Corvin spread the expedition’s receipts across the registry counter beneath a flickering light.
The clerk had found them an empty corner after the evening queue thinned. Outside, the gate shimmered behind its barriers; inside, damp footprints marked the floor between the door and the counter. Corvin wrote figures on the back of an equipment invoice, added them twice, and passed the page to Eli.
“There. Your guaranteed fee, and the recovery account.”
Eli read the figures. The guaranteed daily fee appeared at the top, untouched by deductions. Beneath it were recovery proceeds of zero and an equipment charge that Corvin had tried to apply against the fee. The total at the bottom was less than half the promised fee.
“The lost equipment isn’t a permitted deduction from the guaranteed fee,” Eli said.
“It was expedition equipment.”
“The contract caps equipment deductions against recovery proceeds, and the daily fee is guaranteed. We wrote both beside the line.”
Corvin held out his hand. Eli gave him the contract, unfolded to the signed page. Corvin read it with the pen still in his fingers.
“That limit was for wear,” he said.
“It doesn’t say that.”
“We left a pack of tools inside.”
“We left it because you agreed we needed hands for the patients.”
Corvin’s pen tapped the counter. He crossed out the charge against the fee and listed it under recovery expenses instead. With no proceeds, it changed no recovery payment. The full daily fee was due. The new total was better. It still would not cover the clinic’s full order.
Tessa laid two receipts beside his invoice. One was for the clinic supplies she had used on Anton and Jory; the other listed the damaged gloves from Corvin’s kit, which she had replaced with her own.
“This is what I used. At cost,” she said.
Corvin looked at the receipts. “The gloves were damaged before we went in?”
“You saw the packet when I opened the kit.”
He paid for the supplies without further argument, then counted out her fee. Tessa checked the amount and separated the reimbursement from the money she had earned. She put the reimbursement in an envelope marked for the clinic.
Cole arrived from the treatment area with a fresh dressing on his arm. Jory followed, still moving carefully but able to walk without support. A responder had advised him to seek further assessment if his breathing worsened or other symptoms appeared. He held the instructions in his hand, folded so many times that the paper was beginning to soften.
Corvin showed them the accounts. Cole examined the line for recovered material.
“Zero,” he said.
“We brought out no saleable find.”
Cole looked at Eli. “Then your share is zero.”
“That’s what the figures say.”
“I don’t want your daily fee.”
“You aren’t entitled to it,” Tessa said.
“I know. I wanted him to hear it from me.” Cole turned to Eli. “I made a bad bargain in there.”
“We both made it.”
“You offered because I put the sheet down.” He touched the edge of his bandage. “Anton shouldn’t have had to wait for me to decide whether he was worth carrying.”
Eli did not know what answer Cole wanted. An apology would not restore the share; there was no share to restore. Nor would it erase the moment in the junction. Cole had picked up the sheet afterward and helped bring Anton out. Both facts mattered.
“Tell him that when you see him,” Eli said.
Cole nodded. “I will.”
The clerk witnessed the final figures and gave each member a copy. Corvin signed beneath the equipment adjustment, then gathered his invoices. He paused when Tessa asked for a photograph of the page.
“You already have a copy.”
“I want a record of both signatures before you take yours.”
He held it still while she used her phone. The light above the counter flickered again, and she took a second picture to make sure the writing was legible.
“Are we done?” he asked.
“For tonight,” she said.
Outside, the road had grown quieter. The other team near the gate was speaking to a registry worker about the blocked route. Eli considered warning them about the branch, then saw Vera already describing the scratches and cool air. She drew the junction on a scrap of paper, marking the damaged support and the place where the beam had fallen. The leader of the new team asked whether the creature had followed them out.
“We heard movement,” Vera said. “We did not see it past the barrier. Don’t treat that as proof it stayed there.”
Eli stopped to add the location of the supplies they had left in the chamber. Corvin gave the new leader permission to retrieve them if the route was safe, but asked for them to be returned. The leader agreed to report any find to the registry.
Tessa waited until the conversation ended. “Can you walk to the clinic?”
“Yes.”
“You said that about the pack.”
“I walked out with it.”
“You left half of it behind.”
He considered arguing, then noticed the way his hand shook when he put the contract back in its sleeve. “I can walk. Slowly.”
She bought a bottle of water from a machine outside the registry. Eli tried to pay; she handed it to him before he found his money. They crossed the road together, avoiding the puddles left by the afternoon rain.
The sewing shop’s sign was dark, but a light showed in the ground-floor storeroom. Mrs. Ortega had left the side door unlocked for the clinic. Inside, a folding table stood beside shelves cleared of fabric. The remaining supplies had been arranged in labeled containers. A handwritten sign on the wall explained that the clinic offered wound checks and referrals, not emergency treatment.
Leah sat at the table with a ledger. She stood when she saw Tessa’s dusty clothes.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right. We had injuries on the expedition, but the responders have them.” Tessa set her bag down. “Is Noah all right?”
“He used the inhaler before bed. He’s with Mrs. Ortega upstairs.” Leah looked at Eli. “You look worse than he does.”
“That’s reassuring,” Eli said.
She did not smile. She fetched a chair and waited until he sat before returning to the ledger. Tessa cleaned her hands at the portable washing station and examined the stock she had carried into the dungeon. She set the used items aside on a list, matching them to the receipts Corvin had paid.
“We’ve enough to replace these,” she said. “And some of the order.”
Leah opened the ledger to the page for donations. “Mrs. Ortega paid for the disinfectant. Someone pledged dressings, but they haven’t arrived. I kept that separate.”
“Good.”
“A supplier called. They can sell us the smaller quantity tomorrow morning, but not hold the rest without the deposit.”
Eli placed his fee on the table. “Use this.”
Tessa counted it. She did not ask about the missing recovery share; they both knew why it was missing and why it had ended up worth nothing. She combined his fee with part of her own and the clinic’s available cash, then checked the supplier’s list.
“We can buy the most urgent medicine and some dressings,” she said. “Not the full order.”
Leah drew a line through several items on the proposed purchase list and wrote the smaller quantities beside them. “What about the utility bill?”
“We set that amount aside,” Tessa said. “If the room loses power, the supplies won’t help anyone here.”
Eli watched the total shrink. He had spent the walk imagining how much the crystal might have fetched, even though he knew the calculation was useless. Meridian Recovery had bought one in the other life. He had not verified whether the company was buying now, whether the crystal remained in the fissure, or whether Corvin’s team would have reached it. The number in his head had never been money.
Leah noticed his expression. “We can ask for more donations tomorrow.”
“I thought I’d bring enough back.”
“You brought yourself back.”
He looked at the supplies again. “That doesn’t fill the shelf.”
“No. But someone has to carry whatever does.” She closed the ledger. “Don’t make me find another volunteer because you decided returning wasn’t worth anything.”
Tessa wrote the revised inventory on a sheet and pinned it beside the shelves. She used separate columns for what was in the room, what had been paid for, and what had only been promised. When Leah offered to call the supplier, Tessa gave her the exact quantities and asked her to confirm the price before placing the order.
“You don’t have to do it tonight,” Tessa said.
“I can leave a message. They’ll see it before opening.”
Leah picked up the phone. Eli listened to her leave the clinic’s name, the items, and a number to call back. She did not describe a pledge as money already received. When she finished, she wrote the time of the call in the ledger.
The detail reminded him of the evacuee list at the temporary clinic: what was known, what had been reported, and what still needed confirmation. They had less than they wanted, but at least the list did not pretend otherwise.
Mrs. Ortega came downstairs carrying a folded blanket. She put it over the back of Eli’s chair.
“You can rest here until you can walk without listing to one side,” she said.
“I wasn’t listing.”
“You were when you came through the door.” She looked at Tessa. “Marisol covered the morning, and I answered the phone. The afternoon patient took the hospital referral, and the other came earlier as planned.”
“Thank you,” Tessa said.
Mrs. Ortega glanced at the thin stack of cash on the table. “Can he take another delivery shift tonight?”
“He can sleep tonight,” Tessa said.
“I can work tomorrow,” Eli said.
“After you’ve slept.”
“I only carried—”
“You carried equipment into a gate and a patient out. You were nearly buried. I don’t need you to add yourself to the list of people who need care.” She held up a hand when he began to reply. “I’m not telling you what work you may take. I’m telling you what I saw.”
The distinction mattered to her. It should have mattered to him earlier, when he had tried to forbid her from joining the expedition. He leaned back in the chair and let the blanket rest over his shoulders.
Leah and Mrs. Ortega went upstairs after checking the door. Tessa remained to finish the inventory. Eli helped by reading the labels while she wrote, though she made him stay seated.
When the last container was counted, she put down the pen.
“Why were you so sure there was something valuable in that gate?”
Eli looked at the pinned inventory. “I had information about the route.”
“What information?”
“A map. It showed a chamber with three shallow pools. The crystal was in a fissure past the third.”
“Whose map?”
He had not intended to give her so much. The details came easily because he had studied them the night before, comparing what he remembered with the road outside. Tessa waited while he tried to decide how much more he could say.
“It was old information,” he said.
“The survey team entered only two days ago. Corvin said they didn’t get past the first chamber.”
“Another team could have gone farther.”
“Could have?”
He met her eyes. “I didn’t verify it. I should have said that more clearly.”
“You said the layout might have changed. You didn’t say how you knew what it used to be.”
Outside the shop, a vehicle passed over the wet road. Eli heard its tires for several seconds after it had gone out of sight.
“Was it a guild map?” Tessa asked.
“No guild gave me a map for this expedition.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He could tell her about the old guild report, about the future in which she had been an Aegis medic and had tried to reach him while he died. The account would sound impossible. Worse, once she knew it, someone could ask her what he had said. He had no idea who was watching newly awakened hunters or how much the guilds already knew about unusual abilities.
“I can’t explain the source tonight,” he said.
Tessa leaned against the table. “You asked me to trust your warning. I listened because you described the danger you could actually see. Then we got inside and you recognized a route that nobody on the team had mapped.”
“I was wrong about part of it. There was a new tunnel.”
“I’m not asking you to be right every time. I’m asking whether the information put us in danger.”
“I don’t think the source did. My confidence might have.”
She studied him. “That’s at least an answer.”
Eli wanted to offer more. Instead he looked down at his dust-stained hands. He had already given her a sentence designed to be technically true while hiding the fact she was asking about. She had heard the gap.
“I’ll tell you when I can,” he said.
“Decide what that means before you ask me to make another choice around it.” She took the blanket from his shoulders and folded it. “For now, go home and sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He stood slowly. His legs held him. At the door he looked back at the inventory: a short list of supplies, a smaller order, and several blank spaces for donations that had not yet arrived.
Tessa was already washing the dust from her medical bag. She did not look up when he left, but she had left his name on the volunteer schedule for the morning.