Chapter 941 - 941: Orra's Underside Has A Street

Sennik insulted every hand that touched the wrong strap, which made Nessa trust her instructions.

"My chest goes to yellow first, and anyone loosening my left shoulder loses a finger."

The Clinic Five worker stepped back from that buckle.

"Say your name before you inherit my weight."

"Talli Ren, Clinic Five, second shift, hands steady."

Sennik watched Talli's hands through one transfer. Only then did she allow Ruvan to move a quarter chest load from the private house into the clinic rail.

Her carrying frame leaned toward three surfaces while Meya held the jaw board, Talli supported the chest belt, and Nessa used her left hand to keep the right wrist level. Sennik's legs pressed into the gallery floor.

Nessa's own numb arm pulled toward the black stake beneath its harness.

The pulse cage wanted to learn every bad direction in the room. She had no intention of letting it practice on Sennik.

"Your harness manages the damage without teaching your body one down."

Sennik shifted her right fingers around Nessa's wrist.

"Management lets me complain longer than a cure somebody invented without asking."

Talli almost smiled. Sennik saw and pointed her working fingers toward Ruvan's tally.

"Put my name on a public line before this frame leaves the house."

Ruvan wrote Sennik Roe beneath Clinic Five, listed each transferred share, and crossed out private ballast without erasing the words. Sennik made him add anchor worker and living.

"Keep Jori's cord tied where I can reach it from the clinic."

Meya passed the gray braid through the frame buckle and gave Talli the free end.

"One shift pull from Sennik means stop. Jori's ladder count remains two, pause, one."

Clinic Five took the frame through the yellow corridor. Sennik went shoulder first, arguing with the doorway until Ruvan removed one hinge rather than turn her body.

Nessa waited until the clinic tube confirmed every strap, then turned toward Orra's underside hatch.

Ruvan put one public rope on the crossing table and locked its counter beneath his thumb.

"One team descends until second bell. This rope returns everyone before lower current loads the seventh well, and Rillhold cuts it if your signal misses recall."

Meya tested the rope with her good arm.

"I lead because the missing cord belongs to my crew."

"You lead under my recall because three hundred rooms belong to mine."

Neither sounded pleased. Both took the terms.

Harven stayed at the crossing table with his roof hook across the seventh column. The prison shaving remained in Ruvan's counter tray under a clear cup and two public signatures.

Jade carried Ty's skull at her coat belt. His ribs and right hand stayed inside one chain path clipped to the public rope. Nessa carried the recovered field finger on its separate link and kept her right arm bound above the elbow.

Meya opened the underside hatch.

Orra's hide moved beyond it in pale plates, rising far enough with each breath to crush a careless hand against the hatch rim. Meya crossed on the exhale. Jade followed with Ty's chain. Nessa waited for the plates to lower and moved her left knee onto the first hook.

The world pulled toward Orra's belly, then toward the stone pieces traveling below her. Nessa's stomach chose one while her cage chose the other.

She bit the inside of her cheek and kept climbing.

"Your right shoulder is turning before the next plate opens."

Meya pointed with her chin, since her good hand held the rope.

"Turn my harness left and keep the field finger outside your cord."

Jade reached back and shifted the shoulder strap. The cage needles dragged across Nessa's sleeve but stayed away from the iron hooks.

Six empty anchor harnesses hung across Orra's west flank. Search chalk marked each buckle and ended at a seam between two hide plates.

Jori's gray cord passed through that seam.

Meya rubbed the old search mark with her thumb.

"They stopped where the public map ended because Sennik's private load hid the continuation."

"Ruvan's searchers followed the map they were given."

Jade kept Ty's chain clear of the plates.

"The map was built to make stopping here look responsible."

Meya pushed her roof knife into the seam. Orra breathed, opening the plates around the blade. Ty fed one chain loop through and held it as a spacer without sending any bone across.

The hidden cord led them inside the gap and out beneath another ridge.

A street hung under Orra.

Nine houses faced one another across a road made from linked door frames. Their roofs pointed toward the roadback. Their floors pulled toward separate chunks of stone suspended below them on black lines.

One kitchen table still held a bowl beneath three straps. A child's boot hung from a doorknob by its lace, held above the missing yard. Laundry twisted around a chimney while the empty house kept reaching for a foundation twenty feet below.

Every hinge and foundation still carried the cuts used on Kavel's fixed islands.

Nessa's recovered field finger closed around its chain.

"The black lines use each stolen foundation as a separate down source."

Ty's voice came from Jade's coat.

"My shadow is moving toward the last house before we are."

At the far end, a pale bone stake passed through a slab of island stone. Black metal wrapped the stake in four bands and pulled all nine foundations toward it.

The oldest Rillhold stake.

Jori's cord ran along the hanging road.

A worker stepped from the third house with a blank helm clamped around her head. One leg walked along the door frame. Her upper body hung toward a foundation below. Two belts crossed her abdomen and joined the black line behind her.

She carried a hooked cutter.

Four empty circles marked the helm above its left ear.

The worker reached Jori's cord before Meya did.

Jade's damaged eye opened wider.

"Living worker behind the helm. Stop the hook and leave every chest brace intact."

Nessa sent the recovered field finger down its separate chain. The finger crawled over the door frame and closed its stored grip around the cutter's hook.

The worker pulled. Nessa's chain cut across her left palm.

Ty wrapped his whole chain around the road frame. Every bone stayed clipped beside Jade while the chain took the worker's weight in one direction.

Meya crossed the gap and caught the cutter handle with her roof knife.

The worker kicked toward the stone below. Her torso pulled the other way. Both abdominal belts tightened until she made a rough choking sound inside the helm.

"Release the cutter, and we will hold all three braces where they sit."

"Every signal tightens the old stake through our bodies. I cut that cord before the next knock tears me."

Meya kept pressure off the hook.

"Give your name and whoever fitted those belts."

The worker's hands shook against the cutter.

"Dema Voss from Crowstep. Blank helms fitted everyone who survived the foundation pull."

Nessa moved closer without letting her cage arm cross the black line.

"Which buckle releases your cutting arm without shifting your chest?"

"The copper loop beneath my right shoulder, after someone takes my leg line."

Meya hooked the leg line to the public rope. Jade took the shoulder loop. Nessa loosened the cutter hand only after Dema counted both loads aloud.

The recovered field finger kept the hook.

Dema sagged inside her belts. Meya raised the helm's face plate rather than removing its support frame.

The skin around Dema's mouth had split where the lower brace pulled sideways. Her eyes stayed on the gray cord.

"They let us stand inside the level house between shifts. Outside it, every part remembers a different foundation."

Nessa looked at her own strapped arm.

"Who ordered your crew to maintain this stolen street?"

Dema turned the helm enough to show the four circles.

"The work mark gives orders through the black line. I have never seen the hand above it."

The four circles identified only a work group. Nessa left the hand above it unidentified.

Meya took Jori's cord past Dema. It crossed all nine houses and disappeared into the island slab around Rillhold's oldest stake.

Two pulls shook the braid.

After Jori's usual pause, one harder knock came from inside the hanging foundation.