Eli Voss counted the body bags twice before he understood what was wrong.
The first count gave him forty-two. The second gave him forty-two again, although he had moved three crates in between and hoped, without admitting it, that one of them contained something else.
He crouched beside the open supply case and checked the label on the topmost bag. Black polymer, heat-sealed edges, reinforced carrying handles. Aegis Guild issue. The case smelled faintly of antiseptic and new plastic.
“Those aren’t going to bite you.”
Eli looked up. A hunter in polished silver armor leaned against the loading bay rail, watching him with the indulgent expression people reserved for children and badly trained animals. Eli knew the man by sight, though not by name. Third squad, probably. Sword user. The sort of person whose equipment had its own line on the manifest.
“I know,” Eli said.
“Then stop checking them and load the case. We’re leaving in fifteen.”
The hunter turned to his friends. “You’d think a Gravekeeper would be happy to see some tools of the trade.”
A few people laughed. Eli closed the lid, making sure none of the folded handles caught in the seal, and slid the case toward the trolley.
He had heard better jokes about his talent. He had also heard worse ones, usually after people learned that Gravekeeper didn’t raise the dead, summon ghosts, or help him kill anything. It showed him the names and causes of death of human remains. The system had rated it F. Every employer since had agreed.
He pushed the case past the armor racks and into the row marked MEDICAL. The raid manifest hung from a clipboard at the end of the table. Eli had checked it when he arrived, but he took another look.
Twenty-eight registered personnel.
Twelve hunters in the main assault team. Six in support. Four porters, including Eli. Two scouts. Three medics. One commander.
He ran his finger down the names again. The total remained twenty-eight.
Someone had packed enough bags for every registered person and fourteen more.
“Are we expecting a recovery team?” he asked the quartermaster.
The quartermaster was a broad woman with gray hair tied under a red cap. She was checking crystal packs into a padded case, signing each one out to a specific hunter. She didn’t look up.
“Not on this sheet.”
Eli tapped the casualty-bag count. “There are forty-two.”
“Then count them as forty-two.”
“I’m asking why.”
“Ask the medic.”
The quartermaster shut the crystal case. A second later she added, “And when you’ve asked, put them on the transport. I don’t want Commander Rusk asking why his supplies are still here.”
Eli knew better than to mistake an answer for an invitation. He marked the case as loaded on his own checklist and went in search of the medic.
The loading bay belonged to an old freight terminal on the edge of the eastern industrial zone. Aegis had rented the building after a gate appeared beneath the neighboring warehouses. The terminal’s windows were painted over, its cargo lifts were chained open, and a line of temporary work lights stretched across the concrete floor. Hunters moved through the bright spaces in their guild colors. Porters moved around them, carrying the things the hunters had forgotten or decided were too heavy to be worth carrying themselves.
Eli had worked for Aegis long enough to recognize which crates needed careful handling and which supervisors enjoyed watching a porter struggle. He didn’t work for them often enough to have a permanent locker, a medical allowance, or a place on the roster beyond PORTER 04.
That last detail bothered him more than the silver-armored hunter’s joke.
He took a pencil from behind his ear and wrote his own name on the back of the checklist. Below it, he added the names of the other three porters. He had asked them when they signed in. One man had been surprised that anyone bothered.
The guild had their names somewhere. It just hadn’t put them on the copy intended for the people going inside.
A porter had vanished on an Aegis job the previous winter. His sister had come to the terminal with a photograph and a receipt for the contract deposit. Eli remembered how carefully she’d held both, as though a crease in the paper might give the guild a reason to send her away. The receptionist had said the job records were incomplete. Two months later, a friend of the missing man had found a casualty notice with the wrong surname and no forwarding address.
Eli had helped the sister find the notice. He had not asked why the guild’s records were incomplete.
He folded the checklist once and put it in his pocket.
The medic was kneeling beside an open equipment trunk. Her dark hair was tied back with a strip of gauze, and she was sorting sealed packets into three piles with the speed of someone who had already memorized what was supposed to be there.
“Tessa?” Eli said.
She glanced up. “If you’re here to tell me we don’t need all the burn dressings, you’ll have to bring the commander himself.”
“Body bags.”
That got her attention. She set a packet down. “What about them?”
“There are forty-two. The manifest lists twenty-eight people.”
Tessa wiped her hands on her trousers and stood. Her guild jacket was clean, but its left cuff had been repaired with a line of uneven black stitches. Eli remembered her from two earlier jobs. She had once made a high-rank hunter wait while she treated a porter whose hand had been crushed under a supply box. The hunter had been furious. The porter had kept his fingers.
“Show me,” she said.
He led her to the casualty case. She opened it and counted without relying on his number. Halfway through, she pulled the bags out and stacked them in groups of five. A young medic passing with a tray stopped to help her, and they finished more quickly than Eli had alone.
“Forty-two,” Tessa said.
“Maybe they’re for something inside,” the young medic said. “The old site, perhaps?”
Eli looked at the manifest. “There isn’t a recovery assignment.”
Tessa held out her hand. He gave her the sheet. She read it from top to bottom, then turned it over, looking for an attachment that wasn’t there.
“Is there another crew going in after us?” she asked.
The young medic shook her head. “I only saw this team at the briefing.”
“An earlier team?”
“There was one last week, but they withdrew. I heard they were all accounted for.”
Tessa put the manifest down carefully. “Who told you?”
“One of the support hunters.” The young medic glanced toward the armor racks. “I didn’t see the report myself.”
“Then we don’t know.” Tessa looked at Eli. “Did you count the rest of the medical supplies?”
“Basic first aid, yes. The sealed drug cases are yours.”
“Help me check the dressings.”
The young medic hesitated. “We should load the casualty case first.”
“We will. It takes two minutes.”
It took four. They found an extra crate of burn dressings and six more compression wraps than the manifest called for. That, on its own, was not unusual. Commanders overpacked medical supplies all the time, and nobody sensible complained when a dressing was available for someone who needed it.
The bags still didn’t fit.
Tessa repacked the dressings and sent the young medic to fetch the other medical trunk. “Tell them I requested it. If anyone asks why, tell them I’m checking the seals.”
When the girl had gone, Eli said, “You think they know something about the gate.”
“I think the count is worth remembering.”
“That isn’t the same answer.”
“No.” Tessa glanced at the hunters, then lowered her voice. “If I had proof of something worse, I’d use the word. Right now I have a supply count and a report about an earlier team that neither of us has read.”
Eli appreciated the distinction. People who worked around hunters learned quickly how little it took for a reasonable question to become an accusation, and how easily a guild could punish the person who asked it.
He had once asked a supervisor to correct a casualty list. The dead man had been a temporary cleaner, not a hunter, and his family needed the list to collect the insurance payment. The supervisor corrected it eventually. The following week Eli’s name was missing from the job board. He hadn’t been assigned another Aegis contract for six months.
He needed this one. His rent was overdue by eleven days, and the landlord had already changed the lock on a neighbor’s door. A raid payout would cover the debt and leave enough for a month’s food. A successful raid could pay more.
Tessa pointed to the manifest. “Can you make me a copy?”
Eli looked toward the quartermaster. She was arguing with a hunter over an unreturned mana crystal. The man’s voice carried over the loading bay, loud enough to attract the attention of everyone nearby. No one was watching the medical cases.
“There’s a copier in the office,” he said.
“Which sends a record to the guild printer.”
“You want me to write it out?”
“I want the personnel list, the bag count, the loading time, and whoever signed the manifest. If there’s a harmless explanation, we’ll have a harmless piece of paper.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“Then we’ll know what they told us before we went in.”
Eli had learned to avoid being the person holding a document someone powerful wanted forgotten. The last time he had challenged a record, the result had been a corrected surname and six months without work. He could tell himself that the correction had mattered, but it had not paid his rent.
He looked again at the casualty case. Forty-two folded bags. Twenty-eight names on a sheet that didn’t actually name the porters.
“I need a surface,” he said.
Tessa handed him the clipboard and moved the trunk so it blocked the view from the center of the bay. It was a small gesture, and not a particularly subtle one, but it gave him enough cover to write.
His handwriting was narrow and slow. He copied each registered name, then the four porter slots. Beside those he added the names he had collected at sign-in. Tessa checked his count as he worked and pointed out a support hunter he had nearly skipped. Eli copied the quantities from the medical section, including the forty-two casualty bags and the extra dressings. At the bottom he wrote the time and the initials on the authorization line.
R. Rusk.
“Don’t add a conclusion,” Tessa said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were frowning at the bottom of the page.”
“I always frown when I write.”
“That explains the handwriting.”
He almost smiled. It surprised him enough that he had to look down at the paper again.
A metal door slammed at the far end of the bay. Commander Rusk entered with two guards behind him. He was a large man whose armor carried no visible scratches, though the guild stories said he had led more than forty successful expeditions. He stopped beside the loading table and looked over the row of cases.
“Why isn’t that on the transport?” he asked.
Tessa stepped around the trunk. “I was checking the medical inventory.”
“You have a medic for that.”
“I am the senior medic.”
Rusk’s gaze shifted to Eli. For a moment Eli thought the commander could see the paper beneath the clipboard. He kept his hand still.
Tessa said, “There are forty-two casualty bags for a team of twenty-eight. Are we joining another group inside?”
“We pack for contingencies.”
“Do we have an expected recovery assignment?”
“No.”
“Then why fourteen extra?”
Rusk looked at her as if she had asked why a door needed hinges. “Because they weigh less than a dead hunter and we have room on the transport. Would you prefer I leave them behind?”
The answer was reasonable enough that Eli felt foolish for a moment. A cautious commander could pack extra bags. A cautious medic could ask why. Neither fact proved anything else.
Tessa didn’t argue. “I’d prefer an accurate inventory.”
“You have one.” Rusk picked up the manifest and checked the signature line. “Load the case.”
Eli let go of the clipboard. Rusk’s hand came down over the copied page. Eli’s stomach tightened, but the commander lifted only the manifest from the top. The handwritten sheet remained against the board, partly concealed by the clip.
Rusk read the list, made a mark beside the crystal allocation, and handed it back.
“Communications check in five minutes,” he said. “Anyone who isn’t ready can stay outside and explain the wasted space to the guild.”
He moved on. One guard followed; the other paused to inspect the casualty case. Eli waited until the guard turned away, then pulled the copied page free and folded it into quarters.
Tessa held out her hand.
He hesitated. She saw it and withdrew the hand without comment.
“If they search the medics’ equipment,” she said, “they’ll find it on me first. Keep it until we’re inside.”
Eli tucked the paper into the inner seam of his work vest, behind the small roll of tape he carried for torn straps. It was not a clever hiding place. It was simply one he could reach without opening his pack.
The young medic returned with the second trunk. Together they checked its seals and loaded both cases onto the trolley. Eli pushed while Tessa steadied the stack. Neither mentioned the copied manifest again.
Outside, the rain-cooled air smelled of wet concrete. A dark transport vehicle waited beside the terminal with its rear doors open. Beyond the fence, the gate shimmered between two abandoned warehouses, a vertical wound of pale light that made the rain bend around it. Aegis guards kept the road clear. A few people watched from behind the barrier, hoping to see a famous hunter board or a monster emerge before the raid began.
Eli lifted the casualty case into the transport. It took two hands, and the silver-armored hunter did not offer either of his.
Tessa climbed in after the supplies and began securing her equipment. She checked the latch on the casualty case, then the latch on the medical trunk. When she caught Eli watching, she said, “Extra supplies can be a good sign.”
“You believe that?”
“I believe it could be true.” She tightened the strap around the trunk. “I’d like to come back knowing which explanation was right.”
The commander called for the team to board. Eli took his assigned place near the rear doors, his pack between his boots. The other porters climbed in beside him. He checked their faces against the names on his private list, making sure he could match each one.
The doors closed. The engine started, and the transport rolled toward the gate.
Eli kept one hand against the seam of his vest. The folded paper pressed against his fingers. It held nothing dramatic: a personnel list, a count, a time, and a signature. If Rusk was right, Eli had risked his job for a record of an overly cautious packing decision.
He hoped that was all it was.