says. “But it’s why I won’t fall.”
Micro-hook 1
I step back one boot-length and press palms into procedure. “Drop on three,” I say, because the body needs rails. “One. Two. Three.”
We settle into the sound of rope moving through metal: the low purr, the occasional sand-grain rasp where the sheath kissed a corner last month. Ten meters and I call, “Check.”
“Clear,” he says, and my muscles believe him.
We pass the inspection hatch where the algae-lit glass turns the shaft green enough to think of aquariums and childhoods I can’t have back. I tap the hatch once for luck I don’t admit to. He hums low, a tune I want to place; it’s not the clinic lullaby, it’s something from the docks—men singing while knots learn to obey.
“Anchor,” I say at the first landing. I clip us to the rail and feel the steel vibrate with the building’s throat. He’s close again in the necessary way the shaft enforces, shoulder to shoulder, gear clinking like small coins in a tin.
“Say it again,” I say, not the kiss, not the feelings I can’t carry to the boat. “What you said about inheritance. Say it like it’s a decision, not a romance line.”
He looks at me full-on, no deflection. “I’m willing to burn my inheritance to stop Sable. All of it. Board seats, votes, the family name as a currency. If the price of ending this is the end of what protects me, I’ll pay it. I want you to know that before Thursday so it’s not a grand gesture in a storm. It’s a plan.”
I taste aluminum even though my teeth aren’t on the rail. The river’s iodine rides up the vents and coats my tongue until purpose blooms where appetite should be. I nod once, like we just agreed that a door is locked.
“Then I build routes that don’t require your money to open them,” I say. “We go in rich and come out ordinary. Ordinary is harder to track.”
He grins, a small thing, but it touches the bruise left by the kiss and makes it worth it. “I can do ordinary,” he says. “I can carry bags and not be on a brochure.”
“Prove it,” I say. “Second drop.”
The rope warms under our descenders as we feed it bite by bite. Halfway, the shaft breathes different—cooler, wetter—the river speaking in pipes. I think of the hurricane barrier’s blind zones under the arches and how the city turns them into picnic shelters when the weather behaves. Resilience festivals eat fear for dessert out there. On Thursday, those arches are my cover and my trap.
“Check,” I call.
“Need,” he says.
My hand is on the brake strand before the word’s echo dies. “Talk.”
“Left leg loop pinches,” he says. “I can correct, but if I ignore it I’ll go numb.”
“Fix it now,” I say. “You don’t get bravery points for neuropathy.”
He snorts and works the webbing, breath puffing my cheek by accident. The contact writes its own note; I file it under later, if later is ever an option that doesn’t end in a morgue.
We touch down on sublevel three and play the rest of the rehearsal fast: traverse to the river hatch, identify the three places a camera could hide, confirm the emergency crank isn’t fused, rehearse the body angle that shields a pad if we must key it. His voice returns to even. Mine pretends it never wavered.
At the hatch, I check the gasket with my fingertips. It’s slick with condensation and tastes like old bolts when I lick the salt to be sure the river still kisses here. A tide breath brushes my face through the seam, cool and damp and impatient.
“Thursday,” I say. “Second gate cycle. Seventeen past.”
“Nineteen seventeen,” he says. “Under the arches.”
“We’ll stage at the blind zone where the CCTV misses the public park,” I say. “Families pose for resilience. We’ll carry boxes and look like staff.”
He studies me, not the hatch. “You’re going to lead in first,” he says. “You’ll taste the water before you let me.”
“That’s the job,” I say.
He shakes his head. “That’s you.”
Micro-hook 2
I push his shoulder lightly until he turns back to the rail. “Up-drill,” I say. “Real work starts before the kiss fades.”
He flushes; the red strips make a theater of it. “It’s not fading.”
“That’s the problem,” I say, and the line twangs, and we climb.
On the ascent, our gear sings a quiet duet of gates and teeth. He calls cadence back to me so I don’t have to pretend my head isn’t counting the other clock, the one only I can hear: June’s storm window, the tender’s engine, the board’s cameras. At the intermediate landing, he pauses, catches my eye, and lifts two fingers. Permission to speak.
“What about after?” he asks.
“After the drill?” I try deflection because it keeps me sharp.
“After the rescue. After the board. After the tender.” His voice trembles again, but not from our climb. “Do we go back to pretending?”
I feel the webbing cut into my hips; I welcome the bite. Pain clarifies. “I don’t get to make promises in dark hallways,” I say. “Promises cost speed. We need speed.”
“I’m not asking for a promise,” he says. He swallows, then tries again. “I’m asking if I’m alone in the not-fake.”
The shaft goes very quiet except for the distant drone chorus and the water’s patient tick. I could lie. Lies have saved more lives in this city than truth. But the paradox we swim in doesn’t care how clever we are: protection demands closeness; closeness destroys cover.
“You’re not alone,” I say, and the words feel like stepping onto ice you both hope will hold and plan to break. “But if this gets me hesitant on Thursday, we lose people who don’t know either of our names. So I will act like I am alone when I need to.”
He nods. It lands not as concession but as agreement to the physics of what we’re doing. “Then I’ll follow fast enough that you won’t be.”
We clear the top rail with the kind of grace two tired bodies manage when they over-practice something hoping repetition will protect them. It never does. Only attention protects you. I lock the descenders out, unclip us, and hang both devices so the next emergency has tools.
For one beat, we stand in the red hush, shoulder to shoulder, helmets off now, sweat cooling in the shaft’s stale breath. The algae-lit glass above throws a smear of green like a promise that never knows how to keep itself. I reach without thinking and set his strap straight where it bites his collarbone. He catches my wrist, not to trap, but to say I see you.
“We’re good?” he asks.
“We’re functional,” I say. “We’ll be good if we hit the gate at nineteen seventeen with eyes that aren’t busy.”
He touches the bruise the kiss left on his mouth and smiles like a man who understands delayed gratification better than rich men are supposed to. “I’ll keep my eyes on the river.”
I open the maintenance grille by habit to listen to the city one last time. The hurricane barrier hums in the distance, the public park on its back already staging banners for a resilience festival the feeds will adore. I can smell fried batter and rain in rehearsal; I can hear dock workers bartering favors under the arches in reality.
“One more thing,” he says, voice low, raw. “If the window narrows, and it’s me or the patients—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I say. “You don’t get to be noble on my watch.”
“That’s not nobility,” he says. “That’s math.”
“Math changes when you love someone,” I say, and the air drops three degrees between us because I didn’t mean to use that verb out loud in here. His eyes widen, then soften, and the shaft hears it too and keeps the secret.
I step back hard enough that the webbing in my hands burns a line into my palm. I welcome the sting. It’s the only honest thing in a room built for lies.
“Drill’s complete,” I say. “Gear stow. We walk out of this shaft like we practiced nothing.”
We file up the last ladder to the service corridor because rehearsal ends when you decide it does, not when the script feels tidy. He doesn’t reach for me, and I don’t look back, and both our silences do the work we can’t write into plans.
At the door to the executive hall, I stop with my hand on the bar. “Thursday,” I say.
“Thursday,” he answers. “Nineteen seventeen.”
The door is cold. My palm sweats against it. The tide clock in the marina will be three minutes fast, like always. We’ll budget the lie like professionals. We’ll try not to spend the truth.
I push the bar and ask the question the city never answers with anything but weather: when the river opens its mouth, will I move fast enough to save strangers—and slow enough not to break us?