Administrator Of A Broken World

The scream stopped halfway through.

Mataon’s hand stayed raised.

Ivara pointed left. Tovan pointed right. Edrin’s transfer token lost another finger-width of red.

No one had time to win the argument.

Mataon counted the silence after the scream.

One heartbeat.

Two.

At three, the right tunnel gave back the last broken note.

Not an immediate echo. Something had carried it, held it, and released it.

The scream could be real and still be bait.

He dropped to one knee and drew the junction in the dust. Five marks on the left. One mark on the right. Then he split the route cord into two loops and held them up.

Ivara understood first. Her mouth tightened.

Tovan shook his head. Splitting inside a place that stole directions was an excellent method of producing two smaller groups of corpses.

Mataon added a line between both loops. They would remain tethered to the junction. Then he drew a small circle, divided it into ten marks, and tapped two fingers against his wrist.

A short search. A fixed return. No chasing voices beyond the cord.

Tovan tapped his own chest, pointed right, and bared one small fang.

"You heard a scream," Mataon thought. "So did I."

He touched the five marks on the left, then the single mark on the right.

Five people could be weak. One person could be dying.

Zahr said, "A fine administrative principle. Save the largest department."

"I’m saving the person with the shortest deadline."

"Less administrative."

"More useful."

Almina cut through both of them. "Your token is closing."

Her voice was sharper than before. Mataon almost thanked her, then noticed the warmth under his bandage.

Blood again.

He tightened his fist.

"I saw that," Almina said.

"Of course you did."

Zahr sighed. "She watches you constantly now."

"I monitor an unstable asset," Almina replied.

"An asset with excellent hair."

"An unstable asset with blood loss."

Mataon pointed right before Zahr could improve the conversation.

Decision made.

Ivara caught Mataon’s coat and pulled him closer. She pointed at the right passage, then at his injured hand, then made a cutting motion across the route cord.

If the cord was severed, they returned immediately.

Mataon nodded.

She pointed at Barni.

Barni pointedly looked away.

"Yes," Mataon thought. "He also refuses my supervision."

"He has evaluated its quality," Zahr said.

Ivara tied the shorter loop around Mataon’s belt. The other end stayed with Edrin at the junction. Three hard taps passed down the line.

Return.

Tovan gave Barni one look that clearly meant keep him alive.

Barni answered with a flat stare that meant he had already noticed everyone else was incompetent.

Then Mataon, Ivara, and Barni entered the right passage.

The scream did not come again.

Their steps did.

Tap... tap... tap...

The tunnel copied them half a breath late. Mataon shortened his stride. The false steps continued at the old rhythm.

Something had learned the sound, not the movement.

The right passage descended sharply. A groove ran along the floor, polished by dragged weight. The hooked no-return symbol appeared every few paces. At the second symbol, Mataon found a crescent of dried blood pressed into the stone.

At the third, Barni stopped.

His nose moved once.

Then he looked up.

A dark cord lay against the ceiling, almost hidden inside a root seam. It trembled under tension.

Ivara followed it with her eyes. The cord passed through a stone ring and disappeared around the bend.

Mataon pointed to himself, then to the cord.

Ivara caught his wrist before he touched it.

Look. Do not touch.

He raised both hands.

Her gaze dropped to the bandage.

"Yes," he mouthed. "I have learned at least one lesson."

Her expression suggested the examination remained ongoing.

They rounded the bend.

The woman hung sideways behind a waist-high iron grate.

She was an adult, thin beneath a blue-grey hood, one ankle locked inside a wooden brace. The ceiling cord ended at that brace. Every time it tightened, her injured leg lifted against the joint.

A second line ran from the brace into a narrow crack above her.

The creature did not need to fake the first scream.

It only needed to pull.

Mataon’s humor disappeared.

Ivara was already at the grate. She tested the lock, then the hinges. Rusted iron. Swollen rootwood. No keyhole on their side.

The blue-grey thread marker had not led to a corpse.

The woman’s chest moved.

Once.

Again.

Mataon counted. Her breathing was shallow but regular. The last scream had ended between breaths, not because she lacked air.

Something had stopped pulling.

Something was waiting for rescuers to arrive.

Barni slipped his paw through the bars and touched her sleeve.

Her eyes opened a fraction. Grey, or perhaps green in the poor light. She focused on Barni first, then on Mataon’s coat.

Fear tightened her face.

Human.

Mataon moved his crude knife away from the bars and set it on the floor where she could see it.

Her breathing eased by one small measure.

The ceiling cord snapped tight.

Tchk!

Her body jerked. Air caught behind her teeth.

Ivara cut at the cord, but the fibers separated into wet strands and pulled away from the blade.

Not rope.

Membrane.

Mataon gripped the grate. The rootwood around the lower hinge was dark with water. Old moisture had swollen it until the iron pin could no longer turn.

He pointed at the wood, then at himself.

Ivara shook her head.

He held up four fingers.

Four Mana.

She glanced toward the ceiling crack. The membrane tightened again.

Then she tapped his shoulder three times.

Real permission.

Mataon pressed his uninjured hand against the rootwood.

He did not ask for all the water in the tunnel. He did not ask the world to solve the door.

Only the moisture held inside the swollen wedge.

Druid Extraction answered.

Cold moved through his palm. The wood gave a faint series of complaints.

Kik... kik... krk.

Clear water gathered against his skin and vanished into Astronomic Space before it could splash.

The root wedge shrank.

Pain struck behind his eyes, small but immediate. His injured hand throbbed in answer.

"Stop at four," Almina said.

"I planned to."

"You also planned not to touch the wall."

Zahr said, "Her confidence in you is developing beautifully."

"It is developing evidence."

The hinge dropped half an inch.

Ivara drove her knife beneath it and twisted.

Klang!

The grate opened.

The membrane line whipped down from the ceiling.

Barni barked once.

Mataon ducked. The line passed over his hair and wrapped around the bars. Tiny ridges opened along it.

The woman’s scream came from the membrane itself.

Exactly the same break. Exactly the same unfinished note.

Real pain, recorded and reused.

Ivara cut the ankle brace. Mataon caught the woman under the shoulders while Barni tore at the line near the grate. The ridges snapped at him with stolen clicks.

"Barni. Stay."

Barni bit harder.

"That animal respects no lawful instruction," Zahr said.

"He respects competent ones."

"A personal attack."

"An observation."

Almina said, "Lift with your legs. Your left foot is slipping."

Mataon adjusted before the wet stone could prove her right.

Zahr made a soft sound of triumph.

Almina ignored him so loudly it almost became visible.

They pulled the prisoner into the passage.

Her hand closed weakly around Mataon’s sleeve. For an instant he expected her to push him away.

Instead, she pointed behind the grate.

Three short cuts had been carved into the stone beneath her body.

Not random scratches. Route marks.

Three prisoners had continued deeper or been taken through another passage.

The cord around Mataon’s belt jerked twice.

Edrin’s signal.

Time.

Ivara took most of the woman’s weight. Mataon supported the injured side. Barni ran backward for three steps, watching the ceiling, then turned and led.

Behind them, the copied scream sounded again.

Farther down the right tunnel.

Then again from above.

The bait was alive.

The bait was also everywhere.

They reached the junction as the red line on Edrin’s token narrowed to a glowing scratch.

Tovan had forced the left gate open by the width of his forearm. Through it came five knocks.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

Tok.

Not a mechanism. The last knock paused until Tovan answered with his claw.

Someone was listening from the other side.

Both routes had been true.

Both had been traps.

Edrin saw the woman and went pale. He touched the blue-grey hood, then held up one finger.

One of the four missing prisoners.

Mataon showed him the three carved cuts.

Edrin’s fingers shook once before he pointed through the left gate.

The other three had likely been transferred across the same route.

The woman stirred against Ivara. A word slipped out in a language Mataon did not know.

Barni froze.

His folded ears turned toward the ceiling.

Mataon felt the route cord lift from the floor.

Not pull.

Lift.

Five hooked joints detached from the stone above Edrin.

The stolen voices began counting with five different mouths.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

"Four."

"Five."

The first hooked limb dropped.