Gojaro arrived through Waddell's radio because the front doors were no longer trusted.
The ergency unit on Waddell's belt coughed, spat static, then produced Gojaro's voice with the tired authority of a man who had been obeyed by worse machines.
"Fujiwara. Status."
Jade closed her good eye. "Alive."
"That is not a status."
Waddell looked up from the freezer record. "I said the sa thing earlier."
"Sergeant Waddell?"
"Unfortunately."
"Why is Jade answering incident command from inside a basent that should have been evacuated?"
Jade opened her eye. "Because the evacuation team had no faces."
The radio went quiet.
Kieran took the unit before Jade could explain badly. "Faceless responders. False federal credentials. Door invitation behavior. Angelic-adjacent residue, but not standard Angelic command. Death-mark targeting. Zunoder broadcast contamination. Public witness instability."
Waddell mouthed, Efficient.
Kieran ignored him. Gojaro exhaled through the speaker. "Put Jade on."
"She is injured."
"That is why I said put Jade on."
Jade held out her hand. Kieran hesitated.
"He will yell," Kieran said.
"Good. Familiar sounds help."
The radio changed hands. Jade lifted it to her mouth. "I am here."
Gojaro's voice sharpened. "Which eye?"
Jade did not answer fast enough.
"Jade."
"Right side is mostly gone."
Tyree stopped wrapping a bandage around a child's eyebrow. Waddell's pencil paused. Rima looked interested in a way Jade did not appreciate.
"Mostly is not a dical category," Gojaro said.
"It is today."
"Left eye?"
Jade touched the edge of the gauze. The thread behind it pulled toward the dead, the white stones, and the phones still showing Zunoder's face.
"White pressure. It reacts to nas. And Ty's voice."
"Which Ty?"
That one hurt. "Both."
The radio clicked. Sowhere far from the basent, Gojaro was probably gripping a desk hard enough to damage it.
"Do not use the mark again."
Jade laughed once. It ca out wrong. "I love simple advice."
"I am not advising. The cost has changed."
Every phone in the room still showed Zunoder's paused face while Waddell's people tried to isolate the feed. Jade looked at that familiar mouth and hated how badly she wanted it to say sothing harmless.
"Changed how?"
Gojaro did not dodge. That was why she trusted him more than most people who claid to protect her.
"When Ty intercepted the strike ant for you, the Reaper clause reacted. Your dical record split. One file says vision trauma. One file says partial vessel ignition. One file tried to delete itself and wrote his na across the error log."
Rima whistled softly.
Waddell looked at her. "Bad?"
"Expensive."
"Can anyone use normal adjectives?"
Gojaro continued over them. "You are not benched."
Jade's jaw tightened because he knew exactly where she would go.
"But you are no longer cleared to make contact decisions alone."
"I am in a basent full of civilians, fake responders, dead bodies, one woman who works for everybody terrible, and Ty's stolen face talking through phones. Alone is not the main issue."
"Jade."
The warning made the white thread twitch. She lowered her tone. "I heard you."
"No. You are arguing because if you stop, you will have to feel what happened."
That was unfair because it was accurate.
Jade looked at the milk coolers. Aaron Pike stayed down. Janice Bell stayed down. Mara Ellison stayed down. Nas, not tools. She had held that line. Ty had held another line in front of her. Neither line had held for free.
"He was here," she said.
The basent stopped pretending not to listen.
Gojaro answered quieter. "Yes."
"Everyone saw him."
"Yes."
"He looked like a skeleton."
"Yes."
"And sothing else showed up behind ."
No radio sound. Jade's hand tightened.
"You knew."
"I suspected."
"That is a coward's version of knew."
"It is the version that did not have proof."
Another voice cut in, farther from the receiver and sharp with command-room exhaustion. "This is Director Caelin."
Jade rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Of course it is."
"We have world-leader calls waiting, three division heads demanding jurisdiction, and two hospital networks refusing additional supernatural intake without written liability shielding."
Waddell looked at the radio as if it had personally betrayed him. "That is happening now?"
"Everything is happening now, Sergeant. Rosa and Oscar are moving toward you, but they are blocked two streets out by a crowd filming the school. Gojaro says opening a portal near Jade could worsen the thread reaction."
"Gojaro is right," Kieran said.
"I dislike how often people say that," Gojaro replied.
Jade leaned against the freezer. "So we hold."
"You hold," the Director said. "You docunt. You do not chase Ty's face through a door, a phone, a mirror, or anything claiming to be a rescue route."
Jade looked at Zunoder's frozen face. "That order was very specific."
"I have t you."
Fair.
The practical cruelty steadied her. Earth had not beco a myth where everyone stared at her white eye and waited for prophecy. Earth had traffic, hospital capacity, liability forms, trapped civilians, and Rosa two blocks away probably threatening sobody's barricade.
Good. ss ant the world was still partly theirs.
The freezer door beca black glass. The puddle beneath the folding tables smoothed. The dark screens across the room turned toward Jade.
In every reflection, a white skeleton stood behind her. No sickles. No fire. One hand hovered above her shoulder, not touching.
Waiting.
Jade could not breathe.
Kieran caught the radio before it slipped. "Jade?"
The skeleton in the freezer reflection turned its skull, not toward Jade, but toward the phone showing Zunoder's face. Gojaro's voice ca through the dropped radio, distant and urgent.
"Jade, do not answer anything behind you."
Too late, Jade thought.
The white skeleton lifted one finger.
One.
Jade kept her mouth shut.
That was harder than screaming. The reflection waited behind her with its raised finger, and every tired piece of her wanted to turn around and demand an answer. Was it Ty? Was it a warning? Was it death wearing a shape she could understand? The basent gave her no ti to find out. A child coughed behind the pantry shelves. Caleb Morris started crying without sound. One of Waddell's soldiers called for more gauze from the supply bins.
Duty moved first because love had beco unreliable.
Jade pointed at the freezer record. "Copy every na twice. One paper copy, one spoken recording. If the phones lie, we keep sothing they cannot edit."
Waddell looked at her for half a second, then nodded. "You heard her. Move."
The reflection lowered its finger. It did not disappear.
Gojaro's voice crackled from the radio. "Jade?"
"I did not answer it."
"Good."
"That does not an I am fine."
"I know."
For once, he did not sound like he was correcting her. That almost broke her worse than yelling.
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