My Infinite Investment System

"Don’t smear it," Ryan said as he caught Jun’s right wrist before the fresh violet ink disappeared between the scout’s fingers.

The maze smelled of hot stone, marker solvent, and old dust shaken loose whenever another room shifted.

"Hands off the ink," he said, dropping beside the false mark.

Jun kept both gloves above his shoulders and asked, "Are we treating my handwriting as a crime scene?"

"Your handwriting already looks criminal."

Mika trapped a laugh behind pressed lips while Nia planted her shield across the nearest doorway.

"Twenty seconds before this room moves," she warned, watching the copper timer above the lintel.

The arrow pointed down in the same square style Jun had used since the trial began, while the wet tail feathered toward the right.

His real marks feathered left.

Ryan checked Jun’s photograph, where the original arrow pointed east above a small triangle.

Spark Sense found two heat traces inside the ink, one fading beneath the newer stroke.

’Somebody copied the shape from a screen,’ he thought, holding his breath near the solvent, ’they missed the hand that made it.’

He checked both gloves for transferred ink along the working fingers.

Violet stained the thumb and first finger of Jun’s left glove, where his marker rested each time he drew.

"Show me your right hand."

Jun turned it over, revealing the wet stain left by touching the changed mark.

"Congratulations," she said as one corner of her mouth escaped, "your suspect remains extremely unemployed."

"The person who changed it writes right-handed," he replied, checking the seam beside the arrow.

Nia placed her shield edge beneath the rising door and asked, "Can you identify them before the floor chooses violence?"

"I can identify the glove."

The copper timer reached five.

Jun photographed both marks with his private body camera, then sealed the raw file before the room rolled beneath their boots.

The north wall rolled beneath their boots until it became the floor.

Nia locked her shield against the new angle, giving the other three a ramp while loose stone poured through the doorway.

Ryan landed beside a maintenance slit that had been hidden near the ceiling.

A strip of black fabric clung to one screw, carrying a sharp line of violet.

"Somebody used the service route," he said, sliding the fragment into an evidence sleeve from Jun’s belt.

The scout stared at the slit and whispered, "Trial staff can enter from there."

"Observers can request a safety check," she added, all performance gone from her face.

’Of course the expensive maze has a back door,’ Ryan thought as the wall settled, ’rich people call cheating an access level.’

Careful footsteps crossed the passage beyond the hidden maintenance slit.

He pressed one eye to the gap and caught a trial attendant moving along the service rail in a black uniform.

The woman carried a silver inspection stylus in her left hand.

Violet ink covered the outside of her right glove from wrist to thumb.

"Found her," he whispered.

Jun shifted closer, but Ryan blocked the opening with two fingers.

"Record through the screw hole, keep your face back."

The scout detached his camera and fitted its narrow lens against the gap.

On the other side, the attendant removed her stained glove with her teeth and stuffed it beneath a belt pouch.

’They never keep the dirty part visible,’ Ryan thought, ’Mercer taught that lesson to an entire building.’

She hurried toward the smoked gallery above the next junction.

Bartek waited there with an Apex lanyard hanging across an official bronze observer card.

The man tapped twice against the smoked observation window above them.

The attendant answered with one tap, then pointed toward Northstar’s position on the wall display.

"Apex," Jun whispered, keeping the lens steady.

The striker checked the moving ceiling and asked, "Do we send that to the trial office now?"

His thumb hovered over the bright emergency report button on Jun’s screen.

One press would stop the stage, preserve the evidence, and place Northstar inside an office full of people who had already chosen the bracket.

’Priya would ask for chain of custody,’ he thought as the old anger returned, ’Bartek would ask why the camera angle missed her face.’

"We keep moving," he said.

Mika stared at him until the last trace of amusement left her mouth.

"You have both of them on video."

"We have an attendant near a mark and an observer making a call," he replied, capping the evidence sleeve.

"That is more proof than most people get before posting six parts."

"It is less than we need after they control the review."

She folded her arms, then dropped them when the next wall began to grind.

"You want to beat the route they rigged before you accuse them."

"I want us alive when I accuse them."

The sentence changed her face.

She looked toward the false arrow, rolled one shoulder loose, and said, "Fine, victory first, public humiliation after lunch."

The tank lifted the shield from the doorway and added, "If lunch survives."

Jun copied the raw footage to three offline cards, placing one in each teammate’s inner pocket.

"If I lose mine, somebody else uploads."

"Nobody uploads until everyone captured in it agrees," he said, closing his jacket over the card.

The scout pressed his lips together, then answered, "I hate responsible employment."

The maze shifted again.

This time the floor split into four copper paths, each marked with one of Jun’s arrows.

Three were false.

He crouched over the nearest line without touching it and traced the feathering with his eyes.

"Left hand, mine," he said, pointing north.

The striker leaned over his shoulder and asked, "You can tell that fast now?"

"I can tell somebody copied the other three while panicking."

’My panic finally has market value,’ Jun thought as the timer dropped, ’rent still wants ordinary money.’

They took the north path.

Two rooms later, the maze tried to fold them back toward the altered western route.

Jun caught the repeat from a chipped lion tile on the ceiling and redirected them through a narrow hinge gap.

Nia turned sideways to fit, shield held flat against her spine.

"This opening hates shoulders," she said, forcing the frame wider with one forearm.

"The opening has standards," the striker replied, squeezing through after Ryan.

The tank looked at her until the striker ducked her head to hide a grin.

Ryan followed Spark Sense through the bronze machinery and found a weak current feeding every false route from the same control rail.

One Spark Step could break the exposed control rail completely apart.

He could also drop half the maze on people he could not see.

’Useful power keeps arriving with a lawsuit attached,’ he thought, ’my personal balance cannot survive a filing fee.’

"Can you shut the route control down?" the bulwark asked, reading where his attention had fixed.

"Yes," he said without looking away.

She adjusted the shield grip and asked, "Safely?"

"No," he replied, letting Spark Sense close.

She returned her focus to the corridor and said, "Excellent restraint."

They reached a circular chamber whose bronze walls offered no visible exit.

The bronze door sealed behind them while air pushed from holes around the floor.

Jun searched each seam and said, "This room is absent from the official pattern."

Mika held one spark between two fingers, letting its pink light skim the walls.

Old scratches covered the lower panels, including route marks abandoned by other teams.

Most of those lines stopped before the marker completed its direction across the lower bronze panel.

"People were trapped here," she said, keeping her voice low.

Nia put the shield between the trapped group and the sealed bronze door behind them.

"How many exits?"

"One beneath us," he replied as Spark Sense found a huge dormant core below the floor.

It pulsed once.

All four people felt the dormant vibration travel upward through the soles of their boots.

’That is too large for a maze mechanism,’ he thought, lowering his center, ’that is breathing.’

Jun went motionless above the scratched southern panel near Nia’s boots.

"I found the service latch."

Before he could touch it, the control rail outside sent power through the wrong route.

Violet lines brightened across every false arrow they had avoided.

The floor opened.

Nia drove her shield flat beneath the group while the chamber dropped around them.

Bronze walls rushed upward for three stories, carrying the smell of wet fur and scorched metal from the dark below.

Mika caught Ryan’s jacket with one hand while Jun locked both boots against the shield rim.

The platform stopped hard enough to make Ryan’s teeth meet.

In front of them, a plated creature filled the sunken arena from wall to wall.

Its body resembled a six-legged bull beneath overlapping bronze armor, with a bell-shaped skull resting against two folded forelimbs.

Eight black cables ran from its plated spine into the maze walls.

Every slow breath pulled the nearest bronze walls toward its sleeping body.

The trial boss slept less than eight meters from their tilted platform.

Jun checked the sealed shaft above them and whispered, "The route ends here."

Ryan watched a violet drop fall from the maintenance hatch onto the beast’s upper plate.

The falling drop struck bronze without waking the creature beneath its armor.

"No," he said, drawing one short line through the dust with his finger, "somebody ended it for us."