Chapter 6 - Beneath the City
The steam tunnels were a subterranean maze of massive concrete pipes, hissing valves, and echoing drips of condensation. The air was thick, warm, and smelled faintly of rust and ancient earth. Delaney switched on her small aluminum penlight, its narrow beam cutting a sharp path through the gloom as they hurried deeper into the bowels of the city.
"Where does this lead?" Cassian asked, checking his weapon's magazine in the dim light. His breathing was heavy, the strain of the previous night's near-execution and the recent firefight clearly taking a toll on his body.
"It leads to the old municipal waterworks beneath Fennel Street," Delaney said, her voice echoing off the concrete walls. "Nobody comes down here except maintenance crews. We're safe—at least for a few hours."
Cassian nodded, leaning against a damp concrete pillar to catch his breath. "You handled yourself well back there. Most people would have frozen."
"I told you, I'm done freezing," Delaney replied, turning to face him. The harsh light of the penlight illuminated the cuts and bruises across his face, stark against his dark coat. "You said the files on that drive prove Raldi poisoned the water table in Larkin Row. Is there enough to put him away federally?"
"There’s enough to put him away for the rest of his natural life," Cassian said grimly. "Bank transfers, environmental test results falsified by state inspectors, and direct shell-company receipts linking Raldi to the kickbacks. But there’s a catch."
Delaney frowned. "What catch?"
"The physical server housing the primary backup isn't in a corporate office. It's stored in a secure vault inside the Port Authority building—a building that Raldi’s security firm guards like a military installation," Cassian explained. "The thumb drive we have is just the decryption key. Without the master drive from that vault, Raldi’s legal team will argue the data was fabricated."
Delaney stared at him, her mind racing. A federal vault. Guarded by elite security. It sounded impossible. And yet, looking at Cassian, and feeling the burning, unyielding anger for her mother’s memory, she knew they had only one shot.
"Then we break in," Delaney said simply.
Cassian stared at her, a flicker of genuine shock crossing his features. "Delaney, you're a nursing student, not a tactical operative."
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"And you're an auditor who just crawled out of a shallow grave," Delaney countered sharply. "We don't need an army, Cassian. We need a plan. And I know every service entrance, ventilation shaft, and medical bay backup protocol in the municipal district because my mother used to clean them when I was a kid."
Cassian slowly broke into a weary, genuine smile—the first real smile she had seen on him. "God help us," he murmured. "Alright. Let's build a plan."
