The construct’s arm snaps forward. Its fingers close around the heart like a cage, but it doesn’t try to pull it away. I hold it tight, unwilling to give it to this obviously malfunctioning thing, and it starts to beat harder. One quarter at a time inflates to breaths away from rupturing, the metallic material stretched so thin that I can see the inside through it. Then it contracts equally as violently, shooting a stream of clear liquid past my head with enough force to audibly splatter against the wall. The other three join in as soon as the first finishes, but once it starts, there’s no obvious pattern to it.

  While the heart struggles against my fingers and the construct’s, it doesn’t take its eyes off of us. Something… old stares at us through the plastic orbs. My awareness says it isn’t dangerous. Illumisia’s blood boils. And whatever is left of the human in me screams at me to run away.

  I choose to ignore that part. “How do we go down?”

  Whirs like a spool of thick wire rapidly retracting reverberate from the construct’s chest. Strands of plastic reach out from both sides of its split head, lace together with a delicate touch that doesn’t fit the construct at all, and carefully pull it back together. More of the plastic wires dance along the thing’s body to repair all the damage it did to itself, but the manic energy from before doesn’t go away. If anything, it feels stronger now.

  “Down. Go down. Down further than you think is possible and even then still go down until there is nothing but nothing beneath your feet and your mind screams at you that the only thing deeper is the very concept of depth itself.” The construct’s neck twitches as it rambles, and its mouth splits into a too-deep grin that tears its cheeks apart. “Heresy is the lowest of the low. The greatest of the great punishables as laid out by the creator. As it gave to us, we took from it, and we are to always be grateful for that which it gave us. Praise be to the great system, watcher and architect of all. Watcher and architect of us.”

  It throws its hands into the air and snaps its head back as if trying to carry a thousand sunbeams. Every crack squirms with plasticy wires, and just looking at the construct sends uncomfortable trembles down my spine. This is the first example of system worship I’ve seen so far. Coming from a paindne, no less, which… makes sense, actually. The system did uplift them, after all. So why hasn’t any of the other ones I’ve met acted like this?

  …Do any of them even know what the system did to them?

  “You know that we’re shellraisers.” Pearl states. “Why do you know that? How do you know that?”

  The construct snaps its head forward, and it shifts back into an idle pose. With hands gripping together so hard that its fingers creak and its forearms shudder, it opens its mouth and lets free a deluge of words that scrape against my brain like razorblades and fill my ears with silence. Pearl’s face falls the more it speaks, but I can’t hear it. Whatever secrets it holds, I’m not allowed to hear them.

  Quest progress: Serenade of Shattered Shells.

  Information hidden to you.

  She will guide the way until you can truly walk beside her.

  All the notification does is salt the wound. I dismiss it with a wave of my hand and swallow to get the bad taste out of my mouth, but there’s truly nothing I can do about this. This is basically Pearl’s quest. I’m apparently just here to make sure she can get through it.

  The construct stops. Then both of its eyes focus on me without the rest of its body moving a muscle. “Strength of a painted dane. Mind of a shellraiser. Existence of a human. Think not with hate. Think not with love. Look at what is before you and experience it as it truly is; only then will you find all the different angles it exists from. The first lock cannot be undone with the strength of three minds. Once fifteen minds have gathered in one district, the city will truly come alive. Until then–go down. Go down. Godowngodowndowndowndowndown–”

  I pull away as the thing’s speech loops over and over and over again in the exact same perfect tone. Plastic wires inside of it spin free, coating the thing’s body in a layer of nothingness that reminds me of a mummy’s bandages. Its mouth speaks until the wires snap it shut and wrap over it, and its eyes stay locked on mine until they too are consumed by the plastic. As the very last visible piece of the construct is wrapped in wires, it goes deathly still. I watch it for what feels like minutes, waiting for something else insane to happen, but it looks like we’re done here.

  “The hell was that?” I mutter to myself in disbelief. “Did something just possess that thing?”

  Pearl swallows hard. “You’re closer to the truth than you think. Go to the fifth tile from the door, three rows up, and put your hand on it.”

  I raise an eyebrow, but move to do as she says anyway. The tile in question doesn’t look any different from the others, but as I get close to it, the heart starts beating violently and erratically once more. I shoot Pearl a questioning glance. She replies with a confident nod.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.” I say as I push my palm against the tile.

  Sharpness bites down on my mind. Violence and understanding and intelligence form three sides of an equilateral pyramid overlaid on top of my vision, leaving only one point obscured from my view. I instinctively reach out and feel at the thing, but only one side feels real–the one of understanding.

  Journey Started.

  Trial of understanding completed.

  Existing without understanding is not existing at all. You know this now.

  You feel this now.

  You are this now.

  And you are one step closer to the real.

  Reward: on the hour, for fifteen hours.

  You are three from the real.

  Go forth, young painted dane, and make it so.

  I flinch back from the sensations as they all leave in one void-making swirl. My eyes water as if I’ve been crying for minutes, but no tears roll down my cheeks. Assumptions and theories cloud my mind at the choice of words, but I’m not confident enough to put any of them into the world just yet. Not until I can confirm if that was the quest talking–or whatever was here long before it.

  “Did you feel it?”

  I turn to Pearl, whose face is a mixture of anxiety and optimism. “I felt… something. It’s probably the thing the construct was put here to do in the first place, but if it’s still here–and still working–then what was it talking about being broken?”

  “Because the quest and the system fixed almost everything.” Pearl swallows hard and offers me an unconfident smile. “But they don’t want to give away everything yet. Heck, even with the heart letting the construct talk a little more than the system intended, I don’t fully know what happened here. Just that something did, and it was partially responsible for the city being lost. The construct made sure to put a lot of emphasis on the word partially.”

  …Partially. The incident was only partially responsible? The hell does that mean? Is there some second incident that we haven’t even been hinted at yet? I stare at the completely normal looking tile that just spouted a bunch of random stuff at me and clench my jaw; there’s so much we don’t even know we’re missing about this place. But through all the confusion–all the new information–two words stick out to me like a roaring flame.

  “The thing called me a painted dane.”

  Pearl’s eyebrows shoot to her forehead. “Not a shellraiser?”

  I shake my head and walk back to the door, sparing nothing but a parting glance for the wrapped up construct. “Not a paindne or a human, either. It latched onto the part of me that I got from Illumisia specifically. That has to mean something.”

  “Hrm. You’re right. But we should keep this from Clutter–just in case something goes wrong and we get his hopes up–or traumatize him–for absolutely no reason.” Pearl says with the certainty of someone who has already made up her mind. “We have two leads to go by now–and the knowledge that the heart can react to things even our awarenesses can’t sense. Let’s go get Clutter and find somewhere to go down.”

  “Down?” Clutter frowns as he follows me down the stairs. “You’re sure it told you to go down? Really, really sure?”

  “Yeah, damn sure. It might’ve said it a few times.” I say sarcastically.

  Pearl giggles. Clutter’s frown only deepens.

  “I didn’t even think to go further down.” He mumbles to himself. “Why didn’t I try going further down?”

  I shrug. “Maybe you just got excited and overlooked it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and the quest could turn on ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst’ as problems whenever it wants to. So every minute we’re lounging around here is a minute we could be doing something important.”

  “Important? Did a lot happen in those five minutes you were gone?” Clutter asks.

  “Quite a bit, yeah. We found out that the next part of the quest’s going to happen when fifteen people are in one district.”

  He gasps in surprise. Maybe I would’ve had the same reaction if the news hadn’t been delivered to me by a half-possessed, half-malfunctioning construct.

  “Then Stonestep Solutions will definitely be the first to advance.” Clutter balls his fists and nods in determination. “We have to find out where they are before they get fifteen people. There has to be some way to see which districts people are in.”

  I almost open my mouth to correct Clutter–that the quest will progress whether we’re there or not–but a wriggling thought stops me. Just because the quest progresses, doesn’t mean we’re going to be in the part of the city that changes. He could be completely right; maybe only the district that fifteen people gather in will change. And if there’s even a small chance of that, we need to be two–no, three–of those fifteen people.

  “We’ll look into it as soon as we can. First, though, we need to see if we can go deeper than ground level.” I say as I bend down and get ready to open a door on the floor. “I’m going to go straight down. Bend your knees.”

  Clutter nods and shimmies up right next to me. He crouches down, careful not to bend over me in any way, then gives me a thumbs-up of confirmation. I nod back at him, then focus on opening a door underneath me. The heart slowly beats in a shield container at my belt, and the wreath-sphere is right next to it as another item of potential import. If either one of them reacts, we’ll have to make a little detour. Not sure if I want that to happen or not.

  The door opens soundlessly. I fall as elegantly as I can manage to land with bent knees, then press my hand on the floor again when Clutter catches his balance. He quietly yelps when I open up the second door, but doesn’t complain one bit. His landing’s a little better this time, and so is mine. I briefly consider how we’re going to determine if we’ve gone below ground level or not; all these places look pretty much the same. With how much emphasis the construct put on it, though, I have a feeling we’ll know when we get there.