CHAPTER 33: THREE BELLS

The chain sang twice more, closer. A grate climbed, teeth rasping. Air pushed out of a ceiling throat. It tasted like oil and wet stone.

Light spilled from the next room—brassy, flickering. A "Watch" placard hung crooked. Inside, a rack had dumped weapons everywhere and a dummy "watchman" lay pinned under a bar. Sparks spat from a busted sparker on the bench and crawled toward a ribbon of spilled lamp oil.

"Clear," Cael said, stepping over fallen spears.

"Fast," I said.

He lifted the bar—easy with aura used like a carpenter uses a lever. I dragged the dummy clear, heel-pulsed the sparker off the bench, and shoved the lamp oil rag under a bucket. The sparks found the rag and died in the water. A bell in the wall spared us a chime out of habit.

"Rung four?" Cael asked.

"Close," I said. The tone chimed a hall later.

The corridor forked again. Left carried the thin, recorded cries of dummies designed to needle conscience. Right smelled faintly of pine and iron—the clinic scent Liora keeps. Faint shoe prints, scuffed in a hurry, ran toward pine.

Left had points. Right had people.

"Right," Cael said.

"Right," I echoed.

We entered a low room with two cots, a cabinet, and a floor drain that made an honest gurgle. A mannequin "nurse" leaned against the wall with a bent knee. Its chest box clicked slow. A go-bag sat half-open nearby. Old routines came up clean: splint, sling, lift with respect, not speed. We carried the dummy to the painted cross. A clean bell answered.

"Good choice," a voice said behind us.

We both turned. Nobody stood in the doorway. The sound had come from the wall—Liora, speaking through a tube.

"You passed the mercy test the easy way," she said. "Try the harder."

The floor shivered. A panel in the far wall slid. Sand hissed again—this time darker, like weight instead of trick. It pushed under the panel and swirled toward the drain.

"Drain," Cael said.

"Clogs," I added.

He went to the grate, ripped it with aura like peeling a stubborn lid, and stuck his hand into the throat. "Clean," he said.

"Then bait," I said. "It wants us to waste time helping a drain that’s fine. The real choke is upstream."

We ran the wall with our palms, listening through the skin. At the corner, the sound sharpened. I cut a patch, slapped it to the seam, and pulsed when cloth met stone. The hiss dulled. The sand settled to something lazy and ugly.

"Bell?" Cael asked.

The wall was quiet.

"Not everything claps," I said.

We moved.

The next hall gave us a choice that pretended to be math. Two doors. Behind one, the thin clicking of a chest box close to failing. Behind the other, a loud but regular rhythm—someone hurt, not dying. The loud one would pull most teams.

Cael looked at me. ’Left is louder,’ his eyes said.

’Right is closer to the edge,’ I answered with a nod.

We took the right. A single dummy lay inside with a chest box that had found the wrong path and was trying to die politely. Two clamps, one pressure release, three breaths on the count, and the path remembered how to be a loop. The bell chimed. The loud room next door stayed loud. Someone else could have its easy points.

The hall bent left and opened on a mezzanine. Below us, the main spine of Gate Six ran like a gray river. White wardlight pooled along the floor. Far across, I saw two silhouettes moving—Ariadne and Marcus, Cell B. Marcus glanced up, saw us, and touched two fingers to his brow. Ariadne didn’t look, but she shifted her path by one tile to avoid a plate with a gap you could miss. She had seen it.

"Rung five," Cael said. The tone chimed again.

We crossed a narrow catwalk. Halfway, the rail shivered. A pin dropped from a housing and bounced into the dark. The rail sagged.

"Hold," I said.

Cael planted. Aura turned his stance into a beam. I set a rib wedge in the post joint, pulsed only when bone met iron, and tied it off with a thong. Marrow set against the far pillar and turned into a brace. The rail eased back into honest.

"Go," Cael said.

We hit the far landing and took the stairs down. The stairwell turned ninety degrees on the seventh step and put us in a short hall with three doors and a bad smell: stale damp.

"Flood room," I said.

The first door opened on a shallow basin with a cracked lip. Water seeped in along a hairline and gathered with lazy purpose. A dummy "child" sat on a crate in the corner with painted tears that never moved.

"We can carry," Cael said.

"Or we can keep it from rising for the next team," I answered.

He weighed it. "Wedge, patch, then carry."

We did it quick. Rib wedge under the lip. Treated pad over the seam. Pulse only on contact. Anchor Step when my heel wanted to skate in the thin film. We lifted the dummy and passed it over the sill. The bell made a quiet noise like approval embarrassed to be caught.

"Rung six," Cael said.

"Two more, then core," I said.

Hollow clacked once. Marrow’s leash hummed steady. My hands didn’t buzz; my heart stayed where it belonged. Liora’s voice came once more through a wall tube, very faint.

"Good," she said. "Don’t admire it."

We didn’t.

On the way out, I snapped the go-bag shut and set it where a first-year wouldn’t trip. Cael toed a loose tile back into its bed and chalked an X so the next team wouldn’t learn it the hard way. A busted lantern swung from a hook; I steadied it and left it dead—temptations like that turn small fires into big lessons. We passed an old survey arrow pointing the wrong way and scored it through so it couldn’t lie again. The air shifted—cross-draft teasing the nape, the kind of change you feel before you hear. Hollow corrected with a small wing tilt and clicked twice; I filed the warning for the next bend.

"Time?" Cael asked.

"Clean," I said. "We’re ahead if we don’t get cute."

"Then we don’t," he said.

We set back to the jog, breath on a count, hands quiet unless they earned their keep. The floor under us sounded honest. The stone ahead sounded like it had opinions.

We ran.