The drone of the pipes is the only constant.

  Until it isn't.

  A new sound intrudes, a wet, tearing rhythm that settles deep in my bones.

  The boy leads me on. He moves with a slow, pained effort, forcing his broken body upright.

  We step into a vast, circular chamber.

  In the centre, a huge iron screw turns in a pool of black filth. The boy ignores it. His attention is fixed on a chute high in the ceiling.

  He is waiting. His whole body is a question.

  Nora's mind stirs with a cold, clinical fascination for the machine. A problem of waste, solved with horrifying efficiency.

  There is a loud metal bang from above.

  A body falls.

  It is a man, I think. His limbs are twisted into the wrong shapes.

  He hits the iron screw with a heavy, wet thud.

  No clean snap of bone. Just a thick, wet grinding, as gristle and cloth are forced through the iron teeth.

  I watch the boy. The muscles in his neck stand out like cords. His one good eyebrow lowers. He does not flinch. He does not look away. He watches until the last scrap of the man's tunic is ground to nothing but scarlet threads in the black water.

  Only then does he move.

  He takes a step forward. His shoulders, usually hunched in pain or fear, are squared.

  He lowers his head in a slow bow.

  He turns from the machine.

  His foot slides on something wet and dark, and his leg, already bent at an unnatural angle, gives way. A low grunt escapes him as he falls forward.

  I lunge to catch him. His bulk meets my arms. Something in my hip gives a dry, splintering crack.

  This body is broken.

  My arms are useless. Just two dry branches, their trembling a frantic protest. My will screams 'hold!', but the strength in my arms fractures, the muscles spasming in a useless, frantic reply. It's not enough. It will never be enough. His lurch is enough to break me.

  The pain is a whiteout, erasing the world. A single, clear image punches through. Him, finding his footing.

  As he scrambles to right himself, his mass leaves my arms. The frantic protest of my muscles has nothing left to fight, and the shaking becomes a hollow, uncontrolled tremor.

  He turns to me, his face full of a dawning concern.

  He follows the motion down to my hand. The shaking has not stopped.

  He sees the damp sheen on my forehead, the tightness of my jaw.

  His concern is gone, replaced by the sad, knowing calm of a boy who has just inherited a heavy load.

  He takes a half-step back, placing his broken body between me and the open tunnel.

  He turns down a narrow passage I had not even noticed, and pulls back a sheet of heavy iron, revealing an opening.

  The air inside smells of charcoal and a faint, animal warmth. This is his home. Dozens of faces stare at me from the stone walls, drawn with a sure and loving hand.

  An alcove is carved into the far wall, and it glows. A high pipe bears a clean puncture, weeping a gentle, misty light. And in the centre of that soft glow is a small huddle of Dregs, pressed together.

  He ignores me for a moment, his first duty to his strange flock. He kneels before the Dregs, and moves to the largest of the creatures, its skin a polished black.

  With a gentleness that seems impossible for his knotted hands, he wipes a smear of green moss from its back. Then he reaches into the pouch at his hip and pulls out a smooth river stone.

  He places the stone in the centre of their huddle. They shift towards it at once, their slug-like bodies pressing against its cool surface. A soft sound rises from them, a low, contented cooing. It is the sound of a family at peace.

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  While he tends to his flock, I glance at the walls. To the charcoal faces. At first, they are just faces. Then I see the details. A scar above an eye. The specific way a woman's hair curls.

  Each face is a life he has refused to let this place erase.

  My eyes find a blank space on the stone, an unfinished face. A man's strong jawline, the beginnings of a thick neck.

  My breath catches. I know that man. It is Derrick. The tavern keeper from home. The man who was taken. The man who vanished.

  The boy sees me looking. He picks up a piece of charcoal from a small ledge and stands before the unfinished face. His hand moves with a sureness that his legs do not possess.

  But as he tries to capture Derrick's mouth, a low growl builds in his throat, the sound of a memory dying. His hand, so sure a moment ago, falters. The charcoal smears, a black wound where a mouth should be. He is trying to draw a smile he can no longer remember.

  He scrubs the drawing away with the heel of his hand, leaving a grey smudge on the stone.

  The charcoal slips from his fingers and clatters on the stone floor.

  He stares at the grey smudge, then lifts his eyes to mine, but only for a moment before they slide away, finding the floor instead.

  He picks up the charcoal again and turns to a clean patch of stone beside the smudge. With a new, delicate touch, he begins to draw my eyes. I see it in the set of his shoulders, in the concentration on his ruined face. A quiet, desperate promise. You will not be a smudge of grey on a wall.

  I look away from my emerging face to the one beside the grey smudge of Derrick. This portrait is whole. It is the face of a young man, drawn with a love so fierce it seems to have been carved into the stone itself. His eyes are kind, but his jaw is set with stubbornness. Nora's library of memories offers no name for him. He is just a stranger.

  The boy follows my line of sight and stops drawing. For a moment, the tight, pained lines around his mouth ease.

  He points at the portrait, his misshapen finger lingering on the stone. Then, his hand, balled into a gentle fist, comes to rest over his heart. He thumps it twice.

  Leaning forward, he opens his mouth, his whole body bunched with desperate effort, trying to force something from the ruins of his throat. A sound emerges. A dry, rasping catastrophe.

  "Eee... Lye..."

  The pain it must cost him to make even that small noise. My hand wants to reach out, to rest on his shoulder. I force it to stay still.

  I nod, to let him know he doesn't have to try, that I see his pain.

  It is the worst thing I could have done.

  The light in his eyes dies. He sees my pity, not my understanding. His shoulders slump. He looks at the face on the wall, then at the charcoal in his hand. He sets it down on the ledge.

  As he turns away, a fierce, protective warmth ignites in my chest. It wars with Nora's quiet empathy, a sudden, possessive heat that feels like it belongs to a stranger. The conflict is a physical agony. My hip gives a sharp, grinding crack, and I cry out, stumbling to the floor.

  The boy watches me, and in his eyes, I see myself. A heap of trembling bones on the floor.

  He does not try to touch me. He seems to understand that touch would not help. Instead, he turns to a pile of rags in the corner of the room. He pats it once.

  I crawl to it. I let my weary body sink into the rags.

  It is a poor bed. And yet, a part of me, the old woman whose bones I wear, knows that it is the kindest one she has ever known.

  I turn my head to watch him. He sits by the entrance, his back to me. His misshapen silhouette against the weak light is that of a watchman. I have grown used to the constant, low thrum of fear that lives in this body. Nora's fear. And for the first time, it is silent.

  I close my eyes. For Nora, sleep was always a battlefield, a place for old ghosts and memories to surface. But tonight, the ghosts are sleeping too. It becomes a quiet, dark peace, held in the care of a broken boy.

  Hours later, a gentle pressure on my shoulder lifts me from sleep. It is a soft, hesitant pressure, the touch of someone afraid to disturb the refuge they have woven from scraps.

  His face appears above me, a misshapen silhouette against the pipe's soft light. He meets my eyes, then gives a sharp nod toward the tunnel.

  It is time to go.

  For hours, we walk. We move through a blur of identical iron tunnels until something shifts. The drone of the Anima Conduits begins to falter, interrupted by the sound of dripping water. The iron walls give way to crumbling, ancient brickwork, slick with natural moss. We are leaving the new construction and entering the older, forgotten foundations of the world.

  We stop where the path splits.

  He points down one tunnel without hesitation. It is a tight, dark passage that seems to be actively swallowing the light. Every part of me recoils from it.

  I look to the other path. A soft, green light pulses along its walls.

  A lifetime of study surfaces in my mind. The alchemist I carry in my bones, stirs with a sudden, academic excitement. Nora knows that light. It is a rare moss, a sign of fresh air, a promise of a way out. It is the clear, correct, and safe choice.

  I look at the glowing, hopeful path, the logical way out. Then I look at him, still pointing down into the dark. Into the unknown. He stares at me, waiting for me to follow.

  Nora's certainty settles in my veins. This is the way.

  I turn towards the green light.

  Behind me, he makes a choked, panicked sound. His grip clamps onto my arm, startling in its strength. He pulls me back, his misshapen head shakes, a violent blur of motion. Over and over, he jabs a finger toward the dark tunnel.

  My instinct pulls me toward him, but Nora's certainty is a second set of muscles in my arm, fighting my own.

  This goes against all reason. Against everything I know. A death wish.

  The boy is a broken creature. The light is a fact.

  I look again at the glowing path. Then I look at him.

  His eyes hold a terrible knowledge. They are the eyes of someone who has seen the trap and lived.

  And in that certainty, my own logic shatters.

  I take his hand.

  His fingers, cold and misshapen, close around my own. He pulls me forward, into the dark.

  We walk until the darkness begins to thin. The boy stops in a square of grey daylight falling from a grate above. He looks up at the world he cannot have, then at me. Then he points back the way we came, to the home he has made in the dark.

  This is as far as he can go.

  "Come with me. We can find a cure," I say, knowing how empty the promise sounds.

  He gives a small, slow shake of his head. The brand on his flesh emits a soft pulse, a quiet answer to a question I did not ask. He is bound to this place.

  He raises a hand to his chest, then reaches for mine, pressing his fingers over my heart. His touch is so light it's barely a pressure.

  He nudges my leg. I pull myself up, squinting against the sudden brightness.

  I am standing in Greyhollow square. It is exactly as Nora remembers it, but the life has been bled from it. The square is full of people, but no one speaks.

  Then I see it.

  The missing person posters that once papered the notice board are all being taken down.

  Every last one.

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