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Chapter 1 · Mission One · the first night

The Singing Quarry

Page 1 · The Caesura

A Colossus kneeling in a field of long grass, weathered, overgrown, dead for decades. Small farm buildings in the distance.

Three generations ago the Colossi knelt down in the fields and stopped answering.

The books call it the Caesura. A caesura is a rest in the music. It is not the end of the piece.

Close on a kneeling frame's hand where it meets the earth. Grass has grown through the fingers.

Nobody wrote down what they were protesting. They only wrote down that it was quiet.

A carved faceplate in the dark of a hall. One rune catching light for the first time in sixty years.

Sixty years of quiet, and then one of them answered.

A See hall. Robed figures, tiny, arranged before a single lit frame.

They have been waking us up ever since. There is a ceremony. There are robes.

They tell us we are being given a voice.

Page 2 · Six days awake

Inside Orca's cockpit. The Cantor's face lit blue from the instruments.

The Lapis frame sat sixty years with its throat sealed. Six days ago it took a breath and it took me with it.

The frame's hand opening and closing, testing itself. Seen from the cockpit.

murmurYou are holding your jaw again.

orcaI am not.

murmurYou are.

Teal light moving through the carved channels of the cockpit wall. This is Murmur.

The Spirit that came with the Stone is called Murmur. It says very little, and it says it late.

murmurThere is a word you are going to need.

orcaThen say it.

murmurI only know the edges of it.

Orca standing alone on a service gantry, small, the frame towering behind.

That is the arrangement. The frame remembers the shape of its oaths and none of the words.

You find them by talking to a machine until it agrees with you.

Page 3 · Three priorities, in order

A comms plate lighting in the dark of the cockpit.

reyes (off)This is Captain Reyes, Cantorial Auxiliary. The quarry at Vega-7 has gone quiet.

reyes (off)Last contact was a worker reporting singing in the pit.

Orca listening. Not moving.

reyes (off)Three priorities, in order. One, neutralize the broadcast. Two, preserve civilian life. Three, preserve the site.

The plate again, unchanged, the voice still coming.

reyes (off)Three is non-negotiable for your political careers. One is non-negotiable for the cycle of new harvests.

reyes (off)You will work two out on your own. Reyes out.

The plate goes dark. Orca in the dark after it.

I counted them twice. I have a habit of counting things I have been promised.

murmurYou heard it.

orcaI heard three orders.

murmurYou heard four.

Page 4 · One sentence each

The dropship bay. Two Colossi braced in the drop cradles.

The other one had been awake eleven days. Nobody had told it anything either.

Monolyth, head turning to Orca.

monolythGranite. They call me Monolyth.

Orca, answering.

orcaOrca.

The two of them, not speaking, the bay shaking.

Eleven days awake and six. Between us, one sentence each.

anvilHe is deciding whether you will run.

monolythAnvil.

anvilLook at his feet.

Orca's foot, planted, not shifting.

I did not move my feet. I have learned that much.

Page 5 · The arithmetic

The bay doors peel open on the top rim. The pit falls away below.

The pit went down in rings, and everything in it was downhill of us.

Behind them, on the rim, the worker barracks with the lights on.

The people I had been sent for were up on the rim, in three long huts with the lights still on.

The whole shape of it at once. The pit, the Stones, the thing in the air, the barracks on the rim.

The thing in the middle of it had a shape, and the shape was wrong, and it had been singing for three days.

To reach it I have to walk away from them.

Orca, not moving yet.

I did the arithmetic twice and got the same answer both times.

Page 6 · Monolyth draws the room

Monolyth drops a terrace into the bowl and plants. Shield out.

monolythCome to me, then.

Two Chorister heads turning together toward the grey slab.
Orca watching Monolyth take the whole room onto itself.

It did not ask me first. I have stood in rooms where that would have been an insult.

This was not one of those rooms.

Monolyth planted, both husks closing and unable to reach it.

Granite does not chase. It becomes the only thing worth hitting and then refuses to fall over.

anvilHe is showing off.

monolythI am working.

Page 7 · What they used to be

A Chorister, close. Half machine, half person.

They sing in unison because there is nothing left in them to disagree with.

Closer. A face that was recently a face.

They came out of the workforce here. Six days ago they had shifts.

Orca not looking away.

murmurDo not look at their hands.

orcaWhy.

murmurYou will see the callus. Then you will see the man.

A worker's hand on the rig. The callus.

I looked at their hands.

Page 8 · Command

Orca slides into the lane between the husks and the barracks. A body between the threat and the people.

orcaEveryone behind me. Now.

Workers running behind the blue frame's legs toward the huts.

Something moves in my chest when they do what I say.

Teal climbing the carved channels inside the cockpit.

The Stone calls it Resonance. It rises when I am heard.

It has been rising since we landed.

The lance coming level. Orca's own hand steady on it.

I have not said a true thing out loud on this world.

Page 9 · Wide

The lance charging. The husk in the sights.
The bolt goes into the dark between the boss and its choir and hits nothing at all.
Orca, lance still out, not lowering it.

Not close. Wide. Into the dark, at nothing.

Teal light in the cockpit channels, too bright now.

murmurThe band is loud.

orcaI know what the band is.

murmurThen you know what comes after loud.

Page 10 · The cruelest available thing

The thing in the air opens. Enthralled workers pour out of the pit in a slow pleading wave.

Then it opened the pit and sent them at us.

Picks and hammers. Forty people it did not need in order to win. Only in the way.

Close on a worker's face inside a stripped frame, hands raised, walking forward because they cannot stop.

workerI'm sorry — I'm sorry — I can't stop —

The wave fills the lane. Priority two, walking.

They came inside my reach. Any one of them I could have ended without thinking about it.

The lance going down.

I put the lance down. That part was easy. It is the only part that was.

Page 11 · The Drowning Song

The Hollow peels its head back and sings.
The rings crossing the pit, finding the loudest thing on the field.

It reaches for whoever is singing loudest.

On this field that is me. I have been talking all morning.

Orca staggers a half-step. The lance dips.
Inside. The Cantor's hands, one of them not obeying.

It took the small motion out of my hands.

It left me the slow one.

Page 12 · Distortion

The comms going to static.
Orca's mouth moving. Nothing arriving.

orcaMonolyth.

orcaMonolyth, fall back to the huts.

Monolyth, far off down the terraces, not turning. It never heard.

My orders did not arrive. I said his name twice and the pit did not carry it.

The frame's throat plating, dark where it should be lit.

The Stone has a name for this one. It calls it Deception.

It does not come from lying. It comes from having lied.

Page 13 · The water

Inside. Everything muffled. Orca's face.

I want to tell you about the water.

A memory. A great hall, the sea already at the windows.

My family governed a coastal reach. When the sea came for it I stood up in the hall and told four hundred people the walls would hold.

The memory, closer. A younger man speaking to a room that believes him.

I believed it when I said it. I have gone over that a great deal and it does not help.

The memory ends. Water and lamplight and nothing to see.

The walls did not hold. The ones who stayed because I told them to stay, stayed.

Back in the cockpit. The channels dark. One thread of teal moving anyway.

murmurThat is the edge of it.

orcaThe edge of what.

murmurThe word. I told you I only know the edges.

Page 14 · Two ways out

Monolyth, still in the same square, taking it.

He had been standing in the same square for three minutes so that nothing could get past him to the huts.

He could not hear me. He was doing it anyway.

Orca's hand closing on the discharge lever. The easy way out, within reach.

There is a way to bleed this off. Everybody uses it. It works every time.

murmurYou have used it twice today already.

The hand stops. Murmur, the one thread of light, not letting him.

murmurThere is one other way out. You will not like it.

orcaSay it, then.

murmurYou have known it since the hall. I only know the edges.

Orca's hands come off the controls.

The other way takes the whole turn. You do not move and you do not shoot.

If you are wrong about what the true thing is, you have spent the round on nothing.

Page 15 · Speak true

Orca turns its head away from the enemy entirely.

I turned away from the thing that was killing us.

The held moment. Nothing moves in this panel.

I have never said a true thing out loud where someone could hear it.

The line. Give it the width of the page.

orcaI hope I don't betray you.

Nobody moves. Not the machines, not the husks, not the thing in the air.

Page 16 · The answer

Extreme close on the granite faceplate. The sigils lighting from within as it speaks.

monolythI will not betray you.

Orca, receiving it.

I had braced for a man's answer. That was the frame.

anvilHe means it. He does not know how to mean anything else.

Page 17 · The lie cracks

The band empties. All of it, at once, out through the throat of the frame.

The band went to nothing. All of it, in one go. That is the price and it is not negotiable.

The Drowning Song tears. The rings shatter outward like glass.
The Hollow's face, for one moment not broadcasting.

The song it was broadcasting was a lie, and it had been a lie for a long time.

A lie will crack if you set a true thing down next to it.

The quarry, for the length of one breath, not singing.

I did not know that. The Stone knew it.

For one breath the quarry was not singing.

Page 18 · What it cost

The boss answers. A hollow note shrieks back across the pit.
It catches Orca square.
Orca down on one knee, half its lights out, lance planted to stay upright.
Behind the kneeling blue frame, Monolyth stands entirely untouched.

The note never reached him. That was the whole point of where I was standing.

I do not regret the arithmetic.

Page 19 · The hammer finds something else

Round three. The maul comes down on the battered Chorister and ends it.
The same swing carries through into a Singing Stone.
The Stone shatters. The light goes out of it.
The Hollow screams. Not in triumph.

Page 20 · Two people wake up

In the rubble two enthralled workers drop mid-step.
One of them puts a hand to their own face like they have not felt it in a while.

worker...my god. What are we doing.

Orca, still kneeling, watching them.

They stopped because the Stone stopped.

The two remaining Stones, still burning, still holding everyone else.

The Stones are not the site. The Stones are the leash.

Priority three is a leash. I am going to need to know who wrote the list.

Page 21 · The held breath

Pull all the way back. One Stone dark, two still ringing the pit. One Chorister left. The wave still closing, two of them awake now and stopped in the middle of it.

One down. Two still ringing.

Monolyth, healthy, standing exactly where it decided to stand.
Orca, half-lit, upright again, something steady burning in its chest.

There is a token in my hand I do not understand yet, and a word I did not have this morning.

The Hollow, above the pit, drawing breath to sing again.

She used to work here. Somebody will tell me her name in a month, and I will wish they had not.

The pit. Both of them small in it. The song starting again.

She sang too long. That is all that happened to her.

That is all that has to happen.

Adapted from the Antiphon Chronicle, Mission 1 Session I