Chapter 18: Doors (Part 1)

Milo grabbed the Iron Turnhook off the ground.

He had given himself two minutes of rest beforehand.

This time, the current burned a little less, and the cramp, though it spread over his whole body, had less bite to it. Wards were temporary barriers. Since nobody consecrating a school display ever accounted for a locked-in boy with nothing but time and a high pain ceiling, they were budgeted for average students.

If one clung on beyond that budget, the barrier would exhaust itself.

"Progress toward Day?"

[ Progress toward Day: 11.1% ] 𓂃🖋

The sandals had taken Hour two thirds of the way and left Day at a ninth.

His meals would have to get bigger.

He loosened two fingers, felt the hook start to slip, and clamped them back down. If he could think about how much it hurt, it couldn’t hurt that much.

Each breath came sour with iron and carrot, over a throat the sandals had rubbed raw.

"Day’s development?"

[ Day Development ]

[ Consultation ]

[ Permits the User to pose elaborate questions. Answers draw only upon what the User has discovered and what the pages have witnessed through him. ] 𓂃🖋

"So that’s when you stop being an asshole, huh."

Still, it could explain only what he’d already seen, and he could do that himself. He wasn’t eating the rest of the relic room and his new weapon for that.

Milo swung at the air with his new weapon, testing the handle now that it no longer agonized him. The heft answered every swing a beat late, tip-heavy, built for pulling burning thatch rather than fencing.

Maybe Seb would come at him again. All Milo needed was a chance to defend himself.

Grade, common. Longevity, Day! What else could a man desire?

By the time he calmed down, the Ward had nearly no effect left.

He went to work on actually getting out, starting with a look up at the top of the door.

Its emergency seals were darker along the top, where Mr. Cald had burned them with his ragged stick. That left a simple, locked door; an unremarkable obstacle.

After taking a step back and gripping the hook tighter, he drove it into the wood just below the keyhole.

Thwack!

The door creaked open on its own, a crater showing where the metal struck it.

The filtration hummed on, and no one came to collect the noise.

Milo had vomit and blood on his body. There was no explaining left for him to do now.

He could deny having the Plague all he liked, with carrot soup, blood and tears drying down his front speaking for themselves. He could not let anyone get a look at him, at all. One glimpse, and the whole sealed building would learn, floor by floor, where its Plague walked.

The baton’s outline glided along the ground floor, though the bowl on the locker stayed.

Mr. Cald’s nest was the next destination. He went down the middle of the corridor at full stride, all of his steps inaudible: no slap of a sole, no squeak.

"Can I view a list of my mercies?" he whispered.

The yellowed paper snapped open before him with a crackling rustle.

[ Still Step ] 𓂃🖋

"Right, that’s all... Can I turn it off when I want?"

[ Do you wish to permanentlydelete the Mercy of Still Step? ] 𓂃🖋

"NO!" he yelled. "I do not wish to permanently delete the Mercy of Still Step. I want it enabled. I’ll keep it."

His voice bounced off the lockers and came back to him twice before Milo clasped his free hand over his mouth. He waited, with the hook raised, for one of the doors to burst open on the boy yelling about mercies in an empty corridor.

None did.

[ Understood ] 𓂃🖋

Milo nearly stopped at the notice.

The sheet, any sane being would assume, was a soulless floating object. At times, like now, it would act as though it chose to be an asshole.

Could a paper understand?

He sped up, and slowed again just as quickly; his other sounds, like the rustle of clothes and his breathing, had no Mercy of their own.

After making sure he remembered the nest and the rough direction Mr. Cald took from it, Milo constructed a mental map of the building—a miracle, considering how rarely he took any path other than entry to class and class to dining hall. The gaps he padded out with guesswork.

Between him and the nearest staircase lay one straight corridor and a row of classroom doors. Each with its pane of glass.

He cleared the first pane on elbows and knees, the Turnhook laid flat over his forearms. Iron rang on tile at the lightest tap.

One such note would put a dozen faces at the glass above him. Every yard cost his ribs something, and he re-gripped the sweaty pole at each new door.

Milo pictured it at every pane: some student glancing over at exactly the wrong second and finding a boy crusted red and orange, armed with a hooked pole, creeping by on all fours. The Survey class would sound composed by comparison.

A bathroom he passed also had emergency seals on it, a place begging the question of what happened to the bladder of the locked students. A maintenance stack of old classroom desks and chairs draped in a paint-stiffened dropcloth piled by it, as useless as the room itself.

Under one of the last classes, muffled voices reached him. He went flat below the pane, and the murmur slowly sorted itself into words.

"My brother saw it. He’s in Survey."

"Shut up. You want it coming here?"

A ruler rapped the board twice, and the whispers scattered into the shuffle of a lesson resuming.

Rumors were spreading.

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Doors (Part 2: Finale)" ... ⤵︎ [!]