Chapter 932 - 932: An Angelic Saves The Wrong Prisoner

Dimitri pushed his left hand through the white cut and found fire on the other side.

His fingers flattened to fit the opening before his eyes adjusted to the monitoring room below. Oil burned across a table with five edges. One wall and part of the floor were gone. Through that break, a black rail carried the missing section somewhere the extraction band refused to measure.

Five people remained in the room.

The white band around Dimitri's wrist tightened. A crack from Jade's earlier cut crossed half its face. It could widen for one stable body before the return line folded.

Darel drove the empty oil can against the west door. Keth worked beneath the fallen table with his saw pressed against an ankle buckle. Ossan tore pages from a route ledger and packed them into the gaps around the door latch.

Miri held the carrier upright with one arm while pumping with the other.

"Take him first because the ankle restraint still carries the table's weight."

Dimitri changed his forearm into a narrow hook and lowered it toward them.

"The band carries one stable body before this ceiling closes."

Dimitri split the hook into two loops, dropping one toward the carrier while Darel caught the other above his wrist.

Across the white band, the old crack opened through another mark. Darel's fingers showed through both loops as Dimitri's changed skin thinned. The ceiling cut folded at its corners and bit into his sleeve.

He pulled the empty loop back before the band severed it with Darel's hand inside.

"Two bodies tear the cut before either one crosses."

Darel rubbed the white pressure mark around his wrist.

Darel stopped hitting the door long enough to look up.

"There are five stable bodies here if you count without using that bracelet, and every one of us knows who kept the carrier breathing."

On Earth, Dimitri had admitted he was the weakest soldier in Masabi's group, terrified of zombies and honest enough to say so. He had also stepped between Masabi and Regaku's attack while his knees tried to abandon him.

Back then, somebody stronger had always been close enough to call his fear a training problem. Nobody stood above this room with a second band. The choice belonged to the soldier who had spent years avoiding assignments because he knew exactly how dying felt.

Masabi moved him off direct combat after Earth. Observation duty was supposed to reward useful caution. Measure the escaped soul. Confirm whether the skeleton could separate without losing identity. Mark any clean vessel that might carry the same soul pattern.

The white ring had found Ty's buried rib, then the left finger bone Jade cut free. Both measurements ended with Dimitri watching from a distance where nobody could hit him.

Five people now watched his hand hanging within their reach.

He turned the cracked band toward each worker. Route soot caught around Darel's exit chit and climbed the arm holding the oil can. Miri's pump key carried the black graft rhythm. Ossan's ledger had seven cuts burned through every page. Keth's saw joined the room to the prison wall each time its teeth moved.

The band loosened when Dimitri aimed it at the carrier.

No name strip remained on his throat. The straps had rubbed every transport mark from his clothes, and the prison had taken whatever records once traveled with him. The white band found fewer attachments and pulled harder.

Miri carried most of his weight. One knee folded whenever the ankle buckle shifted, and each breath stopped until she completed the pump stroke.

Darel pointed the oil can at him.

"He cannot stand without her, yet your bracelet calls him stable."

By Angelic order, stable meant a soul the band could keep measuring through transport. Miri could keep the carrier's legs and lungs working or let both fail. The band ignored her.

Miri saw the ring turn.

"They washed his name away. Clean is what the prison left after scraping."

"His soul gives the band fewer damaged attachments to carry through a closing cut."

"Your path likes what the prison already removed for you."

Smoke reached the white cut. Its lower edge pinched around Dimitri's wrist, forcing his hand back toward its normal shape. When he lowered the hook around the carrier's chest, the man caught it with both hands.

His fingers had lost skin around the restraint contacts. Pressure opened the burns again, but he kept Dimitri's arm away from his ribs.

"Ask whether I leave before your clean path takes me."

Dimitri looked at the ceiling line shrinking above him. Masabi's field orders had never included time for the target to negotiate extraction. That habit had seemed efficient until Jade and the humans kept surviving choices Angelic reports called impossible.

"Will you cross now while the band can still carry you?"

The carrier looked toward Miri.

She cut the chest strap and left the loose end in his hand.

Keth shoved the severed ankle buckle from beneath the table.

"Choose after your legs belong to you again."

The carrier planted one foot, found weight, and stood with the torn strap around his waist. He reached for Ossan rather than Dimitri.

"What happens to all four of you after I cross?"

Miri moved the pump key into Darel's empty can.

"We break the west door, lower the pump through first, and climb after it before the ceiling falls."

Keth slid his saw into the latch beside Ossan's wet ledger covers.

"The door opens when paper swells around the upper tooth and metal takes the lower one."

Ossan tore the last written strip from his ledger. Four worker names and one blank carrier line survived above the burned edge.

"Take this because complete records have failed to save anyone here."

Darel pulled his exit chit from the oil can handle and pressed it beside the four names.

"Mine purchased a door that never existed, so carry that proof somewhere expensive."

The carrier folded both papers inside the chest strap. Ash from the burned cord wells coated his palms.

He faced Dimitri.

"I choose the cut, and I carry everyone your bracelet refused."

Dimitri extended the hook again. The carrier took his wrist rather than allowing the band around his chest.

Black ash pressed between their hands.

Dimitri's shapeshifting answered contact before he could stop it. His wrist softened around the carrier's grip, closed over the ash, and returned to bone with a black route fiber trapped beneath the skin.

Pain drove his elbow straight.

"Release my arm before the cut closes on both of us."

"Your arm entered our fire, so it leaves carrying what you touched."

The carrier stepped onto Keth's back, then Darel's braced knee, and pulled himself into the ceiling cut by Dimitri's wrist. Miri pushed from below until his hips crossed. Before releasing his ankle, she tucked her brother's receipt beneath the strap with the other papers.

Across the narrowing cut, the white band opened around his shoulders and pulled him into the extraction corridor.

Dimitri caught the carrier against the hard floor of the extraction corridor. Through the shrinking cut, Darel returned to the west door. Keth placed his saw beside the latch. Ossan wrapped wet ledger covers around Miri's burned pumping hand.

The four workers struck the door together before the line closed.

White metal sealed beneath Dimitri's knees.

His retrieval band rotated around the carrier and searched for the pulse it had measured in Ty's bone. The ring stayed cold. The man beside him carried a living soul scraped nearly bare, but none of the skeleton's answer.

Dimitri turned the band twice, hoping the crack had interrupted its reading. The carrier's pulse entered the metal on both turns and left no white pressure behind.

"I was assigned to preserve the soul closest to the skeleton's measurement."

The carrier opened the chest strap and showed him the four names, blank line, exit chit, and Miri's brother receipt packed together.

"You preserved the man they emptied enough to fool your measurement. The people who kept me alive are still striking that door below us."

The carrier pushed himself onto one elbow.

"Open the cut again for the four people you left inside."

Dimitri pressed his uninjured hand against the sealed floor. The cracked band had spent its width. The old room coordinate pulled through the ash embedded in his other wrist, but the white metal refused to open around contaminated tissue.

He tried flattening the trapped wrist again. The skin changed first. Bone followed halfway, met the black fiber, and bent around it until two knuckles pressed in opposite directions.

The carrier caught Dimitri's elbow before the arm folded farther.

"Keep that piece inside you until it leads us back to them."

Under his skin, the black fiber divided toward five points.

His hand changed shape around it and failed to change back.