Chương 104: 17 - NEVER ASK ME THAT

Two weeks had passed. At least, T'balt thought it had been two weeks. It was hard to tell in a room with no windows, no clock, no sunlight, no moonlight, and no mercy from the usual little annoyances that made time feel like time. No hunger. No thirst. No tired eyes. No aching bladder. No stomach growling in the dark. Nothing. Just grey walls, a steel door, and the same four people breathing the same stale air that never seemed to run out. At first, they had treated it like a problem. Problems could be solved.

T'balt had pressed his ear to the door, checked the seams, run his fingers along the floor, tested the walls for cracks, kicked the metal until his heel went numb. Cannon had tried to ram it once, messed up foot and all, and only managed to hurt his shoulder. Ellie had searched every inch with the desperate focus to avoid the boredom. Acelin had helped until helping became sitting quietly and staring at nothing. Now, they were past problem-solving. They were in the part after.

T'balt sat with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up, staring at his empty hands. The woman had taken everything. Their loot. His notebook. That bothered him more than it should've. He could lose food. He could lose sleep. He could lose a body and had done so plenty of times already. But his notes were the one thing that made all of this feel less like madness. Proof that his mind wasn't just spilling out of him every time the world bent backward.

"Do you see anything?" Ellie asked. Her voice sounded strange after so much silence. Not hoarse. They didn't get hoarse. Just smaller than usual. Cannon was lying flat on the floor with one arm behind his head, staring up at the ceiling like it might eventually say something interesting.

"What?"

"When you died." Acelin looked over from the corner. Cannon didn't answer right away. T'balt watched his face, trying to guess which version of Cannon would respond. The joking one. The honest one. Finally, Cannon said, "Not really." Ellie turned toward him.

"Not really?"

"I mean, the getting killed part made me see all kinds of things. Wouldn't recommend it. One star. Terrible service. But the actual dying?" He blinked.

"It was like blinking." T'balt lowered his eyes. Cannon kept staring at the ceiling.

"People always say your life flashes before your eyes, right? It kind of did, but not like a movie. More like… I knew I was done. I knew everything was over. Then I opened my eyes, and there you all were. Not even a glimpse." Ellie looked disappointed in a way that made T'balt feel guilty, even though he hadn't been the one to answer.

"So there was nothing?"

"I didn't say that." Cannon sat up slowly.

"I said I didn't see anything. It felt more like a nap than dying, to be honest." Ellie wrapped her arms around herself.

"I wonder about it sometimes."

"Death?"

"Our souls." She looked at T'balt, though not quite at his eyes.

"When he Redeems. When everything starts over. I wonder what happens to us. I wonder if God holds us somewhere until he comes back around, or if we're just…" Her mouth twitched like she hated the word before she said it.

"Copies." Acelin hugged his knees tighter. Cannon smiled.

"Still trying to make all this fit with the church?"

"I'm trying to make it fit with anything."

"Fair." He rubbed the back of his head.

"Sorry. I wish I had something better for you. But I've pretty much concluded I don't know a damn thing about what's going on up there. Or down here. Or sideways, wherever T'balt keeps sending us." T'balt didn't smile. Ellie looked to Acelin, trying to keep tabs on the boy's spiritual education or whatever he had been getting.

"What do you think?" The boy shrugged.

"I believe in T'balt." Ellie's face tightened.

"Don't do that." Acelin blinked.

"Do what?"

"Don't make him into that." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"I didn't."

"Yes, you did." She sat up straighter.

"T'balt has power. A lot of it. But he's still a man." Acelin looked at T'balt, then back at her.

"If that were true, we wouldn't do everything he says." No one answered that. The room seemed to shrink around them. Acelin continued, quieter now.

"That's why we're here, right? We followed him. He said this was where we might find answers. So we followed him, and now we're trapped in a basement forever." T'balt felt the words land one at a time. Not cruelly. That was worse. Acelin wasn't trying to hurt him. He was just saying the thing everyone else had been kind enough not to say.

"You're right," T'balt said.

"I should've known better. I walked us into this, too confident that I could wiggle my way out of it somehow. I'll do better next time." Cannon slowly sat up all the way.

"Next time?" T'balt looked at each of them.

"Yeah." Then he said it.

"I need you all to do me a favor." Ellie's expression changed first, like some part of her knew before the words came.

"I need one of you to kill me." Acelin went pale.

"What?"

"You're joking," Ellie said immediately.

"I'm not. Listen to me."

"No," Ellie repeated.

"I'm not listening to that."

"We're soft-locked," T'balt said, forcing his voice to stay calm.

"That's what this is. She took our loot, put need nullification on us, locked us in a room, and left. She doesn't have to come back. She doesn't have to feed us. She doesn't have to check on us. This is a Redeemer trap." Acelin shook his head.

"But she could come back."

"She hasn't."

"It's only been—""We don't even know how long it's been."

"But maybe—""Acelin." T'balt hated how sharp he sounded, but he couldn't stop.

"She's not coming back." The boy fell silent. T'balt looked to Cannon.

"It makes the most sense if you do it." The big man laughed once. Not because it was funny.

"No."

"Cannon."

"No."

"You don't have to make it dramatic. Just break my neck. Bash my head against the wall. Choke me if you have to."

"Listen to yourself," Ellie said.

"I am listening to myself."

"You're asking us to murder you."

"I'm asking you to send me back." T'balt stood.

"We could be here for years. Decades. Forever. Or I can reset right now. And stop this situation from getting out of hand in the first place." Ellie stood with him.

"And what do you think happens to us after we do that?"

"You won't remember it." Her eyes sharpened.

"That's supposed to make it better?"

"It means you don't have to carry it."

"What if I don't want to forget?" That stopped him. Ellie's voice shook, but she didn't look away.

"You never understand that part. You think forgetting is mercy because you're the only one who remembers enough to suffer. But we are still people while it's happening. Right now, we're people. Cannon is a person. Acelin is a person. I am a person. And you're asking us to do something monstrous because later, maybe, some other version of us won't remember." T'balt rubbed his face.

"I've done it dozens of times. It works the same every time. If you're worried about me, I'll be fine. The pain lasts a second. Less than that. Cannon said it. It's like blinking. The only difference is I wake up somewhere else." Cannon looked away. T'balt pointed at him.

"Tell her." Cannon didn't answer.

"Tell her." Cannon's jaw tightened.

"Don't drag me into your gallows speech." T'balt's hand dropped. Ellie stepped closer.

"You have been doing this for so long that death has become a door to you. But to me, Murder is still a sin. It's still murder. Even if it's you. Especially if it's you. So please don't ask. You don't know what you're asking." T'balt felt something twist in him. He softened his voice.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that."

"You shouldn't have said it at all," Ellie said. They stood in silence for a long moment. Then T'balt said, "Alright. I'll figure out a way to do it myself."

"That's not what she meant either," Cannon said. Acelin spoke up meekly.

"Please stop fighting."

"I'm not fighting," T'balt said.

"I'm waiting for a better solution." He looked at Ellie. She had none. He looked at Cannon. Nothing. Acelin just stared at the floor. T'balt nodded bitterly.

"That's what I thought." Ellie's eyes narrowed.

"Don't do that."

"You wanted to know what I go through. This is what I go through. Impossible choice after impossible choice until one finally works. I know it's not ideal, but I do this so we can get one iteration where we all grow old. Until then, I just need you all to listen to me."

"So we just watch you die," Ellie said, "so you can figure it out some other time?" T'balt's voice came out tired.

"Yeah." Her face changed then. Not anger. Something colder.

"Do you even know what happens to us when you die?" He frowned.

"What?"

"It's a simple question."

"We reset."

"How do you know?"

"Because that's how it works."

"How do you know?" He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Ellie took one step closer.

"How do you know that when you kill yourself, you're not just leaving me, Cannon, and Acelin here with a rotting fucking corpse while you live it up in some other life?" The room went dead quiet. T'balt stared at her. He wanted to answer. He searched for one. A note. A rule. Something Monan had said. Something he'd seen. Some proof carved into the bones of the world. He had nothing. Ellie's voice lowered.

"Only God knows that answer." T'balt looked away. She wiped at her face with the heel of her hand.

"I love you. But never ask me that again. Never ask any of us that again." He nodded once. Not because he agreed. Because there was nothing else he could say. They sat back down after that, though no one really settled. Cannon leaned against the wall. Acelin curled beside him. Ellie sat farthest from T'balt, and he deserved that. He kept staring at the steel door, trying not to think of all the ways he might still manage it. The wall. His own hands. Enough force. Enough patience. Then something clicked.

All four of them froze. The steel door groaned open. Ellie grabbed Acelin and pulled him behind her. T'balt moved without thinking, putting himself between them and the doorway. A woman stepped inside, and they were all ready to pummel her at first sight. But they stopped when they saw that it wasn't the woman in the gas mask. Someone else entirely. This one had no pistol raised. No stiff, mechanical menace. Her hands were visible, and her face had a smile on it. At least it started that way.

The woman lifted both hands.

"Wait." T'balt's voice came out rough.

"Who are you?" She looked at the four of them, then at the grey walls, then back to him.

"I'm here to let you out."