Chapter 934 - 934: The Prison Road Drops Its Floor

Nessa's right arm fell toward the ceiling and told her nothing about it.

The sleeve tightened under her armpit. Her shoulder stayed beside the black rail while the numb arm lifted over her head, fingers open, chasing Cava through a direction the rest of Nessa's body refused.

Nessa wound Kestra's numbered chain around her left wrist.

Todd had reached the west wall and planted both boots against a shelf bracket. Cava rose above the storehouse lamps with a packing cord pulling from the crown on her shoulder. The landing guard and his cutters swung below the broken freight opening, each body choosing a different angle around the same cord.

The painted prison floor sat in the middle of it all. Five empty sockets turned around the black rail while plaster, wet ledger pages, and loose restraint buckles climbed away from one another.

"Call every living body by injury and direction. Leave the tools unnamed until every person has a strap."

Kestra hauled herself along a ceiling strap until her boots found the edge of a shelving post.

"Todd holds west on one shelf bracket. Cava rises north past the lamps, and three carriers remain against my lower shelves."

The lowest shelf had become a wall. Tovan hung inside his strap with the white breathing tube bent under his chin. Ty's left hand held the support cup against his mouth. Dessel lay across the next bracket, his damaged shoulder pressed beneath his own weight. The unnamed carrier gripped the cut end of a restraint rather than letting it close around him.

Jade had Ty's skull tucked inside her coat. One boot remained on Kestra's floor. The other pulled toward the copper tube in the arriving prison segment.

"Ty's left hand stays with the breathing cup, whatever else moves."

His four fingered right hand still held Cava's chest strap. It hooked one thumb around the cloth, walked two fingers higher, and pulled the knot away from her throat.

"My right hand can take the nearest cutter before his cord takes Cava."

Nessa looked up. The cutter nearest Cava had wrapped one packing line around his waist. Its other end ran through the recovery jaw on her shoulder. His left hand kept slipping along the cord, and his mask had filled with blood from a cut above the eyebrow.

"Take his wrist and leave the cord where Cava can reach it."

Ty's hand released her strap after Todd caught it with the end of his shortened staff. Bone fingers crossed the packing line, reached the cutter, and closed around his wrist before he slid into the black rail.

Nessa kicked three gravity straps from Kestra's open bin. Each strap chose a different wall before the buckles finished turning.

She caught the first with the numbered chain and sent it toward Tovan. Jade caught the buckle, passed it beneath the breathing cup, and fixed it to the shelf post without moving Ty's left hand.

The second strap slapped Dessel across his working shoulder.

"Loop that buckle around my waist before this shelf uses the injured side."

Kestra fed the strap behind him. Dessel closed it himself with his right hand and rolled until his damaged shoulder cleared the bracket.

The final strap drifted toward the unnamed carrier. He pulled the loose restraint away from his chest.

"Put the buckle in my hand. Point out one hook that carries weight without deciding where my body belongs."

Nessa sent the strap along her chain.

"Use Kestra's numbered post. It still holds people."

The carrier caught the buckle, tested the post with one pull, and closed the strap around his own hips.

Cava swung above them. The recovery jaw had drawn her torn sleeve tight across the burned crown. Todd's staff held her chest strap from the west wall, leaving her good foot free.

She planted that foot against the ceiling beam and pulled on the packing cord.

"Your order keeps my shoulder attached. Pull when Nessa calls, keep both cutters off my injured ankle, and you might carry the living address back to whatever office still owes you."

The landing guard wrapped his pay card around the cord to protect his hand.

"Nine unpaid shifts die with the seventh account."

Todd shifted his grip along the shelf bracket.

"Your pay can survive after both of your hands become useful."

The guard caught a ceiling brace with one hand and pulled Cava's line with the other. His two cutters copied him. Their cords tightened into a triangle that held Cava below the lamps.

Nessa spent Kestra's last short strap around the cutter in Ty's hand. The buckle closed above his bleeding brow and fixed him to the same ceiling brace as the guard.

West Four's finger moved beneath Nessa's knee.

Its severed wrist remained tied under the numbered chain. The double maintenance punch pressed once against her cutter until the blade vibrated. Two short taps followed.

Meren's return remained dead. The pattern lived in the finger's worn joints, learned during Nessa's last check beside Palla.

Palla's earlier words came back with the pressure in Nessa's left wrist.

"Breaking this jaw blind transfers its turn into whichever plate has the least resistance."

Tovan's breathing tube bent toward one socket while another dragged Dessel by his injured shoulder. Cava's crown and Todd's cracked blade fragment had already claimed two more. The fifth tugged at Ty's absent right index through the bare space in his hand.

Under all five pulls, the supposed plates breathed, bled, or answered to names. Cutting one road would feed its turn into the next person.

With her right arm floating above her, Nessa crawled around the black rail on her left knee. She passed the numbered chain through the first socket and shoved its end toward Ty's loose hand.

"Thread every socket before one of them chooses a person for us."

Ty's hand released the cutter after his strap held. It carried the chain around the second socket, dropped through the third, and emerged beneath the clear sleeve wrapped around the failed copied digit.

Jade used the clamp to pull the chain past Ty's empty index bed.

"That space remains his, and no tool borrows it for this break."

Kestra caught the chain beyond the fourth socket.

"The fifth lip sits under the copper tube, and my floor cannot reach it."

Todd looked from his two staff sections to Cava's capture hook. He slid one section through the west socket while keeping the other across her chest strap.

"My equipment has become too short for every job in this room."

Cava lowered her good foot from the ceiling beam. The move sent her rising another foot, but it freed the capture hook in her hand. She drove its blunt end beneath the fifth lip and turned the handle toward Todd.

"Then use my bad equipment before Griswald charges storage."

Todd caught the handle with his free staff section. The fifth socket lifted enough for Kestra to pass the chain underneath.

All five iron lips now sat on one numbered length.

The prison floor buckled, pulling one socket toward Todd and another after Cava. The Meren line hauled at Nessa's recovered finger while Ty's empty grip drew the fourth toward his scattered ribs. Beneath them, the last socket sank with the painted segment and the wet worker names stuck across it.

Nessa felt the chain choose the weakness in her left thumb.

The field finger still pinned the black rail, preserving one straight floor while giving four routes a fixed place to tear people against.

She loosened the chain from its severed wrist.

The finger caught her cutter with two joints.

Palla had let Meren count Nessa's signal and refused a dangerous answer. Nessa had to do the same with her hand already on the metal.

She looped one narrow chain link around the finger's wrist, then pulled it out of the rail.

The piece she came to recover climbed away from her.

Its joints hooked the chain once before the Meren pull took it toward the east wall. Nessa kept the other end around her left wrist, giving up every useful angle except the promise that the finger would fall somewhere near her.

Kestra braced both boots against the numbered post.

"Pull the five lips together when the painted floor clears every body."

Todd hauled Cava's hook. Jade closed her clamp around two chain links. Ty's right hand gripped the copied digit sleeve and dragged it away from the fourth socket. Cava ordered the recovery crew to tighten, and three paid cords lifted her shoulder clear.

The painted segment dropped below their feet.

Nessa pulled.

Five socket lips tore through one another. The black rail split along its rubbed circles and folded into the empty center. No single road inherited the full turn. Each took the weight already attached to it and ripped away from the others.

Kestra's post left the floor with the three carriers strapped along its length. Todd and the landing guard fell toward the west wall. Cava and one cutter rose through the broken lamps. Jade moved sideways with Ty's skull while his right hand and ribs chased separate chain links.

Nessa lost the floor beneath both knees.

The recovered finger pulled her left arm toward a piece of sky opening under the east wall. Her numb right arm drifted toward another.

Between them, the prison road dropped its painted floor and showed five different places below.