“—to blow this entire high-rise into the sky!”
The captive’s words hung in the superheated air, thick with the smell of scorched plaster and Mireya’s patented meat broth. Savina’s face, already streaked with grime, went stark white. She dropped the splintered spoon with a clatter, the sound swallowed by the hiss of the ruptured pipe.
“The sub-basement?” Savina’s voice was a raw, disbelieving rasp. “He’s gone to the central steam main? That’s… that’s ten flights down! We have to run, now! Before the boiler blows!”
Mireya, still reclining on her velvet couch amidst the carnage of the failed assault, barely shifted. A sliver of rancid lard, flicked from a discarded pot, had landed near her elbow. She nudged it with a lazy toe, a small frown marring her perfect brow. Running ten flights of stairs? The very thought was an affront to her principles.
“Running is… inefficient,” Mireya murmured, her voice flat. “All that exertion. It’s far too much effort for a mild inconvenience.”
Drazan, his grip still crushing the captured assassin’s throat, glanced at Mireya. His gaze, usually lethal, carried a quiet, possessive focus. He released the man, who collapsed in a heap, gasping for air. Drazan knelt, his bulk filling the doorway, and began systematically dismantling the assailant’s heavy boots. His movements were precise, economical, every motion a calculated removal of threat.
“Mireya, the tower is rigged to explode,” Savina insisted, panic sharpening her tone. She gestured wildly toward the doorway, then the stairwell. “We need to move! The main support columns, the structural integrity… it’ll be dust!”
Mireya yawned, a delicate hand rising to cover her mouth. “Dust means I’d have to clean. And I just had this couch reupholstered. Unacceptable.” She surveyed the room, her gaze resting on the largest of her radiator-pots, still bubbling gently on its perch, full of rich, dense meat. It was a behemoth, forged from thick iron, sealed with heavy-duty clamps designed to hold against violent boiling.
An idea, both ingenious and deeply lazy, began to form.
“Drazan, my largest cooking vessel. Unclamp it,” Mireya commanded, her tone mild, almost conversational. “We need to stoke the heat inside. Dramatically.”
Drazan, without a word, rose and moved to the radiator. His blunt hands, accustomed to raw brutality, worked the iron bolts with practiced care, venting the gasket. A cloud of fragrant steam billowed out, momentarily obscuring him.
Savina stared, aghast. “You want to stoke the heat? Are you insane? That thing is already a ticking bomb of broth!”
“Precisely,” Mireya said, a faint, knowing smile playing on her lips. “But it’s *our* bomb. And it’s going down.” She pointed towards a small, heavy metal door set into the wall near the kitchen, a relic from the building’s construction. The Zelen-Tier block, constructed under the old regime, featured a service hoist shaft once used for hauling emergency rations. It sat rusted and neglected, but the vertical flue dropped straight through the concrete core down to the sub-basement.
“The service lift,” Mireya instructed Drazan, her voice calm despite her utter inertia. “Prepare it. We’re sending Rurik a gift.”
Drazan cleared the debris around the rusted hatch without hesitation. Savina, however, remained frozen, mouth slightly open in disbelief. “You’re going to drop a scalding iron vat down a dead chute? It’ll just get stuck! Or blow early! We’re going to die right here!”
“Details, Savina, details,” Mireya waved a dismissive hand. “Drazan, apply maximum heat to the vessel. And then, we load.”
Drazan tightened the dog-latches, then wrenched the radiator’s intake petcock to its maximum stop. The iron kettle groaned as steam expanded within, the thick seams beginning to tick. He shifted the cast iron onto a scrap pallet, hauling the sizzling cask over to the open hatch. The living room grew muggy and choked with steam. The scent of cooking meat, usually comforting, now carried a distinct edge of danger.
With steady force, Drazan guided the heavy cauldron into the dark chute. It scraped and clanged against the rusted metal walls, a sound of grinding protest, before beginning its slow, laborious descent. The ropes, thick with age and dust, creaked loudly under the unprecedented weight.
They stood listening to the rattling drop as the building's deep mechanical pipes droned. Then, a sudden, jarring *thud*. The ropes went slack. The sound of the pot’s descent ceased. It had stopped.
Mireya sighed. “Of course it did. Nothing in this block functions without needless nuisance.”
Just then, a harsh, crackling sound erupted from the dusty intercom unit mounted on the wall. A voice, distorted but undeniably Rurik’s, filled the room. “Mireya, Mireya, you sly little fox. Did you truly think a simple pot would stop me? I’ve had this building’s maintenance logs for months. The hoist pulley is chained solid at the sixth floor, a small preventative measure I saw to beforehand. Your metal payload is stranded. A shame. Perhaps you’ll enjoy the view as your comfortable life, and your precious Drazan, ascend to the heavens in a flash of steam!” His voice was laced with a triumphant, mocking glee.
Savina gritted her teeth. “The smuggler calculated the lines!” She spun around the room, hunting for options. She spotted the cluster of grease-smeared conduit runs trailing across the wall toward the structural riser. Her mind, honed by years of managing complex factory machinery, began to race, calculating, analyzing.
“The bypass feed,” Savina muttered, half to herself. “The primary supply riser runs right beside the chute. It’s old pre-war brass, but there are manual shutoffs for emergency blowdowns on this service hub!” She moved with sudden, decisive energy, pushing past the captured assassin and tearing a section of wallpaper from the wall, revealing a grimy, forgotten panel with a series of heavy, rusted levers.
“The residential grid pulls directly from the basement header,” Savina muttered, wrenching a rusted wheel. “If I dump the thermal excess from this tier into the shaft, the thermal shock should melt the greasy hemp cords holding the cradle.”
Mireya watched, a languid arch to her brow, as Savina, with a surprising surge of physical strength, wrestled with the stiff levers, grunting with effort. The ancient mechanisms groaned, protesting years of disuse. A faint shudder ran through the building. Then, with a loud *clank*, a heavy lever locked into place.
Immediately, a high-pitched whine began to emanate from the walls, growing in intensity. It was the sound of colossal pressure being redirected. Down the hoistway, a scalded roar erupted, whistling like an uncapped locomotive. The air in the apartment grew even hotter, shimmering with invisible currents.
Then, a sharp, cracking *SNAP* echoed from the shaft below, followed by a sound of splintering wood and rending metal. A faint, distant thud vibrated through the floorboards. The heavy vat, brimming with boiling tallow and sealed broth, dropped freely into the dark. Gravity, with a little help from Savina’s ingenuity, had taken over.
The intercom crackled again, but this time, Rurik’s voice was a choked, horrified shout, abruptly cut off by a sickening wet *THWUMP* and a deafening, ear-splitting ROAR that shook the entire Zelen-Tier block to its foundations. The floorboards bucked, ceiling plaster cracked into gray powder, and the remaining window glass cascaded into the room.
Mireya, unfazed, leaned towards the still-hissing intercom, her eyes half-closed in a languid expression. She let out a small, delicate yawn.
“I told you, Rurik. I don’t do heavy lifting.”