Chapter 917 - 917: Nessa Charges The Prison Metal

The blue sliver worked deeper under Nessa's palm each time Tovan breathed.

On his fifth breath, she lost the edge of the red rivet beneath her shortened finger. The numbness reached the scar a cargo door had given her when she was twelve. That scar usually itched before rain. Now it felt like a gap someone had cut into her hand.

Tovan held the gray cup beneath his jaw. His knuckles shook around Ty's loose thumb, though the tube remained open.

"The next breath makes six, and I would prefer to keep counting past ten."

"Keep your wrist braced while I change support."

Dessel's bound thumb struck the black joint twice. His head rested on the lower edge of the crate, turned far enough for one eye to follow Nessa's hand.

"Leave that metal under the stone. I watched it open nine restraints, then close a room around the last carrier who supplied a pulse."

Nessa pressed harder. Feeling stopped below her wrist.

Kestra brought a narrow tool tray and set it beside Tovan's ribs. Every tool had a number burned into the handle. Two also carried prices.

"Removing the blue piece again adds a damaged brace to your account, and I will not hide a disputed carrier beneath the same line."

"Put both beside the six shelves already carrying pieces of my friend, then show me which tool you bill for saving wrists."

Ty's skull shifted against Jade's hip. "My account has become more successful than the rest of me."

Jade kept the recovered phalanx closed in her living hand. Her other hand steadied Ty's wrist above the tube.

"Your account can celebrate later. Tovan reaches eleven breaths first, and none of them get charged to Ty."

Tovan pulled in the seventh and coughed half of it across Kestra's numbered tray.

Kestra looked at the wet tools. "Cleaning has entered the dispute as a separate charge."

Nessa used her left hand to turn Dessel's joint. The linked cuts had relaxed after she took the sliver, but the last tooth remained inside the spindle. It sank deeper whenever Tovan inhaled. The same pressure was serving two restraints and billing each body for the work.

At her right forearm, the cutter strap crossed the emergency port near her elbow. She thumbed it open, exposing three bent cage needles under the skin. The fourth had come out inside Vey's net and never made it back.

Dessel watched the open port. "That cage still carries a living instruction. The metal needs one pulse to begin, then it keeps charging the body that supplied it."

"You have been awake long enough to know what happens when they touch."

"The metal opens for the pulse, then writes walls around whoever supplied it."

Dessel's bound thumb stayed jammed into the joint. The nail had split from pressing there. When Nessa raised her open arm port, his heel stopped scraping the crate.

Nessa measured the distance from the rivet to her elbow with Kestra's smallest chain. The chain came up two links short.

"Bring the cup closer and turn Ty's palm."

Tovan tightened his grip. "The hand can move after somebody explains how my tube stays open, who replaces it, and which one of you keeps breathing for me."

"My arm takes the pressure for six breaths while Kestra releases Dessel's spindle."

"Your fingers already look borrowed, Captain, and I dislike lending air to collectors."

"They are mine, and you are lending air to the man beside you."

Tovan looked toward Dessel. The black iron hid most of him, but one heel kept scraping the crate whenever he tried to shift his useless shoulder.

"Make it five breaths, because six sounds like confidence from an injured person."

Nessa almost liked him.

Kestra lowered the gray cup by one shelf notch. Jade turned Ty's hand beneath it, using his thumb as a hook around the tube. Ty opened his four complete left fingers along the rim. The empty joint in his index finger pressed against the cup without closing.

Nessa waited for Tovan to finish breathing out. She caught the blue sliver with the tips of her thumb and middle finger and pulled it free.

The red rivet dropped against his ribs.

Tovan's body folded around the tube. Ty's fingers lifted the cup. Jade held his wrist flat while Kestra wedged a numbered spoon beneath the stone.

"That spoon belongs to the washing set, and somebody will replace it afterward."

Nessa pushed the sliver into her open arm port.

The pulse cage fired once under her skin.

Her right hand closed hard enough to drive the shortened fingers into her palm. The sliver pulled past the port lip, caught between two bent needles, and turned toward Dessel's restraint.

The black joint opened one tooth.

Kestra dropped a chain into the gap. "One tooth releases only after the next one accepts its weight."

Nessa could no longer feel the cutter against her forearm. She saw the strap pulling at her skin and used that movement to judge where the arm ended.

"Tovan has spent one breath, and the next tooth needs your lower chain."

Kestra moved. The second tooth opened.

Dessel's wrists separated by the width of a finger. He dragged his right arm toward his chest. His left stayed where the joint placed it.

"Leave the shoulder behind if the shelf requires you to choose between them."

"The shoulder comes with you because I refuse loose inventory under my name."

Nessa put her left arm beneath his back. Kestra took his legs. Jade kept Ty and Tovan joined at the tube while the third tooth pulled against Nessa's pulse cage.

The numbness crossed her elbow.

It entered her upper arm in four narrow lines, one for each needle the cage had once carried. The missing line hurt. Pain traveled through the old needle path and stopped under her collar.

Tovan forced out another breath. "That was three, unless pain has changed the captain's arithmetic."

"Pain has never improved it, so keep counting where I can hear you."

The third tooth cleared Dessel's right wrist. Kestra rolled him onto the lower shelf. His left arm dragged behind until Nessa caught the sleeve with her teeth and pulled it over the board.

Her right shoulder stopped answering.

The arm hung from the cage strap while the blue sliver turned inside the port. A pressure mark appeared beneath her skin, four straight sides meeting around the bent needles.

Dessel saw it. He pushed himself upright with his good elbow and nearly slid from the shelf.

"Pull the metal out before that square closes around your pulse."

"The last tooth still owns your left wrist, and Tovan has two breaths remaining."

"Cut the wrist if you must, because the square becomes a door after it closes."

Nessa set one boot against the spindle and hooked her cutter handle under the last tooth. Her right arm supplied no lift. She shifted the handle across her body and pulled with the left.

The cutter slipped.

Ty lifted his thumb from Tovan's cup long enough to strike the cutter handle upward. Nessa caught it against her ribs and drove the last tooth clear.

Tovan lost half a breath before Jade returned Ty's hand beneath the tube.

Dessel's left wrist came free. Kestra dragged the black joint away, and the lower shelf took his full weight.

"Five breaths have passed, Captain, and the sixth has already started badly."

Nessa caught the sliver with her left hand and pulled it from the port.

Her pulse cage released. The square beneath her skin remained.

She trapped the blue metal inside the hollow cutter handle and closed the brass catch over it.

Dessel reached from the shelf. "Break that handle now, because the sliver can build the first wall anywhere you carry it."

"My city has an open west wall and no weapon that can cut Room Four twice."

"Then your city becomes the next cell when you bring that piece home."

Nessa tied the cutter across her left forearm. Her right arm hung against her side, warm at the shoulder and absent everywhere below it.

"I am carrying it until Meren has a door that can survive the next breach."

The black route lock under Dessel's shelf gave up its last tooth.

A floor panel slid open between Kestra's wash trench and the east service door. Two narrow carriers rose from the dark on separate rails.

The first held a person bound face down beneath a soaked blanket. One bare foot dragged in the trench water, and each pull of the rail left less movement in the ankle.

The second held a sealed field crate with three dents across its lid.

Nessa had made those dents with a rifle stock during the Meren evacuation. Her unit mark remained under the latch.

The rails split.

The person moved toward the wash trench.

Nessa's crate rolled toward the unlatched east door.