The gap opened between two Lost Property shelves.
No hinge. No scrape. The shelf labels only bent inward, then the black space behind them became long enough for people to walk through.
Ty’s missing finger pointed from his palm.
The blind crystals along the new aisle caught no faces. They caught motion first. A stairwell. A service wall. A phone screen on Earth with Jade’s basement shrinking inside the glass. Then Zunoder, wearing Ty’s face beside the woman who had brought noodles into the argument and regretted it too late.
Her hands were empty now.
That made her look less like a witness and more like someone who had followed a voice because it sounded tired in the right way.
JJ stepped close enough for her shoulder to brush Ty’s arm.
"Please tell me we are naming the trap before we enter it."
Ty kept his hand open because the finger hurt worse when he curled around it.
"It points through the shelves, and Zunoder is already using the far end."
"A bone with opinions still counts as terrible field command."
Omina moved to the shelf edge. She touched nothing inside the black, only the warped label strip, then glanced toward the clerk behind the counter.
"Record this as pursuit under active witness interference, not recreational stupidity."
The clerk stamped a blue warning slip. The office advised against unauthorized pursuit, then charged the warning to the nearest open case.
Heissman tucked the slip into his coat with the inconvenience form.
"I am keeping both documents, because one of them may become proof that caution visited us briefly."
Yun-Jin pushed herself away from the crate. The movement made her ribs pull tight under the wrapping. She hid most of the pain and failed at the last inch.
"If this is a trap, I would like the trap to provide seating."
JJ looked back at her.
"You can stay here and insult us through the panel."
"If Zunoder steals another route through your wrist, someone has to be near enough to kick you."
JJ’s expression shifted just enough to admit the point.
Omina took command before the room could stretch into argument.
"Ty enters first because the finger answers him. JJ keeps the sponsor line covered. Yun-Jin watches the living targets. Heissman watches the office language. I watch for the law hiding inside the road."
Ty stepped over the threshold.
Cold bit through his feet and climbed the bones of his legs. The shelves vanished behind him, replaced by a narrow run of black tile and public crystals set into the walls at uneven heights. Some belonged to the arena. Some belonged to Earth phones. Some looked older than either world had any right to be.
The finger twitched toward the left wall while the flame in Ty’s chest pulled right.
In the center crystal, Jade’s basement kept shrinking behind dying phones while Waddell made people copy the witness list by hand. Mason sat behind Tyree with the dinosaur in both hands, looking too small for the number of adults using his memory.
Ty wanted to go center.
The finger burned him for wanting it.
Zunoder appeared in the left crystal, walking beside the noodle woman along a maintenance corridor. He had slowed enough for her to keep up. That mattered. He wanted her close, but not dragged.
The woman hugged her elbows.
"If you want me safe, you should tell me where you are taking me."
Zunoder gave her the tired smile that belonged to Ty and used it without shame.
"If I knew how safety worked today, I would have chosen a cleaner room."
JJ’s mouth tightened.
"That answer sounds honest because he leaves blood on every option."
Heissman nodded once.
"Frightened people often trust uncertainty when certainty has already hurt them."
Ty started left.
Omina caught the back plate of his shoulder and held him in place.
"He is baiting the part of you that hates explanations."
A scream broke from the right wall.
The crystal there filled with Applause Junction. Above the crowd, a service balcony had buckled away from its anchors. One man lay across the broken flooring with his arm hooked through a rail. A vendor girl hung below him, apron twisted around her waist. A second man clung to the outer bracket with his boots scraping uselessly against the wall.
The crowd kept staring at the larger screens because the public argument was louder than the people falling above them.
Zunoder saw the same image from his corridor.
He looked left, toward the deeper exit. Then he looked at the woman, who watched him with the kind of hope nobody should hand to a stolen face.
He cursed in Ty’s voice and ran.
The body moved well. That was the ugly part. Zunoder vaulted a maintenance barrier, caught the cracked balcony from below, and hauled the first man onto solid floor. No speech. No performance. Just a fast hand in the correct place.
The noodle woman covered her mouth.
The public crystals caught him saving someone before they caught Ty moving.
The office mark under the floor warmed Ty’s heel. The case was counting public doubt and finding more of it.
Ty pushed toward the right wall.
Omina released him.
"Take the living before you take the thief. Make him hate the order."
The floor bent.
Ty hit the service balcony on one knee. Tile cracked under him. Hot pain flashed up through bone that should have been past pain, and the missing finger nearly slipped from his palm.
Yun-Jin landed badly behind him. JJ caught her vest with both hands and kept her from pitching into the broken rail.
The vendor girl screamed again. Her fingers were sliding.
Zunoder had one rescued man behind him and Ty’s face turned toward the crystals. He made sure the crowd saw the help before they saw the theft.
"You arrived after the part the crowd will remember."
Ty threw a sickle low.
Zunoder flinched, then smiled when the blade went past him. Blue fire sliced the claim-thread coiled around the broken rail. The metal stopped peeling away from the wall long enough for Yun-Jin to throw a pink strand around the vendor girl’s waist.
Yun-Jin’s knees buckled.
JJ braced behind her, one arm locked around her ribs and the other around the strand.
"If you fall, I am billing your estate for the embarrassment."
Yun-Jin’s laugh broke into pain before it became sound.
"If I vomit, pretend this was tactical pressure management."
"I will lie better once everyone is standing somewhere solid."
The vendor girl’s apron tore. Ty dropped flat, caught her wrist, and felt the whole balcony drag against his shoulder. For a sick beat, all of him wanted to turn around. Zunoder stood within reach. The stolen body was right there. The missing finger tapped against Ty’s palm with frantic, furious insistence.
The last man screamed from the bracket.
Ty chose the weight in his hand.
He hauled the vendor girl upward until JJ could grab the back of her apron. Yun-Jin’s strand snapped loose, and JJ dragged the girl across the tile with a curse that had enough family history in it to make the vendor girl stop sobbing for half a second.
The last man lost one boot.
Ty launched his second sickle into the wall above him, hooked the chain around his forearm, and dropped over the rail. His shoulder pulled hard enough to make white sparks jump across his vision. The man slammed into his ribs. Ty caught him by the collar and belt together.
Below, the crowd finally looked up.
Faces turned from the screens to the people above them. Then back to the screens. Then to Zunoder.
Good.
Let them be confused.
Zunoder watched the confusion form and stopped smiling.
"You still spend yourself on strangers while your own body walks away."
Ty pulled the man high enough for JJ to seize his coat.
"Saving the people you left behind proves which face is lying."
Zunoder stepped closer to the blind crystal at the service wall.
"You think ownership is the argument. It was always appetite."
The word hit wrong because it sounded like Erebos speaking through another mouth. Ty swung as the last man rolled clear. The sickle caught the wall where Zunoder’s throat had been.
Zunoder moved backward through the blind crystal.
The noodle woman stood on the other side with both hands pressed to her chest. She looked from Ty’s bones to the rescued man coughing on the floor. Then she looked at Zunoder, who had saved one person and abandoned two because the public had already seen enough.
Ty wanted her to understand.
Wanting did nothing.
"He used you as proof before he used you as a person."
She heard him. Her face changed, but not enough. Hope had dug in too deep, and fear kept feeding it.
Zunoder reached back without touching her.
"Stay with the monster that scares you, or follow the man who pulled someone back."
The woman took one step toward Ty.
Then the crystal behind Zunoder showed Earth. Jade’s basement. Phones dying. A child behind adults. A white reflection at the edge of the image.
The woman saw the child and followed Zunoder.
The glass went black.
Ty hit it with the heel of his hand. Nothing answered except his finger, tapping twice against his palm.
The vendor girl clung to Yun-Jin’s sleeve with both hands. Yun-Jin stood crooked, breathing through her teeth, and let the girl hold on. JJ noticed and moved her body between them and the nearest public crystal.
That small shield mattered more than another speech.
Omina arrived from the office side with one hand pressed against the wall. The black tile behind her had begun to shrink back into shelf-shadow.
"Report what happened before the crowd chooses a simpler version."
Heissman staggered out behind her, pale and offended.
"Zunoder saved the first man in public view, then abandoned the remaining two when the rescue had already purchased doubt."
JJ lifted her cracked panel.
"Ty saved the people Zunoder left hanging, and Yun-Jin nearly paid for it with ribs she already owed."
Yun-Jin pointed at the vendor girl still gripping her sleeve.
"Please include that I was brave in a medically irresponsible way."
The vendor girl made a wet sound that might have become a laugh if the day had been kinder.
Below them, Applause Junction began arguing with itself. Some people pointed at the replay of Zunoder hauling the first man up. Others pointed at the balcony rail Ty had held long enough for the last two to live. The argument had no clean winner.
That helped.
Zunoder wanted a public that could choose Ty’s face and go home relieved. Confusion gave Jade time, gave Mason time, and made every lie work harder for its meal.
The blind crystal flashed.
At the far end of the black reflection, a red door stood where no wall should have been. Something knocked from the other side.
The vendor girl tightened both hands in Yun-Jin’s sleeve.
Omina’s voice went low.
"Nobody opens that reflection until we know what knocks behind it."
Ty looked at the missing finger. It pointed at the red door with a certainty that hurt all the way up his arm.
"That road answers my finger too, not only his stolen body."
The red door knocked again.