Tessa hated the register drawer more than she hated the blood on it.
Blood made sense. Blood belonged to bodies. It dried, cracked, stained, and told anyone with eyes that a person had been hurt badly enough for the floor to rember.
The drawer was worse because it looked normal.
Coins still sat in their little wells. A five-dollar bill had dried into the corner. Two receipts curled under the spring clips. The front edge was dented where Zunoder's shoe had kicked it shut so the cara would see a rescue instead of a cashier bleeding beside the counter.
Tessa held the evidence box against her ribs and tried not to think about how warm it felt.
It should not have been warm.
One soldier walked ahead of her. One walked behind. Waddell had sent both with nas, which Jade insisted on now because nas made people harder for the route to fold into scenery.
"Sergeant Mina Cross," the woman in front had said.
"Private Leon Archer," the young man behind had added.
Tessa had almost asked if they were real nas or soldier nas, then decided the day had enough problems.
They moved through a service hallway beneath the shelter toward the loading bay where Caelin's courier team waited. The route had not opened a red door yet. That worried Tessa more than if it had.
Quiet ant it was thinking.
Mina stopped at the corner and lifted a fist.
Tessa froze.
Leon looked back the way they had co. "No movent."
Mina pointed at the floor.
A receipt lay in the middle of the hallway.
Clean. White. Freshly printed.
Tessa knew better than to touch it.
She lifted her phone with the hand that was not holding the box and started recording.
"Receipt on the floor of shelter service hall," she said. "No one touch it."
The paper printed a line while she fild.
THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING RCY GENERAL.
Leon whispered, "That is not creepy at all."
Mina gave him one look.
"Professional comntary later."
The receipt printed again.
CLAIMANT COURTESY TRANSFER AVAILABLE.
PLEASE RELEASE DRAWER TO AUTHORIZED FACE.
Tessa laughed once because anger had gotten ahead of fear.
"Authorized face?"
The hallway lights dimd.
Ty's human face appeared in the reflection of the vending machine glass beside them.
Zunoder had no physical body in the hall. Tessa had learned the difference. This version had no breath fog, no weight in the hallway, no wet shoes on concrete. It was a reflection with good posture and terrible timing.
"Tessa," he said.
Mina raised her rifle toward the glass.
Tessa stepped sideways before Mina could fire into a vending machine and spend the next hour explaining that to Waddell.
"Reflection," Tessa said. "Not body."
Zunoder's reflected eyes found the evidence box.
"You are tired."
"Observant."
"They are using you."
"Currently, they are escorting ."
"To a courier. To a chain. To another room full of people who will decide what your pain is allowed to an."
That landed closer than Tessa wanted.
Leon shifted behind her. "Ma'am?"
"Do not answer him for ," Tessa said.
Leon shut up.
Zunoder's reflection smiled with Ty's mouth.
"You learned the rule."
"I learned you hate receipts, nad witnesses, and consent."
"I hate waste. Nora's pain can end this faster if you give the drawer."
Tessa adjusted her grip on the box. "By end, you an help you."
"By end, I an stop making strangers bleed for a skeleton who will leave you when he finds what he wants."
The sentence was good.
Too good.
It had the shape of sothing a tired person could believe at two in the morning while holding blood that did not belong to her. Ty would leave. Jade would go where the crisis went. Waddell would file reports. Tessa would be a clip, then a userna, then a woman strangers argued about until the next disaster gave them new at.
The route knew abandonnt had a flavor.
Tessa looked at the reflection.
"What does Nora want?"
Zunoder paused.
Mina's eyes flicked toward Tessa, then back to the glass.
Tessa repeated it for the cara.
"What does Nora Pell want done with the drawer?"
The receipt on the floor curled black at the edges.
Zunoder's reflection softened. "She wants the truth."
"That is not an answer. That is a poster."
Leon's mouth twitched.
Tessa kept the phone up. "Did Nora give you permission to take this?"
The reflection's jaw tightened.
"Nora is dying."
The words hit the hallway hard.
Tessa's hand went cold around the box.
Mina spoke for the first ti since the reflection appeared. "Current dical status says critical, alive, responsive to pain, pressure stable after transfusion."
Tessa looked at her.
Mina did not take her eyes off the glass. "Waddell told us to know the witness status before moving the evidence."
Tessa could have kissed Jade for making competence contagious.
She looked back at Zunoder.
"Nora is alive."
"For now."
"Then she can say what she wants."
The vending machine glass cracked when the reflection pressed one hand against the inside of it. Blue fire spiderwebbed through the glass.
Mina stepped in front of Tessa.
Tessa stepped around her.
"Do not make brave," Tessa snapped.
Mina blinked.
"Sorry," Tessa said. "Not you. Him."
Zunoder tilted his head.
"You think bravery is sothing I give you?"
"I think you keep arranging rooms where people have to perform it."
The receipt on the floor burned away.
The route disliked that one too.
Tessa's phone buzzed.
Jade's line.
No audio ca through. A text appeared instead.
CALL CHAIN. DO NOT ARGUE FOR THE CROWD.
Tessa exhaled.
Right. She was doing it again. Letting him pull her into a scene. Letting the cara beco a stage.
She turned away from the reflection.
"Mina, Leon, we move."
Zunoder's voice sharpened behind her. "If you deliver that drawer, rcy General rejects ."
Tessa kept walking.
"Sounds like a you problem."
The vending machine exploded.
Glass sprayed across the hallway. Mina shoved Tessa down by the shoulder, hard enough to bruise. Leon fired once at a red hand coming through the broken machine where the coin slot had been.
The shot tore the wrist open.
Paper and blood-colored light spilled onto the floor.
Tessa curled around the evidence box.
No hero posture. No dramatic cara angle. Her knees hurt. Her bandaged hand scread. Her phone skidded under a radiator and kept recording the floor.
The footage felt more honest than anything she had taken all day: concrete, glass, one boot, her own breath punching in and out of her chest while adults shouted around her. No face. No speech. No clean angle for people to love.
She preferred it.
Leon grabbed the phone on the way past and held it out without looking at the screen.
"Still live."
"Of course it is," Tessa said.
"Do you want it off?"
The question nearly made her trip.
Nobody had asked that since the grocery store.
Tessa took the phone and kept running.
"Not yet."
This ti, the answer belonged to her.
Mina hauled her up. "Move."
They ran.
The loading bay door was twenty yards away. It looked farther because fear hated asuring things fairly.
Leon stayed behind them, firing twice more. Mina hit the door release. The loading bay opened to rain, flashing lights, and a black ergency van with Caelin's seal on the side.
A courier in a clear face shield stepped out with both hands visible.
"Evidence chain?"
Tessa almost shoved the box at him.
Then she rembered.
Nad. Witnessed. Asked.
"Na," she said.
The courier stopped. "Agent Rulo rcer."
"Who sent you?"
"Director Caelin through Waddell's shelter command."
"What are you taking?"
"One grocery register drawer tied to Nora Pell's witness statent and the Zunoder face-user claim."
"Where?"
"rcy General external claimant intake, then basent records under dual witness."
Tessa handed him the box.
The mont his gloves touched it, the drawer inside snapped open by itself.
Every person on the loading bay stopped moving.
The marked receipt rose from under the cash tray, held upright by blue fire that did not burn the plastic evidence lid.
Ty's skeletal thumbprint glowed over Nora's tistamp.
New text appeared beneath it.
RCY GENERAL BASENT RECORDS
ROOM B-12
UNRESOLVED REMOVAL LOG
BRING WITNESS CHAIN.
Tessa stared at it.
Then she laughed again, shakier this ti.
Agent rcer looked at her. "Is that normal?"
"Today?"
Mina grabbed the van door and checked the street.
Tessa picked up her phone from Leon, who had recovered it from under the radiator and looked too young to have been shot at by a vending machine.
She pointed the cara at the glowing receipt.
"Nora Pell's drawer is in chain. It says Room B-12."
The reflection of Ty's face appeared for one last second in the rain on the van window.
This ti, Tessa did not speak to it.
She spoke to Jade's line.
"I am done being the stage. Tell Ty where to go."
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