Jiang's claws tore white lines through the dirt between stones.
The root beneath his breast dragged him toward the door while his cold legs supplied more friction than strength. Across the chamber, Aylin hung half upright from the line at her throat.
Devika caught Jiang's sling before his beak struck the iron loop.
"The cloth, not his body," she said. "Aylin, can you lower yourself?"
Aylin drove green light into a floor joint. The light held. Her boots came down, but the black root kept her leaning toward the sealed wood like a leash fastened behind her tongue.
Nerea smothered the sight rod under its cover.
Both roots vanished from view.
The roots kept pulling.
Martelli watched the sling cut into Devika's fingers. "The chain can hold the core long enough to separate them."
"The last one held you," Aylin rasped.
"Because the room supplied a copy where a living answer belonged."
Nerea put her boot against the lamp base before the bent door loop could dislodge it. "Who answers this time?"
Martelli looked at Aylin and then away. "Someone the trace has never entered. Someone who sees the core independently."
His gaze stopped on Nerea.
"I will answer what the rod shows," she said. "I answer nothing about you."
"That is safer for both of us."
Aylin kept one hand at her throat. "What happens when the core copies her answer?"
"The copy can repeat sound," Martelli said. "Nerea must name what she sees in the present. If the creature changes bodies, the chain stops at the named one."
"And if I see the wrong body?" Nerea asked.
"Then we bind the wrong thing. You keep the rod. I keep no vote."
Devika held the sling while checking the movement against Jiang's breast. His heart had resumed a steady beat, yet both feet remained numb at the edges and his shoulder dressing had opened again.
"No pressure hold," she said.
Jiang tapped the stone once with his right foot.
"You enter in the sling. Feet and beak stay free. I end the descent if your breathing loses its rhythm."
He gave a second tap.
Aylin kept her hands where he could see them. "Rear support, until the core is pinned or we retreat?"
One more tap accepted the limit.
Nerea took the front loop. Aylin took the rear, bracing her own root with green light wrapped around the floor joint. Devika moved to Martelli and offered her shoulder.
He reached for the wall instead.
"You may spend dignity or blood," she said. "The room has already priced both."
Martelli placed his unwounded arm across her shoulders.
Above them, Lucia changed the lamp. A narrow beam came down the stair and ended on the silver-bound door. Matthews fed the return line after it, keeping the rope clear of every blood drop.
Nerea freed the padded fork from the iron loop.
The door opened under the roots' pull.
Cold air came through first. It smelled of wet iron, old wax, and the seed cakes Gredudande had stolen from Aylin's memory. Beneath that sweetness waited a feather-drying draft with no living source.
Jiang flattened his feet against the sling.
The lower chamber narrowed like a wedge. Ordinary iron chains hung from its ceiling, part of a forgotten counterweight system whose wooden lift had rotted away. The hooded light gave each length a black twin on the walls.
Dozens of shadows swung.
The iron above them stayed still.
"It is moving the images," Nerea said.
"Then stop watching the walls," Jiang wanted to tell her.
He lowered his beak and scraped one claw across stone instead.
The first hanging chain carried no tremor through the floor. A second clicked overhead but left the joint beneath Jiang quiet. The third sent a faint pull through both webbed feet, not from its hanging weight but from something beneath the stone.
He tapped twice near its anchor.
Nerea lowered the lamp. Three false shadows leaned toward her arm. Jiang barked and struck the same joint with one claw.
"Below us," Aylin translated through her wounded voice. "The chain is being pulled from under the floor."
The black root tightened beneath Jiang's feathers.
His mark slid across skin without moving from its place. Cold pressure traveled around the silver recognition ring, trying to turn his breast toward the vibrating joint.
Nerea held out the padded fork. "Can he place this?"
"Ask him," Devika said.
Nerea laid the padded shaft across the sling within beak reach. "Joint only. Release if the rod or shadows move toward you."
Jiang caught it sideways.
The fork weighed little in human hands and far too much at the end of his neck. Its padding tasted of old cotton. He let the sling carry his breast, used both feet to keep his body straight, and lowered the fork between the iron anchor and stone.
Something bit the other end.
The shaft jerked hard enough to pull his beak open. Jiang released it before the motion reached his injured shoulder.
The fork remained wedged beneath the anchor.
Every false chain shadow turned toward that point.
"Now I have one location," Nerea said.
"You need the body," Martelli replied.
He removed the gauze from his wounded hand.
Devika seized his wrist. "You said one use. Tell me what ends it."
"The answer ends. The blood leaves silver. Or I lose the hand."
"Those are three different emergencies."
"Today they may arrive together."
Martelli waited until she released him. Then he planted his bleeding palm against the nearest silver strip on the open door.
Blood filled the worn groove.
Gold found the wound before it found the core.
Light traveled beneath Martelli's skin, following the bruised links around his wrist. His fingers curled halfway and remained there. The final joints no longer answered his effort.
He spoke through the pain. "I spend this blood on the thing I saw beneath the chain."
Gredudande answered in his voice from every wall.
"I spend this blood."
No gold moved toward the copy.
Nerea uncovered the sight rod.
The aperture swung toward Jiang. Braced beneath Nerea's scarred hand, it crossed the fork and poured dark silver into the vibrating joint. Around one clenched knot, the stone thinned to nothing.
It resembled no heart Jiang knew. Black cords folded around a hollow center, tightening with Aylin's breath and Jiang's pulse. One side wore a thin green edge. The other carried the same dark silver as the ring beneath Jiang's feathers.
Nerea's scarred fingers shook against the rod.
Martelli held the opening on one strained breath.
She wanted Martelli's lie to cost no more of her body. Leaving him unanswered would make Jiang and Aylin pay instead. Accepting his need as proof would repeat the mistake that had cut her hand.
Nerea chose the thing she had tested.
"I see a hollow knot below the iron anchor," she said. "It has no pulse, and it is pulling two living bodies. Hold that."
The answer left her own breath.
Gold crossed the threshold.
One end locked around the black knot Nerea had named. The other entered Martelli's wounded palm. No link touched Aylin, Jiang, or the copied voices filling the walls.
The roots went slack.
Jiang sagged into the sling. Aylin dropped to both knees, one hand at her throat and the other still holding his rear support.
Martelli's right hand darkened from palm to wrist.
Devika wrapped both hands around his forearm, keeping pressure away from the glowing wound. "Can you feel your fingers?"
"I can feel two fingers."
"Name the two fingers."
He looked down as though sight could answer sensation. "I am guessing."
The bound core began to turn.
Black cords peeled away from its hollow center and climbed the golden links. Gredudande could not escape the named body, so it dressed that body in every memory the recognition ring had shown it.
A human shadow rose behind the iron chains.
Legs came first, long enough to step over Jiang. A wrinkled office shirt gathered around a narrow chest. Hands opened at the ends of arms Jiang remembered using to type, cook, shave, and hold a phone against his ear.
His old face formed last.
The counterfeit looked down at the emperor penguin in the sling.
It opened Jiang's human hand.
"You could call her with this," it said in his voice.