The butcher shop's upstairs room smelled of old fat despite the broken windows. Vell covered the floor with clean canvas, then placed the Grade 2 parasite core beside the cracked Needle-Step sliver.
Heat-Skin remained in the Forge as a one-use regulation pattern after its outer layer washed away beneath Corven. Using it here would consume the last function created from the transformed gland.
Yenna sat on the reinforced table with her coat folded beneath her head. Her chain-knives lay within arm's reach, because she had accepted treatment without accepting the idea of becoming helpless.
The locator pulse had followed them from Luna's clinic, weak but regular. Vell had jammed it with a salvaged collar wire for twenty minutes, which was time to prepare rather than time to relax.
He checked the room twice before beginning, noting the front stair, the back stair, plus the butcher hooks bolted into the ceiling. A stack of cleavers sat beside the old block, while a rusted freezer door could become cover if someone broke through.
Yenna watched him lay wire across the hallway threshold, then watched him set a pan of rendered fat above the front door. She had seen his traps often enough to recognize when he was trying to make a room fight beside him.
"Stop arranging the furniture and tell me the procedure," Yenna said, sitting forward, "I did not come here to guess what you plan to cut."
Vell placed the parasite core where she could see its dull red surface. It had fed on damaged channels in a fen creature, then held just enough compatible mass to brace a human core during extraction.
"The parasite core gives the anchor somewhere else to pull," Vell said, indicating the heat gland, "this keeps your core from collapsing when I separate the damage."
"That describes the tools," she said, folding her arms, "tell me what happens when they fail."
He preferred preparing around hard facts instead of saying them to a person he needed alive. Yenna had made the rule in the safehouse after he explained the procedure risks, so he gave her every number without sanding any edge.
"If Heat-Skin loses regulation, your core will scar further," he said, arranging the materials between them, "you keep your Grade 2 strength, but the burst limit could stay permanent."
"Next," she said, keeping her gaze on him.
"If the parasite core rejects the anchor, the locator stays where it is," he said, pressing a finger against his own sternum, "they can lock your core again when they find us."
"Next," she said, moving one chain-knife closer to the table edge.
"If I cut the root wrong, your core can fracture," he said, forcing himself not to look away, "that could take your Grade 2 capacity or kill you."
The final possibility stayed between them without a system screen to soften it. Vell had fought monsters with simpler teeth than the sentence she made him say.
Yenna reached across the table and took the parasite core in her palm. She weighed it for a moment, then placed it back exactly where he had set it.
"You missed a risk," she said, tapping the core once, "you might decide for me after something goes wrong."
"I will not," he said, meeting her eyes, "you can stop the procedure at any time before the root opens."
"After it opens?" she asked, keeping her hand beside the core.
"After it opens, I tell you every change," he said, checking the room's improvised receiver, "you still choose whether I continue or abort."
She considered the terms while the pulse ticked through the wire jammer below. Yenna had spent three years being called contagious by people who had never asked what lived inside her.
"Start when you are ready," she said, sliding one chain-knife beneath her hand, "but do not ask me to lie still if they come."
Vell reopened the stored Heat-Skin pattern, feeding it Forge Energy until regulated warmth settled around Yenna's healthy channels. He opened the Forge read against her neck, revealing silver lines hooked through the core like wire through cloth.
[Procedure: Directorate anchor severance.]
[Initial success chance: 68%.]
The Forge showed the first path toward the parasite core, a shallow thread carrying the locator pulse. Vell separated it slowly through Heat-Skin's regulation while Yenna breathed against the pressure beneath her collarbone.
Pain tightened her shoulders, but she held the table instead of his wrist. The choice made the read steadier, since the Forge could follow a core that was fighting without fighting him.
The first thread pulled free and curled into the parasite core like a black vein. Yenna's breath broke once, then she nodded for him to continue before he could ask.
The second thread had grown deeper than the first, ending at a branching root near the core wall. Vell traced it twice, hoping the Forge would offer a clean separation if he gave it more attention.
Nothing inside the Forge offered a second way around the knot without destroying Yenna's healthy channels. The root had widened into a barbed knot, built to tear through Yenna's core if anyone tried removing it along the obvious route.
"Stop there," she said, reading the hesitation in his hands, "what changed?"
"The root is tied to your Grade 2 channels," he said, keeping the read open, "a normal cut will break them before the anchor moves."
"Can you take the anchor whole?" she asked, sweat gathering at her temple.
"Not before it broadcasts the lock," he said, measuring the pulse between the scar lines, "I need to cut its escape route first."
Vell had one thing capable of making a precise burst inside a core: the cracked Needle-Step imprint recovered from beneath his stove. It had remained slotless and uninstalled, leaving his empty Trait Slot untouched while its damaged geometry waited for one final use.
The real problem had arrived on Yenna's table, wearing the shape of a root nobody else could see. He pressed the physical sliver into the Forge read, feeling its damaged speed pattern answer through his palm.
"The speed trait can make one precise cut," he said, holding his hand above the root, "afterward it is gone, and I lose the only extra movement I have."
"Will it save the root?" she asked, looking at the black knot instead of him.
"It saves the route around it," he said, breathing through the pull in his chest, "the chance drops if I spend it, but you keep your core."
She gave him a short nod, then tightened both hands around the table edge. Vell burned the imprint before fear could make either of them waste another second.
Needle-Step shattered inside the Forge, becoming a narrow grey line with one impossible burst of speed. He drove it around the root, cutting the anchor's retreat path without touching Yenna's healthy channels.
The knot jerked as the route closed, then sent pain through her until the chain-knife bent in her right hand. Yenna made no sound until the metal reached its limit, but blood ran from where the handle bit into her palm.
[Trait imprint consumed: Needle-Step.]
[Escape path severed.]
The parasite core took the first torn fragments, yet the remaining root fought the pull from inside Yenna's chest. Vell felt his FE reserve drain through Heat-Skin, then into the stabilizing read holding the healthy channels apart.
[Procedure success chance revised: 41%.]
[Forge Energy committed: 310/310.]
Forty-one percent did not make Yenna flinch, but it changed the room around them. Vell had no reserve for a second attempt, no Trait Slot advantage, and no clean way to retreat without leaving the anchor alive.
He looked toward the receiver just as the jammer wire gave a sharp metallic snap. The locator pulse had become louder, either because the root was resisting or because the Directorate had finally reached the signal's end.
The jammed locator wire had begun to melt around its ceramic bracket. Its failure gave Vell one useful fact: the Directorate was no longer searching the belt, since it had found the exact room.
Below them, the front door opened with the careful force of someone expecting a trap. A chain shifted across the hallway threshold, then a man's boot pressed down and pulled the wire taut.
"Upstairs," a voice called through the butcher shop, "take the woman alive and bring the branded one if he breathes."
The fat pan tipped from its hook as the first collector reached the stairs. Vell kept both hands inside Yenna's core while the trap began burning the floor below.