How her voice reached Ty stayed beyond Jade, but the cost arrived immediately.
The beacon stone split her palm open and drank enough blood to make the basement tilt. Her left eye pulled tight from the inside. For one ugly second, every dead name on Waddell’s clipboard tried to turn toward her at the same time.
Aaron Pike, Janice Bell, Mara Ellison, and three more names pulled at her from the clipboard. She had said them with her teeth clenched and her hand burning white.
They stayed down.
Barely.
Kieran grabbed Jade’s wrist and forced her bleeding hand over the nested pans.
"Drop the stone before it starts making choices for you."
Jade tightened her fingers around the sharp little thing.
"If I drop it now, Ty signs blind."
"It is cutting deeper every time you speak."
"Everything useful in this room has teeth today."
"That is a terrible philosophy for staying alive."
"I learned from the best and several bad doors."
Kieran followed Jade’s good eye to the basement floor.
The three knocks came again.
This time the concrete answered. Dust fell from the ceiling in dry pinches. Children whimpered behind the pantry door, and Tyree moved one sack of flour in front of them as if flour could stop a route breach if a person stacked it with enough attitude.
One of the faceless responders stepped into the center of the room. Its blank face angled toward the tile as if it could listen through bone.
The badge on its chest crackled.
"Bone party has reached the Name Office below."
Waddell kept his gun up and his feet planted.
"If you narrate one more disaster without helping, I am shooting the badge first."
"Operational clarity improves survival odds for civilians under breach pressure."
"You sound like a training pamphlet that learned to trespass."
"Pamphlets survive wars because people put them in drawers."
Tyree snorted despite himself.
Jade liked that sound. It meant terror had not taken every human corner of the room yet.
She pressed the bleeding hand tighter around the beacon stone. The cut widened. The red dust inside the crack shifted into lines that looked like a desk, a slate, and clerks standing too straight.
"Tell me whether Ty heard me clearly enough to stop."
The faceless responder turned toward her.
"Connection confirmed through the fractured beacon stone, barely."
"Can I speak into it again without killing anyone else?"
"The connection is possible and extremely unwise right now."
"Answer the question I actually asked before I bleed more."
Kieran’s grip tightened before the responder could reply.
"The answer is no while your hand is open."
Jade looked at her. Kieran held her ground, gold light still wrapped around both hands and both door seams.
Good.
Jade needed at least one person in the room willing to be difficult for the right reason.
"If he signs whatever they put in front of him," Jade said, "the office gets to sell him in cleaner language."
"You do not know that from one broken connection."
"I heard myself warn him like I already knew."
"That is still not proof anyone should trust."
"Welcome to my day, where proof keeps arriving after damage."
Waddell moved beside them with the clipboard still in his left hand and the pistol in his right. The paper shook once when the floor knocked again. He flattened it with his thumb.
"What does the title do if he signs it?"
Jade stared at the stone. Inside the crack, the slate below offered shapes that were too neat to be harmless.
"I think it gives people permission to call him a monster first."
Waddell absorbed that with a soldier’s face and a friend’s eyes.
"Some people already want permission for that kind of fear."
"I know exactly how many already want that."
"You cannot fix every mouth in every crowd."
"I know that too, even when I hate it."
"Do you know it in the part that keeps bleeding?"
Jade almost snapped at him.
The old version of her would have snapped with command voice and a sharp answer, then moved on. This basement needed someone else. It needed the woman with one working eye, one bleeding hand, and a clipboard full of names too human to turn into tools.
"I do not know it enough to stop bleeding for it," she said. "But I am trying before it turns into another crowd."
Waddell nodded once and handed her the clipboard.
"Then count the room before the room counts itself wrong."
Jade looked down.
"You mean the dead first, then everyone else."
"I mean all of us, because Command keeps asking for numbers like numbers are the same thing as people."
The page had changed while he held it. Casualties were only the first column. Wounded. Armed. Children. Food. Water. Ammunition. Doors. People who could carry. People who needed carrying. People who kept trying to stand and needed one firm order before they wasted blood.
Messy. Practical. Human.
It steadied her where comfort would have slid off.
Jade took the clipboard with her clean hand.
"You made categories while a fake federal team tried to steal the door."
"I panicked professionally and used available office supplies."
"Good work. Keep craving validation after the invasion."
"I will schedule it between reloading and hating stairs."
The faceless responders shifted. All three turned toward the stairwell.
The hidden fourth presence finally stepped into view.
Jade had expected Erebos’s absence before the shape appeared. He would not spend himself on a basement door when a voice and a borrowed team could make everyone feel watched.
The fourth was a woman in a gray field coat with a broken crown stitched inside the collar instead of outside. She had a human face, dark hair cut short, and a scar that ran from ear to throat. Her eyes were black all the way through.
Kieran lifted both hands.
"Give me a name before you step closer."
The woman smiled without showing much of herself.
"Rima will do while everyone is armed and bleeding."
The name meant nothing to Jade. It meant something to the beacon stone. The red dust recoiled inside the crack.
Waddell aimed center mass.
"Tell me who owns your orders before I decide your coat is lying."
"Griswald owns the leash unwillingly. Erebos borrowed the hand temporarily. I remain mine whenever paperwork blinks."
Tyree stepped between Rima and the pantry door.
"Try that again in a version meant for people hiding children."
Rima looked at him with brief interest.
"I work for Griswald because refusing him costs more than pride. I work with Erebos because he keeps finding rooms that need surviving. I work for myself because I dislike every other option."
Tyree kept his fists raised.
"That version was worse, but at least it had corners."
"Honesty often arrives with ugly furniture attached anyway."
Jade glanced at the faceless responders.
"You are the second team he sent through the wrong door."
Rima bowed with one hand over her heart.
"Second team, third excuse, fourth bad decision, and the only one with a face rude enough to negotiate."
"Why help us instead of taking the mark?"
Rima’s smile vanished.
"Because Erebos said leave the central gym alive, and I dislike obvious orders from men who think subtlety is a personality."
Kieran’s mouth twitched.
The floor stole the moment.
A crack crossed the old cafeteria tile from the stairwell to the milk coolers. The dead twitched again. Jade read the first name from the clipboard before the thread behind her eye could ask.
"Aaron Pike stays down because this room remembers him."
The body settled.
Another crack opened.
"Janice Bell stays down because this room keeps her name."
The second body stilled. The room held.
Rima watched closely.
"You are using a death mark like a phone wire, and it will collect payment soon."
Jade looked at her over the clipboard.
"Get in line behind the ceiling, the stones, and the office below us."
"I mean soon enough for your eye to notice."
The beacon stone pulsed.
Ty’s distant voice came through, broken by static and water.
"Jade, can you still hear me through this?"
Every argument in the room died.
Jade gripped the clipboard hard enough to bend the old clip.
"I am here, and you need to listen fast."
His answer arrived thinner than she wanted.
"Are you safe enough to keep talking through the stone?"
She looked at the cracked floor, the dead, the faceless responders, Rima, the children hiding behind pantry shelves, and Waddell pretending his hands were steady.
"No, but that has not stopped anyone today."
A pause.
Then Ty laughed once, weak and real.
"Good. Honest answers travel better through bad doors."
Jade closed her bleeding hand around the stone.
"Do not sign anything that makes you easy to sell."
Rima’s black eyes widened.
The stone burned hot.
The floor split open under the milk coolers. From the crack, a dozen paper hands reached up holding pens. The badge on the nearest responder sparked.
"Earth witness accepted by emergency route pressure and live objection."
Jade raised the clipboard like a weapon and pointed the bloody stone toward the floor.
"Then tell the office I have formal objections."