"The seal is gone!" Vaelric yelled over the rising shriek of scorched steel echoing up from the conduit shaft below. He climbed faster, his boots clanging against the rusted iron rungs as a torrent of superheated air blasted past them, carrying the stinging stench of burnt copper and ionized air. "Tazrek, if you know a shortcut out of this vertical coffin, now is the absolute time to share it!""There are no shortcuts, Vaelric! Only bad choices and worse angles!" Tazrek roared back, not breaking his rhythm as he hauled his massive, armor-clad frame up the ladder with terrifying efficiency. He didn't look down, but the metallic clatter of his boots hitting the rungs above told them he was gaining distance. "Keep moving or get vaporized! Those corporate cleaning squads don't take prisoners, and they certainly don't read debtor appeals!"Mavren groaned below Vaelric, his foot slipping from a rung with a sickening scrape. A sharp gasp tore from the older man’s throat as his weight suddenl

"Move!" Tazrek’s voice dropped from the upper hatch like an iron anvil.Vaelric shoved Mavren upward, ignoring the white-hot agony radiating from his wrenched shoulder joint. The older man scrambled blindly, his boots finding purchase on the cold iron rungs with a desperate, frantic scraping sound. Above them, the heavy steel access hatch hung open, framing a patch of the bruised, charcoal-grey Voss sky. A relentless, freezing downpour sheeted down, immediately turning the metal edges around the hatch into slick, treacherous glass.Vaelric hauled himself through the opening last, his boots slamming onto the concrete roof just as a blinding, superheated geyser of steam erupted from the conduit pipe behind them. The concussive blast blew a cloud of soot into the damp air, searing their lungs with the caustic taste of burnt industrial lubricants."Clear!" Tazrek barked, already unlatching his heavy, scarred chest plate with trembling fingers. The debt-collector looked like an iron beast

"Don't complain about the schedule when you wrote the calendar, Vaelric," Tazrek snapped, wrenching the heavy steel plate off his torso and letting it clang against the wet concrete. He pointed a thick, calloused finger down at Vaelric's chest. "Don't complain about the schedule when you wrote the calendar, Vaelric."Vaelric didn't flinch, even as rain slicked his hair flat against his forehead. He hauled himself up to a crouch, his jaw tight. "I wrote an efficiency matrix for asset tracking, Tazrek. I didn't write an execution order for every poor bastard who missed a quarterly quota.""Same code, different function," Tazrek countered, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly rumble that barely carried over the drumming of the downpour. He stepped closer, the massive silhouette of his frame blotting out the weak, amber glow of the emergency beacon behind him. "You built the walls of the maze, and now you're whining that the maze has teeth. Get up. We're not done."Mavren groaned from

Mavren spat a glob of pink-tinted phlegm onto the wet metal of the roof, his face twisted in a sneer of pure contempt. "Displacement protocols? They’ve been writing those eviction notices since the third quarter, Tazrek. The only difference now is they’re putting our names at the top of the casualty ledger.""They're not just writing them, Mavren," Vaelric said, his voice dropping into a cold, flat cadence that made the battered executive blink. "They’re uploading the final sign-offs to the main grid server right this second. Automated execution. No appeals, no paper trails, no witnesses."Tazrek crossed his massive, scarred arms over his bare chest, ignoring the freezing sleet that bit into his skin. "And what's your grand strategy, architect? You gonna march up eighty stories of reinforced plasteel and ask them nicely to hit the undo button? They have private security battalions stationed on every single transit floor.""I’m not going to ask them anything," Vaelric replied, pulling