Chapter 968: Gojaro Finds The Creature Giving Orders

Gojaro placed two fingers beside the thumbprint in the gate grease. Heat remained in the metal around it.

The right hand had pulled the gate closed while its owner looked over one shoulder. Rainwater covered only the outer edge, putting them inside during the last few minutes.

Gojaro tested the handle with his sleeve around his hand. A service chain caught behind the gate after half an inch.

His radio clicked against his collar.

"Rosa, tell me why that plate is walking toward you."

"The rooftop carrier brought it into the crosswalk with the punched corner forward, and he keeps turning whenever I move."

Gojaro leaned far enough from the service awning to see the west intersection. The altered body stood beneath a dead traffic light with the stolen placard held at chest height. It could have kept the brick wall between itself and Rosa. It had chosen the crosswalk and a clean line to her fire.

"Leave the offered plate where it is because somebody wants your hands occupied."

Rosa’s web flashed across a bus shelter behind the carrier, closing the route back without touching the bait.

Oscar came over the channel next. His voice carried the scrape of his sword against pavement.

"The two at my barrier left the door, split up, and started digging around its anchor from both sides."

"Brace the hinge before they relocate your wall."

"I can brace it, but the north lane shrinks to shoulder width and your retreat comes through me if the station opens."

Gojaro looked at the gap under the service gate. His shoulders fit most definitions of large. Oscar had found a polite way to remind him.

"I will make myself inconveniently narrow and complain after we survive."

The rain gutter beside West Return Six emptied into a square catch basin. One corner of its grate had been lifted and settled crooked. Gojaro pulled it free. Warm air rose through the drain with the smell of boiler grease and wet cloth.

The station map put the condensate trench below the service floor. It also marked the opening as nine inches wide.

Gojaro removed his overcoat, folded it over the gate rail, and went through one shoulder at a time. The brick scraped his back. Water reached his ear before his boots found the trench.

He landed with both knees bent.

A bare foot swung where his head had been.

Gojaro leaned backward and watched the heel pass his nose. The altered man above the trench planted one foot high on the wall, raised the other knee, and held both hands loose near his ribs.

Gojaro knew the posture. He had used it in the street while Regaku prepared the shot that should have killed him.

The man lowered his knee and waited for Gojaro to rush the open side.

Three years of teaching Jade had started with that mistake. She used to chase the first empty space and accuse the floor when it disappeared. Gojaro had made her repeat the approach until she learned to ask who had left it open.

He stayed in the trench.

The altered man shifted twice, searching for the attack stored in his feet. One arm carried an old hospital band. The other ended at the wrist, yet the missing hand kept trying to close around a flute that was elsewhere.

"You remember his feet, but I have had time to become more annoying."

Gojaro kicked the drain grate upward. It struck the man’s planted heel. The copied stance folded at the wrong joint, dropping him across the opening instead of into it.

Gojaro slid beneath his ribs and caught the service ladder. He climbed at the speed of a tired maintenance worker, denying the body another familiar charge.

The sublevel held six cots against a boiler wall. Names written on masking tape marked five pillows. The sixth cot carried folded district maps and a stack of work cards held down by a soup can.

Across the cards, different hands sent someone to check the west intake, bring the plate home, and keep away from people. The final direction had been rewritten until the paper tore beneath the word people.

A woman stood beyond the boiler with one shoe off and a manual breathing bag under her arm. Gray hair stuck to the sweat around her temples. A city heat badge hung from her neck, its photo old enough to show a heavier face.

Brass tubing ran from the breathing bag into a cut metal rail. Four copper braces held the rail together. Six finger holes had been drilled through repairs that belonged to several different instruments.

The woman squeezed the bag.

Air entered the rail. One low note moved through the wall behind Gojaro, and the altered man at the trench stopped climbing.

"Set the bag on the floor, keep your thumb where I can see it, and tell me what happens when your patients lose their jobs."

Her thumb stayed over the third hole. "They are people, and jobs keep them human."

"Your west worker carried an obvious trap toward Rosa while two others tried to move the only barrier protecting an occupied shelter."

"He offered the plate without offering his body."

Gojaro looked at the work cards again. The woman had made rules. The rules had protected civilians in the alley. They had also brought a marked route within three blocks of forty three displaced sleepers.

"What name belongs on the badge you keep turning backward?"

"Miriam Kroll worked city heat dispatch before your office stopped answering our basement calls, and this badge still opens rooms your people forgot."

Miriam turned the badge photo outward after saying it.

"Whose hands taught you to repair that rail?"

"My brother is lying across your drain, and he stopped eating doors when I gave him inspections."

Miriam pointed with her bare foot toward the cot nearest the boiler. Its tape read EDDIE KROLL. A pair of work boots sat beneath it with their laces tied together. The altered man wore no shoes.

"The other four came from my district lists, and their families stopped claiming them after the burn orders."

Gojaro kept his hands where she could see them. "Who promised this station would remove them safely?"

"The pipe printed instructions in rust after your people moved the first bodies underground."

Miriam nodded toward the service hatch. Seven chalk footprints crossed the floor and ended at a round plate set into the concrete. A person had lain over those prints often enough to polish the last two with a hip and shoulder.

Three empty square sockets surrounded the hatch center. A rubber mouthpiece waited beside them.

"The station needs this plate held against somebody warm, followed by seven steps and one breath."

"Your rail can assign movement, but the hatch has rejected every breath you gave it."

Miriam’s fingers tightened around the bag. "It keeps rejecting me because the missing carrier must have answered the first note with fire."

Gojaro left Tyree’s name off the radio.

"You mapped a shelter because the route asked for a living key."

"I mapped heating returns, and your shelter built beds over one of them because nobody checked the old district plans."

"That distinction will not protect anyone sleeping upstairs."

Rosa cut into the radio. "The plate carrier is retreating while keeping the punched corner pointed at me."

Oscar spoke over her. "My two have the anchor collar loose, and the physical hinge is carrying their pull."

Miriam reached for the breathing bag again.

Gojaro put one hand over the rail without touching her fingers. "Give them a job that returns every body here, and I leave your brother standing."

"They will arrive hungry because the return command has no work after arrival."

"Write their next job before sending this one."

Miriam looked at the cards. She pulled one from beneath the soup can and wrote with a carpenter’s pencil.

WAIT BY YOUR OWN BED.

She held it where Gojaro could read it, then slid the card into a clamp beneath the brass rail.

"Rosa, heat the clean punches on the offered plate without taking it from the carrier."

"That gives the bait what it wants, unless you found the hand holding the line."

"I found her, and we are changing the job before we break the tool."

Rosa’s blue fire crossed the west feed. Heat reached the rail under Gojaro’s palm. Miriam covered the first, fourth, and sixth holes, then squeezed the bag.

The note made Eddie Kroll’s empty wrist close around an absent grip. Gojaro had seen Regaku hold his flute at that same angle before the boy vanished through the failed barrier.

Outside, Oscar reported the anchor collar dropping from dead fingers. Rosa’s plate carrier turned from her fire and ran toward the south service lane. Feet struck the roof, alley, and return stairs in different rhythms.

Miriam set the bag down. "You will have six people in this room before you decide what saving them costs."

"I already have one person here, and she owes me every name on those pillows."

The cut rail gave another note without Miriam squeezing it. On the funeral engine, Kieran’s damaged flute answered from beside the tank.

Kegaku reached for an instrument he was not holding. His good hand closed around Regaku’s old grip.