Chapter 2

An hour after Evelyn went out, the first temperature screen in the underground cooling station went dark. Right after that, cries erupted from the infant emergency area.

"Water! Who still has oral rehydration salts!"

When I got there, a young mother was on her knees with a baby in her arms. The baby's face had gone purple, and their lips were cracked and bleeding. The medics kept pressing cooling patches onto the child, but the patches had lost their chill long ago.

"What about the backup circulation water?" I asked.

"Pressure's below the safety line." The nurse's voice shook. "If it keeps dropping, we can only reserve the cooling pods for the most critical patients."

I looked up at the screen. There were still more than six hundred people in the underground cooling station. And up on the ridge, the Dawn Dome was swallowing the power and the water that should have been ours.

The side door slammed open. Evelyn staggered in, one side of her face burned red, her arms covered in blisters.

"Evelyn!" I caught her.

She caught a few breaths, her eyes full of fury. "Julian sealed the emergency road up the mountain. He said you'd use the chaos to wreck Celine's dome. He won't even let me near it."

My hand tightened on her arm. This was not about disbelief. He had decided long ago that he would not believe me.

I ran to the dispatch terminal and switched to the regional climate emergency platform. "This is the San Riva Lower City cooling station requesting a Level Red emergency response. Backup water circulation has failed and wildfire smoke is sinking. Requesting airdropped filtration modules and mobile cooling units."

The other end went quiet for a moment. Then a flat, procedural voice came on. "Sorry. San Riva's heat alert data has been flagged as anomalous. Regional rescue can't deploy until the local civil defense director reconfirms it."

I stared at the line on the screen and went cold all over.

[Risk note: municipal engineer Mara Vale is suspected of altering sensor thresholds without authorization, which may cause mass panic.]

It was signed by Julian.

Suddenly I understood. Celine had not acted on impulse, and Julian had not lost his head in the moment. They had written the verdict against me in advance: I would be jealous, raise the alarm, and make a scene, so nothing I said could be trusted.

Evelyn leaned against the wall and caught her breath, then looked up. "There's another way."

She pulled a yellowed old-district blueprint out of her tool bag. "Between the ridge reservoir and the underground cooling station there's an abandoned gravity conduit. It used to supply the old city. They sealed it when the main network went in. If we can open the old water gate, the cooling station can hold out one more night."

I looked at the thin line cutting through the mountain. It was already 117 degrees outside and the wildfire smoke was pressing down. But staying here meant waiting to die.

"I'll open the gate," I said.

Evelyn shook her head. "You stay and keep people organized."

"Evelyn, Julian has already turned his back on you." I pushed the blueprint back into her hands. "He'd turn his back on me even faster."

"Then don't go begging him."

I picked up a smoke mask and a tool kit. "We're going to take back the water that belonged to the Lower City all along."