Chapter Forty-One: The Corridor

Night had teeth. The van hunkered in the torn seam of scrub, ladders lashed like an alibi someone had believed for too long. Wind combed grit across the windshield. In the cab’s dim light, Ethan checked his watch—second hand poised like a trigger—then cracked the door and let the cold swallow him.

The hill waited, a darker shape against a dark sky. The drone’s whine carved circles overhead, metronomic, patient. He moved on the seam they’d measured: out of the camera’s sagging arc, under the drone’s five-second drift, across dead ground that punished hesitation. Kyle followed, drop cloth folded over one arm like a tradesman too tired to care who watched.

At the grate: ritual. Canvas draped to make a shadowed tent. Talc whispered over Ethan’s fingers. The flat bar slid under the lip; the bolts complained, then surrendered with a soft metal sigh. Cold, used air breathed up his wrists—oil, disinfectant, human hurry. The coil camera nosed into the shaft. Galvanized ribs, left-hand bend, a