Morning started with silence thick as cloth. Kael marked supplies in the ledger before breath, then recited doctrine. Mira joined in this time, stumbling but present.
"We do not need to be brave," Kael said.
"We need to be correct," Mira finished.
The building answered with its hour hiss. Steam slid through pipes like a long s, bending the air thin. Kael timed his heartbeat to it and let the rhythm become a metronome of decisions.
[System: Day Plan] - Mission A: establish Anchor - 2 (secondary secure room two floors below). - Mission B: maintain no - contact with Blue marks; record density only. - Mission C: test response to faster infected variants. - Reward: +2 PC if Anchor - 2 installed without alert; +1 PC if variant neutralized without structural damage.
Points available: 8.0.
Optional Knowledge: Engineering T0 - > Fixings & Levers (cost: 2 PC).
Kael selected it without ceremony.
[System: Knowledge Acquired]
Fixings & Levers installed.
Effects: +barricade quality, +assembly speed, +30 percent efficiency on levered tools.
Remaining PC: 6.0.
He looked different when knowledge settled. Not larger. Tighter. Loose thoughts found bolts.
"Today we make a new door tell the truth," he said. "We will need strap, nails, reed tin, water, duplicate ledger leaf, and a bar slot."
Mira set out the strap and nails as if handing instruments to a surgeon. She touched the reed tin Kael had cut last night and smiled without showing teeth. "I like that the wind will tattle."
"It will sing," Kael said. "Tattling is a moral judgment. Singing is physics." - - - Preparation
He divided their ledger into a duplicate leaf, copying by hand: headcount 2, doctrine seed, RN - 1 and RN - 2 notes, no names. He wrote the date without the year because years had started to feel like a rumor.
They labeled two bottles A2 - 1 and A2 - 2 and taped their caps. Kael cut a strip of cloth to bind the hinge pins if needed and tucked three screws and the stubby screwdriver into his pocket. He drew a chalk map of the route on the inside of his forearm: out, left, stairs, down, landing, storeroom, brace, strap, reeds, water, notes, leave.
Nox's door stayed a seam when they passed. Kael tapped twice, paused, twice. The seam widened into an eye and then a half - smile. Nox lifted the pipe in greeting.
"Is today the day we teach the storeroom to behave?" he asked.
"It is," Kael said. "You can walk point and hit things or walk rear and listen."
"I will listen," Nox said, surprising himself. "Pipe can still talk if needed." He stepped into the hall with a caution that had learned posture from Kael's. He carried a backpack that looked like an apology for being empty and a promise to be full later.
[System: Companion Status]
Nox: calm, observant, armed (pipe). Trust: untested but trending.
Mira whispered, "Proof - of - life?"
Kael nodded. "Pipe. Blue cap. Angle by RN - 3. Verified." Nox heard and nodded again, approving the grammar. - - - Descent
They moved on the hiss. The bottle cap at stair two kept its unholy center. The five rectangles under the rail had gained a sixth. The crooked circle above the stair now wore a longer tail, almost an arrow pointing down.
"We are not following arrows," Kael said to the air and also to himself.
Two floors below, the corridor narrowed the way bad decisions narrow choices. At its end, a heavy steel door waited. The paint had blistered in fish scales. The old lock hung but the hinges were thick old friends with fat pins.
Kael kept his voice equal to the door. "Good bones," he said.
He tested the slab with the flat of his palm, then with his ear. The room behind the door returned the sound the way a church returns whispers. Empty or full of quiet. He preferred quiet to guessing.
Nox positioned to the side, pipe low. Mira crouched to check the floor line. "No draft," she reported, proud to report something.
Kael worked the knob slowly until the latch surrendered with a soft complaint. Inside: dust, shelves buckled like old knees, a small barred vent with webs that had auditioned for curtains. He stepped in and the room made the tiny sound rooms make when they decide to accept a new name.
"Anchor - 2," he said.
He measured the hinge with his eyes and then with two fingers and then with a screw. He set the strap low because low loads better. He had Nox hold the bar while he cut a slot into the door frame with the knife and the patience that Fixings & Levers had taught his wrist. The knife made a careful music. Mira fed a screw to him at the exact second he asked for it. Nox's pipe handled the weight like a quiet muscle.
[System: Progress] - Brace established (shelf reinforcement + bar slot). - Strap installed at low height. - Reed tin configured on hinge. - Water stashed: A2 - 1, A2 - 2. - Duplicate ledger leaf hidden above hinge under faux rust tape.
+1 PC (construction quality).
Mira stood back and looked at the room like a person looks at a haircut right after the hair falls. "It feels... less empty," she said.
"It feels obligated," Kael corrected. "Obligation is a kind of furniture."
They tested the door from the inside. Bar in, strap taut, hinge singing softly in a spidery whisper. The reed tin vibrated when the door moved a hair, a barely audible chirp.
"It sings," Mira breathed.
"It tattles," Nox grinned.
Kael allowed both truths to coexist. - - - Blue at the threshold
They returned to the hall to check visibility. That was when Mira froze. A single line of blue had been drawn on the floor in front of the storeroom threshold while their backs were turned. Ankle height if vertical, but here horizontal: a floor underline.
Nox lifted the pipe. "I did not hear anyone," he hissed.
Kael scanned the corridor angle to angle. No movement. The paint looked fresh in the way wet things pretend to be dry. The line stopped at the jamb and did not cross into the room. It was a rule that knew its own edge.
"It knew we were in there," Mira whispered.
"It wants us to think it knew," Kael said, correcting the grammar because control lives in grammar. "Either way, we maintain." He removed a screw from his pocket, held it like a talisman he did not believe in, and pretended the line was chalk drawn by a child practicing straightness.
[System: Observation]
Blue line: placed during operation; no auditory alert detected.
Hypothesis: observed by human eyes or set as bluff.
Action: complete install; no - contact remains. - - - Variant
The first hint arrived as a breeze that smelled like rot and speed. The second hint was a sound like bare feet forgetting the lesson of stairs. The third hint was the shape of a woman coming fast with a broken jaw that clicked as if speaking a new language.
"In," Kael said, voice flat. Nox slipped to the side of Anchor - 2's door, pipe ready. Mira ducked inside. Kael stepped last and set the bar. The reed tin chimed as the door sucked closed and the sound made his skin prickle with a truth he liked.
The thing hit the door not like a drunk but like a runner who had found a finish line. The steel jumped, the strap took pride, the bar held. The reed sang again, a thin cry like a metal insect. Fingers clawed along the jamb and left smears of something that did not want to be named yet.
"Fast," Nox breathed.
"Variant," Kael said. He traced the door with his palm and felt the force dissipate into frame and wall, into screws that had not wanted to trust anyone until right now. The thing hit again, lower this time, like it had learned a small lesson about leverage. Kael smiled without showing it to anyone.
He drew three marks on the inside of the door at knee height. "Next time we brace here tighter," he said. "It is learning. So are we."
The clatter changed to a scratching orbit. The thing paced, then vanished. Mira wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist and discovered sweat she did not own yet. She smeared it on her hoodie and whispered, "I hate it."
"You hate error," Kael said. "That is allowed."
They waited two minutes. Three. Five. Then the reed stopped vibrating and courage returned to its usual workload: remaining unnecessary.
[System: Encounter Logged]
Threat: Infected (Tier 0+, agile/runner variant).
Result: door test passed; no breach.
Reward: +1 PC. - - - Clean and close
They cleaned the jamb with bleach because even unnamed smears deserve procedure. Kael wrote in Anchor - 2's duplicate ledger leaf with small letters. - A2 installed: brace, strap, reed tin, bar slot. - Stash: A2 - 1 and A2 - 2 water. - Variant tested door: held. - Blue line placed across threshold during operation; no - contact maintained. - Retreat protocol: enter, bar, wait for reed silence, exit on hiss.
He taped the leaf back into its rust disguise and smudged the tape with grime until the hinge believed its own lie again. Nox watched with a craftsman's approval.
"You are making the world keep receipts," Nox said.
"The world is bad at accounting," Kael said. "We fix the books."
They slipped out on the hour hiss. The blue underline looked drier now, a thin bruise under the door's nose. Kael stepped over it without ceremony, not because he wanted to insult it, but because he would not grant it the respect of a bow.
The stairwell below them muttered. Above, a door banged and then apologized with a smaller bang. They made it back to their floor with the kind of relief that admires itself too loudly. - - - The message
In front of their apartment, the blue mark that had been just a line last night had grown words. Not painter - neat. Not even adult - hand steady. But words. Fat, dripping, and terrible in their certainty.
WE COUNT YOU
Mira's mouth opened and then shut. Nox swore in a language that used consonants like nails. Kael stared until the words stopped moving in his head.
"It knows your name," Mira whispered, then corrected herself. "No. It knows the idea of us."
"It wants us to think it knows our name," Kael said. He set the backpack down and took out the chalk. He did not write back. He drew a tiny square two inches below the last letter and colored it in slowly. Then he drew another square to its right and left it blank.
Mira frowned. "What is that?"
"An audit," Kael said. "We mark what is done and what is not. Let it learn boredom."
Nox laughed despite the day. "Let the paint audit this," he said, and bared his teeth at the wall like a bad idea.
Kael opened the door, rehooked the string, set the sofa. The room accepted them the way a boat accepts weather. He washed his hands until the bones felt noticed. - - - Court and calculus
He called Quiet Court and read the day as if a judge might be hiding in the cupboard. Mira sat with her knife in her lap again, but her fingers were different. They rested like tools waiting for jobs instead of animals waiting for a cage to unlock. Nox leaned against the window frame where the blackout cloth made a false night and listened with the patience of a man who had just seen a strap redeem a door. - Anchor - 2 installed; reed sings; strap holds; bar fits. - Runner variant tested door; held. - Blue underline placed at A2 threshold during install. - Blue at A1 escalated to words: WE COUNT YOU. - No - contact policy maintained. - Companion status: Mira steadying, Nox cooperative. - Supplies: nails - 6, tape - small, bleach - small. - Doctrine repeated.
Mira raised a hand, playful and serious at once. "Permission to ask a coward's question?"
"Granted," Kael said.
"What happens when the blue is not outside but inside?"
"Then we clean it with bleach," Kael said. "And if it is painted on a person, we do not clean the person. We remove the person."
Nox made a face that looked like respect thrown through a window. "You are colder than I thought," he said.
"I am learning to be correct," Kael said. "Warmth is a cost center. We allocate it to those who pay in survival." He looked at Mira until she rolled her eyes at him and the room warmed by a margin.
[System: Audit Complete]
+2 PC gained (A2 install + variant handled).
+1 PC (discipline under pressure).
+1 PC (doctrine repeated).
Total PC: 10.0.
[System: Knowledge Available]
Engineering T1: Torsion & Springs (cost: 3 PC).
Kael did not spend yet. He wrote the knowledge name in the margin and drew a coil that looked like a spring and also like a small snake. He did not like snakes but he liked springs. - - - The test we did not choose
Night fell and carried with it the sound of a person trying to tiptoe while dragging a chair that did not know how to help. The scrape paused at the blue words outside their door. The paperclip bell clicked once, then twice. Someone turned the knob gently, carefully, as if they had watched him show the click to Mira and had learned the grammar.
Kael stood and put his hand on the wood. He felt a human palm on the other side and the way the pressure moved across it like a thought trying on different sentences. He lied with his voice.
"This is not a door," he said quietly through the wood. "This is a wall that remembers being a door."
The hand stilled. The pressure withdrew. A soft laugh came from the other side, not amused, not sad. Just a noise that admitted to learning.
Mira shivered. "Was that Nox?"
Nox said from the window, "If it was me, I would have said a stupid joke first."
Kael let breath out in a measured cylinder. He did not open. He did not chase. He waited until the building rearranged itself into anonymous sounds again.
[System: Door Discipline]
Attempted human entry at A1.
Indicators: click verified.
Action: maintain proof - of - life protocols. - - - Engineering in the margins
He spent the last hours drawing. Not of people. Of levers. Of a shelf that could fall with proper malice if a trip line taught it how. Of a pendulum that could knock a man out of a sentence. Of springs that could put snap in a door. He did not build. He sketched traps like prayers and then put the pencil down. Tomorrow would be for teeth in walls. Tonight was for letting the jaw imagine itself closed.
Mira fell asleep mid - count, whispering numbers like charms. Nox did not sleep so much as lean into the wall and dare it to stop leaning back.
Kael wrote the last lines of the day with a tired precision that felt like respect. - A2 online; reed choir acceptable; strap tension to recheck daily. - Blue escalates to written sentence; minds must not follow. - Variant: agile. Prepare counter. - Next: design guillotine shelf trap at A2 corridor; test with decoy. - Recruit policy: Nox probationary. Proof - of - life always. - Hygiene: bleach allocated to door zones post - contact. - Doctrine: We do not need to be brave. We need to be correct.
He underlined doctrine once. Then he closed the ledger and set it under his palm until the book felt like a sleeping animal.
Outside, the blue letters dried into a law that did not apply inside the room. The city tried on a new siren and discarded it. Somewhere, a runner variant found new stairs to learn wrong. Somewhere else, a hand with blue on it touched a wall and decided how to feel about power.
Inside, a strap held. A reed sang when it should. A small bell clicked when it must. And three humans pretended to be furniture so the night would forget to count them.