Chapter 28: False Exit!
The dead road throat opened ahead of them like a wound deciding to become a door. The tunnel beyond the chain pit split into a round passage lined with muscle stone. Old corpse straps hung from the ceiling in wet loops. Pressure wires ran under the skin of the walls, pulsing dark violet, then black, then dark violet again. At the far end, a pale rectangle of light promised an exit.
The ash road pinched around the false exit until the side walls leaned inward and listened.
False exit announced itself by offering relief too clean for the road that carried them. Drag marks began before the door and never continued after it. The lie had temperature: cool at the threshold, warm around the hidden hinge, colder where the floor waited.
SCRAPE!
Road-bone, pressure mud, corpse dust, and stones polished by fleeing feet gathered in the throat. Nobody wasted breath complaining; breath was inventory now. Every hanging corpse strap twitched with the passage draft, soft and wet, like the road was testing which living neck would fit next.
Vaela did not trust promises.
She stumbled to the shelf, one arm tight around her bruised ribs, and watched the pale rectangle while everyone else wanted to run toward it. Workers saw light and became stupid. Renn saw light and saw a way to stop counting bodies. Orrek saw light and tried to shove the cart toward it with one arm and a shoulder that should have been useless.
Kael saw Vaela stop. That told him enough.
"False?" he asked.
Vaela spat black fluid from her lip.
"Too clean."
Behind them, Kael had the first retrieval body by the broken hip. He slammed it into the pit wall again, buying breaths with violence.
BOOM!
The body’s chest mouth clicked, still trying to swallow force through ruined geometry. Kael had learned. He struck from the side, knee, elbow, shoulder, stomp, never feeding the mouth straight unless he had already turned it wrong.
The dead road throat pulsed.
The pale exit brightened.
A worker sobbed, "There! There!"
He ran.
Vaela hooked his collar with one crescent blade and yanked him back so hard he fell on his back.
THUD!
He stared up at her in shock.
"You mad corpse rat!"
Vaela pointed to the light.
"Throw something."
No one moved.
The pale exit shimmered, soft and clean. No soot. No blood. No pressure rain. It looked like mercy.
That made it obscene.
Vaela grabbed the rusted meat hook from the old woman and threw it through the rectangle.
The hook vanished.
For half a breath, nothing happened.
Then the wall around the exit chewed.
CHOMP!
The pale rectangle folded inward. Rows of little Court teeth snapped shut around empty air. The meat hook came back in pieces, spat out across the floor in a spray of metal chips.
CLATTER!
The worker who had cursed her went white.
A chip of the meat hook struck his cheek and opened a thin red cut.
TIK!
He touched the blood and understood the door had almost taken his face politely.
Vaela leaned over him.
"Apologize with your feet. Move left when I say."
The old woman glared.
"That was my hook."
"It died with purpose."
"I liked it."
"Then mourn while walking."
Renn dragged the fever girl away from the false exit. The boy Orrek had freed helped Brak sit up in the cart, both of them shaking. The chain pit tilted again. The cart wheels groaned against the shelf grooves. Behind them, Kael tore one retrieval body’s hook arm free at the elbow.
CRACK!
Black fluid hit the floor.
The Sovereign Root stirred but gave nothing. The pressure was already read. Kael did not need a reward for every broken thing. He needed an exit. Vaela had learned exits in corpse markets.
Not doors. Doors were for people with permission. Real exits were where handlers got lazy, where waste needed removal, where debt ink leaked into drains, where old straps were replaced by newer hands that did not know why the first builders had tied them in a certain order. A cruel system still needed maintenance. Maintenance meant cracks.
She ran her fingers along the pressure wires and felt pulse order. One wire tightened when the false exit brightened. Another loosened when the throat flexed. A third carried warmth away from the corpse straps and into the wall, which meant it fed the chewing teeth. She cut that one first.
SNAP!
The false exit flickered.
The worker she had knocked down stared at her with a new expression. Not gratitude. Not trust. Something more useful. He realized she knew the road better than fear did.
"When I say crawl," Vaela told him, "you crawl until your knees open. If you stop to thank me, I will kick you into the teeth myself."
He nodded too fast.
"You learned," she said. "It suits you."
Vaela found it in the straps.
Not the road. The road lied. The straps did not. Old corpse straps had to lead somewhere practical.
Bodies were cargo. Cargo required maintenance shelves, handler loops, toll windows, cleaning drains. Court cruelty still needed infrastructure. That was the part monsters always forgot.
They could be ancient, brutal, and arrogant, but even their machines needed a place for workers to fix rot.
She cut the first strap near the wall.
SNAP!
The dead road throat shuddered.
She cut the second.
SNAP!
A strip of wall skin loosened, revealing a narrow black maintenance slit behind the pressure wires.
Renn stared.
"That is smaller than a coffin slot."
"Good. Retrieval bodies are not small."
"The cart will not fit."
Vaela looked at the cart, then at the workers, then at Kael.
"No. It will not."
The choice landed like a dropped blade.
The cart carried Brak, the fever girl, stolen food, water skins, broken tools, and everything that made movement possible. It was slow. It was also the difference between injured people walking and dying. Orrek heard the meaning and shook his head.
"No."
Vaela cut another strap.
"Yes."
"We need it."
"We need living bodies more."
Renn swallowed.
"She is right."
Orrek rounded on him.
"You counted that?"
"I count everything that hurts."
The chain pit tilted harder. The false exit chewed once, hungry and empty.
CHOMP!
Kael threw the broken retrieval body into the false light. The wall teeth snapped shut around it and tore the thing in half.
CRUNCH!
The chest mouth screamed as it vanished into the trap.
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Dead Road False Exit Collapse Pressure
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Hostile Route Consumption Pressure Recorded.
====================================================================
Kael turned.
"How long?"
Vaela cut the last strap and kicked the wall skin inward. A maintenance slit opened fully. Narrow. Wet. Dark. It smelled like old oil and lung rot. Perfect.
"Long enough if everyone stops arguing with physics."
The old woman shoved the first freed worker toward it.
"Go. Crawl. Bleed later."
Renn helped the fever girl down from the cart. Brak groaned and tried to stand. His legs failed. Orrek caught him with one arm, face twisting from shoulder pain.
"I can carry him."
Vaela said, "You can barely carry yourself."
"Then I will carry both badly."
Kael stepped to the cart. His hand left black and red prints on the side rail.
"Take the food. Water. Tools. Leave wood and wheels."
No one liked it.
No one argued.
Orrek put one hand on the cart rail before they stripped it. Not farewell. Accounting. The rail had carried Brak, food, stolen tools, and every breath too weak to walk.
Then he tore the first bundle loose.
The cost of leaving the cart showed immediately. Food bundles split between too many arms. One water skin burst when a worker crawled over it. The fever girl had to be dragged instead of laid flat. Brak’s breathing turned wet. Every useful thing became heavier once it was no longer on wheels.
Vaela did not apologize for the choice. Apology would not carry anyone. She only cut faster. The group tore the cart apart in brutal seconds. Food bundles went into arms. Water skins over necks. Tools through belts. The boy took two rods and almost toppled under the weight until the old woman slapped one away.
"Live first. Hero later."
Behind them, the remaining retrieval bodies entered the throat. The second had a broken knee but still crawled. The third had Vaela’s cut wire hanging from its leg, sparking against the floor.
Kael moved to hold them.
Vaela grabbed his wrist.
The marked one.
For a breath, black pressure crawled toward her fingers. It stopped before touching her skin.
She noticed.
So did he.
"Do not die in a maintenance hole," she said.
"That your practical advice?"
"No. That is me saying I hate finding new valuable people. It is tiring."
Kael pulled his hand free, but gently.
"Go."
Vaela went last among the workers, cutting straps behind her to make the slit harder to read. Orrek shoved Brak through, then crawled after him with curses shaking from his teeth. Kael stayed until only Renn remained at the slit mouth.
Renn looked at him.
"You are about to do something stupid."
Kael watched the retrieval bodies crawl through the throat.
"Necessary."
"Those are cousins."
"Often."
Renn disappeared into the slit.
For a breath, Vaela watched from inside the slit instead of crawling on. She hated herself for it. The smart thing was movement. The profitable thing was distance. But Kael standing there with the cart wheel in his hands made the route feel less like escape and more like debt.
Kael stood alone between the crawling retrieval bodies and the torn open maintenance route, counting breaths like weapons. He picked up one of the abandoned cart wheels.
The dead road throat pulsed around him.
The false exit chewed softly in the distance, disappointed. Kael rolled his shoulders, feeling the new density settle inside old wounds.
"Come collect," he said.
Behind him, the slit breathed once like a wounded lung.
Inside it, someone dropped a water skin and caught it before it burst. The tiny save sounded louder than the false exit’s chewing because everyone knew what losing it would cost.
HUP!