Chapter 34: Fear Coin!!
The leech bodies did not stay dead quietly. They twitched under boots. They leaked pale slime into floor cracks. Their crushed mouths opened and closed around nothing, still trying to feed because hunger did not know when the body had failed. Renn made everyone step around the largest pools.
"Do not smear it," he said. "If it carries scent, we do not drag it forward."
Vaela looked at him. "You are becoming useful in unpleasant ways."
"Thank you?"
"Do not get greedy."
Orrek lifted a dead leech on the end of his chain and squinted at it.
"Can we eat these?"
Four people gagged.
Vaela did not even look back. "If you eat that, I will walk on the other side of the chute until death."
"That is not a no."
"It is a threat wearing patience."
Kael crouched beside the ruptured brood knot and pressed two fingers near the split core. Heat remained inside. Not fire heat. Body heat. Work heat. The core had pushed the little predators through wall moisture and blood scent.
The wildland had organs.
That mattered.
A land with organs could be hurt, and it could adapt.
He wiped his fingers on the floor and stood.
"Move. The nest will answer."
Sair spat into a crack. "Let it answer politely."
"It will not."
"Then I will be rude first."
They moved in clusters as Kael had ordered. The injured inside. The stronger outside. Not neat. Not trained. But less like loose meat. Renn kept count in whispers. Vaela watched the back. Orrek walked center, chain looped around his uninjured forearm, ready to swing low if more leeches came.
Kael took the front.
The new Velocity Movement Authority kept trying to show him paths before his eyes finished seeing them. A dry strip along the right. A dip in the floor that would twist a weak ankle. A wall seam with old bite marks. A section of ceiling too smooth because something had rubbed itself there often.
It found openings before he wanted them.
It also showed him every place a weak ankle could fail.
Alive in his nerves.
Then the pressure token spoke from inside the wall.
"Renn of furnace cart duty."
Renn stopped like someone had put a hook through his spine.
The voice was different this time.
Not the friendly announcement from the disk. This was closer. Intimate. Whispering from stone as if the chute itself had learned names from Malrec and wanted to taste them.
"Your mother died owing six ration strips and one lung payment. Your debt remains assignable."
Renn’s face drained.
Orrek swung at the wall.
Kael caught the chain before it struck.
The impact of stopping Orrek’s strength jolted through his arm.
CLINK!
"Do not," Kael said.
Orrek’s nostrils flared. "It named his dead."
"It wants sound. Damage. Panic. It wants us hitting walls."
Vaela’s eyes moved along the stone. "Pressure tokens. Small ones. Buried near listening seams. If we break one wrong, it alerts the others."
The wall whispered again.
"Brak of lower pipe crew. Safe treatment available. Chest rot untreated. Separate from marked fugitive for clean air reassignment."
Brak’s breath hitched. The fever girl began crying without sound.
The wall moved down the list.
"Miro. Wrist fracture. Protect unregistered fever asset by surrendering her location."
Miro clutched the girl’s hand so hard she winced.
"Sella of chain pit intake. Knee rupture. Labor value declining. Report Orrek Sain and receive debt transfer."
Sella’s mouth twisted.
"Labor value," she said. "I always wanted to be insulted by a wall."
But her voice shook.
The wall continued.
"Old Mother Sair. Expired work classification. No reward offered. Burial disposal available."
Sair slowly raised her head.
"No reward?"
Vaela murmured, "That is what offended you?"
"I have value. My knees are rude, not dead."
A few workers laughed despite themselves. Then the wall said Orrek’s name.
"Orrek Sain. Debt active. Shoulder ruined. Strength wasted. Chain Yard requests return of property and one broken gate penalty. Kneel and live."
Orrek’s face emptied. For one breath, all the noise in him vanished. That frightened Renn more than his anger. Kael watched Orrek’s hand tighten on the chain.
Not yet, he thought.
Not here.
The wall saved Vaela for last.
"Vaela Korr. Corpse market violation active. Red Table authority recognizes betrayal option. Deliver marked fugitive route and receive annulment of blade debt."
Vaela smiled.
No warmth touched it.
"Tell the Red Table I said choke on bone dust."
The wall did not answer.
Instead, a new voice came from farther ahead.
Human.
"Vaela?"
Everyone froze.
A man stepped from a side slit twenty paces ahead, hands raised, empty palms visible. He was thin, gray haired, with a corpse market tally cord around his neck and two pressure tokens sewn into his collar. Behind him stood three workers from a different route, each holding a bundle of fungal paste and water bladders.
Food.
Water.
Real.
Renn’s eyes went to the supplies before he could stop himself.
The thin man smiled sadly.
"No blades. No tricks. We heard the Warden message. Some of us want out too."
Vaela did not lower her crescent.
"Name."
"Tollen Gray. You cut my brother down from Red Hook bridge."
Vaela’s face changed by one grain.
Recognition.
That made Kael more alert, not less.
Tollen looked past her to Kael.
"You are carrying too many. The Warden knows. The Court knows. The Ledger knows. The wild chute knows, from the smell of you all. You need food. We need protection. We can trade."
Orrek muttered, "I hate reasonable traps." Renn whispered, "Those bladders are full."
"That is why it works," Vaela said.
Tollen flinched. "Vaela."
"Do not put softness in my name. You wore Red Table cord once."
"I cut it."
"You still know where to sew pressure tokens."
His jaw tightened.
The three workers behind him shifted.
One was not a worker.
Kael saw it through Threat Perception Instinct before the man moved. Too balanced. Too clean around the boots. No hunger shake. The fungal paste bundle in his hands was weighted wrong.
Kael let the false worker see him coming.
The fake worker threw the bundle.
It burst midair.
Not paste.
A pressure net.
FSSSHH!
Black threads snapped outward toward the fever girl, Miro, and Sella. Not Kael. Not Orrek. The weak center.
Malrec had learned fast.
Kael moved.
Velocity Movement Authority burned through his legs.
The system flashed once.
Kael gave the order inward, cold and exact, sending the shards into Velocity Movement Authority while the threat still thought his body could be priced.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Pressure Net Intercept Under Survivor Targeting
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +1
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +1 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 11
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▲ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 5
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Five Shard Reserve Maintained.
====================================================================
Kael reached the net before it opened fully. It wrapped around his forearm, shoulder, and marked hand instead of the workers.
The threads tightened.
CRRRK!
They bit through skin and tried to fold his arm behind his back. He turned with the force instead of resisting it straight. The new speed did not make him graceful. It made him early. Early enough to step inside the pull, plant his foot, and slam his elbow through the net’s anchor knot.
BANG!
The knot cracked.
The fake worker lunged with a capture spike. Vaela’s crescent blade crossed his wrist.
CHIK!
His hand opened. The spike fell.
Orrek’s chain took him in the chest.
THUD!
Ribs caved inward with a wet crunch because Orrek did not swing to warn. The man hit the wall, folded around the impact, and slid down with blood bubbling from his mouth.
Tollen screamed.
"I did not know!"
Vaela was already on him.
She slammed him against the wall, blade under his chin, ribs shaking with every breath.
"You carried them to us. That is knowing enough."
The two real workers dropped the supplies and fell to their knees.
"We were paid!" one sobbed. "They said only the marked one would be bound!"
Sair stepped forward and slapped him so hard his head cracked against stone.
SMACK!
"They never bind only one. Idiot."
Kael tore the last pressure threads from his arm.
RIP!
Blood ran hot, then slowed under Regenerative Dominion. The net had cut deep enough to expose white lines in the forearm. Not bone. Tendon. Close.
He looked at Tollen.
The man trembled under Vaela’s blade.
"Malrec paid you with food," Kael said.
Tollen swallowed. "Food and debt silence."
"And fear."
Tollen’s eyes filled with shame so fast it almost looked useful.
"Mostly fear."
Orrek stepped forward.
"I vote we turn his knees into moral examples."
Vaela did not look away from Tollen. "Tempting."
Renn knelt by the dropped supplies, checking for more traps with shaking hands.
"Some of this is real. Water too."
Kael looked at the supplies, then at the workers who had brought them, then at his own people watching him decide what kind of violence would rule the next breath.
Kill all three and take the food.
Easy.
Clean by pit standards.
Wrong shape.
Malrec wanted fear to make people useful once, then disposable forever. Kael could not answer that by teaching the same lesson with different hands.
He pointed at the two kneeling workers.
"You carry the supplies. You walk in front of Orrek. If there is another trap, he decides what your bones owe."
Orrek brightened. "I accept this office."
Kael looked at Tollen.
"You walk beside Vaela."
Tollen went pale.
Vaela smiled again.
"That is worse than death, according to several markets."
"Then we make it expensive," Kael said.
The wall whispered one last time.
"Practical workers are invited to choose survival."
Kael turned toward the seam where the token hid.
This time he did hit the wall.
Not with rage.
With two fingers placed exactly where Threat Perception Instinct felt the pressure line gather.
TAP!
The token cracked inside the stone.
POP!
The whisper died.
Vaela watched him. "You found it."
"It wanted us loud."
"You are learning to disappoint traps."
"Good."
"There is that word again."
Renn lifted one water bladder. "We have enough to keep moving. Not enough to rest."
Kael nodded.
The group moved again with three new bodies, two unwilling supply carriers, and one terrified man under Vaela’s blade. Behind them, Malrec received the pressure token’s final image: Kael intercepting the net meant for the weak, spending power instantly, and refusing to become only a butcher when fear was more useful alive.
Malrec sat very still.
Then he smiled without warmth.
"He protects them even from the lesson," the Warden said.
A debt officer bowed. "Do we increase force?"
"No."
Malrec touched the map where the dry chute thinned into wild territory.
"Let the land test the cost of mercy first."