SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The four of them caught her two hundred paces into the north passage, which meant they were fitter than they looked and stupider than they should have been. Rhosyn stopped running and turned around, and that alone was enough to make the front two slow down.

”That’s better.” The man in front had his weapon raised and his breathing under control. ”Keep your hands where I can see them. Nobody said anything about hurting you.”

Rhosyn only looked at him. He glanced back at the others, waiting for a laugh, and got half of one. ”Nothing? Fine. You can walk back with us quietly if that’s how you want to do it.”

Men like him liked to talk first. It made them think they still had control of what happened next. Rhosyn let him finish, then stepped forward.

Space folded between them and she appeared in front of him with her shoulder turning. Her fist caught him across the jaw before he could finish the word he was on, and he dropped hard against the stone.

The second man got his guard up. Rhosyn opened a small fold beside his elbow and let his own swing carry the arm through at the wrong angle. Something cracked, and he hit the floor screaming while she was moving past him.

The third backed away and shouted for the others. Rhosyn caught the haft of his weapon as she stepped inside his reach, tore it from his hands and snapped it across her forearm. She drove the broken end into his thigh and kept moving as he folded.

The fourth turned and ran. Rhosyn crossed the distance with another fold, swept his legs out from under him and let his own speed carry him shoulder-first into the wall.

It had taken eleven seconds. She checked all four beneath the buzzing lamps and made sure none of them were dead.

’Twelve Myrrhvale soldiers dead underground with no witnesses. Trafalgar said it himself four minutes ago.’

Four injured soldiers could still speak later. Four corpses would leave everyone else free to decide what had happened down here, and she had no intention of giving them that story. She tied the belt of the man with the ruined arm above the wound to slow the bleeding, then checked that the one by the wall was still breathing.

Letting one of them die now would only make things worse. Then she left, taking the north passage into the overflow gallery beneath the yards.

From there, it was one level up to the surface and then across into the third ring. She had walked the route four times and knew every turn.

The gate was down. It wasn’t guarded or locked against her specifically. The full pressure bulkhead had been lowered into place, the same way it would be during a drill or pressure fault, with the wheel turned all the way and the seal locked into the frame.

A card hung from a wire around the handwheel.

SECTOR CROSSING CLOSED. MAINTENANCE. FROM THE SIXTH HOUR.

Rhosyn stared at it for a few seconds. The sixth hour was mid-afternoon. She and Trafalgar hadn’t entered the passages until the ninth, which meant the crossing had been closed for three hours before they had even left the castle district.

She didn’t bother trying the wheel. A pressure bulkhead wasn’t an ordinary door, and she couldn’t fold through solid metal. She needed open space or somewhere she could see beyond, and there was nothing past the plate that she could reach.

Rhosyn turned and ran for the eastern crossing. Six minutes later, she found that one closed too, with the same bulkhead down and another card hanging from it in the same handwriting.

MAINTENANCE. FROM THE SIXTH HOUR.

Rhosyn put one hand against the cold metal and stayed there for a moment. Two crossings had been closed hours before they arrived.

Someone had come through in the middle of the afternoon, shut both of them, hung the notices and left. Nobody on this level had questioned why two pressure crossings needed maintenance on the same evening.

’They cleared the shifts first. Then they closed the ways out.’

That changed what this was. If Rhavel only wanted Trafalgar dead, he didn’t need any of this. Twenty soldiers, one commander and a sealed passage were more than enough.

The gates were for what came after. Nobody was supposed to leave this level tonight, and by the time anyone in the castle heard what had happened, the first version of the story would belong to whoever controlled the tunnels.

’They don’t just want him dead. They want to decide what everyone hears afterward.’

Rhosyn pulled her hand away from the bulkhead. There was one route left: the freight lift on the far side of the ring.

It was too large to seal this way and too important to close without half the port noticing. It should still be running, and if it wasn’t, then someone had planned more than two closed crossings.

She started counting the route in her head. Eleven hundred paces back through the yards, then two levels up and around the curve of the ring. After that came the transport tunnel, two checkpoints and the climb back into the castle district.

Even if all of that went cleanly, she still had to find Lyren di Myrrhvale somewhere inside a building with four hundred rooms.

Rhosyn counted the time once, then again because the first answer was worse than she wanted it to be.

Forty minutes, if nothing else went wrong. She had left Trafalgar in that chamber with close to twenty men and a commander.

Even taking the fastest route she knew, it would be at least forty minutes before she could bring a Myrrhvale witness back to him.

For the first time since leaving the chamber, Rhosyn thought about what forty minutes actually meant. Trafalgar had told her he would be fine, and she believed him. That didn’t mean nothing could happen to him.

There were too many men, too many exits closed, and somebody had prepared the whole thing hours before either of them knew they were walking into it. She pushed the thought away before it could slow her down.

There was no better route, no faster crossing and no one closer she trusted enough to bring into this. Rhosyn started running again, heading for the freight lift and the only way out they had left.