The Final Gavel

6. Bait

[01:46:41]

The woman who had spoken in the dark took a hesitant step onto the bridge. It held firm beneath her weight.

"We… we have to check them," she whispered, staring at the green glow of the watching orb. "Before it gets free."

One of the men, his face covered in old scars, shook his head. "And if you pick wrong? That text said provocation speeds it up. You want to be the one who kicks the hornet's nest?"

"We can't just stand here and watch the clock!"

"We split up."

Leonard's voice cut through the argument.

The friendliness from earlier was gone. He sounded calm now, almost too calm for someone standing above a bottomless pit with a monster slowly breaking free in the center of it.

"It's the only logical move. We cover more doors, move quietly and test them. If someone finds the right one, the one that opens, they signal the others." He looked around the group before his eyes settled on Rem. "It's the only way we all have a chance."

The scarred man's expression hardened.

"And if one of us sets it off? Brings that thing down on top of us all?"

"Then the rest of us learn which door is wrong." Leonard said it without hesitation. "And we get closer to finding the one that's right."

Nobody answered immediately.

The idea was simple, but Rem didn't like what it meant. Leonard wasn't really asking them to work together. He was suggesting that they spread out and let each person test the doors separately. If someone triggered the monster, everyone else would know which door to avoid.

They would be using each other as bait.

Rem looked at Leonard's calm face, then at the shifting maze of stone around them. The Bone-Singer hung motionless in the center, its restraints giving off that deep, uneven vibration. The situation reminded him of the train. The living survived by making use of whatever they could.

Apparently, that rule applied everywhere.

Nobody spoke after that. The grinding sound of the bridge retracting slowly faded into the chamber, leaving behind the low hum of the bindings and the occasional sound of loose grit falling somewhere below.

The others eventually moved.

The scarred man stepped onto the bridge and crossed carefully. It held firm beneath him. He reached the first door on the third level and stopped. For a moment, he simply stared at it. Then he pressed his ear against the cold iron.

Rem wasn't sure what the man expected to hear. There was no reason for the door to make a sound, but when there was nothing else to work with, even a useless method was better than standing still.

The man listened for several seconds before pulling away.

Nothing.

One of the women followed him. Then the other two men from the Warrens. Soon, everyone was spread across different ledges, testing the doors one by one. They knocked quietly. Pressed their ears against the metal. Ran their hands along the edges. Pulled at anything that looked like it might move.

Nothing happened.

Leonard remained near Rem.

"You're not going to look?"

"I am looking."

Rem wasn't looking at the doors.

He was watching the room.

The bridges were moving. At first, they seemed random, appearing and disappearing at different levels without any obvious pattern. But the more Rem watched, the more familiar the movements became. The bridge they had crossed retracted shortly after the last person stepped off. Ten seconds later, another bridge appeared on the far side of the fifth level. Thirty seconds after that, one on the second level extended.

Rem began counting.

The movements weren't identical every time, but there was a rhythm to them. A sequence that repeated often enough to be useful. He kept watching, matching the movement of the bridges to the low vibration of the bindings.

One… two… three…

A bridge moved.

Rem memorized the interval.

It was the closest thing they had to a map.

For a while, that was all they did. They moved from ledge to ledge whenever a bridge appeared and tested another door. Nobody spoke unless they had to. The Bone-Singer remained suspended above them, watching with its slow-moving green eye.

Rem eventually crossed a bridge leading down to the second level.

The air was colder here, and the glyphs gave off less light. The door in front of him looked exactly like the others, a rectangle of rust-pitted iron set into the stone. He didn't touch it immediately. Instead, he looked up.

From this level, the Bone-Singer seemed even larger. Its dark body hung against the faint glow of the glyphs, eight legs folded beneath it while the enormous chain disappeared into the darkness above. The vibration coming from the restraints was stronger here. Rem could feel it through the soles of his shoes.

Then the sound changed.

A brief stutter passed through the chamber.

Rem looked at the creature. A thin crack had appeared across its carapace. The vibration returned to normal.

Then it happened again.

Another stutter. Another crack.

Rem's eyes narrowed. Whatever was keeping the creature restrained was slowly failing.

The Bone-Singer's central green orb continued its slow movement across the crypt, passing over every person as they searched. Rem watched it pause briefly whenever someone touched a door.

It was watching them.

Not simply staring.

Watching.

Learning.

It's learning our patterns too.

Rem turned back toward his own door. He leaned close without touching it and listened. Nothing. He breathed slowly onto the metal, watching the thin layer of condensation form and disappear. He held his palm close to the surface, but there was no change in temperature and no vibration coming from the other side.

Just another door.

The bridge behind him began to retract. Rem stepped back as the pale granite disappeared into the wall. He had roughly forty-five seconds, according to his count, before another bridge should connect this ledge to somewhere else.

He waited.

The Bone-Singer's green eye completed another slow sweep across the chamber. Then another bridge extended, almost exactly when Rem expected it to.

He memorized that too.

The search continued.

Time became difficult to measure. Rem stopped thinking about the timer and started measuring everything by bridge cycles and the movement of the Bone-Singer's eye.

[01:32:17]

The number appeared in the corner of his vision, but it barely registered anymore.

A boot scraped against stone somewhere above him. Someone grunted quietly as they climbed onto another ledge. Another person coughed and immediately covered their mouth. Nobody wanted to make too much noise.

The fear in the crypt had become almost tangible.

Then someone screamed.

Rem's head snapped toward the sound.

It was the younger of the two Warrens women. She was standing on a ledge on the fifth level, almost directly across from him. She had been careful throughout the search, checking each door before moving to the next.

Now she stood completely still.

Something small and pale had dropped from a crack above the door. It landed on the back of her hand.

A spider.

Its body was bloated and almost translucent, with long, thin legs trembling against her skin. The girl's face twisted in disgust.

Then she screamed.

The sound echoed through the cylindrical chamber, bouncing from wall to wall until it seemed like the entire crypt was screaming with her.

Everyone froze.

The deep vibration stopped.

The sudden silence was worse.

At the center of the pit, the Bone-Singer's five orbs flared. The green light became painfully bright. Its body unfolded. Eight jointed legs snapped straight beneath it, the sound echoing through the chamber like breaking stone. The enormous chain groaned as the creature pulled against it.

Then it moved.

The Bone-Singer descended along the chain toward the fifth level, its hooked legs finding purchase against the vertical wall as easily as if it were walking across the ground.

The girl was still screaming when it reached her. She stumbled backward, trying to get away. One of the creature's legs shot forward. The hooked claw caught her and lifted her from the ground.

For a moment, Rem could see her struggling beneath the creature's massive body.

Then she disappeared from view.

Her screaming stopped.

A wet, rhythmic crushing sound filled the crypt.

Nobody moved.

The Bone-Singer was eating.

It was awake.