Some iron, some steel-heavy crew would be the ones to deal with that. Rusty pipes ran ahead of him, disappearing into darkness. The paint itched and drove him crazy, but he didn’t relish finding his way back out of the mazelike ducts in blind blackness, so he let his forehead itch and again surveyed his position. With one scarred hand, he swiped at the salty rivulets, careful to avoid rubbing off the LED paint.

Grime and salt sweat stung his eyes and trickled around the edges of his filter mask. The LED glowpaint smeared on Nailer’s forehead gave a dim green phosphorescent view of the service ducts that made up his world. A meter’s worth of precious copper tore loose in his hands and dust clouds enveloped him. The staples pinged about the cramped metal passage like coins offered to the Scavenge God, and Nailer felt after them eagerly, hunting for their dull gleam and collecting them in a leather bag he kept at his waist. He scrambled deeper into the duct, jerking more wire from its aluminum staples.

Ancient asbestos fibers and mouse grit puffed up around him as the wire tore loose. NAILER CLAMBERED THROUGH a service duct, tugging at copper wire and yanking it free. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Visit our website at Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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