The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 004: The Inspector

Ethan opened his mouth to answer and found he didn't have one.

"I don't know," he said. "It's always been that way. Since before I was old enough to test."

"Who told you it was a rule?"

"My uncle. Garrick." Saying the name left a bad taste. "He said the Crown ordered it. For dignity. So nobody gets embarrassed in front of their family."

Rhea repeated it under her breath. The Crown ordered it. Her jaw worked as if she were chewing something tough.

"Grey coat," she said. "Third row. Left before the end."

"You noticed."

"I notice a lot of things. It's most of the job." She wiped her palms on her trousers. They were shaking a little, which he hadn't expected from someone with Level 28 floating next to her name. "Okay. Stay quiet about that for now. The healer's coming. After that, a few people are going to ask you questions, and I don't want you to answer them like you're answering me."

"How should I answer?"

"Slowly."

The healer turned out to be an old man named Hollis with huge hands and a smell of mint and iron. He knelt, unwound the cloth, and made a face at the arm. Green light poured from his palms. It was warm, and it itched, and Ethan watched the ragged edges of the bite crawl together like wet clay being smoothed by a thumb.

"Odd," Hollis muttered. "Should be black around the edges by now. Monster saliva, you know. Your blood's running clean as a spring."

"Lucky," Ethan said.

"Lucky," Hollis agreed, and didn't sound like he believed it.

He dropped the bloody strip of cloak on the stones. Ethan's eyes went to it and stayed there. The smell reached him, sweet and thick, and his mouth started to water before he could stop it. His good hand curled against his thigh.

No.

He made himself look at the wall instead. At a crack in the mortar. At anything.

Rhea was watching him. She didn't say a word. She nudged the cloth away with her boot, and the smell thinned out.

When Hollis was done, a pink scar wrapped the forearm in four neat ridges. The status window blinked.

[Vitality: 74 / 100.]

"Can you stand?" Rhea asked.

He stood. His knees wobbled, then held.

Boots on the stairs again. Many of them this time, steady, in step. The iron gate groaned all the way up, and a line of men in charcoal coats came down into the lantern light. Silver chain at each collar. Sheathed swords with plain hilts. Four of them fanned out along the corridor without a word, like they had practiced it. The fifth stopped in front of Rhea.

He was tall, forty or so, with a clean-shaven face and short grey hair. His coat didn't have a speck of dust on it, and that was strange, because everyone else on those stairs had been coughing for ten minutes.

[Lucan Voss. Human. Level 41. Warden-Inspector. Surface attitude: Courteous.]

Surface. Ethan noticed the word.

"Captain Kessel," Voss said. His voice was pleasant and very quiet. "I'll take it from here."

"The tower guard has jurisdiction inside the tower, Inspector."

"Not when a seal breaks. That's in the charter." He smiled politely. "You know that."

Rhea said nothing, which was its own answer.

Voss looked down. His eyes were pale grey and slow. They went to Ethan's arm, the scar, the stained shirt, then back to his face, and they didn't hurry.

"You're the boy from the examination," he said. "Ethan Vale."

"Yes, sir."

"The null."

Ethan's face went hot. "Yes, sir."

"And you're alive."

"Yes, sir."

"That's unusual." Voss crouched, which put them at the same height. "Tell me about the creature."

Ethan told him. A lot of it was true. Black hide, four arms, the mouth in the chest, the teeth. How it had thrown him into the wall. How it had come at him and he had gotten lucky with a dropped blade. He kept the system out of it. Rhea's guards had already seen the empty stone where the body should have been, so he said the thing had gone to light and vanished.

Voss listened to every word without blinking.

And while Voss listened, something at the back of Ethan's skull started to hum.

It was the same feeling as before, the soft second heartbeat. Stalker's Instinct. It had picked up the shapes of the people standing near him, and one of them had a breath that was slow, deep, and perfectly even. No hitch when he spoke. No flutter when he lied, or when he asked. It was a breath that hadn't changed once since Ethan came down the stairs.

He had heard that rhythm already. On the landing above the gate, behind the iron bars, standing very still.

Ethan did not move. He did not look at the Inspector's chest, or his collar, or his hands. He looked at a point just past his ear and thought as loud as he could about nothing.

"One more thing," Voss said. "Did the creature carry anything? A device. A mark. Something metal."

The pocket on Ethan's right leg weighed about as much as a brick.

"It carried teeth," he said.

Behind Voss, Rhea coughed into her fist.

Voss's mouth twitched. It wasn't a smile, quite. "Fair enough." He stayed crouched a moment longer, and his gaze dropped, just for a second, to Ethan's pocket. Then it came back up. "I think you should come with us, Mr. Vale. A protective review. It's standard. You've been through a terrible shock, and the Wardens have good rooms and a physician. You'd be safe."

Ethan's stomach turned over.

"He's going home," Rhea said.

"Captain-"

"I'll walk him there myself. He lives in the lower north ward, and he's bleeding through a bandage." She stepped forward until she was shoulder to shoulder with Ethan. "He's a victim, Inspector. Not a suspect. Unless you're calling him a suspect. Because if you are, I'd like to put that in my report, along with the time, and who said it, and in what words."

The corridor was quiet. One of the Wardens shifted his weight.

Voss stood up slowly. He brushed his sleeve, though it wasn't dirty. His eyes moved between the two of them, and Ethan had the strange impression that he was adding something up.

"No," he said. "Of course not." He drew a small silver disc from inside his coat and held it out. A stylized key was stamped on one side. "If you remember anything, Mr. Vale. Any detail at all. Come and find me."

Ethan took it with his right hand. The metal was cold and perfectly smooth.

[Silver token. Enchantment detected. Function: unidentified.]

He didn't like the word detected. He didn't like how it sat in his palm, either, light as a coin, as if it were waiting for him to put it somewhere.

"Thank you, sir."

"Be careful in the lower wards. These are strange days."

Rhea put a hand under his elbow and steered him past the Wardens. Up the stairs, one step at a time. The gate that had cut him off from everyone hung open overhead, its bars black against the lantern light. Corin saluted as they went by, then looked at Ethan's face and forgot to lower his hand.

Ethan didn't turn around. He kept his eyes on Rhea's back. He kept the disc in his fist and his other hand away from his pocket, and he counted the stairs, because counting was still something he could do.

Twelve. Thirteen.

The metal band against his leg wasn't cold anymore. It was warm, and it was humming.