By the time Frank reached the north corridor, somebody had moved the WET FLOOR sign six feet closer to the wall. It was still technically visible, provided a visitor had already crossed the slippery stretch and turned around to admire the furnishings.
A pair of iron barriers stood at the entrance, blocking most of the public route. Beyond them, water had crept into the mortar seams, carrying a faint gray film from the banquet system. The floor looked almost clean in the dim torchlight, which made it worse. People trusted stone that looked dry.
Moss stood between a dispatch clerk and a goblin who had been trying to wring gray water from his mop into a bucket already half full of it. The goblin had his name stitched inside his collar, where customers wouldn't see it. Every time he tried to leave for a fresh bucket, the clerk stepped into his path to point at the barrier. Moss had plainly reached the end of her patience with both the argument and the obstruction.
"They want the passage reopened," she told Frank, skipping the greeting. "The party from the southern entrance is coming up this way, and dispatch says we can't divert them twice in one visit."
The clerk wore a polished badge and carried a timetable already damp at the corners. "We promised a complete experience. There's a difference between a little residue and a closed floor."
"There's sewage under the old tiles," Frank said. "Water's still coming through the joints, and I haven't checked whether the bedding underneath is holding."
"The surface doesn't appear flooded."
"You want to walk across it?"
The clerk glanced at his shoes. "That's not the point."
"No, it isn't." Frank set down his toolbox and knelt, putting the flat of a scraper against the nearest joint. Water welled around the blade. He lifted it so everyone could see the gray liquid gathering there. "The point is what happens when somebody heavy steps on a tile that doesn't have anything solid beneath it."
Moss moved the sign back where it belonged. She had the expression of a woman resisting the urge to use the sign on somebody.
The new classification on Frank's work badge had caught the clerk's attention. He bent close enough to read it. "Custodian Grade. Does that mean you can certify the area safe?"
"It means I can open certain service doors without borrowing a key. It doesn't change the floor."
The banquet fountain had thrown a pipe through its wall the previous shift. The mage had landed in the flood, but the flood was still here, seeping under a floor Dispatch wanted to call dry. Frank tapped his scraper against a loose tile and heard water beneath it.
The dispatch clerk unfolded his timetable again, flattening the wet corners against his thigh. His thumb had left a gray print on the paper, and he kept rubbing at it even while he spoke. "Management says the northern approach must be ready by the next bell. If I put CLOSED on the visitor route, I'm the one whose name goes against the missed attraction."
"Put down that I inspected it and refused to open it," Frank said. "You don't need to take the blame for my work."
"They'll still ask why I let a skeleton overrule dispatch," the clerk said. He wasn't looking at Frank now. He was staring at the narrow smear his thumb had made on the timetable.
Frank pushed the inspection slip across the barrier. "Sign what Dispatch knows, then Moss and I will sign what Maintenance knows. Nobody has to claim the banner is safe to prove the floor is wet." The clerk held onto the form long enough to see there was room for both signatures.
A warning chime sounded from the public side of the north approach. Through the protected observation slit, Frank saw four adventurers reach the far landing. A woman with a painted stag on her shield led them; behind her came a man loaded with climbing rope, a young woman carrying a lantern, and a fellow with three different weapons who seemed unable to decide which one to hold.
"They're here early," the dispatch clerk muttered. He reached for the speaking tube mounted beside the barrier control. It led to the visitor route office, where a public-facing attendant could redirect the party without admitting them into the staff work zone.
"Tell your attendant the corridor is closed," Frank said. "There's water beneath the tiles, and the banner anchor over that landing may be loose."
"We haven't confirmed the anchor," the clerk objected.
"Then tell them what we have confirmed. The floor isn't sound. I don't want anyone testing it with their boots."
The clerk sent the warning down the tube. A few moments later a distant attendant appeared at the public gate and spoke to the party. The heavily armed man gestured toward the barrier, apparently proposing to jump it. The rope carrier shook his head. The lantern-bearer seized his sleeve and pointed to the slick stones.
Frank kept his eyes on the ceiling above them. The woman with the lantern raised her light, and its beam caught a glittering line near the banner hook. A little mortar dust fell onto the dry landing. Frank moved to the staff-side inspection point and saw the split stone around the lower anchor.
"Moss, keep the public gate shut and get them behind the turn. The banner mount's moving," he said.
Moss sent the warning through the clerk rather than crossing into the visitor area herself. The shield bearer gathered her companions and moved them beyond the bend while the public attendant held the gate. The clerk wrote the closure onto the back of his damp timetable, pressing hard enough to tear the paper. He called Tev on the service speaking tube so the wire could be isolated before anyone approached the hook.
Frank fetched a folding support from the maintenance recess, but the wall hook would need a qualified trap technician to isolate the signal wire that ran beside it. The banner was decorative; the wire was not. A careless pry could ring the room-reset alarm and send the ceiling gate down across the corridor.
He found the service-door key in his new requisition envelope. For twenty years he'd had to ask Moss or a technician to admit him through this one, even though he had installed its lower hinge. The brass plate accepted his classification mark, and the latch opened with a grudging clunk.
RB slipped through ahead of him, checked the darker stretch, then returned to sniff at the edge of Frank's boot. The rat's coat was still missing in ugly patches around his shoulders; the bandage Nera had once fitted to his damaged leg had grown dirty but remained properly tied. He gave two impatient squeaks.
"I know," Frank said. "We ought to check the other end before we start pulling at the wall."
"Is that a staff passage?" the clerk asked.
"Approved service access," Frank said. "Not a public shortcut."
The distinction mattered. The passage ran behind the old laundry and connected to an unheated stair that workers used to move carts during resets. It was narrow, with a shallow drainage gutter down one side, and two people carrying a stretcher could only pass if one walked sideways. It would serve Moss's crew while the public corridor remained closed. It would not hold four armored adventurers and a fleeing monster.
Frank went in far enough to check the gutter. The grout was damp at the entrance but the rest of the floor remained sound. Through a slatted inspection hatch he saw the back of the damaged banner anchor. The iron was pulling away from its mounting plate, not because the screws were loose but because the stone around the upper hole had cracked.
A bell rang, and the service lighting briefly changed from amber to a bright official blue. The Core's face appeared in a polished inspection tile.
"Good news, team! I hear we've discovered an opportunity to reopen a popular attraction ahead of schedule."
"No," Frank replied, still studying the split stone.
"Frank, I appreciate that promotion has encouraged you to take ownership, but let's remember the customer journey."
"The anchor could come out of the wall. There's a live reset wire beside it. I'm closing the route until Tev isolates the circuit."
"It's a decorative banner."
"The banner is decorative. The gate connected to the wire isn't."
The Core's smile held while the inspection tile flickered. "We could put a warning in the visitor experience notes."
"Put it in the closure notice."
Moss came through the door behind Frank, ducking beneath the laundry piping. She brought Tev with her. The technician carried a case of insulated clamps and looked annoyed in the precise, quiet way Frank associated with people who'd been interrupted halfway through their own dangerous job.
"Which circuit?" Tev asked.
Frank held up his lamp and pointed to the insulated line running behind the anchor plate. "North reset gate. That cracked stone is taking the support with it."
Tev checked the identification tags before he touched anything. "That's the gate circuit, all right. But the old isolator's on the public side. Whoever painted this wall painted straight over the service disconnect."
"We can open the inspection flap from here," Frank said. "I won't touch the wire until you've checked it."
Tev gave him a quick look, then knelt to examine the painted-over disconnect. "Fine. Hold your lamp on the tags. And if the light flickers, back away. Somebody's used that circuit as a convenient place to borrow power before."
They found the flap behind an abandoned roll of canvas. Tev traced the live signal to its terminal and sent Moss to suspend the automatic reset. He waited for the correctly numbered confirmation before locking out the controller and testing it twice. Only then did he allow Frank near the anchor.
The first suspension token came back without a corridor number. Tev rejected it, and Moss returned with the proper one tied to the correct controller. In the meantime, the goblin with the bucket finished cleaning the landing and sat rubbing his wrist, with the adventurers held on the far side of the gate.
Frank had set his folding support in place and could do nothing more until Tev nodded. He kept his hands off the screws. The temptation to get on with a familiar job was real, but he had worked with one carpenter who'd ignored an isolation tag. What remained of the man's hammer was still in a locker downstairs.
The next bell went unanswered by anyone who could sign for replacement stone. Tev kept the controller locked out while Frank prepared the timber support, and Moss went hunting for a mason willing to put a name against the cracked anchor.
Frank braced the cracked section with a timber from the laundry rack, placed an iron catch beneath the banner arm, and worked the mounting screws loose without putting pressure on the broken stone. RB remained by the open service hatch, watching the screw heads. When one dropped into the gutter he chased it down, but returned the right one rather than whichever piece glittered most. Frank let RB set the screw beside the toolbox before he spoke.
"That's the long one," he told RB. "Good catch."
Tev heard him. "He's got a better eye for fasteners than my last trainee."
"Last trainee had better fingers."
"Didn't use them much."
The cracked anchor came free, followed by a wedge of brittle mortar. Underneath was damp bedding with a narrow channel worn through it. Frank packed the opening temporarily with an approved support pad, bolted the banner arm to a separate sound fixing, and marked the damaged stone for Construction. It was a holding measure, not a certification that the whole wall could carry the load again.
From the landing came a raised voice. The man with the extra weapons was arguing with the dispatch clerk about compensation, while the shield bearer asked for a map she could actually use. Through the clerk, Moss arranged the east route and obtained a dispatch seal confirming its reset. The public attendant passed the directions to the party. She didn't offer the private laundry stair. When she returned she had wet ink on both hands and a look of satisfaction that cost the clerk considerably more than Frank's repairs had.
"They've been sent east," Moss said. "Dispatch says the route's clear, and the captain agreed to it once she saw the safety notice."
"Did the man with the weapons give you trouble?"
"He did. Captain said if he wanted to test the floor he could do it after she collected his share of the reward. He became very interested in the eastern stairs."
Tev restored the alarm circuit only after Frank had replaced the service cover and cleared all tools. They tested the gate from its controller, watched its indicator respond correctly, and left the public corridor barred. The floor remained unsafe, and the cracked backing still needed a full masonry repair, but the workers could now take the laundry passage without crossing the spill.
At the depot Moss handed Frank an access slip for the alternate staff route, this time bearing his own classification mark. It listed the opening hours and a warning not to block the laundry carts. No borrowed signature was required.
The ledger chimed when Frank set the signed access slip in the depot box. For once the reward had come from keeping a corridor shut and finding workers another way through, not from sweeping the same stain off the stone twice.
MAINTENANCE LEDGER
MAINTENANCE LEDGER
Employee
FRANK
Classification
RANK 1: DUNGEON CUSTODIAN
Task
North-corridor closure and service access
Operational credit
+9 XP
Rank 1 experience
14 XP
"Nine," Frank said.
Moss looked up from her paperwork. "What?"
"Points for closing a hall and making a way round it."
"Should've been more. You kept four fools from walking into a falling gate."
"Three," Frank replied. "The one with the shield had sense."
Moss smiled despite the day. Then she showed him the new morning rota, which included cleaning the banquet fountain, checking the north wall, and returning a floor scrubber he'd borrowed before anyone noticed it was missing from Inventory.
Frank took the rota. His bones did not tire like living muscles, but he had heard enough dripping water for one shift.
On the way to his break, Frank passed the dispatch clerk asking a carpenter whether the barriers could look less alarming. The carpenter said the safest-looking barrier was the one that stayed in place.
At the depot, the old CLOSED sign was so faded that a hopeful dispatch clerk could read it as OPEN. Frank painted CLOSED UNTIL TESTED in black across both faces while the goblin from the landing held the frame. "They moved the last one," the goblin said. "Let them move this one with the warning still on it," Frank replied. When the worker asked whether somebody would charge him for the paint on his sleeve, Frank handed him the lid to close. They both knew what Payroll would probably say.
At break the dining room was full of workers diverted by the north closure. A cook was retelling how a messenger had carried six bowls of soup to the wrong floor. Frank took his usual place by the wall while RB watched a sanitation slime swallow a scrap of roast. The handler was asked whether the bone counted as part of the slime's meal and suggested consulting the kitchen labeling committee. Nobody wanted to be assigned to it. The goblin who had helped paint the closure sign arrived with black streaks up his sleeve. When someone asked whether the sign was finished, he held out his arm and claimed it could be read from the next floor. Frank let him tell the story without correcting the distance.