The black water bit. Ty felt it through bone. That bothered him before the pain fully arrived. Pain had rules. Pain meant a nerve, a wound, a body trying to explain damage in the loudest language it owned. The water had no right to speak through bone, but it climbed his shins and chewed with tiny cold teeth anyway.
Behind him, JJ shouted his name. He kept moving. The flooded tunnel sloped down. Old lanterns hung from hooks in the wall, each one sealed in cloudy glass. Shapes moved behind them. Little things. Finger-sized. Some had faces pressed against the inside.
He looked away quickly. Looking felt like accepting.
"Ty!"
JJ splashed in after him. Of course she did. He turned.
"Get back on the cart."
"Stop making stupid destinations."
"Zunoder has my voice."
"And you have no plan."
"I have two sickles."
"That is not a plan. That is cutlery with confidence."
The line almost got him. Almost. Then the water rose another inch and something brushed his missing flesh where a calf should have been.
Omina landed behind JJ with Yun-Jin half held against her side. Heissman climbed down last, swore at the water, and held his half sword above his head like a man protecting the last dry thought in the world.
The cart clerk stayed on the rails.
"Customers who leave transit assume bite liability."
"Shut up," JJ said.
"Sponsor assumes tone liability."
Omina looked back.
"If we survive, I am writing you into a disciplinary report."
"My file is thicker than your law."
The cart slid away. Its bell rang twice, then vanished around the bend. Ty faced the flooded tunnel. The sign over the arch read NAME OFFICE, but the letters rearranged every few seconds.
NAME OFF ICE
NO FACE
MAIN COFFEE
Heissman stared at that last one.
"I miss coffee."
Yun-Jin coughed a laugh and immediately regretted it. Omina shifted her grip.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Can you walk without lying?"
Yun-Jin looked down at the water.
"No."
"Then lean."
She leaned. JJ watched them for half a second and then turned away before either woman could notice the look on her face. Ty noticed and wished the thought had missed him. The lower lane cut that moment short.
The first debt mask rose from the water twenty steps ahead. It had a human body made from bundled receipt paper, wet string, and gray hands. Its face was a flat white mask with a mouth drawn in red ink. The mouth smiled because somebody had painted it that way, not because it enjoyed anything.
Two more rose behind it. Then five. Then the lantern glass along the walls lit from within. Heissman lowered his sword.
"I assume those are not clerks."
Omina's aura gathered around her fingers.
"Collectors."
JJ's wrist panel crackled.
UNPAID NAME CONFLICT DETECTED
TEMPORARY COLLECTION AUTHORIZED
COLLATERAL: WITNESSES, BONE, SPONSOR CREDIT
"No," JJ said.
The first mask tilted its painted face. The voice that came out was Ty's.
"Tell Jade I am coming home first."
Ty moved. JJ expected rage. She got precision. He went low through the water, sickles crossed under the surface. The first cut took the mask's legs. The second opened its paper belly and spilled black ticket stubs into the flood.
The stubs floated, then crawled toward Ty. Omina snapped two fingers. Green fire swept across the water and burned the stubs to ash.
"Do not leave paperwork alive," she said.
"Useful rule," Heissman said, stabbing the second collector through the throat.
The mask turned around the blade. Its paper hands grabbed his wrist. Heissman went pale.
"It knows my school fees."
Yun-Jin's eyes sharpened. She pushed off Omina, slipped one hand under Heissman's elbow, and drove a narrow line of pink light through the mask's painted mouth. The collector split in half. Heissman stumbled back.
"Thank you."
"Do not make it strange."
"I make everything strange under duress."
JJ ducked as a collector lunged for her wrist panel. She slammed the panel against its face. Glass cracked. Pink light burst out. The collector froze with both hands around her arm. A claim prompt opened in the air.
SPONSOR COLLATERAL ACCEPTED
TRANSFER WITNESS?
"Absolutely not."
She drove her knee up into the paper ribs. It did nothing. Ty's sickle hooked the collector from behind and yanked it away from her.
"JJ, down."
She dropped. The sickle came across where her head had been and cut the mask in half. Its red mouth fell into the water still smiling. Ty stepped over it.
"You hurt?"
"I am wet, insulted, and my panel is trying to sell me. So normal."
"Good."
"Do not good me."
He looked past her. More collectors came out of the lanterns now, crawling through glass as if glass were a curtain. Each wore a different painted mouth. One spoke in Jade's voice.
"Ty?"
The tunnel went quiet in the wrong place. JJ saw the moment hit him. It was small. His left hand tightened on the sickle. Red fire pulled inward, away from the edges of his ribs. The water around his feet stopped steaming.
The collector used that pause. It darted low, too fast for wet paper, and slapped one hand against his skull. White ink spread across the bone. Ty ripped it away and cut it apart. Too late.
The ink had already written one crooked mark under his left eye socket. JJ reached him.
"What did it take?"
Ty touched the mark. A flake of bone came away with his finger. Omina saw it and cursed.
"It marked a syllable."
"Of what?" JJ asked.
Omina's answer never came. The tunnel answered instead.
TY HOCKENSON CLAIM CONTEST PENDING
CURRENT ACTIVE USER: FACE VESSEL
BONE PARTY DESIGNATION INCOMPLETE
Ty's fire came back wrong. Lower. Quieter. He looked at the flooded path ahead.
"Then we complete it."
The remaining collectors stopped. Every painted mouth turned toward the dark at the end of the tunnel. A new voice spoke from there. Zunoder's voice. Still Ty's. Still smiling.
"Please do. I want the crowd to know what to call the monster."
The lanterns went out. Something in the water opened a door under their feet.