Chapter 388: A Room Inside The Tooth

The handprint stayed for eleven seconds.

Heat filled the palm first. Five fingers followed with different temperatures. The smallest finger had a cold strip across its middle joint. When the print lifted, four warm circles remained where fingertips had pressed the inner surface.

Sela Orr kept the manual shield closed over half the stamp.

"Current heat source," she said. "Current person remains unproved."

Veki Orl asked for a continuous view. The existing drill hole was two millimeters wide and ended against the embedded copper shaving. Bram Kitt could widen it without crossing the heated path if he entered from the tooth root.

He offered three bit sizes. Veki accepted the smallest under a hand stop. Deya Sorn kept the suppression-water valve. Bram retained the drill trigger. Either could end the cut.

The bit entered gray material.

At North Yard Three, the six-armed body stopped beside the roof it had dropped. Warehouse cameras showed its collarbone mouth closing around empty air. The tooth on the storage road warmed by another degree.

Bram stopped drilling.

The distant mouth opened. Tooth temperature held.

"Physical relation," Kestrel said. "Direction unknown."

Bram moved the entry point four centimeters. His second cut reached a hollow space after seven millimeters. No fluid escaped. Deya inserted a bare copper wire and withdrew it with black soot on one side.

Something pulled the wire back.

Deya released it. The wire vanished into the hole.

Thirty seconds later, its tip returned bent into a loop.

Veki accepted a fiber camera after its keeper removed every remote motor. Bram guided the lens by hand. The view passed through soot and opened above a metal room no longer than a bus.

One wall was the inner curve of the tooth. The opposite wall carried six narrow heat pipes. A low furnace door glowed at the far end. Three people stood beneath the camera.

The person nearest the lens held Deya’s copper wire. Her left little finger had a dark band around its middle joint.

The hand matched the heat print. It did not establish the other two people.

Veki opened sound through the camera cable.

"State what you can observe where you are."

The woman looked at the two people beside her before answering.

"Heat-room six. North tooth housing. Furnace pressure at four marks. Floor leaning toward reject chute."

"Your name, if you choose."

"Hara Vek."

The man beside her called himself Tem Kall. He had a cloth filter tied over his mouth and a fresh burn across his right forearm. The third person, Suli Dask, carried an apprentice’s punch belt and kept one hand against the furnace latch.

No archive held those three names.

Kestrel asked Hara to move away from the camera and choose a new action. Hara handed the wire to Tem instead. Tem threaded it through one punch on Suli’s belt. Suli selected a different punch and pressed a crescent into the soot below the lens.

Three separate choices entered the continuous room view.

Deya asked permission to observe Hara’s injured finger through the camera. Hara agreed and held it near the lens. The dark band was an old metal splint under the skin. Current blood moved around it. She flexed the joint twice and stopped when pain reached her face.

Tem uncovered his burn after choosing the camera angle. Fluid moved beneath a new blister. Suli cut the furnace latch with a punch selected after contact; fresh blood entered one shallow cut on the thumb.

Farah updated three files to current contact inside one bounded room. She did not call the room Crossing Four’s population.

Hara’s first request was water pressure, not extraction. The room’s condenser had stopped when the tooth broke from the body. Tem showed two sealed cups and one open cup with soot on its rim. Suli had half a cup tied to the punch belt.

South Bank’s clinic worker joined under Hara’s permission. She asked Tem to cool his burn. He refused to spend sealed water until she explained what the blister would lose if it broke. Hara opened one cup after hearing the answer and poured it over his arm into a clean tool tray.

The camera cable carried advice and no supplies. Deya tested the drill hole with a water drop; surface pressure flattened it against the opening instead of letting it pass. Hara saw the failed drop and kept the remaining cups under her own count.

"What date do you hold?" she asked.

Hara gave a foundry shift number. It matched no current calendar. Tem said the last city notice ordered Heat Line Six to keep three tooth housings warm for collection. Suli had never seen the city beyond furnace streets and could not identify Basalt Mile, Cairo, or the Stone Table seal.

Their room used hand valves, a coal-dust igniter, and copper pressure strips read by color. Suli’s punch belt served as both repair kit and shift record. Hara knew the six furnace streets between her room and the meal hall. Tem knew one treatment stair. None could place those streets beyond the current wall.

Veki showed them a bounded camera view of the detached tooth and storage road. Hara asked to see the broken root twice. Tem requested the divider where the seventy-six residents had evacuated. Suli declined the body footage and asked for the maker’s stamp.

They received different views on the same cable.

"Who built the six-armed body?" the Stone Table speaker asked.

Hara looked at the seal on his feed.

"What body?"

Veki removed the speaker from the direct room line. His question remained in the public record without becoming Hara’s obligation.

The Stone Table requested a strike hold in case the room opened a hostile route. Ash Quarter requested that Hara, Tem, and Suli receive the same withdrawal information as the sensor keepers. South Bank requested a treatment channel without military audio. Veki granted the treatment channel and published the other requests without combining them.

Hara accepted a warning if the six-armed body approached the tooth. She did not accept city military direction. Tem asked that the camera stay low enough to exclude the furnace code board. Suli chose to show three tool marks and kept the rest outside view.

Bram showed the three residents a diagram of the tooth on the storage road. Hara recognized the room’s outer curve but rejected the stated scale.

"Our wall is six paces wide."

"Outside is almost three meters," Bram said.

Suli put a punch against the wall. The camera showed a hand-sized tool. From the storage road, the matching tap moved across half the tooth.

Scale changed across the wall.

Private Continuity’s four sensor keepers offered a route test using an empty medical wrap. Hara accepted the wrap through the camera hole. Suli tied it to the furnace latch. Tem retained the right to cut it free.

Before the cut, each resident chose a stop signal visible to the lens. Hara would close her fist. Tem would cover his burn. Suli would place the crescent punch over the camera. Bram repeated each signal once and did not turn them into one room command.

Bram widened the hole by one millimeter.

North Yard Three reported movement.

The six-armed body put two hands beneath its collarbone mouth. Its broken teeth shifted inside the repaired elbow. The mouth closed around the empty space where the lost tooth belonged.

Inside the room, both curved walls moved inward.

Hara dropped to one knee. Tem cut the medical wrap. Suli opened the furnace latch and released pressure into the six heat pipes. The walls stopped with less than two meters between them.

Bram released the drill trigger.

The distant mouth opened by the same interval.

"Widening extraction closes their room," Veki said. "No second cut."

Hara stood with help from Tem. She kept the camera line and refused another route test. Suli closed five of the heat pipes and left one open under a local wheel. Tem moved three tool boxes away from the reject chute.

The room remained current and occupied. No one had crossed.

At North Yard Three, the body turned away from the industrial road. It planted its empty left socket against the dropped shed roof. Red soil opened inside the socket and showed five corridor segments.

The Woman’s shelter appeared beyond them.

Her injured host was seated while two residents supported her shoulders. Thirty-nine sheltered people moved away from the east segment. Its keeper pulled a local release, but the wall had already bent around one gray hand.

The six-armed body entered the shelter through the segment it had found inside its own missing side.