Jade made the first rule before the generator finished coughing back to life.
"No sheets over the dead in the main room."
Waddell stared at her. He had blood on his cheek that was not his, one empty rifle, one borrowed pistol, and the expression of a man who had heard too many impossible orders today to reject another one on style.
"People are going to ask why."
"Tell them I said so."
"That is not an answer."
"It is for the next ten minutes."
Kieran stood beside the supply shelves with her bandaged arm lifted. Gold light moved over the door seams, thin as wire. She had found three cracks in the basent wall, two hand-wide vents, and one drainage pipe that humd when crows landed on the roof.
Jade trusted her more when she was useful. That was not kind. Kind could co later if the building survived. Tyree carried a boy past them and set him on a cafeteria table. The kid had a cut over one eyebrow and both hands wrapped around a toy dinosaur with no tail.
"He needs stitches," Tyree said.
"I need twelve more of ," Jade said. "Pressure bandage first. Stitch when he stops shaking."
The boy looked up at her.
"Was that skeleton bad?"
The room went quieter than it should have. Adults were terrible at hiding fear around children. They either lied too fast or stared at the floor like answers lived there. Jade crouched despite the pain behind her missing right sight.
"No."
The boy swallowed.
"He had knives."
"He used them on the thing trying to kill us."
"He pushed you."
"Out of the way."
The dinosaur creaked under the boy's grip.
"He was scary."
Jade nodded.
"So was I when I had a gun."
The boy thought about that with the seriousness only terrified children managed.
"Is he coming back?"
Jade almost said yes. She wanted to. The want ca up so hard she tasted blood. Instead she said, "I do not know." That answer cost less than a lie and hurt more.
The boy accepted it because children still recognized honesty before adults trained them out of it. Jade stood too fast. The right side of the basent vanished. Kieran caught her again. This ti Jade let the grip hold.
"Your balance is getting worse," Kieran said.
"My patience is too."
"I noticed."
Waddell ca closer, voice low.
"Jade. Command is asking for a status call."
"Tell Command the gym is gone, the shelter is crowded, and if they send anyone through the front doors without my word, I will personally test whether their insurance covers stupidity."
"That is not a status call."
"Fine. Add casualties."
Waddell's mouth tightened.
"How many?"
Jade looked at the far side of the room. Bodies lay near the old milk coolers. Six so far. Two soldiers. One teacher. Three civilians, including the woman who had pushed a stroller through the gym doors and then thrown herself over sobody else's child when the hooked thing ca down.
No sheets. Not because Jade wanted cruelty. Because the Reaper thread behind her left eye leaned toward covered bodies like a hand toward a door.
"Six confird," she said. "More upstairs."
Waddell wrote it down on a clipboard he had found in the kitchen office. The clipboard had a faded lunch inventory sheet clipped to it.
MILK: 42
APPLESAUCE: 18
BLEACH: 3
DEAD: 6
Jade hated the page. She needed the page.
"Second rule," she said. "Nobody touches the white stones from the creature."
Tyree looked up from the boy's bandage.
"The sewn ones?"
"All of them."
"I put two in a pan."
"Good. Put the pan inside another pan."
"That a science thing?"
"That is a I do not want the basent to beco a portal thing."
"Pan inside pan. Got it."
Kieran listened with that hunter stillness that made every word feel weighed.
"You can feel them."
"Yes."
"How?"
Jade pointed at her left eye.
"The thing I do not trust likes them."
"The Reaper mark."
Waddell stopped writing. A soldier nearby stopped pretending not to listen. Jade faced Kieran with her good eye.
"Do not say that na loud in a room full of dead people."
The lights flickered. Every body near the milk coolers twitched once. The room saw it. Nobody breathed. Jade raised one hand slowly.
The Reaper thread slid behind her left eye like cold fishing line. It wanted the bodies. It wanted the easy answer. Six dead hands could guard a door better than six sheets on the floor. She grabbed the want and held it.
No. Her palm burned white.
"Nas," she said.
Waddell blinked.
"What?"
"I need their nas."
"Jade."
"If I count them as bodies, this thing counts them as tools. Give nas."
Waddell looked down at the clipboard. His voice changed when he started reading.
"Private Aaron Pike."
The soldier nearest the door made a broken sound. Jade held the white thread steady.
"Aaron Pike stays down."
The body by the cooler settled. Waddell swallowed.
"Corporal Janice Bell."
"Janice Bell stays down."
Another twitch stopped. The whole basent listened. Waddell read the teacher's na next. Then the civilians. The woman with the stroller was Mara Ellison. She had not been carrying her own child. The child she saved was asleep under Tyree's jacket now, thumb in his mouth, forehead smudged with soot.
Jade said every na. Each one made the Reaper thread cut deeper behind her eye. When the last body settled, her knees almost went. Kieran caught her with both hands. This ti Jade leaned for half a breath.
Only half. The basent door at the top of the stairs banged once. Everyone flinched. Then ca a voice from outside.
"Federal response team. Open up."
Waddell lifted his pistol. Jade felt the beacon stones in the pan turn cold. The voice outside continued.
"We are here for the woman with one white eye."
Kieran's gold light snapped brighter. Tyree stood. Jade looked toward the stairwell. The Reaper thread whispered one thing through her skull. Wrong door.
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