Chapter 98: A Room for Whoever Answers

I woke in my own bed and spent several seconds listening for the reason that felt wrong.

Nothing scraped outside the door. Nobody argued in a neighbouring room. The generator was off, the gates were secured, and the only sound came from water settling through pipes I had repaired.

This was the first shelter I had not merely occupied. I knew why the workshop tap worked, which hinge on the pedestrian gate needed replacing, and exactly how ugly the weld on the vehicle gate looked from both sides.

I spent the morning on repairs that mattered whether anyone answered the Call or not.

I climbed onto the reinforced section of workshop roof first and checked the ridge through the rifle scope. Nothing moved along the skyline, but the angle remained bad enough that Liora would object to it on principle. I marked two places where sheet-metal screens could break the sight line between the office and water tanks. They would not stop a proper bullet. They might stop someone from knowing when to fire one.

The generator’s fuel level matched my mark. Both tanks held pressure. The cleared strip along the southern fence showed no tracks except mine.

Two noisemaker wires had loosened in the wind. I tightened one, moved the other into the lee of a storage unit, and tested both. The first trial produced an occasional tap when the fence shifted. The second stayed silent until I crossed it and sent three brass bells into a hard metallic clatter.

The rifle came next. I stripped it under the workshop light, cleaned it, and rejected one magazine whose lip had begun to bend. Then I restocked the medical corner in the site office with what I had bought from Greyhaven.

Pell’s field cases went on their own shelf beside the copied map. I left them visible. A one-minute harvesting window was exactly the sort of detail a man forgot after putting the necessary equipment somewhere safe and out of sight.

Around midday, the cut across my palm reopened while I reset the pedestrian-gate hinge.

The hatch had torn it three days earlier, and climbing, carrying, and refusing to rest had prevented it from sealing properly. Blood spread across the heel of my hand.

My first instinct was to wrap it and finish the hinge.

I stopped instead. I cleaned the cut at the workshop sink, closed it properly with two adhesive sutures, and changed the dressing. Then I ate and sat beside the water tanks for half an hour without finding a smaller task to disguise as rest.

Liora had argued for full recovery. Teo had said a body under repair did not negotiate. Aria had carried my weight when I could no longer hide how badly I needed it.

Three people had explained the same thing. It would have been embarrassing to require a fourth.

In the afternoon, I prepared the site office for the Call.

The floor measured four metres by five. I cleared a three-metre section of chair, crates, drying rack, and tool chest. Nothing remained at head height or within immediate reach of a person arriving frightened. The rifle went onto visible wall hooks, pointed nowhere. My knives lay flat on the bench.

The office’s main door and the second exit through the adjoining washroom were unobstructed. I checked the washroom window as a third emergency option, then made sure the cold shower still ran. It did, resentfully.

I also moved the office mattress away from the arrival space and checked the shortest path from the cleared floor to the yard. A stranger who arrived fighting needed room. One who arrived injured needed six steps to the medical kit. One who arrived frightened needed to see that neither exit had a man standing in it.

I set out a covered jug of water, bread, smoked meat, a folded blanket, and clean clothes in several sizes. The medical kit remained open where it could be recognized.

The last Call had rolled B. The next could produce anyone from D to something I could not safely imagine. It might be a familiar woman or a stranger. Injured, hostile, terrified, armed, unable to understand me. The grade came first. The person came second.

Preparing for Liora would have been hope. Preparing for whoever arrived was responsibility.

I placed the Greyhaven papers and Archive notes inside a drawer. Then I rehearsed the shortest useful explanation: summoned across dimensions, no time passing at origin, unavoidable return, complete freedom to refuse me.

At five, I began cooking.

The smoked haunch I had bought in Greyhaven went into the pot with salt and an onion. It would take hours on a low flame. Nobody required that much food for an unpredictable arrival.

Whoever answered might be hungry.

I put a second cup beside the kettle and left it there.

The Call had begun its natural recovery the instant Aria returned to her refugee column. By late afternoon, the counter was close enough that I checked it too often and called the behaviour scheduling.

D remained the likeliest individual grade. Even if it rolled D, Liora’s preserved signature still received only an even chance. Wanting her did not change either stage.

The food remained sensible regardless.

I trained in the last light without pretending recovery meant inactivity. Controlled footwork across the yard. Twenty dry rifle mounts. One restrained circulation of the Origin Vessel Reforging Art.

Agility 17 settled the sights a fraction faster. Vitality 16 let the third cycle pass without the deep shaking that usually followed. When the next circulation began to feel wrong, I stopped rather than waiting for pain to make the decision undeniable.

After a cold shower and clean clothes, I sat at the workshop bench with the drowned-greenhouse map.

Approach without announcing displacement. Reach the submerged foundation through visibility measured in arm lengths. Cut blocks of root and soil intact. Seal each inside a minute. Withdraw while carrying heavier cases through the same water.

Predator’s Veil could not solve the first step. Neither could Grace or Senses. My notes ended with three possibilities: move without displacing water, survive being detected, or convince the water to report something else.

I carried the map into the site office and left it beside Pell’s cases. The pot simmered. The compound cooled around me.

Then the System opened.

[Blind Call natural recovery complete.]

[Blind Call Charges: 1/1.]

I looked at the cleared floor, the water, the blanket, and the food waiting under its lid.

Preparation was the only part I controlled.