Page 78

“You say that like the commander will allow it.”

Kesta tied off the final knot. “Dreven and I have had several educational discussions about the limits of what he allows.”

A rough laugh escaped Pell.

“That I believe.”

He flexed his fingers experimentally, then stood. Before leaving, he looked back.

“She was alive when I last saw her.”

Kesta held his gaze. “Then that is how we record her.”

Pell nodded once and walked away.

Kesta waited until he had disappeared beyond the infirmary entrance before reaching for the evidence slate Sera had given her. She entered only the facts Pell had provided: HUMAN FEMALE. NARA. POSSIBLE H-PRIME DESIGNATION. DARK HAIR. SCAR BELOW EYE. TRANSPORT DATE APPROXIMATE.

No conclusion.

No prediction.

She saved the note beneath the same privacy lock protecting Horan’s scan.

The impulse to hide the information in her boot, as she might have done only days earlier, never quite formed.

That realization surprised her.

Not because she trusted Ash Camp completely.

She didn't.

But she had begun to believe evidence could exist here without immediately becoming someone else’s weapon.

The thought felt dangerously close to hope.

By late afternoon, the infirmary had filled beyond capacity.

The damaged condenser meant more workers on extended shifts, and extended shifts meant dehydration, crushed fingers, careless falls and exhausted people making mistakes beside machinery capable of removing entire limbs.

Kesta stood over one of those mistakes now.

Rell was a narrow-bodied mechanic with pale translucent skin and four arms, one of which had been cut open along the upper wrist nearly to the tendon. His sideways eyelids fluttered every time Kesta irrigated the wound, although he insisted the procedure did not hurt.

“You are gripping the table hard enough to leave fingerprints,” she said.

His lower right hand relaxed.

The other three did not.

“I require all four,” he informed her.

“I assumed you were attached to them.”

“For precision work.”

“Then you are fortunate. I charge extra for spare arms.”

Rell blinked sideways. “Humans joke during surgery?”