The Word from Inside

Oliver set the wrench on the floor before he reached the pressure gauge.

Nadia watched him do it. “You came prepared to open the plate.”

“I came prepared to inspect it.” He crouched beside the gauge, keeping his hands clear of the screws. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

“Good. We’ll let the presence decide where the difference is.”

The engine ticked as it cooled. Beyond the cab windows, the old eastern line ran along the fragment’s edge, its rails disappearing around a shoulder of stone. Mercy could continue once they were ready. The route did not require them to solve the cab before they moved on, and Oliver had no reason to pretend otherwise.

He had a reason to stay a little longer.

The knock had come from behind the gauge plate. Seris’s note placed the first reply there too. He had asked the presence to answer only if it chose, and it had answered once. He could leave that as the whole exchange. He could also offer it a way to say more without turning every sound into a demand.

Oliver laid a sheet of scrap paper beside the gauge. “I’m going to ask a question. One knock for yes, two for no. Silence means you don’t want to answer. You can change the code or stop whenever you choose.”

Nadia stayed by the cab door, close enough to hear. She didn’t lean toward the gauge or study its screws. Her hands rested open at her sides.

Oliver waited. The engine gave a soft metal click. A minute passed without an answer.

Then came one knock from behind the plate.

He wrote a small one in the margin of the paper. “I’ll take that as agreement to the code. If I’ve misunderstood, you can stop me.”

The gauge needle trembled at its lowest mark, then settled. Oliver looked at the paper, not the needle. He wanted the answer to belong to the sound they had agreed on.

“Did you give Queen Seris the word ‘Mercy’?”

One knock.

Oliver kept still. His first impulse was to ask the next question at once, to push into the space the answer had opened. He let the silence hold for a few seconds instead.

Nadia moved her gaze to him. “Ask one thing at a time.”

“I am.” He heard the tightness in his voice and set the pencil down. When he picked it up again, his grip had eased. “Was Mercy your own name?”

Two knocks.

That answer left the name where it belonged: with the train. It did not say who had spoken it, or what the speaker had been before the train carried it. Oliver’s attention went to the gauge plate. The wrench lay on the floor beside his knee, unused.