The transport stopped before it reached the gate.
Eli felt the brakes through the bench and caught his pack before it slid into the porter across from him. Outside, someone shouted for the driver to wait. The engine idled, rattling the metal floor beneath their boots.
The young porter had both hands wrapped around a canvas satchel. He wore new work gloves with the price tag still tucked under one cuff.
“Does that happen often?” he asked.
“Stopping?” Eli said.
“Stopping this close.”
“Depends on the gate.”
The answer was safe, if not especially useful. The porter looked toward the closed doors as if he might see through them.
“I’m Len,” he said. “In case we didn’t get introduced properly.”
“Eli.”
“I know. You wrote everyone down.” Len rubbed a thumb along the edge of the satchel. “My mother says to send her a message when we get to the entrance. She thinks we can use phones inside.”
“Sometimes you can. Don’t count on it.”
Len nodded and took out a phone. The screen illuminated his face as he typed. Eli looked away, giving him the privacy the transport’s narrow benches otherwise denied.
The third porter, a woman named Ada, checked the buckles on a spool of climbing rope. “Tell her you’ll send another when we’re out,” she said. “People like having a time to expect you.”
“What time?”
Ada glanced at Eli. He had worked more Aegis jobs than she had, though she looked ten years older than him.
“Rusk said six hours for the operation,” Eli said. “I’d add time for the equipment check and the drive back. Don’t promise a time you can’t control.”
Len’s thumbs paused. “She’ll worry if I say that.”
“She’ll worry anyway,” Ada said.
Len sent the message. His phone chimed almost immediately, and he smiled at something on the screen. He showed it to Ada: a photograph of a plate with two uneven slices of pie. Eli caught only the edge of it before Len lowered the phone.
“She made it this morning,” Len said. “Says the second piece is mine if I get back before my brother.”
“Then you’d better hurry,” Ada said.
For a few seconds, the transport sounded like an ordinary vehicle carrying people to work. Someone at the front complained about the smell of the casualty bags. A hunter answered that the bags smelled better than the hunter’s boots. A medic laughed. The noise settled into smaller conversations.
Tessa sat beside the medical cases, checking their straps for the third time. Eli could see her counting under her breath as she pressed each buckle. When she finished, she caught his eye and tipped her head toward the narrow space beside her.
He crossed the aisle, bracing himself against the ceiling rail when the engine jolted. The transport remained stationary.
“Did you get your patient list sent?” he asked.
“Not yet.” She held up a small tablet. “I was checking whether I missed anyone.”
Her handwriting filled the screen: names, appointment dates, medication schedules. Three entries had stars beside them. Another had a note to call a neighbor before visiting.
“You bring that into gates?” Eli asked.
“Not usually. I was finishing it before we left.” She scrolled to the end. “Someone needs to know which patients can’t wait until I get back.”
“Another medic at the clinic?”
“Two volunteers. One’s good with the dressings. The other knows the neighborhood better than I do. Neither should have to guess what I’ve already checked.”
Eli watched her add a line and then delete half of it. The movement was quick, but she read the remaining words twice before she saved them.
“You could have told them you wouldn’t be there,” he said.
“I did. This tells them what to do about it.”
The distinction made him think of the casualty list he had helped correct the previous winter. He had told the missing man’s sister where to find the notice, then gone home believing that was the end of his part in it. She had returned to the terminal three times after that, he remembered. He hadn’t asked what happened on the other visits.
Tessa closed the patient list and opened a different file. This one held several photographs of paper forms laid out on a table. The first was a treatment record; the next was a letter bearing an Aegis stamp.
“Do you remember a hunter named Leon Maret?” she asked.
Eli shook his head.
“He cut his leg on a raid eight months ago. Deep enough that we had to close it before we could move him. He couldn’t work for a while afterward.”
She enlarged the photograph of the treatment record. A handwritten entry listed a wound, a date, and the supplies used. Eli saw Tessa’s initials at the bottom.
“What’s the letter?”
“His request for the guild’s medical allowance. They said they had no record of an injury on that contract.”
“Did he give them a copy of this?”
“He didn’t have one. I wasn’t allowed to take patient records out of the guild infirmary, and I didn’t think to photograph it until he called me.”
Eli looked more closely. “So you did photograph it.”
“After he called. The original wasn’t where I’d filed it. I found a copy in a stack waiting to be shredded.”
“Did the photograph help him?”
“It helped him prove I’d treated him. The guild still wanted proof the injury happened under its contract.” Tessa swiped to the letter. “He’d signed out at the gate, and the log showed him leaving with a bandage. That should have been enough to get a real review.”
“Did it?”
“Eventually. After he borrowed money from his brother and sold his equipment.”
The letter’s final paragraph was too small for Eli to read. Tessa didn’t enlarge it. She set the tablet on her knee and looked toward the front of the vehicle, where Commander Rusk’s guards sat facing the rear doors.
“Leon wasn’t the only one,” she said. “I’ve heard from two other patients who couldn’t find the records they needed. Different jobs, different people handling the files.”
“Could be bad filing.”
“It could. I can’t tell you who removed anything, or even that all the records were removed on purpose. I can tell you the people trying to challenge it had a hard time getting anyone to look.”
Eli touched the seam of his vest. The folded manifest pressed back against his fingers.
“You think this will disappear too.”
“I think if it does, we should have a copy.”
At the front of the transport, a support hunter called to Rusk. “How long are we waiting?”
Rusk opened the partition and spoke to the driver. Eli couldn’t hear the reply. The commander closed it again and told the hunter there was a delay at the perimeter. The hunter swore and resumed adjusting a leather strap around his wrist.
Tessa returned to the patient list. Eli watched her read one of the starred entries.
“You’re still taking guild assignments after that?” he asked.
“After Leon?”
“After the records.”
“I’m leaving.” She said it quietly, without looking up. “After this one.”
Eli waited for her to explain. When she didn’t, he said, “You already told them?”
“No. They’ll know when I stop accepting contracts.”
“Why not leave now?”
She tilted the screen toward him. “The clinic needs supplies. Burn dressings, mostly, and a refrigerator that stays cold when the power goes out. This payout will cover both if I don’t get cheated on the price.”
The answer was so practical that Eli felt slightly embarrassed by the question. He had taken the same job for rent and food. It had not occurred to him that a senior medic might be counting her wages as carefully as a porter.
“You can find work somewhere else,” he said.
“I can. That doesn’t make the patients disappear while I look.”
A knock came from the driver’s side. The partition opened again. Rusk stepped forward to confer with someone outside, taking one guard with him. The other remained in the transport, watching the team without appearing to focus on anyone.
Tessa lowered her voice further. “I asked you for the manifest because if there’s another missing record, I want something that didn’t pass through their office.”
“We can make a second copy when we get back,” Eli said. “Find an advocate who knows the guild rules. Not just someone they’ll send away at reception.”
“I have a name.”
“Then give it to Leon.”
“I did.”
“Good. When this job’s over, we can bring the manifest too. If it turns out to matter.”
Tessa studied him. “You think the safest time to challenge them is after we’ve finished working for them.”
“It’s the time when we have something to show.”
“And how many times have you said that?”
Eli started to answer, then stopped. He could remember the cleaner’s casualty list, the porter whose sister had searched for him, a supply crate that had come back with its seal broken. There were other moments he had put away because he needed the next contract more than he needed an argument.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’ve said it too. Finish the raid. Get the patient paid. Wait until the next person can take over.” Tessa rested her hand on the tablet. “Sometimes waiting is the sensible thing. Sometimes it just lets us find a new reason.”
“Walking out now won’t help your clinic.”
“No. It won’t help Leon either. I’m still here.”
The blunt admission took the edge off his defensiveness. He looked at the tablet again.
“What’s the advocate’s name?”
“Marin. I don’t have her number memorized.”
“Send it to me.”
Tessa raised an eyebrow.
“You wanted a record outside your equipment. If something happens to the tablet, I can still find her.”
She searched her contacts and sent the number. Eli’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He saved the contact under the name she gave him and, after a moment, added Tessa’s name in the note field. There were too many numbers in his phone that he no longer remembered how he had acquired.
The rear doors opened. Daylight cut across the floor, followed by a gust of damp air. Rusk climbed inside carrying a black collection case. His guard followed with a second case and set it beside the medical trunks.
“Attention,” Rusk said.
Conversations stopped unevenly. The silver-armored hunter finished fastening his wrist strap before he looked up. Len held his phone near his knee.
“Perimeter security has identified a risk of interference with private communications,” Rusk said. “Until the team returns, all personal devices will remain outside the gate.”
A support hunter frowned. “What kind of interference?”
“We’ve had reports of messages failing and false location data near the entrance. We are not taking unreliable equipment inside.”
“Mine isn’t unreliable,” the hunter said.
“Then it will be waiting for you when you come out.”
The guard opened the first case. Inside were narrow compartments with numbered tags. He passed along the bench collecting phones, tablets, and two small communication stones. The hunters gave up their devices with varying degrees of complaint. One asked if she could call her partner first. Rusk said there was no time.
Tessa looked down at her tablet. Her patient list was still open.
“I need thirty seconds to send an instruction,” she said.
“You can do it when we return.”
“It’s for patients waiting at my clinic.”
“We are at the perimeter.” Rusk pointed toward the open case. “Your device, Medic Vale.”
Tessa’s jaw tightened. Eli could see the send icon at the bottom of the screen. She had already prepared the list; pressing it would take less time than another exchange with the commander.
One of the guards moved into the aisle. Tessa pressed the icon. The screen displayed a spinning symbol, then a notice that the message was queued. She turned the tablet toward him.
“It hasn’t sent.”
“Put it in the case,” the guard said.
She looked at Rusk. “If I move closer to the door—”
“No.”
Eli held out his hand. “My phone has a different carrier. I can try.”
The guard took a step toward him. Tessa shook her head once. Eli understood: if she transferred the patient list to another device now, Rusk might take both and accuse her of refusing the order.
She read the first starred name aloud, then stopped herself. There were too many people listening.
“The clinic’s on West Mercer,” Eli said. “If we come back separately, I’ll go there.”
“You don’t know which patients need what.”
“I can tell the volunteers you’re delayed.”
“They already know I might be.”
The guard held out a numbered tag. Tessa shut the tablet, took the tag, and placed the device in its compartment. He closed the small lid over it. The unsent message was on the other side of the plastic, visible for an instant through the screen’s fading light.
Len’s phone was next. He held it out, then drew it back.
“My mother just messaged me,” he said. “I told her I’d send another at the entrance.”
“You can send it afterward,” the guard said.
“She’ll think I forgot.”
“Afterward.”
Len surrendered the phone. Ada put her own device in the next compartment without waiting to be asked. Eli followed, feeling Marin’s number disappear into the case with it.
The guard checked each slot against a roster. When he reached Eli, he glanced at the vest pocket where the phone had been.
“Anything else?”
Eli felt the folded manifest against his ribs. The order covered personal devices. The copy was paper, written by hand, and Rusk had not said anything about notes. Eli could answer truthfully without mentioning it.
“No other device,” he said.
The guard looked at him for a moment, then moved on.
Rusk addressed the transport again. “Guild equipment will carry the necessary signals. Stay with your assigned groups, follow the route, and report any anomaly to your squad leader. We proceed as briefed.”
“What if someone needs to contact the perimeter?” the support hunter asked.
“Your squad leader will contact me.”
The hunter looked as if he wanted to object. Then he noticed the guard recording the collection and sat back.
Tessa watched the case being carried toward the rear doors. “The list was queued,” she said to Eli. “It may send if they move the tablet back into range.”
“Can they see it?”
“The screen locks.” She hesitated. “But I can’t check whether it went.”
Eli wanted to offer a reassurance. He had no basis for one. The gate’s pale light was visible beyond Rusk’s shoulder, and everyone outside the transport seemed to be moving faster now.
“If we get out and it hasn’t sent,” he said, “I’ll help you contact them.”
Tessa accepted that with a nod. It was a smaller promise than the one he wanted to make, but it was one he could understand.
The guard shut the device case and carried it out. The other case contained a set of guild communicators, each marked with a squad number. Rusk handed them to the squad leaders and kept one for himself. The porters received none. Tessa was given a medic’s unit with a single channel selected by the commander.
She tested it. A hiss answered, followed by the voice of the second medic.
“Working,” the medic said.
Tessa lowered the unit. “Can it reach outside?”
“Through me,” Rusk said.
The transport doors closed again. A moment later the vehicle rolled forward. Len stared at the place where the case had been, then bent to check the straps on his satchel. Ada offered him the end of the climbing rope and asked him to hold it while she tested the buckle. He did, grateful for something to do.
Eli returned to his bench. His pack rested between his boots, just where he had left it. Nothing about the job had changed on paper: the team, the equipment, and the gate were the same. Yet his plan to give the manifest to an advocate now had an extra condition. Someone had to come back with it, and someone outside Aegis had to be willing to listen.
The transport stopped again. This time the doors opened immediately.
The gate stood beyond the perimeter fence, taller than the warehouse roofs. Up close, its pale surface was not smooth. It folded inward in slow, uneven ripples, showing flashes of a dark passage on the other side. Rain struck the concrete around it and vanished where it touched the light.
Hunters disembarked first. Rusk called their names and assigned positions. The support team followed, then the medics. Eli lifted his pack and stepped down with the other porters.
Len looked toward the building where the device cases had been taken. He gave a small wave in that direction, an awkward gesture for his mother to receive much later, if he remembered to tell her about it. Ada nudged him toward the line.
Tessa checked the strap on her medical case. Eli joined her at the rear of the formation, close enough to hear if she needed a hand.
“Still think we should wait?” she asked.
He looked at Rusk, the guards, and the line of hunters preparing to enter. Beyond them the gate moved without wind.
“I think we should keep our eyes open,” he said. “And get that copy out.”
Tessa adjusted the guild communicator at her belt. “Then don’t let me forget what we saw.”
The first hunter stepped into the light and disappeared. The next followed. Eli touched the folded manifest once more, then picked up the casualty case with Ada.
Together, they carried it toward the gate.