Ty’s missing finger pointed at the wall and trembled like it wanted to accuse stone of cowardice.
He held it against his left hand because letting go felt worse. The finger had been cut from him, stolen from him, used against him, and now it was the only part of his body with the manners to point.
Omina stood beside the wall, watching the black crystal instead of his hand.
"Press it again, but stop the second the wall answers."
Ty pressed the severed finger to the crystal.
Blue fire crawled from his bones into the nail. Red veins opened under the wall, thin at first, then bright enough to paint the corridor like old injury.
JJ stood too close. Yun-Jin stood too close to JJ and pretended she was only guarding the route. Heissman leaned on a broken support column with the expression of a man insulted by architecture.
"If the finger begins speaking in extinct municipal law, I would like permission to panic academically."
Omina’s eyes stayed on the wall.
"You may panic after you translate anything useful."
Ty pushed harder.
The red veins snapped away from the finger as if the route had remembered a rule it disliked. Pain flashed through his missing knuckle, the bones of his hand, and the tooth he had sacrificed at the Name Office.
His skull filled with a grocery store alarm.
Smoke. A child with a phone. Blue fire burning through his stolen wrist.
Ty jerked back.
JJ caught his elbow before he struck the opposite wall. Her hand was warm. Her cracked panel leaked pink light under the glass.
"Tell us whether you saw Jade or the stolen body."
Ty closed his fist around the finger.
"Earth, but not Jade. A store. People trapped inside. Zunoder saved them."
Yun-Jin’s mouth tightened.
"He saved them because witnesses were worth more than running."
"He used my fire while he did it."
Omina stepped between Ty and the wall. Without command weight around her, she looked smaller. Smaller had never meant softer.
"Your body still contains habits, even when someone else wears it."
"The body moved before he chose, and now he gets credit."
Heissman made a thoughtful sound that annoyed Ty before it became words.
"Strategically unfortunate. The stolen vessel performing virtue creates public profit from instincts the face user has not earned."
Ty turned his skull toward him.
Heissman adjusted his coat.
"Your body is helping him look better, which is a terrible sentence for everyone."
"I understood the worse version and hated it less."
JJ let out one short breath that might have become a laugh on a kinder day.
The corridor shook.
The finger turned in Ty’s palm and aimed at JJ’s wrist panel.
JJ froze hard enough for Yun-Jin to move.
"That panel gets no permission from me today."
The panel rang anyway.
The sound came soft and polite, which made it worse. Pink light flickered along the broken edge. The screen filled with black smoke and a paused thumbnail.
Ty’s human face stared up from the glass.
JJ held the panel without opening the video or throwing it down. That restraint took visible work.
Yun-Jin stepped closer.
"Looking at his face while angry is exactly what the prompt wants."
JJ snapped her head up.
"I am allowed one breath before becoming sensible."
Yun-Jin’s eyes widened, then narrowed with pain. The arrow was nowhere in her hand, but Ty felt like one had been drawn.
Omina watched both women and let the silence hold.
Ty wished she would interrupt. Then he wished for the opposite. His body had become a public problem, and every wound in the corridor seemed to point at someone else.
The panel rang again.
This time the video stayed closed. A sponsor notice crawled across the cracked screen in tidy little words. Public recognition had been detected under the contestant image. The face user had generated civilian goodwill. The sponsor account wanted JJ to clarify the beneficiary before support drifted toward the wrong claimant.
JJ’s face went pale in a way Ty hated.
Heissman straightened.
"The polite wording only makes the attempted theft more disgusting."
"Everything attached to my panel knows how to invoice disgust."
Yun-Jin read the notice twice.
"Can it move your support to the stolen face?"
JJ’s voice went calm. Rich calm. Boardroom calm. The kind of calm that meant fear had become arithmetic.
"It can attempt transfer because sponsorship attached to contestant identity, not bone structure or moral ownership."
Heissman nodded with grave appreciation.
"That sentence deserves a small coffin after this."
Two options glowed under the notice.
Bone Half.
Face User.
Ty stared at them.
"You are not paying for another piece of me."
JJ touched neither option.
"This is asking before it steals, which means it knows theft is next."
"That makes it worse, not better for anyone standing here."
Her expression changed as if he had stepped on something soft without seeing it.
"I am refusing to let a thief take the name on the receipt."
Yun-Jin looked at JJ then, really looked, and some of the old sharpness between them changed direction.
"If you choose Bone Half, what bill lands after the click?"
JJ smiled without humor.
"It is WebNovel in hell, so it will tell me after I sign."
Ty reached for her wrist, then stopped himself before touching her.
Omina noticed.
"The finger aimed at the panel before the notice appeared."
Heissman looked from the finger to the wall.
"That suggests the prompt is not merely reactive. It may be part of the route’s lure."
"Or part of Zunoder’s attack through the sponsor line."
"Both theories make my afternoon worse, which gives them credibility."
JJ lowered the panel slightly.
"If I leave the choice blank, how much does he gain?"
Omina took too long.
"Time, possibly not ownership yet, which is bad enough."
"Time becomes ownership when everyone else gets tired."
Ty hated that too.
JJ’s thumb hovered above Bone Half.
Ty caught her wrist with two fingers and no force. The restraint mattered. The corridor watched restraint the way hungry things watched food.
"Look at me before you buy time with yourself."
JJ did. Her eyes were wet, and she looked angry that he could see it.
"I am looking, and I am still choosing."
"Tell me what you are buying before you touch it."
She looked down at the panel. Pink light touched her thumb, eager and mean.
"Six minutes, six hours, any time before he eats a name."
Ty let go.
JJ took a breath and turned the panel toward Omina.
"Make the choice official without letting my money be the door."
Omina’s mouth twitched.
"Former authority can still make theft inconvenient for several minutes."
"Inconvenient is my favorite affordable miracle in a crisis."
Yun-Jin muttered something under her breath.
JJ glanced at her.
"You cut off his hand, and I said that like an accusation."
The corridor went cold.
Yun-Jin flinched, but she held JJ’s stare.
"It was true before it was ugly between us."
"Truth can still be ugly when I throw it at you."
Ty wanted to speak and found no clean wound to stand beside.
Omina saved him by taking JJ’s panel.
"Personal violence delayed for later. Bureaucratic violence begins now."
Heissman looked almost moved.
"General, my admiration has become professionally inconvenient to maintain."
"Keep it professional or I will assign you a form."
Omina pressed neither option. She opened the cracked side menu, dragged the sponsor prompt into a complaint field, and wrote with terrifying speed. She framed it as an active beneficiary conflict under vessel theft, requested a hold on automatic transfer, and demanded field identity review before support could move.
The panel denied the request.
Omina wrote again, this time recording the denial under former command authority and attaching the grocery-store clip as disputed evidence.
The panel paused.
Heissman leaned closer.
"It dislikes being watched while it behaves badly."
"Everything guilty dislikes an audit trail with teeth."
The prompt changed.
A hold appeared.
Six hours.
JJ exhaled hard.
Ty looked at the timer. Six hours before the prompt returned. Six hours before Zunoder’s public rescue could reach into JJ’s support and twist it. Six hours before the face got another bite at a name that belonged to no thief.
The finger pointed past the panel.
Down the corridor, away from Earth, toward the red route.
Then it tapped twice against Ty’s palm.
Omina stared at the gesture.
"Two intersections, and neither one will be clean for us."
Heissman folded his hands.
"Two witnesses would be my least terrible interpretation."
Yun-Jin looked down the red-lit corridor.
"Two traps is probably the honest one today."
Ty closed his fist around the finger until blue fire leaked between his bones.
"Then we break the first trap without breaking the person inside it."
JJ wiped one eye with the back of her hand before anyone could be stupid enough to mention it.
"If the first trap is Zunoder wearing mercy again, restraint gets expensive."
Ty saw the grocery store child again. Smoke. Phone. Blue fire. Zunoder wearing his face like an apology.
"Then we spend restraint where witnesses can see it."
The answer cost him time.
The route felt the cost too.
Somewhere ahead, Zunoder laughed with Ty’s throat.