Motif · Book 5, The Butcher's Masquerade

The blood bar

Tenth-floor saferoom rules imposed on the sixth, retroactively, as the brambles close in: a bar filled by kills, ten hours of rest when full, a random teleport out when it empties, no entry at zero. Fighting the never-ending thorns fills it without experience — fifteen minutes of garden duty every ten hours — which is how a party of hunters lived in Zockau's saferoom to the end.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 52 — Gehenna Bramble
• Chapter 54 — The blood bar
• Chapter 55 — Save the toraline
• Chapter 56 — Zerzura
• Chapter 58 — The last stall in the women's bathroom
• Chapter 61 — Marked for death
• Chapter 70 — Anaconda

Progression

The AI's new status bar: all saferoom access, personal spaces included, now runs on tenth-floor rules — the bar counts down inside, ten hours when full, a random teleport out at zero, and kills fill it (ch. 52). Every hunter who has not trained is ejected at once, and Britney, who has not killed a thing all floor, is zapped out with an empty bar (ch. 54); blood-bar time is not to be wasted (ch. 55); full to enter the club, no drain inside (ch. 58); with the brambles it is exactly what they needed against untrained hunters (ch. 61); fifteen minutes of garden duty every ten hours fills it (ch. 70).