When the morning bell sounded, the rat was still under Frank's chair and had begun furnishing it. A bent nail, two brass buttons and the head of a screw lay inside a crooked boundary of string. Frank was fairly certain the screw belonged to his drawer. The rat watched him discover the arrangement with the attention of a foreman waiting for his work to be inspected.
Frank had been looking for his apron, not an argument. He fetched the apron from the chair back, opened the drawer, and checked the missing buttons against the others still rolling about inside.
"Those came out of my drawer," he said. "Which you're welcome to investigate when it isn't full of things I need."
The animal rested one exposed paw on the bent nail. Frank picked up his buttons and left the nail alone. An arrangement that allowed each of them to keep his own scrap might yet save the furniture.
Keeping a rat had not been part of Frank's plan for paid employment. He'd spent twenty years removing them from feed stores and drains. This one was not properly alive and did not seem interested in dying. Frank didn't know what it ate, whether it could feel cold, or why the injured hind leg grew stiff after a long walk. Having somebody dependent on him was a greater change to his shift than the new wage scale.
He found a shallow box, folded two clean rags inside, and set it beside the chair where the creature had spent the night. The rat circled the box, climbed in, and inspected the corners before carrying its bent nail back under the chair. Frank left the box where it was. People had tried to improve his own quarters often enough without asking whether he liked the changes.
At the door he checked that the corridor was clear before opening it. The rat followed him out, moved toward his right foot, and settled into his walking pace as though it had done so for years. Frank was not moving quickly. He never did unless a ceiling threatened to fall, and even then he preferred to know where he was putting his feet.
Moss met them by the first stairwell, where she was carrying a cup of something that had stopped steaming and a stack of work orders that hadn't stopped growing. She looked at the rat traveling close to Frank's right boot, then at Frank.
"Tell me you didn't bring that thing back from Processing."
"Found him stuck in the drain yesterday. He's not running loose in the pantry."
"Frank, I don't want to write a vermin report before breakfast." She shifted the papers to her other arm as the creature stopped and scratched a ragged ear. "You know how Compliance gets. Someone sees a rat in a staff corridor and suddenly I have a page of questions about the difference between a pet and a health hazard."
"I'll keep him with me. If he gets somewhere he shouldn't, I'll handle it."
Moss drank from her cup and seemed to regret it. "That's the bit they always put on the form after something's happened. Fine. I haven't seen him. But if he gets into the kitchen, you're cleaning it."
"That's on my shift sheet already."
"I know. I'd still rather not add rat prints to it."
She moved on to the pair of goblins disputing an overtime roster. Frank returned to his cart before Compliance could become involved.
His first job was a stuck ventilation grate behind the third-floor pantry shelf. On the ticket it was listed as a simple access failure. Somebody had installed a shelf over the service panel, loaded it with valuable sealed jars, and then insisted the contents must not be moved without a witness. The damaged grate itself was almost an afterthought.
The pantry steward held a pencil between his claws and looked at the maintenance diagram as though Frank meant to rearrange every jar himself. Last time a crew moved the shelf, one container had gone missing for days. Frank suggested letting the steward supervise the transfer, which might take longer but would keep the pantry’s stock ledger intact.
"The contents stay under controlled storage. Half those jars are food and half are ingredients. If I break a seal, I have to witness the whole transfer."
"I don't need a seal broken. I need the weight off the shelf while I lift the grate, and I need you to keep track of where every jar goes."
"Last maintenance crew said that, and I spent a week finding where they'd put everything."
Frank could understand that. He'd spent whole afternoons looking for fittings a previous crew had assured him were in the correct drawer. "I'll fetch a cart. You move them yourself and keep your list. I'll stay away from the jars."
The steward studied him, weighing the promise against some clearly unpleasant memories, and finally set down the pencil. "Get a cart with a rail. Two of these jars contain things that move when they're warm."
"I'll find the one without a missing wheel, too."
By the time they reached the shaft, the rat had vanished beneath a counter. Frank checked around the pantry and found a small gap where the shelf met the wall. A few pale hairs clung to the edge. He crouched beside the gap and heard scratching from inside the panel.
"Get out of there," he said.
"Squeak."
A screw dropped at Frank's feet, followed by another, and then a third came rolling out of the gap. He put his palm beneath the opening and caught the fourth before it could travel under the pantry scales.
"Hold it," he called into the wall. "If that grate slips while you're behind it, there won't be much room to get you out."
The scratching stopped, though he couldn't tell whether the rat had understood him or simply reached a tight spot. Frank tapped the panel twice with his screwdriver. A faint answering click came from within.
The steward had come around the counter. "You brought a rat into my stores to dismantle the ventilation?"
"He found a way in before I could move the shelf. I'm getting him back out."
"Those jars are sealed for a reason. I can't have anything crawling into the ingredients."
Frank kept his eye on the gap. "Neither can I. Give me a little room here."
The rat squeezed backward through the gap carrying a dark piece of bent metal. His injured leg caught against the rim, and Frank stopped himself from grabbing him before the little creature found a foothold. Whatever it had brought out, the grate no longer rattled when Frank touched the housing.
"He pulled out the spring," Frank said, spreading a rag below the dark object the rat had carried back. Its bent teeth matched the release catch in the grate housing. "The grate was binding because this wasn't holding it off the frame. If we'd yanked the panel, it might have fallen into the duct."
The steward examined the metal at arm's length. "I had a man spend all yesterday trying to open that. How did a rat know where to look?"
"Can't say he knew. He got to the back of the panel before we did." Frank checked the rat's leg and found a damp line where its skin had caught on rough stone. "He can stay on the barrel while we take the weight off. The rest is my job."
Once the steward had accounted for every sealed jar, they moved the shelf far enough to free the panel. Frank supported the grate while he reset the catch. The steward didn't praise the animal. He was too busy comparing the jar numbers against his list, and Frank thought that was reasonable. A clever rat was not proof the pantry remained uncontaminated.
The steward wanted a written statement that none of the jars had been opened. Frank could say that; he couldn't certify what had happened inside a duct he had only just reached. He made the distinction on the form. The steward stared at the correction, then added his own witness initials beside the sealed-jar count. Neither man got exactly the statement he'd wanted, but both could live with the one they'd signed.
At midday Frank pushed his cart to Nera's office. She was sorting numbered body tags with one eye on two assistants struggling to match a crate against its shipping note. She let the assistants finish their discussion, corrected a number without raising her voice, then looked at the ragged creature perched on Frank's tool tray.
"I wondered whether you'd let him come home with you," she said.
"More like he let me. That leg keeps catching when he climbs. Does it need a salve, or is the joint coming apart?"
Nera leaned nearer without trying to lift the rat. “The binding can hold bone together after the flesh is gone,” she said. “That doesn't mean the leg is healthy. I can ask Monster Operations about a salve, but if it hurts him we stop.” She looked at Frank rather than the cart. “Don't let somebody write him down as equipment just because he can't explain himself.”
The rat lifted the bad foot as if to offer it for inspection. Nera lowered her pen. An assistant behind her quietly turned the ledger page before the loose tags could slide into the wrong box.
"He's better at waiting than some people who stand in that doorway," Nera said. Then her expression altered as she caught sight of her assistants. "Mind you, they got handed somebody else's wrong crate again this morning. I'm not blaming them for the things Intake sends us."
"Wasn't going to," Frank replied. He had come to ask about the rat, and Nera had been decent enough to look up from her work. "If the salve costs something, tell me before you order it. I haven't seen my first wage slip yet."
"Monster Operations owes this department a consultation. I can put it on the interdepartmental account. But you'll need a classification for the little fellow eventually. If Safety comes by, they'll want someone responsible for him."
The rat was trying to work loose the metal tag on Frank's cart wheel. "They'd better send the rules in writing."
"What are my choices?" Frank asked, still watching the rat's paw.
"They'll offer vermin, specimen, stray, or familiar. None fits very well." Nera turned a tag over, tapping the bare side with her nail. "I don't get to decide what belongs in a cage or what gets turned out. But read anything the Core asks you to sign. Especially the bit about transfer of property."
The rat gave up on the cart tag and pressed its paw against Frank's wrist instead. Perhaps it had sensed the end of the conversation, or perhaps it was hunting for another screw. Frank was not going to let paperwork settle which it was.
Before they left, Frank asked why an undead rat should be so alert to people. Nera watched it lift a loose thread from his apron, hold it for a moment, and relinquish it when Frank opened his hand.
"I couldn't tell you," she said. "Most bound pests wander until the magic fails or somebody collects them. This one's paying attention. Could be it learned that in the drains, or somebody did a better job animating it than usual. I'm making guesses."
She returned with a small sealed tin from Monster Operations and read the instructions aloud, carefully separating what the salve might stabilize from what it couldn't repair. With the rat still on Frank's tool tray, Nera fitted a narrow bandage around his injured ankle. Frank repeated the amount back to her and thanked her. He could do the application himself if the rat let him, but he wouldn't treat its ruined body like a piece of equipment he'd been ordered to service.
At the door the rat touched Nera's boot with one exposed paw. She stopped sorting her tags long enough to look down at it.
"You're welcome," she said, as though the touch had been a perfectly ordinary courtesy.
Frank had an answer in mind about the cost of the ointment, but Nera had already gone back to the assistants, and he let it rest. The rat followed him down the hall with the tin tied securely to the cart.
By shift's end the rat had brought Frank a washer and a strip of blue ribbon of unknown origin. Latch issued a receipt for the ribbon and wanted to know how the rat had acquired it. Frank could only promise to keep looking.
The Core's grinning face occupied Frank's viewing glass when he got home. He had shut the door with his free hand and was just setting down the ointment when the image brightened, as if the Core had been waiting for an audience.
"Frank! There's the man himself. Our residential monitoring program tells me you've acquired a new companion. I do love a happy staff story."
Frank stood with one hand on the tin. "You have somebody watching my quarters?"
"Monitoring for your safety. Staff well-being is important to me. Think of it as a benefit!"
"I've got a lock on the door. I thought that was the benefit."
"Oh, Frank. You'll never feel alone in this dungeon family."
The viewing glass had been offered as a perk, something workers could watch after shift. Frank had never asked whether the glass watched back. The Core knew an animal had entered his room. It might know when he sat down or how long he kept the lamp burning. He left his hand on the ointment tin rather than give the Core the satisfaction of seeing him startle.
The rat rose onto its hind legs, put both forepaws against the glass, and squeaked directly into the Core's smiling face.
"Look at that! He's already making himself heard," the Core cried.
"His name's Rat Bastard," Frank said. After a full day of people treating the rat like misplaced equipment, the name came out before Frank could think better of it.
"An inappropriate designation for official use," said the Core after a pause.
"Then write RB."
"How charming! And what do those initials stand for?"
"His name."
The rat made two bright clicking noises and hopped down off the stool. Frank couldn't tell whether it was pleased by the new sound or interested in the bent paperclip lying beside his chair. Either way the name was staying.
The registration form arrived across the glass, along with a helpful reminder that unsigned domestic arrangements could result in removal. Frank read it slowly. Handler, department, duty, expected cost. He had no problem accepting responsibility for a rat who stole buttons, and he wrote that down in the section provided. Near the bottom, however, a clause gave the Core authority to reassign any registered familiar whenever operational need required it.
"You can take him and send him off to another department?" Frank asked.
"Only if the needs of the dungeon family demand it. We all have to be flexible."
"No."
"Frank, I'm surprised at you. You understand shared resources better than anyone."
"I understand what happens to shared equipment when nobody bothers to ask who was using it. Change the clause. You can inspect him for safety. You can't take him away because somebody wants a rat that fits through a pipe."
The Core offered notice before any reassignment, then a review, and finally the right to object once a transfer was complete. Frank read each proposal without moving his hand from the glass. All three versions let management take RB while he was at work. The rat carried a button to Frank’s foot, unaware of the argument, and Frank pushed the papers back.
At last the clause changed: inspection permitted, removal only for an immediate safety threat, no ordinary property transfer. Frank read the revised wording twice before signing. The Core congratulated him on a wonderful example of collaborative problem-solving, which Frank took as an indication that the Core had lost an argument it did not wish to remember.
MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL UPDATE
Employee
FRANK
Registered coworker
RB
Administrative category
MAINTENANCE FAMILIAR
Assignment
CUSTODIAL SUPPORT
Ownership status
NO PROPERTY TRANSFER
Shift contributions
+26 XP
Frank's experience total
418 / 500 XP
The final notice classified RB as a maintenance familiar. Frank checked the removal clause first, then the work assignment. There were no property-transfer rights. For the first time since the Core had offered him paid employment, he'd negotiated a condition before signing and got something he actually wanted. He did not thank management for allowing it.
"We value every member of our dungeon family," the Core assured him.
"That's what you said about the mop that broke in my hand last week."
The Core treated the remark as a joke. Frank put the signed form in his drawer while the glass was still glowing, then covered the screen with a spare cleaning rag. The Core could turn itself off when it was good and ready. For his part, he was done with the conversation.
Later he set a dish of clean water on the floor, loosened the bandage, and tried to ease ointment around the rat's swollen joint. RB allowed the first touch, objected noisily to the second, and made off with the cap before Frank could close the tin. Frank recovered it from beneath the chair, retied the bandage, and put the ointment away, neither of them wholly satisfied. The injury looked no better, but at least he had managed not to hurt the creature.
The viewing glass stayed covered. RB tucked his injured leg beneath himself beside Frank's chair.
"Keep your side tidy," Frank told the rat. RB clicked twice and dropped something small into the dish. Frank decided it could wait until morning.