The scream reached Applause Junction before the office notice did.
Zunoder caught himself against the tiled wall behind the upper stairs. The gallery above him kept cheering at a fight that had already turned into paperwork below their feet. His mouth filled with blood because Ty's tongue was still Ty's tongue, and some old animal part of the body had bitten down the instant the Name Office stamped the wrong truth.
People on the landing scattered from him.
Good.
Fear made space. Space became a stage if a man knew where to stand.
He pressed two fingers to the back of his mouth and found the ache in the stolen tooth. The bone below had paid. The woman on Earth had interfered. The name had split, yet it had not abandoned him completely, and that was the insulting part. Zunoder had stolen a face. He had not expected the face to keep voting.
"Rude work from a borrowed mouth with borrowed teeth," he said, and spat blood into the gutter slot beside the stairs.
