Chương 53: The Voice That Knows How to Lie

The sound of water was real. It took Zayn almost ten minutes to accept that. Not because he couldn't hear it. Because in Rhel-Fosse, anything that looked like a solution first had to be treated like an assassination attempt with better presentation. He moved through a low tunnel, torch in one hand, dagger in the other. Smoke from the burning depot still clung to his throat. His stomach twisted in waves, sometimes hard enough to force him to stop against the wall, teeth clenched, breath broken.

The black rations had not fed him. They had negotiated an extremely fragile ceasefire with his body. He had gained enough not to collapse immediately, but every step reminded him that this victory had been signed in toxic ink. The tunnel sloped down again. Then the water appeared. A thin stream ran along a crack in the wall before vanishing into a hole in the floor. Not clear. Not pure. But moving. Cold. Cleaner than the dead puddles and metallic drips he had been drinking until now. Zayn stopped in front of it.

He looked at the water. Then the floor. Then the ceiling. Then the walls. Then the water again. No nearby values. No visible thread. No red mark. Which, naturally, proved nothing. He took out a tiny piece of black ration, dipped it in the water, then tossed it to the tunnel entrance. Nothing. He waited. Still nothing. Then he soaked the end of a strip of cloth in the water and pressed it against a pale little plant growing from a crack. The plant did not blacken. Did not shrivel.

Did not explode, which had become a surprisingly positive standard in his day. At last, he drank. The water was cold. Bad. But cold. For three seconds, it was almost happiness. Not great happiness. Not clean happiness. The happiness of an animal finally finding something the world had not yet had time to take away from it. He filled his canteen. Then he rinsed his mouth, his forearm, his flank as much as he could. The pain bit hard when the water touched his wounds, but he let it.

Clear pain was better than slow infection. Finally, he sat down against the wall. Just one minute. Only one. His body interpreted that as a declaration of independence and immediately tried to shut down. Zayn snapped awake. The torch had dimmed. He had no idea whether he had slept for ten seconds or twenty minutes. Bad. Very bad. He straightened at once, hand already on his dagger. Nothing in front of him. Then a voice spoke behind him.

"You should sleep." Lena. Soft. Tired. Exactly worried enough. Zayn closed his eyes. Not from emotion. From exhaustion.

"Of course," he muttered.

"And you should improve your repertoire." The voice did not answer immediately. Then it changed. Mira.

"He's starting to understand simple patterns." Zayn got to his feet. The torch trembled in his hand.

"Simple?" Wrong answer. Too late. Mira's voice came again, perfectly calm.

"You answer when someone touches your pride. Less when they touch your guilt. Almost never when they ask for help." Silence. Then, in Jonah's voice:"Which, let's be honest, sums up the problem pretty well." Zayn stayed still. He did not like this version. Not because it hurt. Because it was effective. The imitations were no longer begging. They were commenting. They were sorting through his reactions. They had stopped being only traps. They had become a mirror. Lena's voice returned:"You left Daera."

Then Harven's: This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"You used me." Then the messenger's:"Wai—" Zayn tightened his grip on the dagger. That unfinished sound lodged in the back of his neck like a splinter. The weaver knew where to press now. Not necessarily because it understood humans. Because it understood repetition. It was testing voices the way Zayn tested traps with stones, corpses, and little beasts. Each of them was learning the other. It was almost irritating to have finally found an interlocutor as filthy as he was.

Zayn's own voice came from the tunnel:"Not even one point." Zayn smiled. Very faintly.

"That one's true." A scratching answered from the left wall. Value. 9 Then another. 6 Small beasts, drawn by the voices or guided by them. Zayn backed toward the water crack. The right wall offered a shallow alcove. The wet ground could become slippery. He wedged his torch sideways between two stones, just enough to light the passage without having to hold it. The 9 came out first. It had a triangular head, long legs, and a swollen belly. The 6 stayed behind, more cautious. Zayn did not move.

Lena's voice whispered:"You're going to kill them." He did not answer. The 9 advanced. Zayn threw a piece of black ration into the water. The beast turned its head toward the splash. Not for long enough. It turned back to him. Smart. He sighed.

"Of course. Even the local rats have strategic training." The 9 sprang. Zayn sidestepped by half a step and let it slide across the wet stone. It hit the wall, spun at once, but he was already on it. Dagger in its back, knee on its thorax, hand over its mouth. The 6 tried to flee. He did not finish it. Not yet. He kept the 9 alive. It writhed. Its legs clawed at the stone. Its jaws snapped beneath his hand. Its pale eyes rolled in their sockets, searching for an angle, an exit, a chance. Zayn looked at the wall.

"Are you listening?" Silence. The beast thrashed harder. He pressed down a little more. Not enough to kill. Enough to make it squeal. The sound rang through the tunnel. The 6 froze at the entrance. In the wall, something vibrated. Not the 47. Not yet. But a reaction. Zayn eased the pressure. The squeal stopped. So did the vibration. He pressed again. Same reaction. He smiled without joy.

"There." Mira's voice asked:"What are you doing?" This time, he answered. Deliberately.

"I'm learning your language." The beast screamed louder under his hand. A black filament shot from a crack in the wall, seeking the source of the cry. Zayn was waiting for it. He cut the filament with the short blade stolen from the Cinders, then immediately pulled the beast back with him. The filament fell to the floor, twisted like a burned worm, then dried out. Information. The network reacted to certain cries from the creatures of the depths. Not out of compassion. Out of control.

The 9 was not a full relay, but its cry drew the connections. Perfect. Terrible. Useful. The weaver's voice changed. Elias's.

"You don't have to do this." Zayn lowered his eyes to the living beast under his hand. He could have answered that yes, he did. That he had to survive. That he needed to understand. That the mine gave him no choice. But those justifications smelled rotten now. He knew perfectly well he could have killed it faster. He also knew what he was doing worked. And between those two truths, the second weighed more. He pressed again until he provoked another scream. A second filament came out of the wall, lower this time.

Zayn did not cut it right away. He let it get closer to the beast, studying the direction, the angle, the speed. The filament was seeking its mouth. Not its heart. Not its eyes. The voice. The weaver worked through sound. Then Zayn cut. The beast was trembling now, out of strength. The 6 had disappeared. It did not matter. He had enough. He killed the 9. [Soul strength absorbed: +0] Nothing. But this nothing barely irritated him. Not this time. He had taken something else.

Lena's voice whispered:"You're becoming horrible." Zayn slowly wiped his blade clean.

"No." He raised his eyes toward the wall.

"I'm becoming precise." The silence that followed was different. Not absence. Restraint. For several seconds, the weaver did not speak again. Not with Lena. Not with Elias. Not with Jonah. Not with the dead. Zayn understood then that he had achieved something. Not frightened it, not really. Not yet. But he had given it a reason to stop playing only with voices. The weaver had just understood that every attempt at manipulation could also become data against it. At last. A little professional respect in this hole.

Zayn picked up his torch and followed the direction from which the second filament had come before it dried out completely. The crack it had emerged from led to a narrow passage masked by a layer of black dust. Without the filament, he probably would not have noticed it. He entered. The passage climbed slightly, then sloped down again. On the walls, old white scratches appeared here and there, almost erased. Not human. Not the weaver's. Farther down, he heard water again. And something else. Voices.

Not the weaver's imitations. Real murmurs, multiple, too faint to form complete sentences. Zayn dimmed the torch as much as possible, keeping only a low glow. He moved crouched until he reached the opening of the passage. A chamber stretched out before him. Wide. Low. Crossed by a more distinct underground stream. Around the water, bodies. Not corpses. Not all of them. Living creatures, pinned to the walls by black filaments. Small beasts. Two larger shapes.

A human perhaps, very anciently alive, too wrapped to identify. Above them, the values trembled. 3 5 8 2 14 1 Relays. Voice reserves. Things kept alive enough to be used. The weaver was not only a predator. It had a pantry of sounds. Zayn watched for a long time. Disgust came. Real disgust. But not pure. Because another part of him thought almost immediately: If I destroy this, it loses voices. Then: If I trigger this, it will come. Then: If I kill the densest ones myself… He rubbed his eyes.

Fatigue made thoughts lie closer together, like knives in a bag too full. He had to choose. Not morally. Strategically. If he freed the relays, they would probably die. If he killed them, he would weaken the weaver. If he left them, the weaver would keep speaking through them. If he made noise here, the 47 would probably come. If it came, Zayn was not sure he would survive. He picked up a stone. Threw it at the farthest relay. A small beast at 3. The impact made it squeal.

Immediately, three filaments from the ceiling stretched toward it. There. Automatic reaction. Zayn threw a second stone, this time at the main filament. Missed. The stone bounced off. The network shuddered. A voice came out of the chamber. Not Lena. Not Elias. An unknown voice.

"Mom…" Zayn froze. The voice was old, weak, probably taken from a child dead a long time ago—or from someone who had called that word before dying. The word crossed the air. Simple. Filthy. Effective. He felt a cold anger rise. Not because he was good. Because he hated the idea of someone using other people's words with such impunity. Hypocritical, maybe. He had used Harven. Daera. The beasts. The corpses. But he had not worn their voices. Not yet.

Maybe even he needed limits to keep believing the rest of the world was worse. He stepped into the chamber. Fast. Not toward the relays. Toward the first anchoring point in the ceiling. He climbed onto a stone, cut one filament, then another. The suspended bodies began to tremble. Voices burst all at once, too many of them.

"Help…"

"Don't leave…"

"I'm here…"

"Mom…"

"Elias…"

"Zayn…" The weaver felt the attack. The 47 appeared in the distance, rushing closer. Zayn sped up. He could not cut them all. So he chose the nodes. The beast at 14 served as a secondary center. He saw it in the way several filaments passed through its back before joining the others. He ran toward it. The creature lifted its head, too weak to attack, alive enough to suffer. He killed it with one strike to the nape. [Soul strength absorbed: +1] Current soul strength: 39 The network screamed. Not metaphorically.

All the voices broke at once. The filaments attached to the 14 blackened, then retracted. Three relays dropped to the ground. Two died immediately. The others convulsed. The 47 was arriving. Too fast. Zayn backed toward the opposite exit. Before leaving, he grabbed a filament that was still alive and knotted it around an old stone hook, pulling hard enough to jam part of the ceiling for a moment. A gamble. Like almost everything now. He threw himself into the passage just as the weaver entered the chamber.

Finally visible. Its gray silhouette appeared among the suspended bodies, stiffer than before, faster, the smile gone. It looked at the destroyed relays. Then at Zayn. No voice at first. Only a stare. For the first time, it was not playing. Zayn, panting, covered in blood, black water, and dust, raised two fingers in a mock salute from the passage entrance.

"You see?" He spat blood onto the floor.

"I can touch your things too." The weaver opened its mouth. All the dead voices tried to come out at once. But they broke apart. Too many relays cut. Too many nodes damaged. What came out was a warped, furious sound, almost animal. Zayn smiled. Not widely. Just enough. Then he ran. Behind him, the chamber of voices partially collapsed. Filaments lashed the walls. Stones fell. The weaver struck the passage with a new violence—more direct, less elegant. Good. Very good. It had stopped whispering.

Which meant it was beginning to lose patience. And in Rhel-Fosse, patience was the most dangerous weapon. Zayn had finally managed to hurt it.