Chapter 908 - 908: Nessa Brings The City's Knife

Nessa made Vey write the recovery order on the back of an evacuee's ruined pressure tag.

The front still carried a woman's shelter intake numbers. A roof shot had cut through the corner that once matched her baggage. Vey turned the tag over and wrote around the hole while the cargo seam shoved another wrapped hinge beneath the tram.

"Name the people crossing, the objects we recover, and the condition that brings us back."

Vey kept writing. "Captain Nessa Cord recovers three field pieces and evidence tied to stolen Oltin hardware."

"Ty and Jade require reasons beyond following me into contamination."

Ty stood beside the open rail with dead Vale strips gathered behind his marked lane. "My chained rib maintains the road, and I intend to follow its prison end toward Erebos."

Jade held a clean cloth against her open right eye. "I am following the line inside my eye, not serving as his restraint or your route instrument."

Vey added both statements without shortening them. "Return begins when Palla calls loss of control, when civilian pressure reaches the seam, or when Captain Cord orders withdrawal."

"Add that nobody remains behind to preserve equipment."

"The first return check comes after ten minutes because the delayed platform must cross this switch before second watch."

Nessa looked toward the thirty people waiting beyond Davi's rail. "At ten minutes, people take the route from my mission whether the field pieces are secured or still moving."

Vey wrote that sentence too. The order now carried an ending none of the objects could renegotiate.

He wrote it below the baggage hole. Nessa pressed her usable thumb into wet grease beside his command mark. Her index finger joined it. The shortened ring finger reached the tag with a pull along the fresh stitches, while the absent smallest finger left no space to mark.

The order fit the hand she had.

Palla dragged the black knuckle beneath the switch using the half drawer rail. The bone had ridden the crawler into the cargo pull without turning once. She set it between both tracks, wrapped three lengths of cage fiber around it, and tied the other ends through the fourth desk's empty keeper cup.

Fenn tested each knot with the broken keg hook. "Your anchor is a dead hand part that refuses to help either side."

"That makes it the most reliable official at this crossing," Palla answered.

Vey looked toward Marshal Sorn's torn seal under the desk and allowed the comparison to survive.

Nessa tightened the compact cutter along her right forearm. Its handle sat beneath her shortened fingers. A brass safety catch from Iven's box passed through the lock, letting her close the blade with her wrist rather than rely on the missing part of her grip.

She put the cutter through the seam.

The far floor pulled its edge toward the lowest hook. The blade struck stone instead. No pulse returned through the handle, so Nessa fed her elbow past the rails and held it there while a coil of washed cloth slid around her sleeve.

"The floor takes metal by load, while the cloth follows contact. Keep every loose strap on Meren's side."

Davi cut the medical tag from her wrist. Fenn removed the long ends of her bandage without opening the wraps around either stump.

Nessa crossed on her left hand and both knees.

The cargo seam compressed around her hips. Palla turned the black knuckle one quarter against the rail, though the bone gave no response. The cage fiber tightened through the keeper cup and held the opening at the width of Nessa's shoulders.

Stone took her weight on the other side.

Nessa scraped the cutter across the nearest floor joint. Black grease filled the cut and carried the same burned grain as the hinges under Vey's tram. The lowest hook had been forged around an Oltin pulse cage shoulder pin, with its maintenance punch buried against the post.

Whoever built this platform removed the serials and kept the useful joints.

Nessa cut the shoulder pin from the post and pushed it into the return fiber. Palla pulled it through to Meren before the route could reclaim it.

The first field finger hung from a hook by its nail joint. Its severed wrist tapped seven times against the post, stopped, then began again when Nessa stood. The other two had already crossed beneath the gray washing lines.

She hooked her cutter around the hanging joint. "Palla, give me three inches of return line before this hook takes the blade."

Fiber came through the seam. Nessa looped it around her left elbow, drove her right forearm against the cutter lock, and closed the blade.

The hook broke instead of the field finger.

Its upper half whipped toward the washing lines. The finger landed against Nessa's boot, curled around the lace, and tried to drag her after it.

She stamped the wrist flat and tied the return fiber through two knuckles. "First piece secured alive enough to remain troublesome."

Vey's voice reached through the seam. "West Four records field material as equipment until a pulse finding proves life."

"Then record it as troublesome until your paperwork catches up."

Ty crossed next. His chained rib entered before his skull, drawing the seam toward his open left side. Nessa moved the captured finger behind her cutter so the two pulls met across metal rather than her legs.

Dead sleeves surged on the Meren side.

Jade called borrowed. Ty released the edge of the seam and shifted one step along the far track. Palla dropped the half rail across the dead strips before they entered.

Ty pulled the rest of himself through and reseated the rib. "The route agrees with your order less than the troublesome finger does."

"Vey's grease carries my thumbprint, while the route brings only a pull."

Jade crouched at the opening. Vey tried to hand her a West Four tether. She left it in his palm.

"Your order records my decision. Keep your tether away from my waist."

"The tether gives Palla a second return point if the skeleton's rib changes direction."

"Tie it to the cutter because Nessa accepted your command. I accepted my own."

Nessa held out her left arm. Vey clipped the tether beside the cage fiber already tied there. Jade placed her living hand on the seam only after the line moved away from her.

Her white hand followed, palm down. The damaged eye stayed open through the crossing. She looked past Nessa toward the washing lines rather than at Ty.

"The line in my eye continues beneath those tracks, while his rib bends toward the hooks. We are following different claims."

Nessa added that difference to the back of the pressure tag and gave the tag to Palla before Jade crossed fully.

Palla folded it around the black knuckle. "I keep the return and all three reasons on this side."

"You keep the route from deciding those reasons were one thing," Jade said.

Palla pulled the cage fiber once, held it, then pulled twice. Nessa answered by striking her cutter once against the stone and twice against the lower rail.

"Repeat that signal at every ten minute check because voices can be copied across this road," Palla said.

After Nessa repeated it, each strike traveled through the fiber past the unmoving black knuckle and into Meren.

The captured field finger bit through one strand of Nessa's return knot.

She drove the flat of her cutter against its joints. Before the second strand broke, the other two fingers came back from the washing lines. One pulled the tied finger free. The second caught the broken hook and used it to cut the final loop.

All three ran down the empty track on their nails.

Nessa followed because her recovery order had just acquired legs. Ty took the right rail where his rib pulled. Jade walked between them without touching either one.

Behind the washing lines, the loading floor narrowed between low buildings assembled from mismatched stone and freight panels. Each doorway carried a number cut into a removable wooden strip. The nearest strip lay on the ground with its nails pulled clean.

No freight workers met them.

Water still circled a wash basin beside the first building. A pair of work gloves lay across its rim with soap pressed into both palms. Wet footprints crossed the lane and ended at a doorway whose numbered strip had been removed.

Under the flat of Nessa's cutter, the heel yielded and spread water along the stone. The opening had interrupted this shift within minutes.

Across the first lane, the three fingers disappeared beneath a handcart.

Nessa reached the cart and found six bowls on a shelf beside it. Food still clung to every spoon. A seventh place held only a clean circle on the wood where its bowl had been removed.

On the cart's underside, someone had pressed the same long line above six cuts before the oil dried.