Chapter 902 - 902: JJ Runs Out Of Someone Else's Money

JJ lost feeling in her thumb on pump stroke forty three.

She noticed because the loose copper braid slipped from it and struck the lower contact. The right pump fired while the left handle was still descending.

Both hoses kicked against the tank rim.

The woman inside folded around her graft. Black fluid pushed between the gray fingers she had clamped over the split in her wrist.

JJ tore the braid away. The copper burned a line across her palm before the right pump stopped.

"The next shared stroke will tear her returned arm open through the elbow."

Yun-Jin caught the left handle at its highest point. Violet thread held it there while JJ flexed her hand. Her thumb moved late, then folded into her palm as if it belonged to someone riding in the next car.

Useful. She had four fingers and a growing dislike of counting.

The funeral engine entered a covered junction. Tile walls closed around the sixth car, carrying rows of brass taps and hooks shaped for hoses. A square reader beside the track brushed the exposed sponsor braid.

JJ's dead wrist glass remained black.

A receipt began feeding from the junction wall.

The paper followed the train, unrolling past three windows before Omina caught it on a green bar. Pink print repeated JJ's contestant number, then informed her that her support balance had been frozen for unauthorized removal of sponsor property.

JJ read it twice because the second reading made the insult more precise.

"They grew the conductor through my skin and still listed it as office property."

Omina walked beside the moving receipt while the junction roof passed overhead. "The offer below the freeze carries a destination transfer clause."

The sponsor office would release a replacement conductor at the next service gate. In return, all transport decisions for the unnamed patient would pass to Contestant Welfare Custody until the support debt was cleared.

The tank woman opened her living hand against the glass. Two fingers stayed bent from the pressure damage. She pointed at the receipt, then dragged her thumb across her throat.

"She understands the part where help arrives wearing a collar," JJ said.

Erebos read over Omina's shoulder. "The conductor would stabilize both pumps before your hand fails completely."

"You sound interested because the collar would land on somebody else today."

The cooling gauge beneath the tank struck its upper peg. Heat had clouded the glass around the woman's shoulders. The returned graft released her leaking wrist, reached for the seventh support line, and stopped when she trapped it beneath her knee.

Stamped numbers marched across the brass taps along the junction. Six funeral cars had six washing outlets fed by one cistern under the rails, and Sadle cleaned bodies before district routing. The wash record and destination punches shared the same turning shaft.

Terrible plumbing. Excellent theft.

She shoved the sponsor receipt at Yun-Jin. "Hold the clause where Erebos can read it without touching anything useful."

JJ climbed down beside the tank trolley. The junction walkway ran two feet below its rim. Ash water from overhead pipes soaked her hair and collar whenever the wheels crossed a joint.

Valve one refused both hands.

Kieran offered the wrapped flute case as leverage. JJ took the blunt end while Kieran kept hold of the cracked mouthpiece. Together they turned the wheel until old soap broke loose around the stem.

Brown water coughed from the outlet and struck JJ across the chest.

"That smell has outlived every person who paid for it."

"The next pipe contains cleaner water if the color rings still mean anything."

Kieran pointed with her elbow. Her other hand stayed wrapped around the flute.

JJ opened the second tap into the gutter. Gray water followed the brown, then cleared enough for the stones beneath it to show. She tore the cooling return from its empty jacket fitting and forced it over the brass outlet.

The hose mouth was too narrow.

Her dead wrist glass still had a metal rim.

JJ struck it against the walkway until the casing split. The sponsor seal beneath it had faded to a stain around the torn skin. With the rim sleeving the hose mouth, JJ held both against the funeral tap until cistern pressure locked them together and drove water around the tank.

The woman inside jerked when it reached her spine. Her living hand slapped the glass once, then flattened while the heat haze thinned around her face.

JJ climbed to the upper fitting and opened the jacket return over the junction gutter. Water ran across all six destination channels before falling beneath the rails.

The burial register began punching.

Six iron pins struck a paper roll inside the wall. The first cut belonged to a north district furnace. The second marked a family vault. The third carried no district JJ knew. Each punch repeated when the tank woman's heartbeat reached the cooling line.

Omina pulled the paper free after the sixth route took the same pulse.

"The engine has entered one living passenger against every body destination aboard."

JJ watched the gauge leave its upper peg. "The engine can complain after she stops cooking inside it."

The receipt line tightened behind Omina. New pink print advanced from the wall, offering the conductor again. The price now included correction of contaminated burial records.

Someone at the sponsor office had found a better chair and mistaken it for intelligence.

JJ fed the offer into the gutter. Wet paper wound around the axle and tore at every punch hole.

The tank woman's pulse settled three marks below the danger line. Her graft uncurled from beneath her knee. She pressed its palm teeth into the tank floor, keeping the hand away from her body while the split at her wrist narrowed around the brace.

The burial register punched a seventh time.

No funeral car owned that destination.

Erebos moved before JJ found the new cut. Yun-Jin's thread caught his wrist and tied it to the rail. Omina lowered two green bars across his shadow, leaving him close enough to read the paper and too far away to take it.

The seventh mark held three offset squares around an empty center. JJ had seen the shape in the broken machinery beyond Room Four, stamped beneath one of the chairs Erebos had lost when the Reaper dragged his wall into Omina's room.

His attention stayed on that tiny hole in the paper.

"Your mixed records introduced that route to this engine."

"Then explain why your prison hardware recognizes the funeral wash."

Erebos tested Yun-Jin's thread with one finger. The violet line tightened around the joint. "The washing shaft passes beneath a discarded outer clock. I can separate the six dead destinations from the living one."

Omina pressed the green bars lower. "Your access remains limited to spoken directions from this position."

"Spoken directions will not turn the shaft hidden beneath the track."

JJ's thumb had begun feeling again. Pain arrived with it, sharp enough to make her drop the copper braid. She caught it against her hip before it touched either pump contact.

The woman in the tank watched her hand.

JJ wrapped the braid twice around her first two fingers. "You get one arm through Omina's bars while Yun-Jin keeps the shoulder attached to this rail. You separate the records where everyone can see your hand."

"I require the seventh strip after the separation is complete."

"You receive a copy after you give this train a clinic route that leaves her destination in her own hands."

Erebos looked through the tank glass. The woman's graft lifted from the floor and aimed its teeth at him.

"She may refuse the clinic after waking enough to understand the destination."

"Then you will have performed your first useful consultation with a patient."

Kieran shifted the flute case under one arm. "The sponsor gate waits at the end of this junction, and its replacement part will arrive with people attached."

Behind the engine, metal shutters began closing over the covered track. Pink lamps lit above the service platform. Three workers in sponsor coats rolled a narrow repair cabinet toward the rails while a fourth carried a destination contract on a rigid board.

JJ opened the funeral tap another quarter turn. The burial shaft knocked beneath the track, turning the seventh punch toward Erebos's bound hand.

He reached through Omina's bars and put two fingers into the moving iron.

The sponsor workers stopped pushing their cabinet.

Every pink lamp over the service platform changed to the empty mark of three squares from Erebos's prison.