Despite all the hard work and all the data they'd scraped together so painstakingly, walking through the front door of the enforcer headquarters simply wasn't an option. The secrecy of the wolfkin operation might have kept them from plastering her face on the city announcements, but she knew damn well that the enforcers themselves would recognise her in an instant, and she doubted Karno would pass as one of them. He'd scraped by as a guard, but he lacked the sheer physicality that exemplified the enforcers.

Poring over the plans, inch by infuriating inch, she couldn't help admiring the design of the enforcer bunker—or, more accurately, bunker complex. From one entrance beneath the Conclave, the structure exploded into a spider web of tunnels and secondary command centres, with hidden exits popping up all over the Silk. Some of the more audacious tunnels even made it all the way into the nearer civilian regions, connecting to all the major tram stations.

The wolfkin enforcers could strike anywhere in the city in a matter of hours.

"By the Peace," Karno muttered, lounging on the couch and pouring over a series of hard copy etchings of the floor plan. "This place is insane."

"I'd say it suits them then," she replied. She sat with her elbows on the table in the back room of Karno's shop, staring at the schematic through aching, bloodshot eyes. She'd futilely tried to get some sleep but only managed a couple of intermittent naps since they'd come back from the Conclave. The lure of the enforcer base was just too tempting.

That didn't make the apparent security measures all the more daunting. While the exterior access doors far from the main complex would be their best bet, they still needed to navigate a complex system of formidable locks, alarms, and guards.

"According to this, there's a rolling patrol in place," Karno continued. "The outer doors don't have a constant guard on them. They're linked up to the alarm system that will trigger on any unauthorised entry. Enforcer patrols check the doors periodically for any physical tampering."

She nodded thoughtfully. "We should be able to isolate the local alarm, so the thing doesn't blow our cover before we're even inside."

"Getting in is by far the easiest part of this." He slung his footpaws off the couch, holding one of the etchings up towards the light and squinting at it. "Whatever we're looking for is going to be in the operations centre."

"Well, there are maintenance shafts that run from the outer staging areas towards the centre." She pointed to the lines on the schematic. "Won't get us into the operations centre, but it'll get us close without having to dodge every single wolfkin in the place."

"That doesn't really help us if the operations centre is fully manned."

"Actually," Jett said, an edge of apprehension seeping into her voice. "I had a couple of ideas about that."

"Lay it on me."

"Well, it might be an enforcer den"—she shot him a mischievous glance—"but they have evacuation protocols like everybody else."

"Uh-huh." He nodded. "And that helps us how?"

"That atomic reactor they've got stuffed down there? Do you know the kind of carnage it would cause if that thing malfunctioned or had a meltdown?"

"I can take a guess," he replied, frown deepening. "But I really hope you're not about to suggest we sabotage that reactor into a meltdown. The risk—"

"No, no, no," she said quickly. "We just make them think it's going to meltdown."

He gave her a dubious look. "You can do that?"

"It's just a case of reading the protocol parameters and manually keying the readings to surpass them." She shrugged. "The hard part will be breaking into the system itself. If we can get into the system on-site and override the reactor safeties, that should clear out the guards that are left—at least temporarily—long enough to get what we need."

Karno's face pinched with thought as he mulled over her scheme. She didn't blame him for not leaping in with particular enthusiasm, given what she was proposing, so she waited. And waited. After a couple of minutes, the impatience began to niggle at her, and she gave his footpaw a light kick.

"Something you're not happy about?"

"No, I think it's a good plan." He gave her a weary smile. "Which I guess means we're really going to do this."

***

The waiting was the worst part.

For more than an hour, she and Karno had been creeping their way through the dubious glamour of the sewer network beneath the Silk, avoiding the Conclave and any possibility of encountering the rolling patrols of enforcers that could be found in the inner sanctum of Wildhearth. As it turned out, they hadn't given the wolves enough credit, and there had been more than one close encounter, even in these disgusting depths.

It reminded her that the enforcer reputation had been hard-earned. No matter their status in the city, their soldiers took no issue with wading through slurry and sewage in the execution of their orders, even on something as banal as a patrol. They undertook their duty with frightening conviction.

Thankfully, the overpowering scent of the city's waste would be more than enough to mask anyone's scent down here. With Karno close behind, Jett picked her way through the muck-brown passages, breathing lightly against the smells that assailed them. She kept her longclaw at the ready, held out in front of her in case of any surprises. Behind her, Karno didn't seem to have brought a weapon of his own, but the claws and teeth of any wolfkin could often be dangerous enough.

They picked their way painstakingly through the network of tunnels, having to pause every now and then to check the copper-etched map of the area they'd taken with them. Every passage looked the same to her, and they had to backtrack more than once, but eventually, they closed in on their destination—a surface access port for the sewers a stone's throw from their chosen entrance to the enforcer compound. Jett stepped out into the next passage, tension winding within her as they edged closer and closer to the most dangerous place in the city.

Suddenly, a paw clamped shut around her upper arm and yanked her backwards with frightening force. Jett's mouth opened to cry out before a second paw grabbed her muzzle, forcing her mouth shut. She struggled before her senses caught up. She was pressed up against Karno, his scent unmistakable with their bodies this close. A shudder; she relaxed. The paw across her mouth was removed, and she allowed herself to be tugged back into a narrow, shadowy alcove.

A couple of seconds later, she heard the heavy pad of several pairs of footpaws in the dampness. Shadows flickered in the passage beyond, and she held her breath without thinking. Seconds creaked by, and she could feel the thump of her heart. The squeeze of Karno's grip on her arm betrayed his nervousness, but thankfully the patrol didn't come down their section of the sewer tunnels. The echo of their steps gradually receded into the warrens.

Once the wolfkin were safely past them, Karno released his grip, giving her an apologetic look as they both stepped out of the shadows. She scowled.

"You could give a girl a heart attack, you know that?"

"All part of my endearing charm."

"Oh, smoke yourself."

Karno smirked and beckoned her. "C'mon, we're almost there."

With her paw strangling the grip of the longclaw, Jett padded along behind him as they traversed the last section of the sewer network before the surface. Three turns later, they reached a wall with a ladder cut straight into the brickwork, and at its top was the flat metal slab of an access hatch. Karno shuffled around in his pocket, retrieving his portable solar clock. He looked at it; nodded.

"Okay, we should be clear for the next twenty minutes before the next patrol passes this section," he said, an edge creeping into his voice. "Looks like we're not getting out of this."

"Then let's go."

Not waiting for him to gather his nerves, Jett sheathed her blade and mounted the ladder, climbing swiftly until she reached the hatch. She gripped its thick metal handle with one paw and, with a snarl of effort, turned it to disengage the ancient lock. It clunked free, and she put a shoulder to the panel, forcing it open and letting daylight spill down over them. Slithering gratefully out of the sewer, she held the door open long enough for Karno to scramble out before easing it back into place.

Glancing furtively around for any sign of pursuit, Jett set off, taking in the clumps of buildings that now surrounded them. It still looked like the Silk, all clean and crisp with walls of ceramic and glass, but from the base of the structures, she could see snaking power conduits that disappeared into the ground, surrounded by large garbage skips. Even the garbage skips looked clean. Shaking that mind-bending notion out of her head, she could see they were at the rear of a series of office blocks, not an area likely to see much life.

She led the way into a dark alcove between two of the towering cuboids where set against the corner wall behind one of the sleek silver-skinned disposal skips was a metal door. At a glance, it looked like a maintenance entrance for the building itself—the perfect disguise, really. Jett glanced back at Karno.

"So that's it?"

"That's it."

"Then let's go."

"Okay, take this." He handed her a small backpack that clinked with promise. Inside were several homemade nerve clogger bombs. Thrown to detonate on impact, they would help deal with any wolfkin they encountered within the compound. She gently slung it across her back

"Did you set the damper?"

"Yes, I set the damper." He shot her a withering look. "Gimme some credit here. You might be the criminal mastermind, but I know what I'm doing."

Jett blinked. "Well, excuse me."

"Just come on." They shuffled over to the door, and Karno indicated the paw-sized black cuboid affixed just to the left of the locking mechanism. "That'll keep the alarm from bringing every bloody wolfkin down on top of us when we pop this thing."

"Great. Give me the cutter." She snapped out a paw expectantly. Without access to the internal systems of the base, they couldn't just override it, so a more direct intervention was needed in this case. Karno reached into his own back and withdrew an L-shaped device with a fat nozzle and a bulky gas canister jutting out diagonally back from the trigger mechanism. He flicked a switch on the side, and a sharp cone of blue flame about six inches long flared from the muzzle.

Taking the cutter, Jett slipped in front of him and cast an eye over the lock, judging where to make her incision. She crouched down and eased the flame into place, putting it right against where she knew a trio of thick metal bolts held the door shut. A few seconds later, the tang of molten metal filled her nostrils as she cut down through them one by one, hot liquid steel seeping down the seam of the door.

Judging she'd carved through all three, she straightened up and glanced at Karno. He nodded once. Jett sucked a breath in through her teeth, placed a paw gingerly against the door and pushed.

It hissed open.

No alarms blared.

No wolfkin came leaping out of the dark.

They looked at each other. Karno cocked his head to one side as if to say what are you waiting for?

The air was cold, purged of outside influences by a formidable filtration system. A filtration system that, pretty soon, she and Karno would be clambering through if things went according to plan.

Pulling her scraps of courage together, Jett stepped over the threshold and into the lair of the wolfkin.