Ty hit the tile on one knee and caught himself with the sickle before his skull reached the floor, while intake sheets and consent forms fell around him with transfer slips and specimen logs. Some were burned at the edges, where blue fire had chewed them thin during the fall. They brushed his shoulders and ribs, then came apart when they touched the freezer floor.
JJ landed behind him hard enough to slap both palms against the tile. Yun-Jin rolled once and came up facing the corridor. Omina arrived on one knee with both cuffs lit. Heissman dropped last, flat on his back, staring at the ceiling like the ceiling had offended him personally.
"I miss stairs more than I respect myself right now," he said.
JJ pushed herself onto one elbow.
"You miss having something normal to complain about."
"Normal complaints had a dignity I failed to appreciate."
Ty let them have it. The route had thrown them through paperwork and cold air and old Mercy tricks. A stupid exchange put people back inside their bodies. They needed bodies right now.
Freezer B 3 stood open.
The drawer had pulled farther out than before. Mara Whitlock’s cancelled copy sat on the tray beside Jade’s contested statement, the specimen cup, and the small black burn in the steel. The mark looked too neat. That bothered Ty more than damage would have, because damage asked to be hated while procedure asked to be obeyed.
Omina saw his hand move.
"Leave the mark alone until we know which rule it is using."
Ty stopped with his fingers above the tray.
The missing finger lay in his palm, curved toward the empty joint on his hand. It had quit scratching at him. That made the wanting worse. Quiet things were easier to mistake for permission.
The freezer speaker clicked.
The voice that came through carried warmth, and the warmth made the cold around Ty feel dirty.
"Human offices break faster when a pen already belongs to them."
JJ’s face changed fast. Anger first, then the effort of swallowing the answer she wanted to throw at him.
"I hate how much he enjoys sounding reasonable before the crime arrives."
Heissman pushed himself up with one hand clamped against his ribs.
"That is because he starts with an accurate sentence and turns accuracy into a weapon."
Ty looked at the speaker.
"If you want my attention, stop hiding in the speaker."
"I showed the part of me that mattered here."
The black mark warmed.
Light rose from the drawer and made an old room above the tray.
Mercy General, years ago.
Jade stood at a records counter with rain in her hair and blood on one sleeve. She was younger in a way Ty hated. Grief had made her careful with every movement, like a dropped pen might finish the night for her.
Rose Vale passed behind her with a chart pressed to her chest. Mara Whitlock stood at the records desk arguing with a man in a hospital coat. His face smeared whenever the memory tried to hold it, but his hand stayed clear as he signed the visitor log.
Edward Ross.
The false name looked clean because someone had practiced it.
Mara’s voice reached them through the freezer hum.
"This signature belongs to property release, and tissue removal lacks approval."
The man beside her smiled with his teeth covered.
"It authorizes whatever the tired clerk enters before morning."
Mara stayed in front of the terminal.
The memory jumped.
Jade’s hand filled the image. She signed a property release with fingers that barely held the pen. The signature belonged to one ugly duty: Ty’s coat, Ty’s necklace, and the last things they would let her carry away.
The machine copied the signature onto a second page.
The gap mark appeared in the blank space beside it.
Erebos had signed there.
He had signed the place where Mercy had already decided grief could stand in for permission.
Omina leaned closer, careful to keep her shadow off the tray.
"He waited until the stolen signature had a slot ready for him."
Heissman nodded once.
"He certified the empty space as procedure, which makes the lie traceable."
JJ glanced at him.
"That is the first useful thing your law voice has said today."
"My law voice has been suffering under difficult conditions."
The memory froze on Jade’s copied signature.
Erebos spoke through the speaker again.
"People beg for monsters because monsters flatter the innocent. Most rooms prepare the cruelty before I arrive."
Ty closed his hand around the missing finger until bone pressed bone.
"You built a theft out of Jade’s grief."
"I used a field her grief had already filled."
Blue fire climbed the sickle.
"Precision will make the cut cleaner when I reach you."
Erebos laughed once, pleased with himself in a way that made JJ bare her teeth.
"Your anger entertains the record. It scares nothing."
JJ’s panel flashed before Ty could answer.
Jade’s shelter feed split across the screen, shaky at first, then clear. Jade stood near the table. Mara stood beside her with the cancelled form held in both hands. Rose hovered close enough to catch her. Waddell stayed at the edge of frame, trying to keep the child’s line of sight clear in a room too small for clean mercy.
Jade was reading captions more than listening. Ty saw the delay in her eyes, the tightening of her mouth when the words caught up. Her hearing had recovered too little for this, and the record had chosen a scene where sound could humiliate her.
The tray tried to make the decision simple.
It labeled Jade as the consent source, named E. Ross as the gap witness, and marked the removal transfer valid.
Jade read the claim, and her shoulders squared.
She picked up Waddell’s pad and wrote in letters big enough for the camera.
Copied grief lacks consent.
Mara saw the sentence and nearly lost her grip on the form. Rose stepped closer. Mara stayed upright with the paper trembling in both hands.
"My cancelled note says the signature came from property release, tissue removal lacked approval, and a named witness was required."
Rose lifted her hand.
"I saw Mara refuse the form before the replacement version erased her note."
Waddell glanced at Jade for permission. She gave one small nod.
"Earth field office records Jade’s statement, Mara’s cancelled form, and Rose Vale’s witness as an active challenge to copied consent."
Caelin’s voice came from off screen, clipped but steady.
"Director’s office accepts the challenge and freezes ownership pending review."
Heissman closed his eyes.
"I despise how much comfort bureaucracy occasionally gives me."
JJ rubbed both hands over her face.
"Please avoid making peace with paperwork in front of me."
"Peace remains far away, but the paperwork has a chair."
The drawer shook hard enough for the specimen cup to rattle.
The black mark stayed on the tray, but the claim beside it changed. The transfer lost its clean status. Ownership moved into review. The missing finger shifted from recovered specimen to witness, because its absence still argued against the theft.
JJ read the changed line under her breath, then looked at Ty’s hand.
"That means the empty joint is useful evidence now."
Omina’s face gave nothing away.
"Separated evidence keeps the wound open where the record can see it."
Yun-Jin looked at the finger in Ty’s palm.
"If he reattaches it now, Zunoder calls the injury closed."
Ty had already reached the same answer.
The body wanted itself back. The record wanted that want. If he put the finger where it belonged, someone would use the repaired shape against him. If he kept it separate, a piece of him stayed on the table because truth still needed a wound.
Jade understood too.
She wrote slowly this time.
A wrong repair helps them.
Ty looked at the empty joint. He wanted to tell her he hated how right she was. He wanted to put the finger back and make everyone else pay for needing him damaged.
He set the finger beside the cup.
Blue fire ran between bone and glass, then settled into the space between them. The record accepted the distance as testimony.
The freezer drawer slid halfway in and stopped. The gap mark remained, but it had moved away from Jade’s copied signature and into the margin, where a guilty witness belonged.
Erebos made a pleased sound through the speaker.
"You are learning to leave useful pain where it works."
Ty lifted the sickle toward the speaker.
"Keep speaking and I will find the wire."
"Tempting, but I still prefer exits that remain useful."
The speaker clicked off.
The freezer hum returned, plain and ugly.
A narrow strip of gray light opened along the wall behind B 3. Text formed there in Mercy’s old archive font, small enough that Heissman had to step closer.
The first removal had been tissue, and the status had changed to contested.
JJ’s panel went cold against her hands when the next line formed beneath it.
The second removal had been memory, and that status stayed open.
Heissman got to his feet too fast and caught the drawer edge.
"Memory of whom, and how did everyone miss it?"
The drawer above B 3 opened.
Inside lay an old visitor badge, cracked down one corner.
The badge belonged to Mara Whitlock and marked her as a temporary escort.
Behind the badge sat a child’s plastic hospital bracelet. Pink, small, and still carrying a printed name.
Kieran Stahl.
On the shelter feed, Jade stopped moving.
Mara made a sound the tablet failed to turn into words. Rose reached for her, and this time Mara let the form fall against her chest.
Ty looked from the bracelet to Jade, then to the blank space in the drawer where a child should have been remembered by somebody sooner.
Mara’s mouth moved before her voice caught it.
"I walked that child once, and then I forgot him."
The archive light behind B 3 changed again.
A second witness had been found.
Somewhere beyond the morgue walls, Zunoder began laughing.