Roy entered a large room as Mister Deadman led him deeper into the sewers. The stench actually disappeared the deeper they went into the tunnels beneath Grim Aegis, and the walls, once just dark stone, were now covered with webs and gems. If each one was a person's memory, they had a mind-wrenching number of them stored in the sewers.

"How many people are in on this operation?" Roy asked as he ducked underneath the web and stood up in the domed area.

"In terms of Fingers? Five," Mister Deadman said, looking up at the ceiling with his hands in his pockets. "In terms of Knuckles, see for yourself."

Across the room, several lurched into motion. Some rose from bedrolls lying strewn across the wide floor, and others stood from the wall. It reminded Roy of the old slave warehouse, just without the cages. By his count, at least twenty-five people had to be in the room, packed tight.

"This a new one, boss?" A man tall enough to have to crawl through the entrance, with a body that looked too rotund to fit, approached.

One finger was hooked in his mouth, while the other picked at his exposed belly button. On his back were two weapons: a massive hammer and a sword too big for a normal man to wield. To Roy, he looked more like a ball than a man, but there was definite muscle hiding beneath his flab.

"Play it cool, Cragg, you hear?" Mister Deadman held up a hand. "I'm showing the new guy around.

"Yeah, boss." Cragg turned around, walking away to his corner of the room.

"Do you really need this many people?" Roy asked as Mister Deadman led him past the various Knuckles in the room.

All of them looked somewhat shady or weird. A man sharpened his nails into razor-sharp points by his bed and flicked a smile at Roy, his tongue stretching long out of his mouth like a snake's tongue.

"This isn't even half the operation, you hear?" Mister Deadman said. "The rest are out in the sewers on their patrols."

"It still seems like a lot for keeping an operation going." Roy rubbed at his stubble.

Snap. Snap.

"This isn't just an operation, you hear?" Mister Deadman said before stuffing his hands back in his pockets. "We're controlling an entire city on a key island. If we don't bring enough, we won't be able to keep our cool, you hear?"

Roy didn't understand, but he was never the one who understood logistics. He was the muscle of the Harper Brothers, at least until William had died. Who was he to question how many people he had backing up? That just meant there was more muscle if things went wrong.

"So, the job is pretty simple then," Roy said. "We change out shifts, go patrolling, and don't touch the webs or the gems."

Snap. Snap.

"That's about the end of it. If you play it cool on this operation, you might be able to move up in the organization. Show you're strong enough; you may even become a Finger."

Crack.

"I can get along with that."

"Let me show you your spot," Mister Deadman said, picking his way through the crowd toward the room's far end.

Skitter.

As they walked, a sound sent a shiver down Roy's spine. He looked behind him both ways, trying to see what made the noise, but nothing crawled across the webbed walls. However, he hadn't imagined it. The noise had definitely happened.

Skitter.

Roy looked up, and he saw the cause of the noise.

Across the ceiling, in the darkness, multi-legged creatures skittered across webs. Roy couldn't quite make them out but could see them by the light glistening off their backs. Like the gems that lined the walls outside, the creature's backs were covered with the same shining gems.

Roy gulped down the sudden lump that formed in his throat.

"What the fu—"

Slap.

A hand covered his mouth before he could yell. One of the Knuckles had come from behind and covered his mouth. Mister Deadman looked back at him, hands in his pockets and a disappointed look in his grey eyes. He shook his head as he walked back to Roy.

"You can't go around yelling in here, you hear?" Mister Deadman said. "That isn't cool. We must keep Miss Malone's spiders from being disturbed while on guard duty. Nod if you understand, you hear?"

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Roy released a scream through his nose, blowing out the air over the person's hand that held his mouth shut. When he finished, he composed himself and nodded. Mister Deadman locked eyes with the person holding his mouth, and the hand was gone.

"Those spiders are the ones who make the gems," Mister Deadman said. "But they're skittish things. Must be hundreds of them up there. So, we have to keep it cool down here to make sure they don't swarm us while they go about keeping people under Miss Malone's curse."

"You all sleep with them in here?"

"Ain't much choice." Mister Deadman shrugged. "We have to be close to the operation, and they're part of it. We all have to make sacrifices for that."

Roy nodded, but he didn't understand. There had to be a better way to go about it, surely. However, it was a problem above his pay. He was there to guard some gemstones from people snooping around.

"You get used to it," Mister Deadman said. "Now, come on. I'll show you where the bathroom is."

Roy took one last look at the ceiling, trying to pick out the spiders in the darkness. However, they remained elusive, staying out of the light with only the faint reflection of their gemstones and eyes. The image of those creatures lowering down on webs as he slept would give Roy nightmares.

They walked out of the domed room and down the hall. Roy didn't understand why they would need a special place to go in a sewer, but he imagined it kept the smell down. The sleeping area didn't have the same stench as the rest of the sewer.

Skitter.

"Hit the deck!" Mister Deadman hit him with one hard arm, sending them both falling to the stone as the sound of spiders rushed by overhead.

Roy added that particular sound to his list of things that would give him nightmares as he waited for the sound to pass.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

"Boss, they all ran out!" Cragg came up behind them as the sound faded.

"I saw!" Mister Deadman yelled as he stood up, brushing off his suit. "Did anyone set them off?"

Roy pushed himself up from the ground, flipping himself over and lying on his back as he caught his breath. He didn't look at the ceiling. He wouldn't look at the ceiling ever again.

"No, boss."

"Get everyone up right now, you hear?" Mister Deadman's voice went cold. "They don't do stuff like that for no reason. We're heading upstairs."

He paused, looking over the hall again.

"Roy, come on. You might as well see this part, too. Unless you soiled yourself."

"Sir!"

Roy stood, following Mister Deadman as he led him down the hall and toward a ladder. Several entrances were down the line, and several Knuckles flooded past them toward the different ladders. They even went past a curve and out of sight.

"These ladders lead up to the various levels, you hear?" Mister Deadman said, putting a hand on a rung and hooking his boot into the bottom. "I'm sure you want to know why we keep all of this underground and don't store the gems elsewhere."

Roy had to admit, he was curious. They shouldn't need this much effort if they controlled all of Grim Aegis. They didn't need to stay out of sight, and they didn't need to hide. If the gems were people's memories, why not just change their memories so that they accepted the operation as normal?

"Yeah, I can see those questions stirring." Mister Deadman nodded. "Come on."

He started up the ladder, and Roy followed after him into the darkness. Roy did his best to push the thought of spiders crawling down the tube in front of them. At least Mister Deadman would face that particular problem first if it were to happen. Then, there was the problem of one crawling up from behind.

Roy just couldn't win.

Clack. Clack. Errn.

Light flooded down as Mister Deadman opened a door and scurried out from the tunnel. Roy followed after him, pushing himself up into a square room. There wasn't much inside beyond a table at the far end of the room next to a window. A spyglass on a tripod sat off to one side, pointed through a set of curtains. Several glowing stones lined the walls to provide light for the room.

"All of our sewers are tied to these rooms," Mister Deadman said. "We've got a Knuckle whose curse lets her dig through stone like butter. A cool power to have."

"But why link them up? This all seems like a lot of work."

"Come on, you hear?" Mister Deadman waved over at the spyglass. "Look out through that."

Roy did as he was asked, looking through the glass and out into the night. There weren't many people out, but the spyglass let him easily see the few people walking the streets from his high vantage point. There were a few other buildings across the level, and he had to wonder how many had similar rooms.

"There's a simple reason we stay low here, you hear?" Mister Deadman said. "Editing memories takes a lot of effort, a lot of will. It's better to put someone into something they can accept than completely altering how their world is, you hear? We lie low so that Miss Malone doesn't get overwhelmed by changes. The gems can't be stored too far away either, or the connection gets broken, and we lose the power from taking people's memories. It completely defeats the purpose."

"So, you have to keep everything in a delicate balance," Roy said.

"That's why we have to play it cool," Mister Deadman said. "What do you see out there?"

"Not a lot of people," Roy said.

Slap.

"You're not looking for people. You're looking for the spiders. They're going to be converging on something on one of the levels. We need to figure out where."

Roy rubbed the back of his head but started searching the walls of nearby buildings. Surely, if a massive army of spiders ran across one of them, they would be easy to see. However, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see anything odd.

"What level are we on?"

"Six," Mister Deadman said. "It has most of the people on it. The rest we keep wrapped up in the mist to narrow how far we need to watch."

"What if they go to the lower levels?"

"We sent people there. Don't worry about that, you hear?"

Roy nodded, continuing his search. He saw a drunken brawl near the square just as a punch knocked one of the fighters out of sight. However, he still saw no spiders.

"Maybe it's nothing." Mister Deadman sighed behind him. "I'd rather this operation be cool for once."

"Wait." Roy spotted a furtive movement on the western side of the level. "I think I saw something."

"Show me." Mister Deadman pulled the curtain to the side.

Roy pointed out to the far side through the window, and Mister Deadman squinted. A moment later, he shook his head, turned away from the window, and walked to the door. Roy followed him to the door.

Snap. Snap.

"Someone did something uncool out there," Mister Deadman said. "We'll go check it out, and hopefully, it's something small. If it's anything big, we might need to bring in some backup to keep everything quiet."

Roy nodded, though he didn't want to get close to the spiders.

"Remember, we need to keep things cool. No big or flashy moves out there, you hear?"

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