Chapter 45: Unsold Fourteen!
The feeding house’s waste chute was not a door. It was a narrow shaft lined with bone hooks. Vaela found it behind a collapsed furnace vent where old grease, ash, and black fungus had formed a skin over the wall. She cut the skin away in strips. The smell that came out made three survivors gag before the opening was wide enough to see.
Renn covered his nose with one hand.
"You said every eating place had one."
Vaela peered into the chute. "I did not say it would be dignified."
Orrek leaned beside her and immediately recoiled.
"That smell has a family."
"Quiet," Kael said.
Everyone quieted.
From the front of the feeding house, the callers still tapped hooks against metal. Their rhythm had changed. Faster now. Excited. They knew the marked meat had not run. They knew hunger had an audience.
TAP! TAP! TAP!
The sound crawled through the walls and settled under the survivors’ skin. Miro clutched the pulse fiber bundle with his uninjured hand. Tavin’s shoulder bled where the hook strap had cut him. Della kept looking backward, not at the callers, but at the direction of Vent Housing where Malrec’s hook hands might already be closing around her sister.
Kael saw each glance.
He was beginning to understand the shape of the new battlefield.
The den did not own this.
The road did not own it either.
No ring waited where one body could answer another until bone settled the argument.
This was wider.
Malrec wanted him pulled apart by what he chose to carry. Food. Names. Sisters. Injured wrists. A boy with a salvage strap. A chained girl in a chain-glass cell. A loud man with a ruined shoulder. A knife woman who kept pretending every choice was math.
It was clever.
Kael hated clever things that hid behind other people’s pain.
Vaela scraped the last fungus skin away.
The chute opened into a narrow downward crawl slick with old fat and powdered furnace bone. Hooks lined the sides, but most had rusted flat. A few still gleamed.
"This runs under the feeding house," she said. "Waste, bones, rejected meat. It should empty near a lower cook drain. If the drain is still open, we bypass the front. If not, we die smelling worse than usual."
Renn looked at the fourteen survivors.
"Some cannot crawl fast."
"Then we make them fast," Orrek said.
He took his chain and wrapped cloth around the sharpest links. Then he made a drag line with loops for the weakest to hold.
Renn stared at him.
"You have done that before."
Orrek’s expression darkened.
"Chain Yard pits liked making men pull carts with people still breathing in them. I learned what knots do not tear fingers off."
Nobody made a joke.
Vaela watched him for a moment, something like respect flickering across her face before she buried it.
"It would serve. Put the smallest in front of you. If the hooks catch, you stop moving or they lose skin."
Orrek grunted. "I know how not to peel people."
"A rare skill."
"You flirt terribly."
"I threaten accurately."
The exchange pulled a few frightened smiles from the survivors. Kael crouched at the chute mouth and put his marked hand against the bone lined rim.
The black intake scar pulsed once.
The feeding house answered from above with a scrape. A caller had found the other side of the wall.
"Marked meat crawls," the high voice sang. "Marked meat thinks holes hide weight."
A hook punched through the vent skin above Vaela’s head.
CLANG!
She ducked. The hook scraped sparks from the furnace pipe. Orrek hurled his furnace bone shard into the wall.
THUD!
Something shrieked on the other side.
"Move!" Renn barked.
The first survivors entered the chute. Tavin went before Della, holding pulse fiber tight. Miro crawled one handed with Renn pushing his boots. Old Noll trembled so hard the hooks rattled when he passed. Kael stayed outside until the last body entered.
Vaela noticed.
"You go before me."
"No."
"If you get trapped behind us, we lose the only thing that makes Malrec nervous."
"Then do not let me get trapped."
"That is not a plan."
"It is trust. Try not to choke on it."
Vaela stared at him.
For once, she had no quick answer. Then she slipped into the chute after Renn.
Orrek waited beside Kael.
"I am last."
"No."
"My shoulder is ruined. I am wide. I block the hole better."
"You are not a door."
"I have been called worse."
Kael looked at him.
Orrek looked back, stubborn as buried iron.
The callers struck again.
Three hooks burst through the fungus wall at once. One caught Kael’s torn shoulder. Another snapped toward Orrek’s throat. The third whipped low for Kael’s ankle.
Kael moved into them.
Away was the wrong direction.
His elbow crushed the neck hook against the wall.
CRACK!
His knee drove down on the ankle hook and pinned it. The shoulder hook tore deeper, biting through meat already mangled by the Bearer.
Pain flashed white.
He grabbed the hook shaft with his marked hand. The black intake scar burned against the feeding house metal.
The caller behind the wall giggled.
"Pipe-rot stink. Pipe-rot stink. Pipe-rot stink."
Kael pulled.
The wall bowed.
Orrek wrapped his chain around the other two hooks and hauled with his uninjured arm.
"You wanted last?" Kael said through his teeth.
Orrek grinned. "I wanted useful."
Together they ripped the hooks through the weakened wall.
RIP!
A caller came with them.
The thing was thin as a famine pole, all elbows and long fingers, with hooks grafted through both forearms. Its mouth opened sideways, packed with broken metal teeth. It struck the floor on all fours and lunged for the chute. Kael’s foot met its face.
THUD!
The kick snapped its head back. It did not die. Its neck stretched like cord and whipped forward again. Orrek’s chain came down.
CLANG!
The caller’s left arm folded in the wrong direction. A hook tore through its own shoulder. Black blood sprayed across the vent wall.
Kael caught the creature by the skull.
His fingers dug into the soft plates at its temples. For a breath, he saw its eyes.
Mindless would have been easier.
Hungry because someone had bought hunger and sharpened it into a job.
That did not save it.
Kael drove its head into the furnace pipe.
BANG!
Again.
BANG!
The skull split on the third impact. Metal teeth scattered across the floor. The body jerked once, then collapsed into a loose heap of limbs and graft hooks.
Cause and effect.
Pipe. Density. Repeated impact. Breakage.
No mystery.
Kael dropped it.
More callers screamed behind the wall.
Orrek shoved him toward the chute.
"Go."
"You first."
"I hate you."
"Move."
Orrek spat a curse and crawled in. Kael followed last as the wall behind them erupted with hooks.
The chute was worse inside.
Bone hooks scraped his back. Grease soaked his chest. The narrow walls pressed against his ribs until every breath became a fight. Ahead, the drag line moved in jerks as Orrek hauled and Renn counted.
"Twelve clear. Thirteen clear. Vaela, watch the left hook. Miro, head down. Kael?"
"Moving."
A hook caught Kael’s calf. It punched through skin and scraped bone.
He did not stop.
He let it tear free as he crawled.
SPLIT!
Blood slicked the chute behind him.
The callers followed the smell. Hooks stabbed through side vents. One scraped his ear. Another pierced the old wrap at his waist. Another struck his ribs and failed to punch through after the density upgrades. He kept himself between the hooks and the others.
Softness had nothing to do with it; position did.
It was battlefield shape.
It was choosing what enemy contact was allowed to touch.
The chute tilted downward.
The survivors slid into a lower drain one by one. Vaela caught Tavin before he hit a rusted grate. Orrek rolled out with a curse. Renn dragged Old Noll clear.
Kael came last.
A final hook caught his marked hand from behind. The caller on the other end shrieked with delight.
"Mine!"
Kael stopped crawling.
The hook pulled.
The mark burned.
He could spend shards if the pressure demanded it. He had five. He could use all five. He would, if needed.
But this was not worth the reserve.
This only needed punishment.
Kael braced both feet against the chute walls and yanked his hand forward.
The hook did not come loose.
The caller did.
It slammed face first into the narrow vent behind him, too large to pass, trapped by its own grafted arms. Kael twisted the hook until metal screamed.
SCREECH!
Then he snapped his head backward, smashing the back of his skull into the caller’s face through the gap.
CRACK!
The caller dropped away.
Kael tore free and fell into the lower drain.
He landed on one knee in black water.
THUD!
The survivors stared at him.
He looked at them through blood, grease, ash, and wild sap.
"Count."
GULP!
Renn swallowed and turned.
"Miro. Sair. Jessa. Old Noll. Tavin. Brek. Halra. Della. The furnace boys. Press women. Twins. Orrek. Vaela. Me."
He blinked.
"Fourteen survivors. All through."
Kael stood slowly.
His calf bled. His shoulder bled. His marked palm smoked around the hook wound. The reserve still sat at five, unused because this threat had not earned more. Vaela watched him with an expression she tried to hide.
"You understand what he is doing now," she said.
Kael looked down the lower drain.
Ahead, water ran toward a wide black channel lit by distant red lamps. Human voices drifted from there. Not callers. Not wardens.
A bowl-run.
Or a trap wearing one.
"Yes," Kael said.
Renn asked, "What?"
Kael wiped black water from his mouth.
"Malrec thinks protecting people is how he makes me weaker."
Nobody interrupted.
Kael stepped into the channel current.
"He is wrong."
The words were quiet.
They landed heavier than a shout.
"If I protect something, I will become strong enough that no hand reaches it twice. If I build something, I will make it too heavy for the pit to drag down. If I choose someone, enemy blood will learn the shape of that choice."
Orrek’s grin faded into something more serious.
Vaela looked away first.
Renn tightened his grip on the count strap. From the red lit channel ahead, a bell rang four times.
A voice called through the drain dark.
"Lower Ash Bowl has fires for night hunger. Keep blades low at the first pot. They never give back a body they drag away."
Vaela cursed under her breath.
Kael walked toward the voice.
Behind him, fourteen survivors followed.
Safety had not reached them.
Freedom had not reached them either.
But moving beneath pressure that had begun to change shape.
Survival was no longer the ceiling.
It was the floor beneath Kael’s feet.