Chapter 334 - 325 — Back to Work II

Chapter 334: Chapter 325 — Back to Work II

It was raining on Floor 32.

Not hard. A fine cold drizzle coming down out of a ceiling of low grey cloud that sat close enough to the ground to take the tops off the hills in the distance.

They were standing on a road.

It was a causeway, properly built — four metres wide, packed stone and earth, raised about two metres above the ground on either side, with the remains of low kerbing along the edges.

And on either side of it, going away for kilometres in both directions, was marsh.

Flat brown water in sheets and channels, reed beds standing in it in dark clumps, and black mud between them that James could tell from thirty feet away would take a man to the hip. Dead trees stood up out of it here and there with nothing on them.

The air smelled of cold standing water and of something underneath it, rotting slowly.

And there was a sound.

Water moving. Not a lot — a slow continuous trickle and slap from somewhere out in the reeds, in eleven different places at once, and there was no wind at all and no current and nothing James could see that should have been moving any of it.

The road ran forward into the drizzle until the drizzle took it.

"Right," said Cillian. "I’ve decided I don’t like this one."

`[FLOOR 32]`

`[FLOOR CLASSIFICATION: STANDARD]`

Then, underneath:

`[MISSION TYPE: ESCORT]`

Finn’s head came round.

"Escort?"

"We’ve not had one of those."

"We’ve had one," said Maeve. "Floor 9. There was a cart."

"There was a *cart*," said Finn. "That’s not—"

`[ESCORT TARGET DESIGNATED]`

The panel resolved.

`[ESCORT TARGET]`

`[LEVEL: 4]`

`[HP: 90 / 90]`

`[OBJECTIVE: DELIVER THE ESCORT TARGET TO THE FAR GATE]`

`[THE ESCORT TARGET MUST SURVIVE]`

`[FAILURE: ESCORT TARGET DEATH — OR ALL CHALLENGERS EXCEEDING 100M FROM THE ESCORT TARGET]`

`[DISTANCE TO OBJECTIVE: 9.4 KM]`

---

Not a cart.

There was a person sitting on the kerbing about ten metres up the road with their knees drawn up, and they had been there the whole time, and every one of them had taken them for part of the floor.

They got up when the panel appeared.

Young — twenties, maybe. Thin through the shoulders in a way that had nothing to do with training. A heavy travelling coat that was too big and had been mended more than once at the elbows, boots laced wrong, a satchel across the body held closed with one hand. Wet hair stuck flat to the forehead.

No weapon. Not one. Nowhere on them.

Level 4.

Ninety hit points.

James had walked into the Tower the first time with more than ninety hit points.

"Are you the ones," the person said.

The voice was not steady.

"We’re the ones," said Maeve, and went forward, and crouched down about four feet away so she was not standing over anybody. "What’s your name?"

"...Aven."

"Right, Aven. I’m Maeve. Do you know the road?"

"I know where it goes." A swallow. "I don’t know what’s on it."

---

Nobody said anything for a second, and James watched the whole team understand the problem at the same time, from five different directions.

Ronan looked at the road width. Four metres, raised, water on both sides. One approach from the front and one from the back and nothing else — and one body to keep between the two of them.

Finn looked at the distance. Nine point four kilometres, at the speed of somebody with laced-wrong boots and ninety hit points.

Cillian looked at the reeds, and at how little of them he could see into, and stopped making jokes.

Maeve was already looking at the failure condition, which said *all* Challengers, which meant one of them could go and look at something as long as four of them did not.

And Alice, who had spent three floors going wherever the fight was worst at whatever speed she liked, looked down at a Level 4 with ninety hit points standing in the open on a road with no cover on it.

"I cannot leave," she said.

It was not a question.

"No," said James. "You can. You just can’t be *gone*."

He thought about a courtyard on Floor 30, and a Warden she could have killed in six seconds that would not stay dead, and an hour in a fort where she was the strongest thing on the field and could still only be in one of five places.

*Same lesson. Third time.*

---

They put a formation on it in under two minutes and did not argue about any of it.

Ronan went nearest Aven, half a step behind and to the right, on the side with the deeper water.

Maeve took the centre of the group where she could see all four of them and the road behind.

Finn went forward — not far forward, twenty metres, on the road, where he could turn.

Cillian stayed back and high on the crown of the causeway with the best sightline he was going to get, which was about eighty metres before the drizzle ate it.

Alice stayed above and behind, low, wings half open, close enough to come down on any part of the group inside two seconds.

And James put his hand on the road surface.

`[UNEARTH ACTIVATED]`

The causeway shuddered and Fossor came up through the packed stone at the edge of the kerbing, and Aven made a noise and went two steps backwards into Ronan, who did not move.

"It’s mine," said James. "It’s on your side."

"That is on *my* side?"

"Yeah."

Fossor went down into the body of the causeway and stayed in it — and that was the other thing James learned in the first thirty seconds, because the moment he tried to push it out sideways into the marsh he felt it hit water and turn back.

Packed road: fine.

Everything else on this floor: not.

Which meant Fossor had one lane, the same lane they were all walking down, forward and back and nowhere else.

"Move," said Maeve.

---

They went four hundred metres and nothing happened.

That was long enough for the formation to settle and for Aven to stop flinching every time Ronan’s shield moved, and long enough for James to get used to the feel of Fossor running ahead of them inside the road, thirty metres out, forty, fifty.

Drizzle. The slap of water in the reeds. Boots on wet stone. Nine kilometres of it to go.

At about six hundred metres, Fossor changed direction.

James stopped walking.

"Hold."

Everybody stopped, immediately, including Aven, who stopped because Ronan’s arm came across in front of them.

"What," said Finn, quietly.

James was not looking at anything. His eyes were half shut and his head was tilted about ten degrees.

"There’s something on the road. Ninety metres. Not moving."

Cillian brought his hand up and put light across his knuckles and looked down the causeway into the grey and said, "I’ve got nothing. I’ve got road."

"It’s there."

He walked Fossor sideways to the edge of the road bed to get a better angle on it —

— and felt the second one.

It was in the marsh, forty metres out to the left, and it was in water Fossor could not go into, and James only knew it was there because the summon had come close enough to the boundary to feel something large displace.

"Left," he said. "Forty out. In the water."

Ronan turned Aven bodily to put himself on that side.

Then the third.

Behind them. Sixty metres back down the road they had just walked, on a stretch of causeway that had been completely empty four minutes ago.

James opened his eyes.

"Behind us as well."

"That road was *clear*," said Finn.

"I know it was."

Out in the reeds on both sides, in eleven places, the slow slapping of water against nothing went on exactly as it had since they arrived — and then, in one of those places, further out, it stopped.

Aven had gone very still in the middle of them.

"They come for me," they said. "Not for the road. Nothing’s on the road until I’m on it."

---

James looked forward into the drizzle, and back down the causeway, and out at the water on both sides.

Nine point four kilometres.

Ninety hit points. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Three things moving, so far, that nobody could see yet.

They could kill whatever was in front of them. He had no doubt about that at all — he had Alice, and Finn, and a fort full of dead Reavers a fortnight behind him to prove it.

It had never once been the question.

The question was whether five people and a Fallen Divinity could keep walking, for nine and a half kilometres, on a road four metres wide, without one of them being one step further away than they needed to be at the wrong moment.

"Tighten up," said James. "Nobody goes past thirty metres. Finn — twenty, not thirty."

"Twenty."

"Aven. You walk where Ronan tells you and you don’t stop when something happens. Especially not when something happens."

"...Right."

"Cillian, watch the water, not the road."

"Watching the water."

The first shape came out of the reeds ninety metres ahead.