"So," Rook whispered, arms behind his head, balanced perfectly on a railing beam overhead, "what kind of morally ambiguous chaos are we getting into today?"
Jace didn't answer.
He lay flat against the cold grating, staring at a flickering pipe light.
No scheming. No games.
Just the silence of exhaustion.
Jace:"Honestly? Nothing. I'm tapped out, man."
Rook (mock gasp):"Are you… retiring? From being you?"
Jace (eyes still open):"Maybe I'm done being a problem for five minutes. Just gonna sit here. Let the trench collapse on someone else's head for once."
Rook:"Touching. You've become a pacifist philosopher."
Jace:"I've become tired."
The next day, the hot water line broke.
It hadn't broken in months. Doss had jury-rigged it to a bypass loop that fed into the sleeping quarters, a rare luxury in a place built to kill you. The steam pipe burst at 6:02 a.m. sharp. Boiled two sleepers through their blankets.
Day two: the ventilation pulse slowed. Oxygen thinned. People woke up gasping.
Ferrin's maps blew away down a maintenance shaft after an unprompted gust of wind whipped through the sealed corridor.
By noon, the east corridor—the one used for food runs—collapsed. No noise. Just gone.
Day three, the rations started rotting. Even sealed ones. Dried meat turned green. The broth grew mold inside the packet.
Doss swore he saw insects forming out of the rust in the corner of his tent.
Yasmin snapped on a young recruit for sneezing too loud.
Auren walked the perimeter that night and didn't say a word to anyone.
Jace didn't move much during those days.
He sat. He watched.
Sometimes threw stones into old coolant tanks just to hear them ping.
Laziel stopped talking to him. She didn't sit near him anymore. Just gave a curt nod in passing like he was an assignment she'd handed in and moved on from.
Day Four.
Auren ordered a full shutdown of unnecessary machinery. Lights flickered off section by section until the camp was dark as pitch, with only one faint orb over the map room left running.
That night, the heaters failed.
And frost formed inside people's throats.
Day Five.
They gathered.
The "tent" was a composite tarp dome reinforced with metal beams and melted scaffold poles. It sat at the dead center of the camp. It hadn't been used in weeks. But tonight, every able survivor was inside.
Jace was last to arrive.
Didn't sit.
Just leaned against the wall near the edge of the tent's curve, arms folded, hood up.
Rook (whispering beside him):"Ooooh. Is this the intervention arc?"
Jace:"Feels more like a town hall right before someone gets stoned."
Auren stood at the center. Pale. Poised. Still in his pristine boots.
Around him were Ferrin, holding what was left of his map in one hand and a half-burned oxygen sensor in the other. Yasmin, arms folded, blood on her knuckles. Doss, twitching, mumbling, eyes darting. A few others Jace hadn't spoken to yet.
Auren:"Let's speak plainly."
No one interrupted.
Auren:"The trench is changing. We've all felt it. Seen it. Whatever's happening, it isn't natural decay. It's pressure. Cursed, reactive pressure."
Murmurs rippled.
Ferrin:"It started after the food run. Day after those two newcomers arrived."
Eyes flicked toward Laziel and Jace.
Laziel stood near the others, close to Auren's circle.
Laziel:"Then maybe it's me."
Yasmin:"No. You've been in the field. You helped keep the pressure plates stable last week. You've saved lives."
Rook (to Jace):"She just threw you under the horse."
Jace (softly):"She was never on my horse."
Doss:"The static's wrong. It buzzes when he walks past. I swear on my mother's spine, it buzzes."
Unknown voice from the back:"We didn't lose a corridor in three weeks before he showed up."
Another voice:"Rations spoiled the night after he joined the fire circle."
Third voice:"We're cursed. It's the curse."
All heads turned.
Auren looked at Jace.
Measured. Controlled.
Auren:"Jace. Your curse. Is it permanent?"
Jace (without missing a beat):"Oh, I'm like herpes. I don't go away."
A few in the back half-laughed. Half.
Rook cracked up.
No one else smiled.
Auren (low):"You think this is funny?"
Jace:"No. But I don't think panic meetings solve rot, either."
Ferrin:"He's poisoning the trench. We need to cut it out before the whole thing collapses."
Yasmin:"We're running out of time. You all know it. It's getting worse."
Auren:"Enough. We're not executing him. That's crude. And it's exactly what the trench would want—carnage. Chaos."
Laziel (from the side, arms crossed):"So we let him destroy everything slower?"
Auren:"We don't kill him."
He turned to the others.
Auren:"We use him."
A low murmur spread through the room.
Auren:"The Mirror Room. If we can send a cursed individual in and gather data... observe what happens when unstable energy meets unstable environment..."
Yasmin (grim):"Use him as bait."
Ferrin:"As a test."
Jace (raising a hand):"Counterpoint. No."
Rook:"Oooh, unpopular opinion."
Auren (to Jace):"You said it yourself. You don't follow rules. Fine. Here's one you don't get to refuse."
...
They dragged him out the next morning.
No chains — not worth wasting.
Just armed escort and a brutal silence that said everything.
The Mirror Room sat at the edge of the known trench. Past the power conduits. Behind the reactor graveyard. Few had seen it.
None twice.
It was a metal door shaped like a vertical wound. Bent inward, etched with reflections that moved even in darkness.
When they opened it, it didn't make a sound.
Just breathed cold.
Auren (to the group):"If he returns… we'll decide then."
Rook (to Jace):"If you return, they'll throw a parade. With ropes."
Jace:"Least I'd get a float."
He stepped inside.
The door hissed shut.