The first flakes hit the glass case and stuck.
JJ looked down at the white smears spreading under her hands. The powder had climbed through the vents dry, but the case had warmed enough to turn it tacky. Each burst from below slapped more of it against the runners, the hinges, and the small guide teeth along the track.
"That is paste now, nowhere near dust anymore," JJ said. "It is packing itself into every rail tooth."
Blue kept Daemon's dead fuse pinned in the cut and shifted her weight away from the nearest vent.
"It was track stabilizer before the fire woke it up," she said. "Now it is hot paste with bone grit inside it."
"I liked dust better than hot paste with bone grit inside it," JJ said.
Rusuf kept both hands on the maintenance sword beneath the stone lip. Heat had reddened his palm around the grip. He changed nothing. The buried body's wrist ring sat half a finger from the loose hook, and Yun-Jin still had the hook dragged back with the folded cloth.
