Ty heard Mason through the waiting room television.
The route carried the child's voice badly. Static chewed the edges. Cafeteria echoes folded over each other. Still, the sentence arrived whole enough to hurt.
My na is Mason Bell.
And I think Kieran Stahl was when everybody forgot.
JJ pressed one hand to her chest. "He kept both."
Heissman adjusted his torn sleeve with unnecessary care. "He preserved his current identity while acknowledging a prior erased designation."
JJ looked at him.
"Yes," he said. "I am agreeing with you."
Ty stayed facing the chair. The child in the mory remained under it with the dinosaur tucked beneath his coat. Erebos's mark burned into the tile, and the old promise waited for the wrong kind of help.
The route offered it again.
FORCE OPEN AVAILABLE.
RISK: WITNESS FRACTURE.
Ty lifted his sickle.
Yun-Jin caught his wrist. "You said no force."
"I know."
"Then why is your hand arguing?"
He looked at the blade and made himself lower it. "Anything that reaches for him loses a finger."
"Use a finger you still own."
The comnt was too dry for rcy, which made it work. Ty's grip settled.
Omina stepped to the center of the waiting room. "Record protected refusal and partial voluntary testimony."
The ceiling speaker clicked.
PARTIAL TESTIMONY INSUFFICIENT TO CONTEST MORY REMOVAL.
Omina did not raise her voice. "Insufficient by what standard?"
The answer ca after a delay that sounded almost like annoyance.
STANDARD: IDENTIFICATION OF REMOVING PARTY.
Heissman nodded once. "It wants one competent identifier. Not the whole trauma."
JJ stared at the frozen child under the chair. "He is seven."
"Yes," Heissman said. "Predators prefer standards children can fail."
Ty pointed the sickle at the speaker without lifting it high. "One sentence. If he chooses one. No more."
The waiting room trembled. The television shifted from the old mory to Jade's shelter.
Mason stood inside the gold circle with the dinosaur against his chest. Jade crouched near him without touching. Kieran the Hunter guarded the door. Waddell held the gray slip, and Caelin's tablet sat on a cot with Rose and Mara behind it. Jade looked exhausted enough to fold over, but she still looked like the only adult in the room who understood where the floor was.
"Mason," she said, "the route wants one identifier. You can give nothing. You can give one thing. You decide."
Caelin's jaw tightened on the tablet. He kept quiet.
Ty watched Mason look from Jade to the blank television. The boy had no direct view of Ty, but the toy had thinned the line between rooms.
Mason lifted the dinosaur. "Can he hear ?"
Jade glanced at the screen. "I think so."
"Skeleton Ty?"
Ty's fingers tightened. JJ did not look away from the screen.
"Answer him," she said.
Ty stepped closer. "I hear you."
Mason's face changed. Fear stayed, but wonder ca beside it, the painful kind that arrives when the impossible has been in the room long enough to learn your na.
"Were you the dead man?" Mason asked.
Zunoder's reflection flashed at the edge of the screen.
Ty answered before the thief could wear the question. "So of was in that body."
Mason frowned. "Are you mad I hid?"
"No."
"I was scared."
"You were supposed to be." Ty kept his voice low. "Scared kept you quiet. Quiet kept you alive."
Jade's eyes shone, but she did not interrupt.
Mason hugged the dinosaur tighter. "The orange eyed man said if I forgot, you could co back."
"He lied."
"I wanted you to co back because the lady was crying."
Ty looked at Jade through the screen. "I know."
Zunoder appeared behind Mason's reflection, wearing Ty's face with a softness made for hospital rooms.
"Careful, little witness," Zunoder said. "If the skeleton says the body saved you, and the skeleton is Ty, then perhaps the body is where safety still lives."
Mason turned toward the reflection.
Jade started to move, then stopped herself. Letting him answer cost her. Ty saw it in her hands.
Mason studied Zunoder's borrowed face. "You look like him."
Zunoder bent a little, bringing the face to the boy's height. "Because I am the part that reached you first."
Mason shook his head. "The dead man moved like he hurt."
"Pain does not make a person honest."
"You move like you know where people are watching."
Zunoder's expression shifted, then corrected itself into sadness.
Mason noticed. "You do faces after you need them. Like grown ups who pretend they were not mad."
Jade looked down before Mason could see her satisfaction. Ty did not hide his.
The child's words carried into the waiting room and struck the old mark under the chair. They were small words, built from child logic. That made them harder for the route to smooth out.
Zunoder's voice lowered. "You are tired. They are using you."
Mason's hand tightened on the dinosaur. "She said I could stop."
"And yet you continue."
"Because I want to say this part."
JJ made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost grief.
Heissman murmured, "Children are sotis devastating."
Mason looked back at Jade. "Is that enough?"
The route withheld its answer. It wanted the identifier.
Mason closed his eyes. "The man who took the cup did not have a face on the cara."
The waiting room mory cracked.
Erebos's blurred figure near the chair sharpened for less than a heartbeat into absence rather than a face. A person shaped refusal. Cara static where identity should have been.
The speaker scread once.
REMOVING PARTY: FACE ABSENT.
ELEVATED SIGNER: EREBOS ALKANDROS.
MINOR DISTRESS CONSENT: INVALID.
MORY REMOVAL: CONTESTED.
Mason dropped to his knees.
Jade caught him before anyone else moved. She let him fall against her first, then wrapped him only after his hands found her sleeve.
"Done," she said. "You are done. No more."
Caelin tried to speak.
Waddell slapped the tablet mute without looking at it. "I will apologize when it becos useful."
On Ty's side, the black mark under the chair split down the middle. Blue fire ran through the crack. The frozen child under the chair exhaled and faded from the loop, not gone from himself, only released from being useful there.
Ty lowered the sickle.
Zunoder's face returned on the television, all softness burned away. "You let a child spend himself for you."
Ty looked at Mason shaking in Jade's arms. "He spent one sentence."
"A noble distinction."
"A real one."
Omina's aura struck the floor in a gold green line. "Witness testimony given voluntarily under active protection. Any further claim against the minor requires nad filing, nad claimant, and nad cost."
The route wrote the order into the wall. Zunoder backed away from the edge of the screen.
For the first ti since the chase began, the borrowed face looked less useful.
Then the floor beneath Ty's feet turned black. The waiting room chairs vanished with the television, leaving only three contested removals in the dark.
FIRST REMOVAL: TISSUE. CONTESTED.
SECOND REMOVAL: MORY. CONTESTED.
THIRD REMOVAL: NA. ACTIVE.
Below them, one final prompt appeared.
TARGET: BONE HALF.
Reviews
All reviews (0)