Chapter_26_Devour

The commotion beyond the water skin dragged them up onto the mound after midnight.

The tall recruit's voice was still stuck in Chen Jin's ear—"Not at the wall, sir. They're biting each other." He hadn't added a word, and he'd reported cleaner than anyone. Chen Jin climbed the broken bricks of the breach onto the north wall. He'd seen that dark shape on the far slope in daylight; Broken-Tooth had moved what it was watching closer. Tonight he meant to see what it was looking at, now that it had come nearer.

Lei Changgeng was already crouched at the foot of the wall, his rifle across his knees, the rail mallet at his side. The old soldier didn't look up. "You're here. What's up there isn't bugs climbing the wall."

"They're biting bugs," Chen Jin said.

"Half the night," Lei said, his voice pressed into the wind. "I've been a soldier my whole life. Never seen an appetite like that."

Chen Jin lay down behind the embrasure and looked out past the east culvert, across the water skin. Cloud smothered the moon, and the surface floated a pale gray. The bugs were packed on the shoal, not in formation, knotted into a ball. Broken-Tooth was at the heart of it, larger than the last time he'd seen it, its plates turning over layer on layer like bricks fresh from the kiln, still giving off heat. Its forelimbs pinned a Hound-class worm that was still kicking; Broken-Tooth's jaws closed, and the whole thing was severed at the neck, the fluid running down the seam of its carapace into the ditch at its feet.

Chen Jin pressed his eye to the wire mesh and looked out. It wasn't only Broken-Tooth biting. A few lone Hound-class worms got overturned by their own kind; other mouths wormed out of the seams and tugged their comrades' legs off, one by one, and swallowed them. The tall recruit was right—it wasn't at the wall. They'd broken their own ranks first. But the one who'd broken them was Broken-Tooth.

It didn't stop. The second, the third—every Hound-class worm that came within half a step of its front got dragged into its arms and taken apart. Chen Jin counted. Seven. Seven Hound-class worms, not one sent against the wall. All of them went into Broken-Tooth's belly.

Chen Jin stared at the ditch under Broken-Tooth. What had been swallowed hadn't wasted its shell—new plates pushed out across Broken-Tooth's back, seams still sticky with fluid that hadn't finished digesting. He remembered its earlier method: stacking bug corpses into ramps, padding the water line with live worms, never taking a gap, only building the wall a path up. Tonight it had turned that engineering on itself. What it ate was soldiers; what grew was armor.

Lei Changgeng lifted his rifle off his knees and worked the bolt three times, each time stopping on a loaded chamber. "I've seen bugs shed their skins," he said. "Never seen one shed its life. Grey Jaws, back when, had the smarts of a commander. This one's working its own flesh now. It's wilder than Grey Jaws, and it's more afraid—afraid enough to rewrite itself bigger."

"It's growing," Lei said, and he'd seen it too. "Not fattening. Changing bone."

The moment he finished, Chen Jin's panel lit up on its own.

[Warning: King-class evolution signal detected]

[Target: Broken-Tooth]

[Power rating: raised one tier]

[Recommendation: none]

The red text floated in his vision without a degree of warmth. Chen Jin watched that line—raised one tier—and the veins on the back of his hand slowly rose. He knew this system. Kill a bug, it paid. Save a life, it paid. Only what he couldn't afford did it hold back. It had never spoken first except to hand him numbers. Tonight was the first time the system had spoken first, and what it said was that the enemy had grown stronger.

Chen Jin reached out and let his knuckle touch the edge of the panel. He'd opened it countless times; every time, he'd asked for the count first, and the system had given it. Tonight it was reversed—the system had put the count in front of him, and he had no line in his own ledger to match it. It reported the enemy's tier, not his merit. He held on the three words Recommendation: none, and understood, suddenly, that the system had nothing either. This thing wasn't in its trade.

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Chen Jin counted the seven and ran a different tally in his head. The system logged ten points for a bug he killed, one for a life he saved—always only the accounts under his own hand. Those seven Hound-class worms out there, gone, and the system didn't note a word. It didn't count the enemy's losses, and it didn't count the enemy's gains. But Chen Jin did. He could reckon it clear enough: the tier Broken-Tooth had added tonight weighed more than the Embers he'd banked across thirty chapters.

Embers still sat at 1415, not a digit moved. The whole devouring beyond the wall, and the system logged nothing. It recognized only the Emperor's hand, not the fangs beyond the wall.

Chen Jin turned the panel's brightness down to its lowest and didn't close it. He thought back along the road Broken-Tooth had traveled. First sighting, a long howl from far off, and every light in the harbor went out. Then waves and shift changes, orderly as a regular army, one wave pressing up over the next. Then it paced the city, picking its ground, measuring the wall's weak points inch by inch. Last night it had summoned the swarm, the long howl three short and one long, and trampled the east culvert's water skin into its own road. Tonight it had skipped the step of learning and simply eaten itself a tier larger.

"It's learning," Chen Jin said. "When it finishes learning, it rewrites itself."

Lei spat. "Rewrite, then learn again. This thing isn't planning to spend its patience on us."

The tall recruit listened, the rifle stock against his chin, his hand a little unsteady. Chen Jin set his hand on the recruit's bolt and worked it three times with him. "Steady. It's eating its own. It's not at the wall."

"But once it's eaten," the tall recruit said, "what comes next won't be last night's thing."

Chen Jin didn't take that up. He watched Broken-Tooth's back plates beyond the water skin, that new layer turned out, cold in the pale light on the water. He thought of the rifle in the store, priced at two thousand one hundred, the one he'd reckoned over so many nights—his balance climbing from one thousand one hundred twenty-three to one thousand four hundred fifteen, still six hundred eighty-five short of that rifle, every night before sleep he'd dim the panel and think of that gun.

The rifle was still there. But what it had to stop had already outgrown a rifle.

The main objective still hung over him: Lin Yuan Holds—on the day the city broke, the living humans had to number ten thousand. Beheading Broken-Tooth was a Chapter Thirty matter; he knew that well enough. But what Chapter Thirty would have to face had been, last night, a mind that paced the city picking its ground. Tonight it was a body that grew itself larger. The day was still far. The size had arrived first.

For a moment no one on the mound spoke. The wind came off the water skin, carrying a little rot. Lei Changgeng picked up the rail mallet and struck the embrasure a second time. Hollow, and a second clank. "I've rung this thing my whole life," he said. "Always for the ears beyond the wall. Tonight's ring is for the ears on this side—so the men behind know Broken-Tooth changed its bone."

Chen Jin thought of the half-yard of hands during the day. Xiaosui had set Auntie Zhang's thimble-callused hands to the powder table, had taken Auntie Cui's cracked-shell basket away, emptied it, and set it back. She'd changed the colliery's inspection rule into a two-man check face to face, with a second chalk mark on the shell base. Three hundred and twelve rounds, loaded one by one into the magazines; Lei Changgeng shook each magazine to hear the sound and said checking a round was the same as checking a gun.

Da Liu had pressed the first reloaded round into his own magazine and said a thought only became a shot once it was in the magazine—that round was in some magazine on the wall now. What hands had loaded still couldn't stop the fangs beyond the wall when night came. But that was the human ledger. The system didn't log it. People kept it themselves.

The rot in the wind reminded him of something else: some nights in the city, the whole shelter talked in its sleep and turned over the words in its heart, then let go all at once—that thing spoke inside the city. Out beyond the wall, this one didn't speak. It gnawed its own bone. Two ledgers, one rule: neither meant to stop.

Wen Heng came up the wall in the dark, her medical case held low. She didn't ask much. She pinched each of the three men's ears in turn and added a line to the margin of her book. "If it's muffled," she said, "stay off the windward side for three days." Then she took the case and went back down, not looking at any of them twice.

Chen Jin looked at the panel once more. The red text was still lit. He said quietly, "I should've seen it. When it wasn't attacking, it wasn't resting. It was eating."

Only when the words were out did he hear how long that sentence had gone unpaid—from the day Broken-Tooth first paced the city picking its ground, he should have asked what that circuit was really for: was it reading the wall, or picking its meat?

At the end he looked at the panel. [Power rating: raised one tier]—the red text hadn't closed. It simply stood open in the night. Chen Jin turned the brightness to its lowest and didn't dim it out.

This line of text, he'd leave for the men at dawn to read.