Chapter 79: Fourteen Stay Visible
The black spine in the wall brightened.
A pale bone plate rolled over the crack and covered it. Red lines spread across the plate in short strokes. The strokes did not form letters. They did not need to. They pulsed against the ledge with the blunt rhythm of a body count.
Thirteen pulses answered from the stone.
Renn went still.
"There are fourteen," he said.
The plate gave thirteen more pulses.
The number entered the ledge through the hands before it entered thought. Sella’s grip loosened around the child. Dorran looked toward the gap where the chain had fallen. The ash-cough woman bent as if she had lost someone and forgotten who. Old Noll’s fingers opened on one twin’s shirt.
Fear moved faster than a hook.
A young worker at the rear began to sob. The sound shook the ledge. Hands reached for shoulders, then lost their grip. The extractor dragged itself toward the group while Kael held the falling chain with Orrek. Its four arms moved low and patient, letting the number do the first cut.
"It took somebody," the worker whispered. "It took somebody and we missed it."
Renn looked down the line.
He had counted food, wounds, steps, and bodies since the pits because numbers were smaller than terror. Numbers had edges. Numbers could be checked. Numbers could be argued with. The gate had attacked that once by lying into his head. This was worse. The pylon was lying into the wall, the chain, the red plate, and the trembling hands of people who had just survived a fall.
A missing body would have been easier. One fewer wound. One fewer mouth. One fewer person to pull through a place built to divide them.
But Renn could see them.
He could see Dorran on the ledge, gasping over his splint. He could see the ash-cough woman with chain blood on her sleeve. He could see the twin Old Noll had caught and the other twin pressed under his arm. He could see Sella’s child trying not to cry. He could see Tavin holding his shoulder, Jaro with torn knuckles, Vaela bleeding from cheek and palm, Orrek hanging off the chain, Kael braced against the extractor, and himself shaking so hard his teeth clicked.
Fourteen.
The plate pulsed thirteen.
A black root crept from the wall toward Renn’s wrist.
The pylon chose him because he was where the line became meaning. He was weak enough to shake and stubborn enough to answer. The red pulses crawled under his burned skin before the root even touched him, and for one breath he felt thirteen grips instead of fourteen. A sleeve vanished from his awareness. A wrist became empty air. A child’s fist became only cloth.
Renn dug his nails into the plate.
The missing hand came back as pain.
"There," he whispered. "There. There. There."
Each word found a body.
Kael struck the extractor’s ribs to keep it from reaching the group.
THUD!
"Renn," he said.
Renn heard him through the pylon’s pulse. He pressed his burned fingers to the stone. The root reached his wrist and bit.
Pain went up his arm.
The plate pulsed thirteen again.
Kael felt the attempt to bend their certainty. It did not come like a thought. It came through contact: stone under palm, chain under hand, strap around waist, cable around wrist, false rhythm in the wall. The Root answered.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE BODY-COUNT DISTORTION DETECTED: PYLON-FED FALSE SIGNAL
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Metaphysical Resistance -> 25
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 17
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: PROTECTED COUNT DISTORTION RESISTED.
====================================================================
Kael’s mind cleared around the simple truth.
There were fourteen.
The truth did not make the ledge safe. It made the lie visible.
Renn pressed his palm harder against the plate. Skin tore. Blood smeared through the red lines. The root at his wrist drank a bead of it and pulsed with the same false number.
Thirteen.
Renn spat at the plate.
"Fourteen."
Sella grabbed the child with one arm and reached backward with the other. Her hand found Dorran’s harness. Dorran gripped Tavin’s sleeve. Tavin caught the ash-cough woman’s hand. The ash-cough woman grabbed Old Noll. Old Noll shoved one twin into the line and dragged the other closer by the back of his shirt.
The touch ran through the ledge in a crooked line of shaking fingers.
"Fourteen," Sella said.
"Fourteen," Dorran hissed.
"Fourteen," Tavin said, voice thin through pain.
The ash-cough woman coughed before she could answer. Black specks hit her cloth. She looked furious at her own lungs.
"Fourteen," she forced out.
Old Noll said it like a threat. The twins said it badly and together. The child whispered it into Sella’s side.
Orrek lifted his chained arm.
"Fourteen ugly problems."
The bone plate cracked.
The extractor’s pipe-lungs coughed black fluid. Jaro shoved his fingers into the wall crack and pointed.
"The spine is behind that plate. It feeds the body and every cable."
Vaela looked at Kael. "If it breaks?"
"The creature loses its wall."
"And if it does not?"
Kael pulled his hand from the chain. Orrek took more of the load without complaint. The complaint stayed in his face, large and theatrical, but he did not spend breath on it.
"Then I break it again."
The plate pulsed thirteen harder.
The pylon changed tactics.
The red lines stopped counting bodies and began counting hands.
One hand slipped from a sleeve.
Another lost the iron bolt.
A third reached for the wrong strap, pulled by panic toward the false rhythm.
Renn understood the cruelty. Bodies could be seen. Hands could be hidden. A missing grip could become a missing person if fear had enough darkness to work with.
"Hands," he rasped. "Show hands."
Vaela stared at him. "Now?"
"Now."
Renn lifted his own bleeding hand into view.
Sella lifted hers from the child’s back. The child lifted both fists, cloth bunched between them. Dorran raised one hand and kept the other on the harness. Tavin lifted his uninjured arm. The ash-cough woman showed her chain-scraped wrist. Old Noll raised two fingers because one hand held a twin too tightly to move.
Orrek, dangling at the chain, lifted his free hand.
"This is stupid," he said.
"Visible," Renn rasped.
"Stupid and visible."
"Enough."
The plate pulsed again.
The first pulse struck Sella’s hand and made her fingers release the child. She caught him again with her elbow. The second pulse hit Dorran’s harness and convinced him for half a breath that the strap in his hand belonged to nobody. He almost let go. Tavin slapped his wrist with his one good hand.
"Mine," Tavin hissed.
Dorran blinked. "Yours."
The third pulse slid toward Old Noll. He answered by biting the sleeve he held, which made both twins shout in outrage.
"Still there," he snapped around cloth.
The plate pulsed again.
This time the false rhythm stuttered.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Thirteen.
Kael moved on the stutter. He drove the extractor’s shoulder into the bone plate and pinned one lower arm under his knee. The creature unfolded all four arms, trying to cover the wall. Its pipe-lungs opened too wide. Red strips snapped toward every raised hand.
The raised hands became targets because they had become proof. The pylon answered the challenge by changing targets. It did not argue with truth. It attacked the fingers holding truth in place.
Kael caught the first strip with his forearm. It wrapped, tightened, and tried to drag his arm away from the plate. He drove his elbow down and crushed it against the extractor’s own wrist. The second strip went for Renn. Vaela cut it before it touched him, but the cut opened her palm again.
Blood fell.
The pylon pulled toward the blood.
Jaro kicked ash over it with a shaking foot.
"Dirt," he said, breathless. "Still useful."
Vaela cut one. Jaro kicked another. Sella pulled the child down just before a strip touched his knuckles. Orrek swung the chain sideways, dragging the extractor’s lower leg half an inch out of place.
The movement cost him. The chain bit deeper into his palm. His arm dipped, and the three rescued survivors behind him lurched toward the gap again. Dorran threw himself flat and caught the ash-cough woman’s ankle. She kicked him in the shoulder by accident, then hooked her heel under his ribs and held anyway.
"Fourteen," Renn rasped.
The word did not fix the weight. It gave the weight a reason to be held.
Hands closed again. Sleeve, belt, harness, wrist, chain. The pylon pulsed thirteen, but every answer came through touch before fear could become certainty.
Half an inch was enough for Kael to see the crack behind the plate.
The spine pulsed there, black and wet with red knots.
Jaro saw it too and made a near-triumphant sound before fear swallowed the end. "There. Low left. The pulse sits off-center."
Vaela’s eyes found the same place. "Of course it hides behind the ugly part."
The extractor unfolded all four arms and blocked the wall.
Its body became a door with hooks. The pipe-lungs swelled behind the ribs, and the door breathed the false count across everyone touching the ledge.
Thirteen.
Fourteen hands rose against it.
Thirteen.
Fourteen hands stayed visible.
The count line held behind him, but holding had become work. Every raised hand shook. Every visible finger gave the strips a target. Renn kept his own palm on the plate because the lie entered through stone, and someone had to answer it there.
"Fourteen," he said again.
The plate pulsed thirteen.
Vaela wiped blood from her palm onto ash before the nearest strip could taste it. "It is stubborn."
"So are we," Renn rasped.
"I noticed. It is inconvenient from both sides."
The extractor breathed again, and the door of hooks leaned forward.
The false count struck the raised hands in a wave. One strip lashed around Tavin’s wrist and tried to drag his arm down. Sella caught his sleeve before it dropped below sight. Dorran lifted the ash-cough woman’s wrist when her strength failed. Old Noll raised the twin’s hand with his own and snarled when the child tried to hide it.
"Visible," Renn rasped.
"I hate visible," Orrek said from the chain.
"Still visible."
"Still hate it."
The answer made three frightened people laugh through their teeth. The pylon pulsed thirteen again, but the laughter had bodies attached, and the bodies kept their hands raised.
Kael lowered his shoulder and looked at the off-center pulse behind the creature.