Zunoder should have had no way to call JJ’s panel.
That was the first useful fact, and JJ grabbed it before fear could make the room stupid. Her wrist screen burned pink-white around the edges while Ty’s stolen voice filled Lost Property with a softness that belonged to someone else.
"Sponsor. How much did you pay for the wrong half?"
Ty reached for the panel.
JJ pulled it back against her chest.
"Keep your hand off the line until we know what he touched."
Ty’s flame tightened around his skull.
"He is using my voice, and he knows exactly where to press."
"Badly enough that the room can hear the theft."
Zunoder laughed through the speaker. The sound made the black case tap once.
Everyone heard it.
Omina turned from the clerk. JJ lifted the panel higher, angling it away from Ty’s hand and toward the office record.
"You are on a sponsor line. That means you routed through my estate claim, the arena feed, or stolen contestant identity. Choose the door you used."
"I missed your confidence more than your money."
"We have never met in any useful sense."
"Your money touched me before your name did. Some courts would call that a relationship."
Heissman folded one corner of his inconvenience form.
"Regrettable, but that argument survives in several unpleasant courts."
Yun-Jin elbowed him hard enough to make him reconsider public scholarship.
JJ kept her eyes on the panel.
"Which route did you use to touch my estate line?"
Zunoder let the silence answer for him. Inside the case, the finger tapped twice against the lining.
The clerk’s pen hovered above the form while Omina stepped closer to the counter.
"Record the case movement as witness interference before anyone calls it debris."
"The item has not entered testimony under current office rules."
The finger tapped three times.
The black case slid one inch toward Ty. The clerk’s expression shifted from bored to offended, which seemed like a promotion in this office.
"Item interference before claim recognition creates a separate review."
The case tapped again. Wax cracked along the seal, just wide enough for a single white bone to press against the gap.
Ty’s missing finger.
Small. Ridiculous. Terrible.
It bent toward JJ’s panel.
Zunoder’s voice sharpened.
"Keep that bone away from the line if you enjoy pretending it belongs to him."
Ty went still.
JJ looked from the finger to her panel.
"That reaction answers more than your silence did."
Yun-Jin smiled without warmth.
"He sounds afraid of a piece small enough to misplace."
Heissman lifted one hand. "I dislike confident interpretations, but this one deserves a premature celebration."
The finger scratched the inside of the case. The sound had intent. Letters appeared in thin white scrapes against the black lining.
Omina leaned over.
"Read what it writes before the office decides it was decorative."
Ty held himself too still.
The finger scratched again.
JJ read because Ty had chosen the quiet thing again.
"It says the body belongs to neither Zunoder nor his claim."
The panel screamed.
Zunoder’s voice split into two sounds. One stayed smooth and human. The other tore underneath it, raw and furious.
"That bone has no authority to vote against the body."
The clerk stamped a form so hard the counter jumped.
The office recorded item self-assertion in three copies.
The case lid popped open.
Ty caught the finger before it rolled off the counter.
He should have felt nothing.
Bone met bone, and the room fell away.
Rain hit his hand.
Memory rain. Cold on skin he no longer had. Jade laughing under an awning while he said something stupid about rice, then something worse, then something better because she kept laughing and made him work for the right words. A promise so ordinary it had survived death by being too small for monsters to notice.
The rain ended at a dark table.
Erebos’s hand rested beside the separated finger. Jade’s emptied crystal sat near it, turned sideways like evidence someone wanted to call a tool. Twelve black circles waited around a brass gate labeled with Earth public trust.
Erebos kept his face empty. That made the memory worse.
"A body is a public argument; a bone is the private one they forget to count."
The question from across the table stayed beyond Ty’s hearing.
Erebos touched the finger to the brass gate.
"Make them disagree where love can hear it."
The gate opened one tooth-width.
Jade’s name caught in the gap.
The command inside the bone made a sequence out of affection: pressure Jade, feed the face, corrupt the rescue route.
The memory broke.
Ty’s flame surged hard enough to lift every loose tag in Lost Property.
JJ grabbed his arm.
"Stay where we can see you until the memory finishes hurting."
His voice came out flat.
"Erebos used the finger to point at Earth through Jade."
Omina’s eyes narrowed.
"Say that again with the cleanest words you have."
"He used my finger to aim the rescue route through Jade."
The clerk’s pen began writing without her hand. The finger twitched in Ty’s palm and scratched against his thumb bone. More words. This time Ty read them himself.
"It says Erebos gave the missing finger a job."
Yun-Jin took one step closer.
"The missing finger received an assignment from Erebos?"
Ty nodded.
"What kind of assignment makes Zunoder this nervous?"
The finger curled toward JJ’s panel. Zunoder’s call remained open, carrying breath that belonged to Ty’s lungs and not Ty’s will.
The finger scratched into Ty’s thumb:
FIND HER FIRST
Omina’s face went still.
"That wording points at targeting before it points at rescue."
JJ tucked the panel closer.
"It means Jade was never only a person to them. She was a route marker."
Heissman went pale enough for everyone to notice.
"If the assigned purpose was to locate Jade through Ty’s original bond, then Erebos turned affection into navigation. Elegant. Vile. I would like to retire from admiring terrible people."
Yun-Jin looked at Ty.
"Give me the version that lets injured people keep up."
"Erebos used my bone to make reaching Jade dangerous."
"That version I can hate without a glossary."
The clerk reached for the finger.
Ty closed his hand.
"The item remains contested under office custody until the review changes."
"It is warning me while the office tries to inventory it."
"Many contested items offer statements under stress before ownership settles."
"This one remembers being used against Jade before ownership settled."
The stamp on the clerk’s desk flipped over by itself.
Negligence review escalated before the clerk could touch it.
Heissman clasped his hands.
"I am about to experience joy in a municipal setting."
Zunoder’s voice came through the panel again, stripped of softness.
"Give it back to the case before it mistakes pain for ownership."
Ty turned toward the panel.
"You sound worried for someone claiming the body."
"It belongs in evidence, not in your hand."
The finger curled against Ty’s empty joint. It failed to attach, but pain ran up his arm anyway, an old road finding new fire. Ty held the panel close enough for Zunoder to hear the bones grind.
"Say ownership again while the witness can hear you."
For one breath, the line carried two hearts: one stolen, one remembered by bone.
Zunoder laughed.
"Keep your little witness. I already found a better road."
The call cut.
Across the room, a shelf slid aside and revealed a narrow black route lined with blind public crystals. The missing finger pointed into it.
Then, very carefully, it pointed at Ty.
Omina read the gesture before anyone else moved.
"He wants you inside the route before we know whose law built it."
"It opens from my bone, my memory, and my old promise."
"That makes it Erebos’s route until we prove otherwise."
JJ tucked her panel against her chest as if cloth and ribs could stop Zunoder from reaching through it again.
"Can we prove anything useful while standing safely on this side?"
The blind crystals flashed once. Jade’s basement appeared in them for less than a heartbeat: gauze, water, phones, and a white reflection behind her. Then the image became Zunoder’s face and vanished.
Yun-Jin drew a slow breath through pain.
"Safe stopped being accurate several rooms ago, but I appreciate the nostalgia."
Heissman folded the inconvenience form with excessive care.
"We are being invited to a trap with unusually persuasive decor."
Ty closed his hand around the finger. It burned. He held on.
"Then we enter while remembering it is a trap."
Omina’s mouth tightened.
"Knowing the trap exists will not feed the people it catches."
"It is more than Zunoder has, and he keeps proving it."