Chapter 983: JJ Leaves Her Wire Behind

JJ had enough fingers left to work the pump or untie the woman from her coat. She chose the pump and let the trolley drag her backward another foot.

“You’re going to take that button off, and then we’ll both be annoyed.”

The woman’s grip loosened. She kept two fingers through the hole, watching the western door over JJ’s shoulder. Behind it, someone knocked again and tried the latch.

Vey put a rifleman beside the door. He sent Fenn down the platform to find where the brass rail entered the wall. JJ held her braid away from it while the left pump descended, then touched the right contact. Her thumb folded into her palm. She had stopped trying to straighten it.

An engineer brought a block of dry wood and pushed it beneath the severed plate. The pink lamp remained lit.

“Disconnect whatever it touched before you bring anything through my door,” Vey told him.

The engineer looked at JJ’s hands. “That connection is already gone. Whatever answered has stayed on the other side.”

A narrow service shutter opened beside the door. Through it JJ saw the repair cabinet from the covered junction, its brass corners dented where it had stopped beside the funeral track. A sponsor worker in a pink coat leaned around it. He looked relieved to see her and less relieved to see the rifle.

“Our cabinet followed the fault connection. Please move the weapon away from the delivery opening.”

Vey rested his hand on the rifleman’s shoulder and left the barrel where it was.

JJ waited for the right handle to rise before answering. “You can leave the cabinet there. Tell me whether the replacement still comes with custody of the patient.”

The worker lifted a rigid board from its side pocket. JJ recognized the offer by the blue tab at its corner. Even the same tab. He checked a lower sheet before looking back at her.

“The replacement remains available under the terms already offered.”

She touched the copper down too hard. A spark struck her knuckle, and the woman inside the tank jerked against the lower support. JJ lifted the braid immediately. Anger could wait until somebody else was holding this damned wire.

The engineer crouched beside her. Oil had soaked one trouser knee from the jack. He watched a complete pair of strokes, then held his open hand below hers.

“Let me take the next two. You tell me when to lift.”

JJ passed him the braid by its wrapped section and guided his wrist through the first turn. With his other hand he drew the left handle down. He nearly completed the circuit too early on the second, but stopped when she touched his elbow.

The woman lowered her shoulder as the fluid changed direction. No new leak opened at her wrist.

JJ eased her fingers out of their cramped grip. Pain climbed into her forearm, leaving her lightheaded enough to sit on the trolley rail. The engineer kept working. She watched because looking away felt too much like dropping the handle.

From the doorway, the sponsor worker said, “An unregistered operator voids coverage for damage during transfer.”

“Write my name down twice, then. I taught him.”

JJ slid off the rail and knelt beside the pump. There was room beside the right contact for a lever. She found the left handle’s return rod, followed it beneath the housing, and stopped at the bend that rose after every downward stroke.

With a loose clamp held above the rod, she tested the travel. The rod knocked it against the right contact and lifted it clear on the return. Too early. She shifted the clamp back and tried again without letting it touch copper.

The engineer leaned to see. “We can hang a rocker there, but it needs a spring to bring it off the contact.”

Fenn came back carrying a short length of the brass rail. She set it on the ground away from the trolley and put her hook through her belt.

“The wall fitting’s cut loose. The door still looks into his cupboard instead of our repair bay.”

Vey sent another man around the building to clear the actual bay. Through the shutter, the worker began to explain that the opened service connection required a returned cabinet to close. Vey stopped him by putting the cut rail across the opening.

“Your cabinet waits there until my people are out.”

JJ took the spring from the trolley’s spare wheel lock. Fenn objected when she saw which lock it was, then fetched a wedge from the pile of discarded clamps. She hammered it against the wheel while JJ bent a strip of metal over the spring.

The sponsor worker watched through the shutter. His board had dropped below the opening.

“That conductor was made to take load through a wrist housing. A fixed switch will wear through it.”

JJ held the braid alongside the new rocker. He was probably right. Two places already showed bare strands, and each had spent too long pressed across her fingers. She could wrap one worn place around the contact and use the other as the flexible bend. After that, there would be very little left to hold.

She brought it to the woman’s eye level before fastening it.

“This will let the other pump turn yours. We test it with my hand ready, and you stop us if the strokes hurt.”

The woman released JJ’s buttonhole. She reached through the sleeve toward the proposed switch, touched the spring, then pointed to the clear hose resting against its edge.

JJ moved the hose behind the housing. Fenn tied it there with a strip torn from the ruined coat hem.

The first test failed on the return. The rocker stayed down, holding the right contact closed. JJ pulled it up while the engineer stopped the left handle before the two pressures met. Inside the tank, the woman struck the wall once with her living palm.

JJ backed the spring off half a turn. They tried again with the right circuit open, watching the metal travel. On the next attempt under load, each hose filled separately.

They let it work through six more pairs. The engineer kept his hand on the brake. JJ stayed within reach of the braid, and the woman watched them both until she could lower her graft from beneath her knee without it reaching for the floor.

At the western door, the delivery cabinet moved forward.

Vey caught its front corner through the shutter and shoved it back. The worker protested about its weight. Farther along the platform, two men emerged from the repair bay carrying a third between them, his stockinged foot held off the ground.

The space behind them narrowed. JJ could see shelves sliding out of alignment through the bay window, while the same shelf edges appeared beyond the pink coat.

Fenn seized her hook. “The cabinet’s bringing his room through. We have to cut the sill before he puts those wheels down.”

Vey looked at the man with the injured foot. He held up three fingers, accounting for the people who had been inside. Vey turned his rifle toward the cabinet and ordered the worker back.

Fenn drove her hook beneath the outer sill. Her first pull tore mortar loose. With two soldiers on the handle, the next pulled the whole threshold away from the platform.

The service door slammed into the empty repair bay. Brick split around its frame. The pink lamp fell inside, still burning, and the cabinet struck the far wall hard enough for its drawers to open.

Dust rolled across the trolley. JJ covered the pump contacts with her sleeve until it passed. The engineer kept working the left handle, with the rocker switching the right after each stroke.

Vey set guards beyond the broken sill. Through the bay window, the worker was picking himself up among fallen shelves. His route had a foothold in Meren now, though the gap between it and the platform was wide enough to see daylight beneath.

Fenn spat mortar from her mouth. “That was where we kept the wheel bearings. He can pay for those before he delivers anything else.”

JJ tucked the last copper tail under the rocker screw. Pulling it loose would stop the right pump. She took her hand away and waited through another stroke with her fingers pressed against her thigh.

The engineer moved his stool beside the brake. A clinic worker arrived with fresh cooling water and a blanket to lay across the trolley’s exposed metal. Vey put a second worker beside the handle to learn the stroke before taking a shift. The woman drew the blanket around her good wrist through the sleeve, then pushed a dry corner toward JJ.

JJ wrapped it around her hand. Across the platform, Omina still had Erebos against the train rail. Kegaku watched from his bed while Kieran held the closed flute case on her lap.

From beneath that case came a scrape.

Kieran lifted the ceramic locator she had received from the air suppliers. Its shipping band pulled toward the isolated repair bay. Beyond the fallen cabinet, a square loading hatch slid upward, exposing a freight track that ran across the wall instead of the floor. The worker grabbed his board and backed away from it.

Someone had strapped three people along a post moving on that track. The nearest had a breathing cup pressed over his mouth. A hand made from bare bone held it there, its wrist ending in empty air.