Yenna's left chain lay across the safehouse floor, its blade resting near the door while her wrist refused every command. The inactive links made no sound when she tried pulling them close.
Vell shut the blinds before examining the silver mark beneath her collarbone, keeping the room dark only where the street could see inside. He needed the scar exposed without turning the street into an audience.
"If you are about to tell me to rest, save your breath," Yenna said, pulling her shirt aside from the damaged line, "I have rested for three years."
"I am going to tell you where it goes," Vell said, placing two fingers beside the scar without touching it, "then you decide whether I keep looking."
Her expression changed by a fraction, though she nodded before he reached for the Forge needle hidden beneath his sternum. Permission mattered more when the answer could ruin her remaining usable power.
[Analyze: Yenna Rook.]
Vell had scanned damaged gear before, but a living core pushed back against attention in a way no object could. He kept the read shallow until Yenna's breathing settled into an even rhythm.
The screen opened beneath Vell's sight after the core answered, showing a Grade Two structure wrapped by a second pattern that did not belong there. Her actual core still held its own shape beneath the foreign threads.
[Foreign component detected: parasite anchor.]
The anchor had been threaded through the outer core wall after Yenna's own power had grown, using its pulse to measure every hard use of her output. Each forced burst gave the hidden knot another place inside her core to pull.
One branch ran toward the locked chain arm, while another vanished into a knot that held a dormant command beneath her chest. The damage came from sabotage, not weakness inside her own stable core.
Vell followed the knot with the Forge read until a spike of pain made Yenna grip the cot frame. Her fingers dented the cheap cot metal while the foreign knot tightened.
"Stop there," she said, keeping her voice even through the strain, "it feels like a hook pulling backward."
He withdrew from the deeper line, which made the pain fade but left the screen's warning clear between them. The knot had roots past anything his current Rank One Forge could rebuild.
[Full core restoration unavailable at Forge Rank 1.]
[Available intervention: sever parasite anchor.]
Rank One could identify what had been done to her, then cut away the part trying to own her. It could not yet repair the scarred channels left around the anchor's roots.
The safehouse held a restraint strap beneath one cot, probably left for collectors who brought people in without asking. Its buckles carried scratches from people who had tried leaving the room anyway.
Vell cut the strap loose and threw it into the sink before returning to Yenna's side. She watched the leather fall without pretending she had not noticed why.
"You can remove it," Yenna said, looking at the discarded leather, "or you can tell me it is worse than the guild doctors claimed."
"I can sever the anchor before it locks your core fully," he said, bringing the screen where she could read every word, "I cannot rebuild the damage around it yet."
She studied the clean lines instead of watching his face, which saved him from softening language that would make the choice dishonest. A gentler lie would only steal the final decision about her body from her.
The first calculation listed thirty-one percent survival with his knife, his hands, plus the heat control he could improvise from the room. Nothing in the safehouse could replace a proper core-pressure anchor during surgery.
The failure line did not hide the cost beneath polite medical terms. The Forge gave failure the same space it gave every possible success.
[Failure consequence: death, or permanent Grade 0 core burnout.]
There was no useful middle ground where Yenna lost only a little strength. Vell waited for her to read the worst line before offering the better route.
Yenna read it twice before she spoke, rubbing the chain-wrapped wrist that had not moved since the fight. Her silence let Vell see the brutal calculation reach her fully inside.
"Thirty-one percent is not a procedure," she said, meeting his eyes, "it is a cleaner way to bury someone."
"I know what raises it," Vell replied, bringing up the material scan he had ignored during the first pass.
A fresh Grade Two parasite core could carry the foreign pressure out of her body, while a heat-gland catalyst would keep her core from collapsing during the cut. Both materials had to match the anchor instead of merely carrying Grade Two power.
The Forge placed the ingredients below the first chance rather than pretending they existed in the safehouse. Vell could see the route to better odds without owning either material.
[Compatible parasite core plus heat-gland catalyst: projected survival chance 68%.]
Sixty-eight percent was still a poor bet, but it was a plan with materials attached. Yenna could reject it knowing exactly what Corven had stolen from her.
The projected route included a narrow window after extraction when the anchor would seek another source of pressure. Vell would have to hold it himself, which made the final cut dangerous for both of them.
"Better," Yenna said, sitting up before her locked arm dragged her sideways, "where does a parasite core grow?"
The scan matched it to Ash-Tunnelers, which nested beneath warm refuse when guilds left enough dead things for them to feed on. Their cores grew around parasite residue dumped with old guild waste piles.
Vell remembered the disposal routes marked near the south edge, where Corven Guild had controlled a dump since before Yenna's scar appeared. The guild had access to the cure because it helped make the damage.
"Under Corven's waste grounds," he said, checking the route against the address card from their collectors, "your former guild keeps the right nest under its licensed dump."
The dump's public permit covered composting, salvage, plus controlled beast disposal after midnight. Its lowest furnace tunnel never appeared on ordinary city maps, but Yenna had used it when Corven still called her useful.
Her laugh came once without humor, then she reached for the working chain-knife at her right hip. Anger gave her a steadier grip than fear had ever managed before.
"Of course they do," Yenna said, testing the weapon's weight, "they never threw away anything that could hurt somebody later."
She named the guard shift that checked the main gate, then described a disposal chute behind the sorting shed. Corven workers opened it after midnight, when nobody wanted to count the things falling beneath the floor.
Vell started packing water tablets and the truck-spring knife, but Yenna caught his wrist before he could turn toward the door. Her good hand stopped him without needing force from the damaged other arm.
"Say the rest before we walk into their dump," she said, holding him with the hand that still obeyed her, "every chance changes when you open a person."
He could have told her the procedure only after the core lay on the table, when fear had less room to make her refuse. He knew how easy it was to call that choice necessary afterward.
That would make him useful to the Directorate instead of different from it. Vell had spent too long under their lie to borrow their methods.
"The anchor may resist through your own core," Vell said, setting the supplies down, "if I cut the wrong root, you die or wake up without any Grade at all."
"If the chance drops after we get the materials, you tell me before touching me," Yenna said, releasing his wrist, "if it rises, you tell me that too."
"No lies about procedures," he said, repeating the terms so neither could later pretend they had heard something kinder.
"No lies about procedures," she agreed, reaching for the brass key, "now show me where Corven hides its trash."
Yenna did not ask him to promise a miracle, which made the agreement harder to ignore later. She asked for the truth before every cut, including the one that might fail.
Vell gave her the Forge's limits instead of treating them as reasons to stay behind. In return, she gave him the dump route, the guard habits, plus the decision to keep moving.
They left the safehouse through the rear stairwell, carrying the locked chain arm between them instead of leaving it behind. Yenna kept the brass key because the next route was hers to choose.
At the alley mouth, Yenna stopped beside a drain map posted for sanitation crews and traced the red line toward the south district. She marked the disposal chute with soot scraped off the grate frame.
The route crossed three blocks of guild storage before dropping below the waste yard's outer wall. Vell memorized the turns while Yenna folded the map into his jacket.
"The dump has a guard gate," she said, choosing a route with no street cameras, "but the disposal chute opens after midnight when nobody wants to count what goes down."
The silver scar pulsed once beneath her collar as they started walking, reminding Vell that the anchor had heard their plan. Its response made the trip urgent without leaving her helpless or silent.
He tightened his grip on the map before following Yenna toward the guild that had built it. Corven would have to supply the materials for its own coming failure.