Chapter 72: Chainrise!
The pale hand did not climb toward them.
It climbed past them.
Four black nails hooked around the chain. A second hand followed. The body remained below the shelf, hidden by steam and the shaft’s red dark, but the chain shuddered with each pull.
A direct attack would have been cleaner. An attack named its hunger. This thing had somewhere to go above them, which meant the shelf was only a rung on its way to some higher pipe, some sleeping machine, or some wound the survivors had not seen yet. Jaro understood it first. His bad ear twitched under the cloth and his hand closed around the iron until his knuckles whitened.
"It is not hunting us yet," he whispered.
Vaela slid her blade free. "Yet is a poor word."
"It is climbing to work something. The chain moved when it passed the lower collar. If it reaches the upper wheel, the whole line may rise."
A mother pulled her child against her chest. The boy had stopped crying; that made him look smaller.
Kael looked at the hand, the chain, the hidden body, and the shelf crowded with people who could not survive a fall.
"Then we move before it reaches the wheel."
Kael lifted his hand.
"Still."
The survivors froze. Tavin’s shoulder scar flashed hot under his shirt. The black strip Kael had caught had dried into a brittle thread around his fingers. He flicked it into a pipe mouth and heard it crackle inside.
CLINK!
The chain beneath their feet snapped upward.
Every link rose toward the unseen ceiling. The iron teeth under Kael’s boots tore free from the wall. Vaela hit the shelf hard enough to bite her tongue. Dorran’s splint caught between two links and twisted him sideways. The child near the rear began to slide toward the open shaft before his mother locked both arms around his waist.
Kael dropped flat and hooked his elbow through a link. The rising pull dragged at his spine as if the shaft had turned upside down.
Jaro slammed against him. "The wall wheel woke!"
A round iron wheel had rolled out of a crack in the wall. Its rim was packed with chain teeth. A pipe drove through its center, pumping red-black fluid with each turn.
BOOM!
The wheel turned. The chain jumped another body length.
Tavin lost his grip.
Kael caught the back of his shirt with one hand. Tavin’s knees struck the links. Blood ran from both shins.
"Bend your legs," Kael said.
"They are trying to leave without me."
"Make them stay."
Tavin gave a wet laugh and folded himself around the chain.
The wheel turned again. Kael felt the pull reach through his elbow, shoulder, ribs, and hips. Ordinary gravity had no part in it. The pipe and wheel had changed the direction of weight inside the chain. His body wanted to peel free.
The survivors felt the change in uglier ways.
Dorran’s injured leg lifted first, splint dragging him sideways. Sella lost one hand and caught the child with the other. Tavin’s shoulder scar pulled toward the pipe mouth as if the old cut had become a hook. Renn slammed his heel through a chain gap and braced his body across two links so the center line would have something human to pull against.
"Do not fight the lift," Vaela snapped. "Fold around the chain. Make yourself hard to shake loose."
"I am already shaped like misery," Orrek grunted.
"Then use it."
Orrek laughed into pain and hooked his uninjured elbow through a link. The laugh made two workers look at him instead of the shaft. It gave them enough time to fix their grip.
The danger was real. The Root answered.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE CHAINWELL PRESSURE DETECTED: INVERTED WEIGHT PULL
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Core Mass Density -> 23
- Gravity Vector Impact -> 21
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: INVERTED WEIGHT RESISTANCE IMPROVED.
====================================================================
Weight returned to Kael in a hard, dense rush. His body settled into the chain instead of flying from it. The link under his elbow groaned.
CRRREAK!
He shoved Tavin toward Vaela. "Pass him."
Vaela wedged her blade through a link and pulled Tavin against the shelf. Orrek crawled after him on one uninjured arm and his knees. He grabbed Dorran’s coat as the injured man slid past.
"You are not falling past me twice," Orrek said.
"I did not fall past you once."
"Then do not begin now."
Renn moved by touch. One hand stayed on the chain. The other found wrists, sleeves, shoulders. He squeezed once and waited for an answer before moving to the next person. The survivor beside him started to sob into her cloth, shaking hard enough to loosen her fingers.
The woman was Sella. Kael had learned her name only because the child had called it in his sleep two nights before. She was small, sharp-faced, and had spent every waking breath since then holding the child close enough to bruise herself.
"Look at me," Renn said.
Sella’s eyes found his through the steam.
"Your left hand is slipping. Put it over the link. There. Now your right."
"The child?"
"I have him."
Renn did have him. The boy was wedged under Renn’s arm, crying silently into the man’s side. Renn’s swollen throat could barely manage a breath, but he kept one elbow around the child and one hand around the chain.
Sella moved her grip as instructed. Her fingers closed around the iron. The chain ripped upward again, but this time she held.
Kael watched the wall wheel through the steam. The machinery moved roughly: every turn made its teeth bite into the chain, release, then bite again. Old grease had hardened around the rim. A pale root had forced itself through the cracked pipe collar and was now drinking the leaking black fluid.
"It needs the wheel to keep the pull," he said.
Vaela looked over without lifting her blade. "Can you reach it?"
"Not cleanly."
"You never do anything cleanly."
Kael did not argue. He shifted one hand along the chain until he could brace his heel against the shelf. The wheel turned. He waited for its teeth to catch, then drove the heel down into the exposed rim.
CLANG!
Pain shot through his leg. The wheel skipped a notch. Steam blew across his face and took skin from his cheek in a hot scrape.
Jaro yelped. "Again. It slipped."
"I noticed."
"I was helping."
"Poorly."
Orrek barked a laugh, then lost the sound when a chain link slammed against his wounded side. His eyes went flat with pain. Vaela saw it and shoved a strip of folded cloth into his free hand.
"Bite that."
"I do not bite cloth."
The chain jumped.
Orrek bit the cloth. Renn pressed his forehead to hers.
"Hold the cold iron," he breathed.
She did.
The wheel turned a third time. Kael planted both feet in a gap between links and drove his heel into the stone shelf. The chain jerked. The wheel’s teeth skipped.
CLANG!
Jaro pointed at the pipe feeding it. "There. The black joint. It is cracked."
Kael saw the weak join. A fracture ran around the pipe collar. Each turn widened it.
The next kick could break the joint, but breaking it wrong would drop the chain under everyone. Kael watched the rhythm. Bite. Lift. Release. Bite. Lift. Release. The wheel wanted obedience to its pattern. It wanted bodies thrown off by panic before the metal did the killing.
Kael waited through one turn.
Vaela noticed and cursed under her breath. "You are timing it."
"Yes."
"I hate when the answer is patience."
The wheel bit again. The chain leapt. At the exact breath when the teeth released, Kael struck.
The pale hand below stopped climbing.
Then another hand rose beside it.
Four arms, Kael thought.
A pale forearm slid into the steam. Bone plates lay beneath the skin around it. A red strip moved across the plates, tasting the leaking blood from Tavin’s knees.
Kael kicked the wheel.
THUD!
The pipe joint burst.
The burst did not free them gently. Black fluid sprayed across the shelf and turned cold in the air. A line of it struck the chain near Sella’s fingers and crusted into a rough ridge. She hissed but held. Renn shoved the child farther into her arms and took the ridge under his own palm before it could cut her.
The ridge bit him instead. He felt it through the burn on his hand, a cold saw under the skin. He wanted to pull away. He did not. Sella needed both arms around the child, and the child needed one adult who could hold without shaking him loose.
"Your hand," Sella said.
"Still there."
"Bleeding."
"Also there."
Vaela glanced back once. "Argue after we stop being dragged upward."
The chain answered by dropping sideways.
Kael felt the chain’s pull change. Upward became sideways for half a breath. The wheel had lost its bite, but the shaft still had old motion trapped in it. If the chain swung, the shelf would scrape people off like ash from a blade.
"Down," he said.
Vaela heard the tone and dropped flat. Orrek dragged Dorran with him. Jaro grabbed Tavin by the belt and pulled him under a pipe lip just as the chain snapped sideways.
WHOOM!
Steam swallowed the shelf. The chain dropped six inches and held. Bodies slammed down. Dorran cried out. Vaela cursed. The child clung to his mother and laughed once, too frightened to know why.
Through the steam, something scraped its nails against the chain.
SCRAPE!
Kael looked toward the sound.
"Across the shelf," he said. "Now."
The four hands began climbing again.
Above them, the upper wheel answered with a hidden turn.
CLACK!
Every chain in the wall tightened toward the sound. The thing below had not failed. It had only lost one path upward and found another.
The shelf answered with a knock under Sella’s knees. The chain below them had stopped dropping, but the hidden run behind the wall started moving in the opposite direction. Jaro heard it and went pale.
"Back path," he said. "It is coming through the shelf."
Vaela looked at the steam, the child, the wounded, and the wall under their hands.
"Then we do not stay on the shelf."
This time, the new path ran behind the shelf under their feet, already knocking.