Ty's missing finger pointed at the wall and trembled like it wanted to accuse stone of cowardice.
Ty held it against his left hand because letting go felt worse. The finger had been cut from him, stolen from him, used against him, and now it was the only part of his body with the manners to point.
He did not appreciate the irony.
"Again," Omina said.
Ty pressed the severed finger to the black wall.
Blue fire crawled from his bones into the nail. The wall answered with red veins, thin at first, then bright enough to paint everyone in the corridor the color of old wounds.
JJ stood too close.
Yun-Jin stood close to JJ and pretended she was only guarding the route.
Heissman leaned on a broken support column with the expression of a man personally insulted by architecture.
"For clarity," Heissman said, "if the finger begins screaming in a language older than local governnt, are we treating that as progress or escalation?"
"Both," Omina said.
"Comforting."
Ty ignored them and pushed harder.
The red veins moved, then snapped away from the finger as if the route had rembered a rule it disliked. Pain flashed through Ty's missing knuckle, through the hand that did not have flesh, through the tooth he had sacrificed at the Na Office. His skull filled with the sound of a grocery store alarm.
Smoke.
A child.
Blue fire burning through his stolen wrist.
Ty jerked back.
JJ caught his elbow before he hit the opposite wall. Her hand was warm. Her panel was cracked. Pink light crawled under the glass in anxious little lines.
"What did you see?"
"Earth."
Her face changed. "Jade?"
"No." He closed his fist around the finger. "A store. People. He saved them."
Yun-Jin's mouth tightened. "Zunoder?"
"Yes."
"Why would he save people?"
Ty looked at her.
She looked away first, annoyed with herself for asking a question with an answer she already knew.
Omina stepped between Ty and the wall. She looked smaller without the easy weight of command around her. Smaller did not an softer. A knife was small.
"He needed witnesses," she said.
"He used my fire."
"Your body still contains habits."
"My body is stupid."
JJ's grip tightened. "Ty."
"It saved them before he chose."
Heissman made a thoughtful sound. "That is strategically unfortunate. If the stolen vessel performs virtue involuntarily, then the enemy receives reputational profit from instincts he does not personally possess."
Ty turned his skull.
Heissman raised one hand. "In human words, your body is helping him look better."
"I understood."
"Then why are you looking at like that?"
"Because I hate your better words."
JJ let out one short breath that might have beco a laugh on a kinder day.
The corridor shook.
The finger pointed again, this ti not at the wall. It turned in Ty's palm until the bone aid toward JJ's cracked wrist panel.
JJ froze.
"Absolutely not," she said.
The panel rang anyway.
The sound was soft, almost polite, which made it worse. Pink light flickered along the broken edge. The screen filled with black smoke and a paused video thumbnail.
Ty's human face stared up from the glass.
JJ did not open it.
She also did not throw the panel. That took visible effort.
Yun-Jin moved one step closer. "Do not watch it."
"I know that."
"Then do not."
"I said I know."
"You are still looking."
JJ snapped her head up. "Because that is his face, and I am allowed to need one second before being sensible."
Yun-Jin's eyes widened, then narrowed in pain. The arrow was not in her hand. Ty still felt like one had been drawn.
Omina looked at both won and said nothing.
Ty wished she would say sothing. Then he wished she would not. Then he wished his body had the decency to stop being a public problem.
The panel rang again.
This ti a ssage appeared without the video opening.
SPONSOR NOTICE: PUBLIC RECOGNITION EVENT DETECTED
JJ's face went pale in a way Ty hated.
Heissman straightened. "That wording is predatory."
"Everything on my panel is predatory," JJ said.
Another line appeared.
FACE USER HAS GENERATED CIVILIAN GOODWILL UNDER CONTESTANT IMAGE.
Yun-Jin read it twice. "Can it transfer your support?"
"It can try." JJ's voice had gone calm. Rich calm. Boardroom calm. The kind of calm that ant soone had moved from fear into arithtic. "The sponsorship was attached to the contestant identity, not the facial structure."
Heissman nodded. "A sentence I never imagined needing."
The panel continued.
RECOMNDED ACTION: CLARIFY BENEFICIARY.
Below the words, two options glowed.
BONE HALF.
FACE USER.
Ty stared.
"No."
JJ touched neither option.
"It is asking before it steals," she said.
"No."
"I heard you."
"Do not pay for again."
Her expression changed as if he had stepped on sothing soft without seeing it. "This is not about paying."
"It always is."
"No. Sotis it is about refusing to let a thief take the na on the receipt."
Yun-Jin looked at JJ then, really looked, and so of the old sharpness between them shifted. It did not vanish. It changed direction.
"If you choose Bone Half," Yun-Jin said, "what does it cost?"
JJ smiled without humor. "It is WebNovel in hell. It will tell after I click."
"Do not," Ty said.
Omina raised one hand. "Wait."
Everyone stopped.
Even Ty.
Omina pointed at the finger. "It aid at the panel before the prompt appeared."
Heissman looked from the finger to the wall. "Suggesting the prompt is not rely reactive. It may be part of the route's lure."
"Or part of Zunoder's attack," Yun-Jin said.
"Both theories make my afternoon worse."
JJ lowered the panel slightly. "If I do nothing, does he gain?"
Omina did not answer quickly. That made the answer bad.
"He gains ti," she said. "Possibly not ownership."
"Ti is ownership if everyone else gets tired."
Ty hated that too.
JJ's thumb hovered over Bone Half.
Ty caught her wrist.
He used two fingers and no force. The restraint mattered. The corridor watched restraint the way hungry things watched food.
"Look at ," he said.
JJ did.
Her eyes were wet. She looked angry about that, and more angry that he could see it.
"I am looking."
"I do not want you buying pieces of ."
"I am not buying pieces of you."
"Then what are you buying?"
She looked down at the panel. The pink light touched her thumb, eager and an.
"Ti," she said.
Ty let go.
JJ did not press the button.
Instead, she took a breath and turned the panel toward Omina.
"Can you make the choice official without using my money?"
Omina's mouth twitched. "Forrly, yes."
"Currently?"
"Currently I can make it inconvenient."
"I love inconvenient."
Yun-Jin muttered, "Of course you do."
JJ glanced at her. "You cut off his hand."
Yun-Jin flinched.
The corridor went cold.
JJ closed her eyes for half a second. "I am sorry. That was ugly."
"It was true," Yun-Jin said.
"Truth can still be ugly."
Ty wanted to say sothing. He did not know which wound to stand near, and every choice felt like proof against soone.
Omina saved him by taking JJ's wrist panel.
"Good," she said. "Emotional violence delayed. Bureaucratic violence begins."
Heissman looked almost moved. "General, I have never admired you more."
"Do not make it strange."
She pressed neither option. Instead, she opened the cracked side nu with the tip of one nail, dragged the prompt into a complaint field, and wrote with terrifying speed.
CONFLICT OF BENEFICIARY UNDER ACTIVE VESSEL THEFT.
REQUESTING HOLD ON AUTOMATIC TRANSFER PENDING FIELD IDENTITY REVIEW.
The panel pulsed.
REQUEST DENIED.
Omina wrote another line.
RECORDING DENIAL UNDER FORR COMMAND AUTHORITY.
The panel paused.
Heissman leaned closer. "It dislikes audit trails."
"Everything guilty dislikes audit trails," Omina said.
The prompt changed.
HOLD GRANTED: SIX HOURS.
JJ exhaled hard.
Ty looked at the tir as it appeared. Six hours before the prompt returned. Six hours before Zunoder's public rescue could reach into JJ's support and twist it. Six hours before the face got another bite at a na that did not belong to it.
The finger in Ty's hand pointed past the panel now.
Down the corridor.
Away from Earth.
Toward the red route.
Then it tapped twice.
Slow.
Exact.
Omina stared. "Two intersections."
"Or two witnesses," Heissman said.
"Or two traps," Yun-Jin added.
Ty closed his fist around the finger until blue fire leaked between his bones.
"Then we break the first one."
JJ wiped one eye with the back of her hand before anyone could be stupid enough to ntion it.
"And if the first one is a person?"
Ty looked at the red-lit corridor.
He saw the grocery store child again. Smoke. Phone. Blue fire. Zunoder wearing his face like an apology.
"Then we do not break them."
The answer cost him ti.
He could feel it.
The route could too.
Sowhere ahead, Zunoder laughed with Ty's throat.
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