The body moved again when Ty dragged the footage back.
By the third replay, the room had learned to stop watching the sheet.
Heissman raised the chain-of-custody page and tapped one corner against the monitor. "Ignore the hand under the sheet and watch the nurse beside it."
The nurse walked beside the gurney with one palm on the rail. Her other hand hovered close to the sheet. When the covered fingers twitched toward Jade, the guard flinched late. The nurse pressed down first.
Not panic.
Habit.
JJ leaned over the desk until her reflection cut across the old video. "She was ready before the guard even understood what moved."
Heissman rubbed the bridge of his nose with the corner of the page. "Ready is the useful word until we place her under oath."
"You ever get tired of sanding every sentence into court furniture?"
"Every day, and my failures have remained consistent."
Ty kept the footage paused.
Jade stood at the end of the hospital hall with one shoe untied and his name broken across her mouth. The sheet covered most of him. That made the hand worse. A whole body could be dismissed as equipment, timing, a bad angle. One finger reaching for her ruined the lie by inches.
The nurse had pushed it down.
Ty touched the monitor where the hand vanished under cloth.
"I need her name from the night sheet before Zunoder buys it first."
Omina pulled the old staffing page closer. The cuffs on her wrists smoked where the paper disliked her. "The sheet gives initials, R. Vale, listed under night rotation."
JJ’s attention snapped off the screen. "Vale keeps appearing where missing names should be."
Heissman took the sheet from Omina and held it under the desk lamp. "Rose Vale fits the initials, but common names have saved worse people than this."
The name tried to hook Ty anyway.
Names were cheap bait in this room. Erebos had made whole roads out of them, and Zunoder knew how to stand at the end looking wounded.
"Put Rose Vale behind the face upstairs for now. Zunoder is already using a crowd."
Above them, Mercy General’s chapel pressed noise through the pipes. The sound arrived without words at first, only shoes, prayers, someone raising a voice, and then fury from people who wanted a miracle and had been handed a camera.
JJ checked her wrist panel. "Jade pushed the statement through public office wording."
She turned the panel around.
The statement used four ugly terms together.
Incomplete record, unverified claimant, face user, named witness.
Twice, Ty read them.
No grieving family could turn those words into comfort. Jade still had her hands on the knife.
The hospital monitor answered the public wording with a thin grey notice. A returned-body claim now needed one witness before the file would let the claim move.
JJ read the line, then looked toward the ceiling. "One witness is a trap, and that wording feels hungry."
"A single witness can be shaped until the room obeys," Heissman said.
Omina tapped one cuff against the desk. "Then Jade has to ruin the wording before he speaks."
Ty pressed play for one frame, then stopped again on Jade’s face. "She will, if anyone gives her enough time."
"That answer has a dangerous amount of marriage in it," JJ said.
"Good, then save that line for morale later."
The floor beyond the records cage clicked.
One tile lifted. Another followed. Paper fingers slid through the gaps, hospital-white and thin enough to fold wrong. Each hand wore a patient wristband. The nearest one slapped the cage, leaving dust in the shape of a palm.
The band carried two typed lines.
Unknown male. Hold for family collection.
Omina moved with the tired anger of someone who had spent too many years obeying forms. She lifted both wrists, letting the last of her field command run bright through the cuffs.
"A body changes hands only when the removal page carries a name."
The paper hands stopped.
Heissman glanced at her with something close to pride. "That sentence was terrible and useful, which is rare."
"Useful is the portion I was aiming for."
Yun-Jin cut the first hand at the wrist. It broke into dry strips and hospital dust. More pushed up behind it, palms dragging across the tile, wristbands twisting around paper bone.
Ty grabbed the file, the hospital tag, and the evidence sleeve from the desk. "Keep those hands away from the monitor while I play this through."
JJ stepped beside him. Her wrist panel lit the floor in a hard pink wash. "If this basement tries to list you as hospital belongings again, I am suing concrete."
"I believe you can make concrete regret its choices."
"Finally, somebody respects the full range of my professional gifts."
Ty pressed play.
The clip moved past the twitch. The gurney rolled toward the double doors marked for the morgue. Jade fought the guard in the corner of the frame, too hurt to be careful and too furious to be moved cleanly.
Another person entered from the side hall.
At first, the camera gave them only a coat, a raised collar, and a patch of darkness where a face should have been. The figure passed behind the gurney without looking at Jade, the nurse, or the covered body. He moved past the camera like permission belonged to him.
Ty’s missing finger pulsed.
JJ saw his hand tighten around the hospital tag. "Please tell me that posture belongs to someone cheaper than Erebos."
Heissman leaned in until the old monitor colored his glasses. "Arrogance has too many owners for an honest answer."
Omina’s voice dropped. "Can your machine give us anything cleaner than that blur?"
"It can enlarge disappointment and charge us for the privilege."
The figure crossed behind the gurney.
The wall clock stayed honest.
The timestamp betrayed itself.
22:59 became 23:07.
Eight minutes were gone.
Yun-Jin moved closer, blade low in her hand. "Eight missing minutes feels too neat for a hospital mistake."
"Accidents become neat when somebody brings a knife and a plan," Heissman said.
JJ made a sound that wanted to laugh and failed halfway.
Omina wrote the time jump on the folder. Her handwriting cut deep enough to scar the paper. "Eight minutes can move the body, strip evidence, and return the hall to boredom."
Ty hated the shape of it.
Rose Vale could tell them the hand moved. Her witness stopped at the hallway. Zunoder needed the gap after that, the part where the camera surrendered and everyone still alive learned to repeat whatever would keep their job intact.
The footage resumed.
Jade was on the floor now.
The guard stood over her with his hands open, scared to touch her and scared to leave her alone. The gurney had gone through the doors. Rose Vale had vanished with it. The figure in the raised collar had left only eight stolen minutes behind.
Under the desk, a drawer opened by itself.
Ty hated that he still reached for it.
Inside sat a sealed evidence sleeve, brittle with age. He lifted it by the edge. A strip of medical tape clung to the plastic, stained dark at one end. A note had been folded around it.
Right index response seen.
Removed by outside order.
The signature line had been cut away with a blade.
Yun-Jin stared at the missing strip. "They cut away the name and left the wound."
Omina studied the torn edge. "The rest still served them, so they spared it."
JJ looked from the note to Ty’s hand. "Outside order from the same shadow, or someone worse?"
The missing finger pointed at the monitor.
Ty wanted to chase the figure through the gap in the tape. The want came hot enough for blue fire to crawl over his knuckles. If Erebos had stood in that hall while Jade broke on the floor, if he had watched Ty’s dead hand reach for her and let someone take the finger anyway, then the road under Ty’s feet had been laid with older teeth than he had guessed.
The basement opened for that anger.
He felt it under his boots.
Yun-Jin shifted close enough to catch him if the floor took him. "Ty, choose the living problem before the dead one."
He closed his fist around the fire until the knuckles shook. "The dead problem is breathing through Zunoder upstairs."
"Then leave enough of it breathing to choke him," JJ said.
Ty pressed the sleeve against the chain-of-custody page.
The blank line warmed. Letters rose through the paper slowly, fighting the fibers.
Removed item, right index response sample.
Outside order.
Witness needed.
The words tried to fade at the middle line.
Omina slammed both cuffed wrists onto the desk. "Recorded under former command while the hospital still had a body to protect."
The line held.
Paper hands thrashed against the cage. Yun-Jin cut two at the tile. JJ pinned three wristbands under pink light while Ty tore the corrected page free.
Heissman grabbed an old tape recorder from the shelf and shoved it into his coat pocket. "We have three facts worth bleeding for. Your body moved after death, the right index response was recorded, and an outside order stole the clean signature."
Ty kept looking at the frozen frame.
Jade was still on the floor.
The missing minutes sat between her and the morgue doors.
"We have four facts once Jade is counted. She reached me before they finished hiding me."
The chapel above them changed.
The noise became applause.
JJ’s wrist panel flashed into a live public feed from Mercy General. Zunoder stood at the chapel entrance beside a crying woman in a nurse’s jacket. His stolen face looked tired in the exact way strangers trusted.
He held her hand gently.
The caption named her before Ty wanted it to.
Rose Vale.
She wiped her face with the heel of her palm and spoke toward the camera. "I saw him that night, and I know what came back."
Zunoder lowered his head beside her.
"The witness is here, so let the family be heard."