Skater tramped through the running water and nearly lost his footing in the sludge. He looked up at Elvis. "Cut it, and let's find out."

The troll nodded and unlimbered the laser torch he had in his equipment pack. He crossed to the wall and thumped it solidly.

"Duran," Skater called out, "see if you can get something over that grate so the laser won't show through."

Duran stripped off his jacket and blocked the grate, leaving enough room to allow the passage of water down the tunnel.

Strapping on a pair of protective goggles and thick gloves, Elvis switched on the laser and moved forward. Skater had the Predator in his fist and kept watch over the mouth of the pipe the way they'd come. There was a clang, then the laser light died away. When he turned, a hole big enough to crawl through was sliced through the pipe. The plascrete around the hole glowed hot orange a few centimeters deep. He holstered his weapon and removed his flash from his pocket, joining Archangel at the hole.

"The pipe's there," Archangel said, "but I can't tell what kind of shape it's in." She pointed her flash into the hole.

Skater added his to hers, but the distance was only illuminated a few meters. "It curves. Those specs didn't show a fragging curve." The light revealed the plascrete twisting out of sight nearly eight meters up.

"They're not that exact," Archangel replied. "They didn't have to be. Maybe it doesn't curve much."

Skater took a roll of ordnance tape from his pack and quickly strapped the flash to his gunwrist. He took off his street clothes and dragged them through the running water at his feet, then threw them across the heated edges of the lasered hole.

The cold water and soaked material hissed when they came in contact with the hot plascrete. The orange dimmed almost instantly, and steam rose up, drifting lazily with the flow of the water.

Skater crawled through the hole and pulled himself into the pipe. The fit was tight; there was barely enough room for his shoulders. Duran, Elvis, and Wheeler would never have made it.

On his stomach with the Predator and the flash aimed before him, he pulled himself forward. Panic whispered in his ear that he was going to get stuck at any moment, causing him to take bigger breaths than he actually needed. Once, because of a deep inhalation, his shoulders did get pinned and he found himself unable to move. Instinctively he took even more air in and found he couldn't. At the edge of losing it, he forced himself to be calm, to breathe out. He became unstuck, then worked to keep moving.

The curve was hard to navigate. He had to turn sideways and bend around it, not breathing till he was through.

His movements had stirred up clouds of dust that obscured the light from his flash. It took real effort to see the other end of the tunnel seven more meters along. A plascrete plug blocked it. He cursed silently for just a moment, then activated the Crypto Circuit link. "Duran, I'm going to need a drain opener. We've got a blockage up here." Skater played the flash over the rough plascrete surface, trying to estimate its depth.

"What are you looking at?''

"Plascrete cap. I don't know how thick."

"Probably only a few centimeters. Builders figured they needed some kind of safeguard to keep rodents and insects from using the pipe as a means of egress."

"According to the blueprints," Archangel said, "'the wall on the other side of it is twenty centimeters thick. That will have to be blown as well."

"Okay, kid," Duran said, "I'll get you a package fixed up. You coming back for it?"

Skater glanced back at the curve and thought about having to crawl through the pipe again. "No. Send it up with Archangel."

He twisted around so that he was lying on his back. His neck and shoulders were already burning from the exertion of keeping his head up. The thought of Archangel being in the pipe with him, blocking the way, was unsettling.

"Elvis sent this along," she said. "He thought it might help shield us from the blast."

Looking down. Skater saw that it was the troll's Kevlar-lined synthleather jacket. "It will. Go back to the bend in the pipe and hold onto it. I'll join you there."

As Archangel wriggled back, Skater moved forward with the explosive in his hand. His elbows were sore from crawling, and he felt the warmth of blood soaking into the wetsuit's sleeve from his left one.

Duran had shaped the charge and put a sticky surface on it. With care, Skater placed the explosive in the center of the plascrete plug. Going backward was every bit as difficult as he'd expected.

He stopped short of the curve in the pipe, knowing he didn't want to be trapped in it if anything went wrong. His nerves were jumping as Archangel passed up the heavy jacket. He wadded it deliberately, making as many layers as he could.

He tagged the commlink. "O.K., Duran. Slow it." He ducked his head into the jacket, smelling the strong troll smell.

Then the world inside the tunnel came apart as the detonation rocketed against his eardrums.

"Kid."

Duran's voice came to Skater as if from a long way off. The ringing in his ears didn't help. "We're here," he answered over the link. Then a fit of coughing wracked him as his lungs rebelled against the dusty debris floating through the air. When he shone his light along the length of the pipe, it looked like the fog hugging the river had invaded the crawlspace.

At the other end of the pipe, the plascrete plug was gone.

"How's it look?" the ork asked.

"Wide open. You did good." Skater tried to go forward, but the plascrete chips tortured his knees and chest. Coughing and wheezing and in pain, he decided his best course of action was to simply fist Elvis's jacket and shove it ahead of him. It also served to sweep most of the chips out of his way.

The opening into the building's foundation was irregular. Jagged remnants of plascrete and stone jutted around the rough circle. Cracks ran the width of the wall for nearly a meter in all directions. The dark was so complete Skater's low-light enhancement didn't work and he had to use his flash.

“Trey," Skater said as he crawled through the opening and dropped to the floor almost two meters below. He turned to help Archangel down.

"I'm here, chummer," the mage said.

"Check around and see if you can find the power supply cables and whether or not we've been found out." Skater played his flash over the walls of the room. It was rectangular in shape, nine meters by three meters, and at least four meters from floor to ceiling. The stone surfaces were chipped and cracked, and fresh scars from the explosion showed through the layers of decades old dust.

"Be right back," Trey said. His voice was already starting to fade as he went astral to do his assensing.

Plascrete chips ground under Skater's boots. It didn't take very long to see that none of the utility lines were in the room.

"According to the blueprints," Archangel said, "the power and supply umbilical should be on this side of the wall." She kept her light moving hopefully, but the frustrated frown on her high-boned elven features deepened. Gray dust coated her face.

After a few minutes more of fruitless searching, Cullen Trey climbed through the pipe and dropped into the room. He reached back into the opening for his pack. "The lines are on the other side of the wall. All the utilities, as well as the computer lines leading to the Portland Matrix, are there."

"What about security?" Skater asked.

The mage removed a drill from his pack and attached a large plascrete bit. "It's major, but I didn't sense any special alert. They're making the usual rounds, strictly routine. The blast was probably covered by the storm." He paced the wall, closed his eyes briefly as if trying to remember, then chose a spot on the wall. "It's here. Give me some room."