The King and his merry men

[Drake Oneir]

Drake slunk through the shadows of Nippur's northeastern quadrant, his eyes scanning the rooftops for piping and auxiliary pumping stations. The corroded infrastructure eventually led him to a small, squat building made of stucco and sandstone bricks. There were no lights on inside, at least that Drake could see from the streetside, and banners of lichen and wetmold highlighted the recesses of the who station. There was a sign in front of the building that was hooked onto a chain-link fence. The fence had been cut through ages ago, but the cuneiform and english writing on the placard indicated that this was, indeed, the primary irrigation plant.

Drake glanced to his left. An abandoned storage shed or something loomed in the increasingly dark Babylonian night. The man in the strip join had used the word 'temple' to describe the operation inside the plant, so the smuggler had to assume that the entrance was being watched. He glanced left and right, watching the dusty street for potential sentries before dashing into the two-story shed. Drake climbed the concrete steps to the second floor, his path illuminated by the small LED on his datavice. It was cramped, and smelled of pigeon droppings, but it had a small, greasy window that looked out on the main pumping and intake complex.

The smuggler cracked the window to let in some fresh, damp air and settled in to watch any activity within the winding forest of pipes, valves, and stucco walls...