Thnk!

  A pounding, a beating, a grating metal sound that could simply be from the vents, two machine parts beating against one another in one useless cacophonic war.

  I shiver. “We have to hurry now.”

  Thnk!

  The wallpaper flowers flit past us in a blur of off-white and red as I walk fast. Lily struggles to keep pace, speaking shortly.

  “I’ve never seen you rush so much. Do you really think that the Horse and Ox can use that crowbar to escape?”

  Thnk!

  “No, it’s just….”

  The Tiger’s weak. She has a slight frame, is a full head shorter than anyone else, and her fists are so small that someone might ward off her blows with a composition notebook. Yet she’s still the one who frightens me the most, by the way she carries herself, cocky, violent, and arrogant—she’s someone who would absolutely use force if it helped her. I follow her, and soon we’re back into the trial room’s wing.

  I glance into the kitchen. The Tiger and the Pig are talking, nothing more than that, though someone had knocked the Pig’s ice cream bowl face-down on the floor.

  “...missing,” The Tiger mutters something, gesturing at the twelve forks, twelve spoons, and eleven knives that the Ox left soaking in the sink. The Pig whimpers, and I tune them both out as the other metallic clatter still erodes at my mind. It’s the vents, just the vents, groaning the same way they do at 2:00 AM at night.

  We walk some more. There are six more suites for the players, past them a broken ice machine, and past that a shoddy entryway with an old, rusted sign saying MAINTENANCE.

  Inside that closet is a mop, a bucket, a dustpan, a broom, and a copious smattering of dust, these supplies leaning on a metal box bulging out of this room’s back wall. A stout pipe from that box puckers into the ceiling and snakes above our heads into the suites, and this prism bears a notched dial with animal icon, along with a place to scan one’s Card.

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  The box could be AC. It could be the heat. But either way, this box doesn’t make a sound, and certainly not the grating noise that I now realize must come from above.

  Thnk!

  “There was a set of tools here.” I check under the mysterious metal prism only to find more dust. “Right here, I swear it.”

  “It’s not there anymore?” Lily pants. “What’s missing exactly?”

  “A crowbar, a wrench, a screwdriver, a hammer… and oh, I don’t know! I can’t remember something that’s already gone!”

  Part of my frustration comes from having offered a solution that was all too swiftly disapproved. But the other half is a cold apprehension that touches me, as though the icy metal of one of those tools had been pressed across the nape of my neck.

  I had ignored this jumbled closet when I had staggered into it half-asleep in the morning, because there was nothing useful for me here back then. Just a collection of things to be used for MAINTENANCE.

  But in this game a box of tools isn’t a toolbox, it’s an armory. I was too late to realize that.

  “The Tiger didn’t take anything, and nor did the Pig, the Horse, and the Ox.” I mutter, as I take the mop and tease the head off the wooden handle.

  “We could give that mopstick to the Ox,” observes Lily. “But if he uses it to ram the exit, its still just made of wood… the stick will might split in two.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll retrieve the whole toolbox.”

  Kang. Tnk. Tunk!

  The grating intensifies, as if to give voice to my frustration.

  I run. I lunge at the elevator call button, press it til my finger jams and stretches back to the ceiling. No mechanical whir emerges from the shaft, just a rhythmic beating that echoes ever louder down towards the two of us.

  “Yuri, wait!”

  I shoulder the mop and race to the stairs. Climbing them one at a time but still fast, I fight through my shortness of breath at the stairwell’s landing and whirl out into the upper hall.

  KANG! TUNK! KANG!

  Metallic and rhythmic and dangerous and clear, I finally head towards the sound’s source. The beatings crescendo at the second set of elevator door;. they’re half-open, jaw-like, and they press uncomfortably against my chest and back as I squeeze myself through.

  I smell his breath before I see him. Rotten, rancid, disgusting—stale, bittersweet pancakes.

  “Now, what are you going to do with that?” says a certain pale-faced boy.

  “Nothing, ” I say, as I lower my mop.