The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 018: The Silver Key

"You've been difficult to find," Voss said.

He stood in the beam of dusk with his hands loose at his sides. Water ran in thin channels around his boots. He looked completely at ease, like a man waiting for a late guest at a dinner he had planned carefully.

"Captain Kessel," he added, with a small nod. "I'm sorry to see you here. You were an excellent officer."

"I still am," Rhea said. Her sword was out. "That's why I'm here."

"Hm." Voss's gaze moved on, past her, past Tomas, and came to rest on Ethan. "You smell of Stalker, Mr. Vale. Did you know? They can't tell you apart from their own. Five of mine broke ranks to follow you through half the ward. I admit I found it touching."

"Call them off."

"I don't think I will."

"Then tell me why." Ethan's voice came out rougher than he meant. He kept his hands where Voss could see them. "Tell me what the nine were for."

For the first time, something moved behind the pale eyes. It wasn't guilt. It looked more like patience wearing thin.

"Nine lives," Voss said, "against ten million. I don't expect you to like the arithmetic. Come with me quietly, and I will see to it that you suffer very little. I give you my word."

"Your word."

"It's the only thing I've never broken."

Ethan stared at him. The new sight sat across his eyes, quietly reading the man in front of him. *Patient. Amused.* But under it, at the edge of the glowing text, something else, a small flicker that the window didn't name. He understood what it was. Voss believed everything he was saying.

That made it so much worse.

"No," Ethan said.

"Pity." Voss raised one gloved hand. "*Heel.*"

It was a quiet word. It filled the chamber anyway.

From the dark mouth of the east channel, two Stalkers dropped into the water. One of them limped, the other had blood on its jaw. They came forward in a long rolling lope, and the old stone rang under their claws. Ethan's new sight tagged them as they moved.

**[Rift Stalker 117-B. Level 14. Collar integrity: 88%.]**

**[Rift Stalker 117-D. Level 13. Collar integrity: 91%.]**

*Not E.* The freed one was still back there, somewhere, in the ruins of the courtyard. Maybe dead. Maybe not.

"Take them," Voss said.

117-B leapt at Rhea. She met it with her blade and her stance, planted wide, her shoulders squared. A faint grey shimmer rolled down her arms. **Iron Guard.** The creature's claws struck her sword and skidded off, and she drove it back a full pace. 117-D went around her, low and fast, straight for Ethan.

He didn't run. There wasn't room.

*Scurry* kicked in and the world sped up. He dropped under the swinging arm, slid through a spray of cold water, and came up inside its reach. The Stalker's chest mouth was open. Teeth. Stink. He ignored all of it. He lunged for the creature's throat, the grey band sunk into black hide, and wrapped both hands around it.

The pain came all at once.

It wasn't his. It poured up his arms like river water through a broken dam. Four years of a hook behind the belly, a tug that never stopped. Hunger that was a kind of rope. A voice, a quiet, polite voice, saying *heel,* and the body obeying, over and over, until the obeying wasn't a thing it did but a thing it was.

Ethan gasped. Understanding rose in him like a tide.

**[Rift Stalker 117-D. Understanding: 58%. Break threshold reached.]**

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry. Let go."

He pulled.

Something snapped inside the grey metal. A hairline crack ran from one end of the band to the other, and the whole thing fell into the water in two halves. The Stalker froze, shuddering. Its chest mouth slowly closed.

**[Collar broken. Absorb bound will of Rift Stalker 117-D?]**

Behind him Voss said, very quietly, "No."

"Trace," Ethan croaked. His hands were still on the creature's throat. It hadn't moved. It was shaking.

**[Estimated trace: Obedience. A command spoken in the Voice of the Key causes a one-second hesitation.]**

**[Estimated gain: Unbind (Minor). Sever a binding by touch. Requires Understanding of 50% or more.]**

One second. It was the same price as the Flinch.

It was also the only way he would ever break a collar without a key.

"Yes," Ethan said.

The grey light poured through him. For a moment he was a creature on four legs, crouched in a black room with a rope on its throat. Then he was himself again. The Stalker beside him made a low, strange sound, almost a sigh, and stepped back through the water, shaking its head.

Voss stared.

Ethan had never seen the man's face change. Now it did. All the polite stillness went out of it in an instant, and what remained was white and cold and very, very angry.

"*Kneel,*" Voss said.

Ethan's knees buckled.

Not far. For one second, a heartbeat, the trace turned his legs to water and his whole body leaned toward that voice like a plant toward the sun. He caught himself on the Stalker's flank. It wasn't a Stalker anymore. It was a free animal, standing in the dark, breathing hard.

*One second.* The second passed.

He looked up.

"That's the cost," he said. His mouth was dry. "That's all it is."

"Then it's a good deal more than you can afford."

Voss drew his sword.

It came out of the scabbard with no sound at all. He was across the chamber before Ethan could think. The blade whipped in a thin silver curve, and Ethan got an arm up, and something hot ripped across his forearm. He yelled. He staggered back. Voss followed, a clean, patient, merciless shape.

Level 41. Level 3. The gap was a cliff.

**[Weakness: Throat. Voice fails if speech is disrupted.]**

"Rhea!" Ethan shouted. "His throat!"

She heard him. She was pinned by 117-B, one knee in the water. But her left hand was already at her belt, and what came out of it was a small, plain dagger, the same dagger she'd thrown through a closing gate three days ago.

She threw it again.

Voss turned his head a fraction. The dagger took him not in the throat but along the line of the jaw, a long red stripe from ear to chin, and he stumbled, a hand going to his neck.

"*Heel,*" he said. It came out as a croak.

117-B stopped. It had been in mid-lunge, over Rhea's blade. It hung there, trembling, as if a string had been cut, and then it drew back, confused, whining.

The freed Stalker moved.

It was a blur. It crossed the chamber in two bounds and hit Voss in the ribs with all four arms. The sword flew out of his hand. Both of them went into the wall, hard enough to crack stone.

Then everything was still.

Ethan stood in the water, bleeding from the forearm, and listened to his own heart. Rhea pulled herself upright. Tomas was a pale shape against the tunnel, gripping the old book. 117-B had retreated into the shadows and was watching.

Voss slid down the wall.

He sat in the water with one hand pressed to his ribs, red seeping between his fingers. His jaw was a ruin. His breath came in short, wet pulls. The freed Stalker stood over him, motionless, and did not strike.

Voss looked up at Ethan. For the first time since the boy had known him, the Inspector was not smiling.

"Do you know what you have done?" he rasped.