Chapter 12: Rot Rain!
Rain kept falling.
A drop landed on Renn’s wrist where cloth had torn.
TSSK!
He swallowed the cry instead of releasing it. The skin raised red at once, and Kael understood the rain was not weather. It was a slow weapon with patience.
Fungal rain did not fall cleanly. It clung, crawled, and left soft burning tracks wherever cloth failed to protect skin. Each drop landed with a soft tick that made workers flinch after the sound, not before.
DRIP!
Furnace Sink Nine carried old damage in layers. The newest layer belonged to fungal rain, and it sat on the air like a bruise nobody wanted to touch.
DRIP!
Fungal rain tried to split attention across too many threats. Kael answered by making his body the nearest fact.
Hunger made every bowl dangerous.
The ash sluice ended under a broken ration house where the air smelled of mold, burned salt, and men who had died waiting for bowls that never came.
Kael climbed out first.
His body protested every inch. The pressure rod bruise across his back had turned deep and hot. His palms opened again when he gripped the stone lip. Blood made his fingers slide. Vaela came after him without asking for help.
Orrek needed help and hated it.
"Touch my shoulder and I bite," he warned.
Renn blinked at him.
"You bite everyone?"
"Only people with fingers near broken places."
Vaela pushed past both of them, caught Orrek under his uninjured arm, and hauled. He snarled. She snarled back. Together, with a wet scrape of boots and chains, they dragged him onto the floor.
"There," Vaela said. "I touched you and survived. Historic."
"I was being kind."
"Try being light next time."
Kael listened while they bickered. It helped. Not because it was funny, though part of it was. It meant they still had air to waste.
The workers below had scattered into three hiding routes. Kael had sent them away in smaller groups because a herd made noise. Some would sell his path by next bell. Some would not.
He did not know which. That ignorance sat heavier than the wounds.
Renn crouched beside a cracked floor grate.
"There is a store below. I smell paste."
Vaela tilted her head.
"You smell food through ash rot?"
"I am hungry. Hunger learns."
Orrek grunted.
"Boy speaks truth."
Kael moved to the grate. Through the slits, he saw dim orange light, stacked fungus bricks, furnace bone bundles, and three men in Black Ledger aprons stamping ration marks on clay tags. A fourth sat by a pressure stove with a cleaver across his knees.
Food.
Not enough for Furnace Sink Nine. More than enough for men who charged starving workers interest on breakfast. Kael’s stomach cramped so hard he nearly folded.
Vaela saw it.
"We take only what carries. No hero speech. No saving every hungry mouth in the pit."
Orrek stared at the stacked paste below.
"I can carry a lot."
"You can barely carry your shoulder."
"My stomach has separate politics."
Kael pressed his ear to the grate.
Below, one apron man laughed.
"Capture price went up again. Warden wants the freak breathing. Means he screams useful."
Another replied, "Black Ledger will get him. Workers always sell workers."
Renn went still.
Kael lifted the grate with slow pressure. Rust protested in tiny flakes. He held it until the sound died. Vaela whispered, "Quiet entry. Cut light first."
Kael nodded.
Orrek smiled.
"Or we drop on them."
"No."
"Tiny drop."
"No."
The grate slipped.
CLANG!
Everyone froze.
Below, the cleaver man looked up.
Orrek sighed.
"Tiny drop it is."
Kael fell through first.
He landed on the ration table. Clay tags shattered under his boots. The table cracked but held for one heartbeat, enough for him to spring forward and slam both palms into the cleaver man’s chest. The man wore a rib plate under his apron.
Kael felt it give, not break completely, just buckle inward with enough force to drive air out of the man’s lungs. The cleaver fell. The man crashed backward into the pressure stove.
HISS!
Steam burst from a broken valve.
Vaela came through the hole after him, light and low. Her crescents cut the lamp cords. Two orange bulbs died. Shadows swallowed half the room.
Orrek dropped badly.
He hit the ration floor with a grunt, rolled over his injured shoulder, and came up furious enough to scare pain itself.
"Who stamped interest on food?"
An apron man lifted a weighted club.
"Debt property does not ask questions."
Orrek moved.
Not well. Not clean. He drove forward like a furnace cart with one wheel missing and all its weight committed. The club struck his side. He ate the hit, grabbed the man’s apron, and smashed him forehead first into a stack of fungus bricks.
SPLAT!
The paste burst around the man’s face. His nose broke against hardened fungus. Not dead. Screaming. Renn scrambled through last and fell on his backside.
"I hate ladders."
"That was a hole," Vaela said, cutting a man’s belt so his trousers dropped around his knees.
"I hate holes too."
The apron man tripped over his own clothes. Kael caught him by the back of the neck and drove him head first into the wall beside the ration shelf. The skull did not shatter. Kael held back enough for survival. The man slumped.
Restraint was harder than killing.
A pressure alarm began to whine.
BZZZZ!
Vaela pointed with a blade.
"Store lock. Bone bundles. Now."
Kael went to the furnace bone stack. Each bundle was dense, treated, and wrapped in black string. Fuel and weapon stock both. He lifted two.
His back screamed. The cleaver man rose from the stove, chest plate bent inward, skin blistered by steam. He was bigger than the others. His eyes had the dull confidence of someone who had hurt hungry people for years.
He lifted the cleaver.
"Warden pays better if I take your legs."
Kael turned.
The cleaver came down.
Kael met it with a furnace bone bundle.
CRACK!
The cleaver sank into the bone, stuck, and dragged Kael forward. The big man drove a knee into Kael’s ribs.
Pain exploded through old damage.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Cleaver Lock And Knee Impact
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
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[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Stored Hostile Force Converted Through Damaged Rib Structure.
====================================================================
Kael did not allocate.
He wanted to. His ribs begged for it. His back begged harder. But the workers needed movement, not a man standing still while his bones changed. He gripped the cleaver trapped in the bone and yanked.
The big man stumbled.
Kael stepped in, shoulder first, and smashed him into the pressure stove. Vaela cut the steam line at the same time.
HISS!
Boiling vapor punched across the big man’s side. His skin blistered and split. He screamed. Kael drove an elbow into the bent chest plate. The plate gave where the palms had weakened it earlier. Ribs folded under metal.
The big man dropped without breath.
Cause. Prior buckle. Steam rupture. Elbow into failed plate.
Kael staggered.
Vaela grabbed his arm.
"No falling in food. It ruins the food."
"That settles the priorities."
"About food, yes."
Orrek had filled two sacks with fungus bricks and one with ration tags.
Vaela stared.
"Why tags?"
"People trade lies if the clay looks official."
She blinked.
"That is almost clever."
"I contain horrors."
Renn dragged a small sack half his size.
"This one has salt. I think. Or teeth."
"Both sell," Vaela said.
Boots hammered beyond the ration house door.
Kael pointed to the rear chute.
"Out."
They moved.
Pressure rain began outside, falling through cracks in the ceiling of the pit. Each drop hit stone with the weight of a thrown pebble. It made the air thrum.
THUD!
Kael looked through the rear slit and saw the route ahead: a narrow bridge of furnace brick, slick under heavy rain, leading toward dead cart lanes. Behind them, the ration house door shuddered under a ram.
Vaela slung food over one shoulder.
"This is stupid."
Orrek grinned.
"But fed."
Kael stepped into the pressure rain with sacks cutting into his palms and Malrec’s capture order spreading behind him. For the first time since the press, the group carried food.
The food slowed them and put them in every hungry eye in Furnace Sink Nine. They did not make it ten steps before the first worker saw the sacks. She was old enough to have lost count of bells and thin enough that her elbows looked like knots under skin. Her eyes dropped to the fungus brick poking from Orrek’s torn sack, then lifted to Kael’s face with shame already waiting there.
"Please," she said.
Vaela closed her eyes.
"No. Do not start this."
Kael stopped.
Behind the old woman, more shapes gathered in door cracks and pipe hollows. Children. Burned men. A pregnant girl with one hand on her stomach and the other around a broken pressure cup. Orrek muttered, "This is how riots begin."
"No," Vaela said. "This is how traps begin."
Both were true.
Kael tore one fungus brick in half and gave the smaller piece to the old woman.
The old woman’s breath hitched.
HUK!
The sound brought two more faces out of the pipe dark. Not thanks. Appetite.
A murmur moved through the watching mouths. Vaela stepped close, angry enough to whisper like a blade.
"Mercy makes a trail."
Kael looked at the hungry faces.
"So does fear."
From behind them, the ration house door finally burst open. Lanterns spilled into the rain. Someone shouted that the prize had food.
Every hungry eye turned sharper.
Every hunter eye turned brighter.
The bridge ahead suddenly looked much longer. Kael adjusted the sack and stepped forward first.
Pressure rain struck harder.
Each drop struck the sacks like fingers testing a body for weak places.
DRUM! DRUM!
Food had weight. Mercy had a trail. Kael carried both and kept walking.
The cold handle under Vaela’s fingers turned once from the other side. Hinges. Joints. Limits. She smiled without humor because limits could be ruined.