The speaker died, but the hook in the water moved.
Jade saw the lie first with her left eye. The creature was dead. The black water leaking from the jacket had gone slow and useless. The beacon stones in the lining were cracked open, dull around the edges, done giving orders to the body.
Her right eye showed something else: a white line caught in the hooked arm like wire around a door handle. It pulled once, testing weight, and the corpse answered because dead things had fewer ways to refuse.
"Back away from the body and move the cots, Waddell," Jade said.
Waddell heard the difference in her voice and shoved the nearest cot with his hip, driving two volunteers and a child away from the flooded middle of the gym. Kieran pulled another child against her side and used one strip of gold fire to mark a line nobody should cross. Tyree looked from Jade to the corpse and tightened his hand around the broken charm dust still stuck to his palm.
