Ty hated the pediatric hall more than the morgue.
The morgue had been cruel without pretending otherwise. It had drawers, labels, steel, cold air, and the decency to admit what kind of place it was.
The hall behind Freezer B 3 wore painted fish on the walls.
Frost had fild over the cartoon eyes. Stickers peeled from cracked glass. A row of tiny plastic chairs sat bolted beneath a dead television, each chair too small for anyone in Ty's group and too familiar for the children who had once waited there. Soone had scraped at the frost on the television screen and left thin marks in the ice.
JJ stopped at the threshold. "No. I hate this more."
Yun-Jin looked at the chairs first, then at the blue line running from Ty's missing finger to the cup behind them. "Children were here."
Heissman tried for his usual voice and failed halfway. "Pediatric waiting rooms do tend to contain children. I am hoping this route is copying a floor plan and not curating emotional damage."
"It can do both," JJ said.
Omina stood beside Ty and studied the old badge floating ahead of them.
MARA WHITLOCK, TEMPORARY ESCORT.
The smaller text under it kept blinking.
ESCORT ROUTE ACTIVE.
Ty pointed his sickle toward the hall. "Where does it lead?"
The badge drifted forward. The floor changed around it one tile at a ti, freezer grooves flattening into waxed hospital squares. The air ward just enough to carry old coffee, disinfectant, and plastic left too long in a toy bin.
JJ rubbed both arms. "Sa rcy mory?"
"Adjacent," Heissman said. "The tissue record used the morgue. This is property and custody. Sa night. Different departnt. Different weak point."
"You sound like you are about to give a lecture."
"I am trying not to panic."
Ty moved first because the hall was trying too hard to make him quiet. His bones made little sound on the waxed tile, so he dragged the blunt edge of his sickle once along the wall rail. The scrape gave the place sothing honest.
"Show the object," he said.
The badge stopped in front of a waist high cabinet labeled PEDIATRIC TEMPORARY PROPERTY.
Omina lifted one hand. "Careful. Evidence cabinets in hostile routes rarely contain only evidence."
"It has a child's toy."
"That is the reason for caution."
The cabinet opened before anyone touched it. Inside sat a clear plastic bag with a cracked label and nothing but an old shape pressed into its sides. Small claws. Crooked tail. One leg bent where tape had once held it wrong.
PROPERTY: ONE TOY DINOSAUR, GREEN.
CONDITION: DAMAGED LEG, TAPE REPAIR.
TEMPORARY HOLDER: KIERAN STAHL.
TRANSFER STATUS: MORY REMOVED.
JJ's face tightened. "Mason has it."
The empty bag twitched when she said his na.
Ty's missing finger burned blue in the cup behind them. The burn traveled through the floor and reached the cabinet like a vein finding an old wound. The plastic bag folded inward, then held its shape again.
Yun-Jin took one step back. "The records are bridging."
The television above the tiny chairs clicked on.
Zunoder appeared with Ty's living face.
The face had dirt in useful places, blood dried where a rescuer might have earned it, and exhaustion arranged into sothing civilians trusted. Ty looked at it and felt a sickness too old for the body he had now.
Zunoder smiled at the empty toy bag. "Children rember bodies before they rember explanations. A face. A hand. Soone pulling them under a chair before the adults understand why."
JJ lifted her panel. "Do not answer him."
Zunoder looked at her through the screen. "You keep saying that because you know answers have value."
Omina set a thin line of gold green aura around the cabinet. "State your claim."
"The child saw Ty's body protect him," Zunoder said. "Flesh and heat, hand and voice. The body acted before any sponsor could explain it."
Ty stepped closer to the television. The glass reflected his skull over Zunoder's borrowed face, and for one ugly angle the two lined up.
"Then the body did one good thing," Ty said. "You still did not do it."
Zunoder's smile cracked at the corner.
Heissman let out a soft laugh he probably should have kept. "That is a problem for a body priority claim. Favorable fact accepted. Ownership denied."
Zunoder's eyes moved to him. "You are very proud of words for a man who bleeds when the room changes its mind."
"Words have outlived people better than both of us."
The cabinet drawer slamd open hard enough to shake frost from the glass.
CURRENT HOLDER: MASON BELL.
JJ pressed both hands to her panel. "Earth side sees it. Jade's feed just spiked. Mason's toy moved."
The route reacted to Mason's na. Chairs scraped toward the television, not far, only enough to make the hall smaller.
Yun-Jin cut through the nearest chair leg before it moved again. "Stop crowding him."
The chair froze.
Omina glanced at her.
Yun-Jin kept her blade low. "It listened."
Zunoder looked almost amused. "The child already knows . He knows the body that saved him."
Ty touched the sickle point to the television glass. "Say the child's na."
"Mason Bell."
The empty bag trembled.
Ty pressed the sickle harder. "Wrong for this record."
Omina stepped in before Zunoder could twist the correction. "The witness currently answers to Mason Bell. The removed mory concerns Kieran Stahl. You cannot use current comfort while denying erased identity."
Heissman nodded once. "That command language is regrettably clean."
The television image distorted. Zunoder's face stretched into a shape the screen could not keep, then snapped back into black.
The cabinet spat out a strip of paper.
REQUESTED TESTIMONY: CHILD MORY.
FORCE OPEN AVAILABLE.
RISK: WITNESS FRACTURE.
Ty read it once and felt the want hit him before he could pretend otherwise.
There was proof behind Mason's fear: the face in the waiting room, the body that had protected the child, and the thread that would tie Erebos, Zunoder, Ty, Jade, and the missing mory into sothing the route could not shrug off.
JJ saw the want. "Ty."
He did not answer her right away. He looked at the empty toy bag and thought of Jade kneeling in a hospital with rain in her hair, of a child under a chair with a taped dinosaur, of every adult tonight who had wanted the useful part of Mason before asking what it cost him to give it.
"No force," Ty said.
The tiny chairs turned toward him all at once.
JJ breathed out through her teeth. "If we tear open a kid's head for useful proof, I do not care what the route calls it. We earned the na."
Heissman lifted one finger. "In less emotionally satisfying terms, coerced testimony corrupts the evidentiary chain."
"Mine was better."
"Mine will survive a court transcript."
Omina kept her attention on the chairs. "Both stay. The witness remains a person, or Zunoder wins even if the statent helps us."
Ty watched the empty bag settle. He wanted the answer. He wanted the cara angle, the old face, the sentence that would let him cut cleanly through the claim wearing his living skin. Wanting proof did not make Mason a tool.
"We wait for Mason," he said.
The overhead lights buzzed harder.
Yun-Jin tightened her grip on the bow. "It hates waiting."
"Then it can learn."
The badge drifted down the hall and stopped above the next door.
WAITING ROOM 214.
Another line appeared below it.
LAST KNOWN MORY: HIDDEN UNDER CHAIR.
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