Iron Heart (The Gauntlet #2)

Chapter 43 - Grey Areas

"Okay, pal, lead the way."

"Hope none of ya are allergic to small spaces," he chuckled, before placing his hands on the edge of the hatch and levering himself inside. Codi waited for a moment, took a steadying breath, and then followed him.

It was cold and crisp inside the vents, like crawling around inside an empty refrigerator. They shuffled onward in Rokki's wake, keeping their movements smooth and quiet, though Codi doubted there was anyone nearby to hear them. Kye stayed close on her heels, with Ripple bringing up the rear, gliding along on fingertips and toes with the grace of a cat.

More than once she felt a surge of worry as Rokki stopped at a junction, his rugged features creasing with thought as he looked left and right, before muttering something to himself and picking a path. They dipped up and down, left and right, and after several minutes heat began building in the vent. Before long Codi was forced to start wiping sweat from her eyes, blinking and becoming painfully aware of how utterly lost she was. If Rokki had taken a wrong turn she had no idea how long it would take them to get out.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" she whispered hoarsely as they paused at another junction.

"Sure I do," Rokki chuckled, seemingly unbothered by the heat. "Just been a little while since I made this trip. You guys need to unwind a stretch." He glanced back over his shoulder, let out another short, maniacal laugh and then slithered down a sloping section of vent to the left. Codi blew out her cheeks in a weary sigh, and then followed him.

At last, after what had felt like years inside the hot, clammy vents, they reached an access panel leading out, and Rokki looked back, giving them a thumbs up signal. He drew his strange tool from his pocket and shook the bolts free from the panel again, neatly catching the metal plate before it could tumble out and crash to the ground. Moving with a painstaking care she would not have associated with him, he levered his body around the plate then slipped out of the vent. A dull clunk sounded as his boots struck metal.

The plate disappeared, and then Rokki's face popped up again over the edge of the vent. "C'mon then, we're here."

Relief flooded through her and Codi scrambled eagerly out of the vent, dropping into merciful open space. As Kye and Ripple followed, she glanced around, taking stock of their surroundings.

The storage area from the exoskeletons was rather less impressive than she'd been expecting. Built away from the invasive clamour of the upper levels that thronged with humanity, it had been constructed for utility, nothing more. It a large, cube-shaped space, with long conveyor belts working their way up the walls like ivy. Below them, filling the walls on either side, were ranks of coffin-like cubicles that held the exoskeletons.

Crisp, antiseptic light from bars in the ceiling illuminated the space, and as they dropped from the coolant vent Codi quickly realised Rokki had been correct. The heat washed over her, a muggy, metal-tasting plunge into hot air generated by the systems of the Lock-Tech.

In this late stage of the competition many of the cubicles were now empty as smaller academies with no remaining competitors had packed up their gear. Many others still glowed with a gentle blue, their maintenance mechanisms humming with power.

"A'right folks," Rokki said quietly. "Everybody split up and find that big goon's skeleton. Sharpish!"

She had no arguments with that. Glancing at Kye, she shrugged and set off, working her way down the lines of exoskeleton cubicles, searching for the Black Horizon suit. The others peeled away in different directions, mounting the thin metal stairways that accessed the upper ranks.