She ripped a cord from around her waist and hurled the weighted end up and around to her rear. The weight caught on something, a pipe. The cord stopped her fall with a jerk. She swung back and banged against a wall of metal, then just hung there, taking in her surroundings. It was like hanging over the abyss, looking into the heart of some industrial monstrosity. The air smelled of molten metal. Enormous furnaces throbbed somewhere far below. Pipes and conduits ran everywhere. Spectral lights flickered and flashed. All the scene needed to complete the hellish image were blazing fires and the moans and cries of tormented souls. Piper could hear those cries in her mind. They were the cries of the millions that corps like Fuchi doomed to miserable lives and wretched deaths.