Chapter 931 - 931: Erebos Burns His Own Monitoring Room

The red oil can rose inside the funeral tap between Erebos's trapped fingers.

Water from the burial shaft turned its handle sideways. Through the warped image, Darel carried the can across the monitoring room while three other workers cut black cords from the table Jade had pulled against Kestra's floor.

Omina saw the color between his knuckles.

"Tell the man carrying that oil to set it down."

Her lower green bar held Erebos's shadow flat against the rail. The upper bar pressed his elbow into iron. Yun-Jin's violet thread ran from his wrist to the funeral engine axle and shortened with every wheel turn.

Erebos bent the finger beneath the tap until Darel's face cleared in the water.

The man wore his exit chit inside his collar to keep the room from charging it as abandoned property. He had accepted monitoring work for two roof shares and a door that was supposed to open after his final shift.

At the altered digit pump, Miri drove every stroke hard enough to keep the carrier alive under the table. Her younger brother's receipt hung from the pump key. As long as she kept the assignment, the boy remained a wash runner rather than a body fitted beneath the table.

Ossan pressed both forearms over the route ledger while fire cloth fell from the ceiling rack. He believed complete records made workers too expensive to lose.

Keth sawed at the cut corridor built into the west wall. He had installed three of its bolts and trusted his own work more than any promise attached to it. A failed corridor would leave him to die inside the wall he had measured.

All four had reasons to survive the room. Erebos had priced each reason before hiring them.

Miri bent beneath the table until the carrier could see her face past the throat brace.

"Keep pumping. I will cut the straps myself."

The carrier pointed at her brother's receipt and then at the locked west corridor. Miri tore the receipt from the key and tied it around her wrist.

Ossan pulled the route ledger against his chest.

"Every assignment remains recorded here, so recovery crews must account for all five of us."

Darel touched the exit chit under his collar. He believed the same thing about one stamped piece of paper.

"That chamber can separate from the prison before the frame pulls any deeper route into view," he said.

Omina pushed the upper bar down another notch.

"A chamber is not the four people trapped inside it. Open their body path before you cut the room loose."

"Their body path shares the wall your skeleton has already seized."

"Then lose the wall and keep the people breathing."

Omina pointed her short blade toward the sixth funeral outlet. Its dead destination strip still hung above an unused washing bier.

"Four workers can cross that outlet on the bier while the carrier stays attached to the pump. The wall reaches us afterward, and we keep the map bounded here."

The route would work. It would also place the sawed monitoring wall beside the burial shaft, where Omina could read every captain branch before Erebos rebuilt the room.

He kept his fingers inside the shaft.

Erebos looked past her toward the tank car. JJ worked the right pump with her cut sponsor braid wrapped around two fingers. The unnamed woman held her damaged graft beneath one knee. Kegaku's pressure bed stayed clear of the fifth lug, and Kieran kept the flute case across her lap.

The monitoring room held five current routes and the live branch toward every captain assignment. Losing it would leave Griswald without a direct answer, blind the six older seats, and force each field operation to decide how much of Erebos's design it still wanted after his voice disappeared.

That cost was preferable to Ty's people pulling the prison map through Kestra's floor.

Omina read the choice in his hand.

"Yun-Jin, shorten the wrist line before he reaches the cut command."

Violet thread bit beneath Erebos's thumb and turned his palm into the burial shaft. Omina drove her lower bar through the shadow below it. The easier command path closed.

Erebos kept two fingers in the turning water.

He pressed the first against the hot funeral collar. Skin stuck to brass. The second contact carried the room number. A third pressure marked severance rather than evacuation.

Heat entered both fingertips and crossed the center of his palm because Omina's bar denied the shadow a way around flesh.

The oil can moved in Darel's hands.

"The cut signal arrived, so open the west corridor before I pour this."

Keth pulled the last bolt. The wall shifted one inch and stopped against a lock Erebos had closed from the funeral shaft.

"Your corridor has been sealed from the main prison side."

Miri kept one hand on the pump and reached beneath the table with the other.

"Then the signal cuts the room away while leaving us inside it."

Darel looked through the copper viewing tube. Jade still held Ty's wrist above the five lock frame. Kestra's chain pulled the room wall through three broken links. Nessa's field finger remained across the black rail.

He could pour the oil or let the strangers drag him toward a destination absent from his exit chit.

Darel pressed the stamped paper against the viewing tube.

"The west cut is printed on this chit. Which door receives us after the room separates?"

His question traveled through the funeral tap and reached Erebos beneath Omina's bar. Erebos maintained the severance pressure. Opening the west door would carry the sawed wall into the main prison before the fire reached its route marks.

Darel wrapped the exit chit around the can handle.

Darel opened the can.

The first sheet of oil crossed the table with five edges and entered the cord wells. Miri kicked the nearest well shut before it reached her pump. Ossan tore three ledger pages free, rolled them around a copper weight, and pushed the bundle into the viewing tube aimed at Kestra.

Keth drove his saw through the locked corridor seam and used the blade as a lever. The west wall moved far enough for two fingers, nowhere near enough for a body.

Flame reached the Earth cord first. Its shelter image folded into black glass inside the funeral tap. The Meren line followed, taking six blue roof marks with it. Todd's wooden stair struck once before its cord burned through.

Along the burial shaft, seven small contact studs lost pressure. The crowned seventh stud held longest. Griswald's line gave Erebos one final pull toward the relocation wagon before cracking under Omina's green bar.

Erebos felt every captain road go absent through the burns in his hand.

One older stud struck Yun-Jin's thread three times on its way out. The count could have meant withdrawal, refusal, or a field captain asking for new orders after a local problem. Erebos had built the room so he would always know the difference. Fire took that advantage with the wire.

Griswald could keep the relocation moving, abandon it, or sell the road beneath his own crown. The six older seats had the same freedom. Erebos would learn their choices only from whatever damage reached him after the final stud cooled.

Yun-Jin watched the studs cool.

"Your captains just lost the voice that kept their assignments aligned."

"They retained their orders and the freedom to misunderstand them."

"That freedom may be the first useful thing you gave them."

Smoke entered the lower drawer around Omina's pinned blade. JJ covered the tank intake with wet funeral cloth while Kieran pulled Kegaku's pressure bed away from the rail.

The tank woman pointed her living hand toward Erebos's burned palm.

"Your fire is reaching my pump through the graft copy."

Erebos twisted the funeral collar, trying to turn the heat back toward the monitoring room. Omina planted her upper bar across the smoking drawer and forced its runners toward Kestra's route.

"Your room carries its own damage away from every patient on this engine."

The altered digit pump stopped.

Inside the monitoring room, the copied finger tore free of its sleeve. The table dropped on one side, exposing a person strapped beneath it from shoulder to ankle. Miri cut the throat brace. The carrier caught her wrist and pushed the pump key toward her brother's receipt before helping her tear at the chest strap.

Darel threw the empty oil can against the locked west door. Ossan fed the rest of his ledger pages into the viewing tube. Keth abandoned his saw in the corridor and crawled beneath the table to reach the ankle buckle.

Their room had stopped following Erebos's cut order.

The prison kept following it.

Four floor bolts sheared beneath the table. The cut floor square carrying five anchor sockets tore away from the burning room, took one copper viewing tube and Ossan's weighted pages, and entered the black rail toward Kestra's storehouse.

Erebos pulled against Yun-Jin's thread. Burned skin opened across his palm, but the room segment stayed beyond his reach.

In the funeral tap, the remaining workroom ceiling split along a white line.

A pale hand reached through the cut toward the carrier under the table.