The dinosaur's jaw opened by itself.
Mason pulled it against his chest so fast the taped leg bent under his thumb. The toy made no sound. That seed to scare him more than a roar would have.
Jade stayed where she was on the cafeteria floor. Her knees had gone numb from crouching. Her right eye kept giving her a deep, an pulse behind the socket. She let both things stay small. If she moved wrong, every adult in the room would rember they were bigger than Mason.
"I'm going to ask sothing," she said. "You can say no before I finish."
Mason looked from her to the toy. "About him?"
"About the tape on his leg. I want to look. I won't take him from you."
His first answer was already in his shoulders, a refusal he caught before it reached his mouth. He looked around, checking the adults, the screen, the door, and Kieran the Hunter by the wall.
Jade hated that tiny pause more than the moving toy. Sobody had taught him that no was dangerous unless the room approved it.
"You don't have to make it polite," she said. "No is enough."
Mason swallowed. "You can look if I hold him."
"That works."
She leaned in with both hands still on her own knees. The dinosaur had been repaired with cheap tape wrapped twice around one back leg. Dirt had settled into the edges. Under the tape, folded so tight it almost looked like part of the plastic, was a piece of an old hospital sticker.
MGH TEMP PROP
The rest had rubbed away.
Waddell ca down beside Jade with the care of a man lowering himself near a live wire. He looked once and kept his voice level. "rcy General."
Mason frowned. "My mom gave him to ."
No one corrected him. Jade turned her head just enough to make sure the room understood that silence was an order.
Caelin did not get the order fast enough. His voice ca through the tablet with papers moving behind it. "Mason Bell's school intake lists Janice Bell as ergency family contact before the shelter incident. Janice Bell is also listed among the confird dead from the school defense."
Caleb, on the cot, pushed himself up on one elbow and then stopped when pain caught him. "The corporal?"
"Yes," Caelin said.
Mason's grip tightened until the tape on the toy creaked. "Janice was my aunt."
Jade nodded because the correction mattered. "Your aunt. Got it."
Caelin started to say sothing else. Waddell reached over and turned the tablet so the speaker faced the blanket instead of the room. The sound dropped to a mutter. "He can still hear you," Jade said, and Waddell kept his hand on the tablet. "I know. That was for ."
Mason watched them with the wary focus of a child trying to figure out which adult had the power to ruin the next five minutes. "Are you talking about taking ?"
"No," Jade said, but Waddell added the part she should have said first. "Nobody in this room is taking you anywhere without you hearing it first."
"That is not the sa as asking." The boy said it softly. Too softly for a seven year old who should have been arguing about bedti or cereal. The room heard it anyway.
Jade kept her hand open on her knee. "You're right. Hearing is not asking. I should have said that better." When Kieran the Hunter asked if Mason wanted her between him and the door, Jade looked at Mason instead of answering for him.
He blinked at being asked. "She can stand there. Not close."
Kieran accepted that without ceremony. She moved to the cafeteria door and sat on the floor with one knee raised, sword hand resting loose across it. It made her look less like a guard and more like soone who had decided the door was her problem for the next few minutes.
Mara had not moved from her chair. The old files lay around her shoes, so face up, so folded under themselves from the fall. Rose stood behind her, but her hand stayed on the chair back instead of Mara's shoulder, giving her a choice she probably could not feel yet.
"He had the toy," Mara said. When Jade turned slowly and asked who, Mara made herself say the na without reaching for Mason with it. "The child in the waiting room. Stahl. He was under a chair when I found him. He told his mother said to stay where grown ups could see him. No grown up was looking anymore."
Mason rubbed the dinosaur's head with his thumb. "White lights."
Mara pressed both hands against her knees. "South hall pediatrics had those awful lights. They buzzed if the building power dipped."
"They hurt," Mason said, and Mara's voice got smaller without breaking. "Yes. They did."
Waddell kept his question plain. "Why was he alone?"
Mara looked at the files on the floor rather than at the boy. "Because the hospital was full and every person with a badge had three jobs. There had been a bus crash. Pediatrics needed transport. Records needed signatures. Soone put temporary escort on my sheet, and I treated it like a task I could finish between two other tasks."
She breathed in and stayed with the ugly part. "I took him to the waiting room and told myself I would co back in five minutes."
Rose closed her fingers around the chair back. Jade did not forgive Mara in front of Mason. Forgiveness would have turned him into an object adults used to make themselves feel clean.
Mason looked up. "Did you co back?"
Mara's mouth moved before sound found it. "No. Not in ti."
The toy shifted in Mason's hands. Its plastic mouth opened wider, still silent.
Kieran the Hunter spoke from the door. "You can stop answering."
Mason looked at her. "You're the other Kieran."
"Yes."
"Are you mad about my na?"
Jade saw the question land under Kieran's ribs. The hunter did not rush the answer. That helped. "No," Kieran said. "I am angry at the people who made you carry one without telling you what it weighed."
Mason thought about that, serious and tired. "I don't rember being him."
"You do not have to prove him to ."
"But you are him too."
"No." Kieran's hand closed around the hilt at her side, not tight enough to draw. "I am Kieran because I chose to answer to it. If that na is part of you, it cos to you your way."
Caelin's tablet crackled against the blanket. "The television just changed."
Everyone looked.
The dead screen above the cafeteria serving line had gray letters on it.
CHILD MORY AVAILABLE.
OPEN ALL?
Y / N
Mason flinched when the Y brightened.
Caelin's voice sharpened. "Do not select anything."
Jade almost told him to shut up, then decided accuracy mattered more than anger. "No one here is selecting it. Stop sounding like the button belongs to you."
The Y brightened again.
Kieran moved without standing. Gold fire slipped from her wrist in a narrow line and cut between Mason and the screen. The letters bent, lost shape, and ca back duller.
Mason stared at her. "Can you cut words?"
"Bad ones, sotis."
Caleb gave a weak laugh from the cot, more air than sound. Mason's mouth moved like it had found the old place where a smile used to live, then lost it again.
Waddell took the tablet and set it face down on the blanket. Mason watched him do it. "Did you put him in tiout?"
"Temporary command pause," Waddell said.
"That ans tiout."
"Fine. Tiout."
The tiny almost smile ca back for one breath.
Then the dinosaur's jaw closed.
Mason looked down at it. "There was a chair."
Jade's whole body wanted to move closer. She made herself stay on her side of the space between them.
"The one from the white room?" she asked.
He nodded. "I was under it because a man told to hide."
Waddell's jaw flexed. He had questions lined up behind his teeth. To his credit, he kept them there. Jade asked the one Mason had already opened. "What man?"
"The dead man."
Rose whispered sothing that might have been a prayer. Mara covered her mouth with both hands. Jade kept her voice even. "Did he scare you?"
Mason shook his head, then stopped and corrected himself. "He looked scary. He wasn't scary at ."
That answer went through Jade harder than a clean yes would have. "What did he do?"
"He stood in front of when the other man ca."
Kieran stayed still at the door. Waddell stayed still by the cot. Even Caelin kept quiet under the blanket.
"The dead man had blood on him," Mason said. "He moved like his arms were too heavy. Like he forgot how people work."
Jade put one hand flat on the floor. The tile was cold. It kept her in the room with Mason instead of back in a hospital hallway where Ty's body had been turned into an argunt.
"Did he say anything?"
Mason rubbed the dinosaur's taped leg. "Hide until Jade stops crying."
The Reaper thread pushed hard enough to blur the edge of the table. Jade held her position and breathed through her nose until the room settled back into shapes.
"Then the other man ca," Mason said.
"The one he stood in front of?"
"Yes."
"Do you rember him?"
"Not his face. It kept going away." Mason touched the toy's empty plastic eye. "I rember his eyes. Orange, like fire trapped in a cup."
Caelin spoke from under the blanket before he could stop himself. "Orange eyed."
Mason nodded. "He told the dead man, if you want her safe, leave this one quiet."
The television flashed once.
MORY DAMAGE ACTIVE.
Mason's shoulders started to shake. Jade held out one hand, palm up, close enough to offer and far enough to refuse.
He did not give her the dinosaur. He set the toy against her fingers and kept his hand on the other side, sharing the weight.
Jade let him.
"One more thing," Mason said.
"Only if you want to say it."
"He told not to let the orange eyed man see my na."
The captions on the tablet caught the words after his voice almost lost them.
DO NOT LET THE ORANGE EYED MAN SEE YOUR NA.
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