The tape kept turning.
Every drawer in the filing room knocked once from the inside, not loud enough to be a threat and not soft enough to ignore. JJ flinched. Her panel tried to open, failed, and left three blue lines dragging across its surface before settling against her wrist.
The label above the drawer stayed in place.
Names worn until they became true.
Ty heard his younger voice come rough through the spool. Pain sat in it where pain always sat when he had tried to sound older than he was, caught in the throat, the teeth, the hinge of the jaw.
"If the form needs something to call me, write Bone Half. I am the half that got up."
The filing room liked the sentence too much. Three cards slid from the drawer and stamped themselves on the floor, splitting the words into self-naming, survival language, and a consent check.
Zunoder's reflection appeared in the brass handles along the wall. He wore Ty's old face with the calm of someone reading a receipt.
