The Light Beneath the Shelf

“Stop,” Tirra said.

Oliver eased the throttle back. Mercy slowed along the narrow black route, while the smaller light behind them blinked once through the chamber’s distant opening.

Tirra had kept pace beside the engine since leaving the lever. Now she stood with one hand resting on the black line, looking over her shoulder. “It knocked when we passed.”

Oliver checked the gauge. The black route held steady beside the white and red ones. None of them pointed back toward the chamber. “You heard it?”

“I heard something.” Tirra rubbed the heel of her hand against her coat. “It was under the shelves. I thought it might be the lever. Then it did it again.”

Nadia came to the cab doorway. Her right hand stayed close to the brass panel, where the crack had lengthened. “Do you want to go back?”

Tirra looked at the black line beneath her feet. “I want to know if somebody’s there.”

Oliver turned Mercy around.

The engine rolled back along the black route. It cost them the ground they’d just gained, but no fuel gauge needle dropped; the route held their passage without feeding the furnace. Tirra walked beside the train, keeping her own pace. Nadia stayed in the cab, watching the panel and the light ahead.

The sorting chamber’s shelves appeared again through the dark. Their small tags trembled in their slots as Mercy approached. The lever still stood under the large black lamp, upright and untouched. Beyond it, a smaller light blinked from a low shelf near the wall.

Oliver stopped at the entrance. “We’ll listen. We won’t move anything.”

“Good,” Tirra said. “That’s what I wanted before.”

She crossed to the platform’s edge, then halted before the shelves. Nadia stepped down behind her and placed a gold point beneath the nearest shelf. Another formed under the next one, leaving the supports separate. The chamber steadied without drawing Tirra back to the lever.

Oliver called toward the small light. “Can you hear us?”

A knock came from the shelf. It was faint, but the metal tags around it rattled.

The source spoke through the chamber walls. “UNASSIGNED CONTENT. DISPOSITION REQUIRED.”

Tirra’s fingers curled against her coat. Oliver had seen the threads bind her wrists the first time. They had not returned, though the source’s voice pressed at the old shape of the order.

“We’re listening,” he called. “You can answer for yourself.”

The light went out. A second knock came from behind the shelf, harder than the first.