"Clock me out," the dead worker said.
The iron key through Pell’s sternum answered before anyone else could. It pulled a finger-width deeper. Bone grated along its shaft, and Pell’s shoulders struck the failing coffer behind him.
The coffer’s lid clapped shut, missed its latch, and sprang open again. Six mismatched legs kicked at the preservation floor. The straps from its back drew tight through Pell’s chest.
He waited out the spasm.
"Careful with the box. Six workers filed inside. Two knock off-count when the overseer isn’t close."
Brant ground his shield edge under one bucking corner and drove with hip and left shoulder. Leather kept his right arm strapped to his ribs. "Bodies?"
"Signatures. Hands. Whatever was cheap to preserve and still knew its shift." Pell’s dry throat clicked around the words. "Storage calls that efficient. Storage never had to share the box."
The coffer kicked twice beneath Brant’s shield.
Pell’s coat rasped as he faced Dane’s cradle. "Responsive container. All six legs on the inside. Braggart."
Black fluid pattered from the coffer’s seams. Each drop carried a cold vibration through the floor to Dane’s base. Pell’s left boot scraped backward.
Vera read the carving on the wall. "Bay Three. Return responsive labor."
Pell hauled his foot forward. The key turned inside him. His knee buckled, and the boot scraped back to the same groove.
"Shift wants the box in Bay Three," he said. "I don’t. If you need to know which answer is Pell, watch where it hurts me to walk."
"When’s the next pull?" Vera asked.
"Bell rings, the key finds the strongest part of the order. I return the coffer. Overseer shaves the noisy pieces down. Then I fetch another crew." His fingers scraped the iron jutting from his chest. Dust whispered from the dead skin. "Good mounting point. My spine does half the work."
Paper rustled above Buk’s litter. "Pull key?"
"Then the parts of me that already died remember the arrangement." Pell’s answer came level with the litter. "Later, if I ask. Box first."
Holt’s palm wrappings rasped against his sleeves. "Six people?"
"Two are awake enough to be frightened. Four answer the work knock. I won’t throw those four back because they can’t explain themselves to us."
Ada lowered rod one until its tip rang against the floor. Brass trembled toward Pell, then the coffer latch, then the Bay Three mark. Rod two answered from her back in its familiar bent note.
"Clock-back straps," she said. "Break one return pulse at the box, and the straps should let go there. The key won’t."
"You get one try," Pell said. "Management rings early when somebody looks hopeful."
"Clear to the pale seam," Buk said, tapping the litter pole. Holt and Vera eased Dane’s cradle forward while rod one rang over each placement. Behind the litter came Tess. When the pale seal crossed under them, Ada asked which side would tear; Tess named the left edge, and her collector cord stayed quiet at her belt.
As Dane’s cradle crossed the pale seam, all six coffer legs folded beneath it. The lid opened in his direction, and preservation cold pressed along his front, sounding his width through the airless gap. His body answered with a shape long enough to hold a man.
Pell stood one reach away.
The key lifted when his dead lungs dragged in a useless breath. Dane’s lid lifted with it. Three bands of pressure entered his front grain: shoulder width, hip width, then the narrow point where heels would lie.
The empty dimensions pulled at his mouth. His lid wanted weight underneath—whatever body lay closest—and Pell’s key scraped one reach away.
Dane struck the cradle three times. Wood rang under Pell’s boots. He held his lid open until the hinge tremor spread through his whole back.
Pell shifted away from the waiting hollow. "Much obliged. I’ve had the shelf tour."
Dane aligned his intact center grain beside the coffer’s broken latch. He kept the load off his separated left hinge and sent it through the three shallow dents in his outer plane.
Two rails pressed from his front corners.
They met the coffer on either side of the latch. Cold ran between them and lengthened, shoulder-wide, heel-deep. The pressure tried to complete the walls. Dane stopped it at two open rails.
The rails stayed separate around the latch, bracing the lid at a sealed coffer’s span. Pell remained one reach away, outside the open geometry.
The coffer slammed down again.
The blow thudded through Dane’s ram dents. His old lock tear burned, but his left hinge kept its prior gap. The coffer lid caught and held through a full breath.
Knock-knock beneath Pell’s hand. A pause. Knock-knock by the far hinge. Four more followed at the work interval.
Pell put his knuckles to the lid and counted with them. "Two awake. Four doing what their hands remember. We move six."
Ada traced the coffer’s latch with rod one. Its tip found a narrow metal mouth beneath the lock. Toothed wheels shifted inside.
"Same acceptance curve as the token," she said. "The pieces can make it read accepted and failed at once. One bad pulse. Nothing more."
The shattered acceptance token lay inside Dane, tight against his crooked tooth. Every piece of it. Beyond those sharp edges rested things no tong could touch: Vera’s chalk-threaded fringe at the cracked root, the buried copper, Toma’s glove and scarf, Nate’s charm, Saint Rust’s knife vessel.
Ada set a clean root tray on the cradle. The long brass tongs chimed against its rim.
"Every token piece," she said. "One knock means continue. Two and I come out."
Dane knocked once.
The tongs entered his existing mouth seam. His lid gave them no more than a copper’s width. Metal passed his missing teeth. When Ada angled around the crooked root, the wounded edge of his tongue stretched against the old bone puncture.
Pain ran hot beneath the preservation cold. His tongue jerked. The tongs stopped.
"Hold," Vera said from the side. "Tip’s clear of the fringe. A hair toward his front."
Ada changed the angle. A token fragment scraped free and struck the tray.
Piece by piece, she worked through the cluster. Each left a small raw absence under the tooth. Ada counted without hurrying. A tremor ran down the tongs; it steadied when she braced her elbow against her ribs.
The last shard had wedged beside the crooked root. The tong tip nudged it. Dane’s mouth tried to snap shut around the intrusion.
He drove his tongue flat and held.
The shard came out slick with resin. Ada rang the tongs once against empty wood beneath the tooth and withdrew.
When the metal cleared, Dane shut his lid on an ache worse than the fragments had been. From tray to toothed slot, the pieces ticked across metal and dropped between the teeth.
The mechanism took them.
ACCEPTED hammered through Dane’s front rails. BROKEN struck from the other direction. RETURN caught between the teeth, and RELEASED hit hard enough to shake black fluid from the latch.
The next clock-back pulse came out of Bay Three.
When the timing teeth closed on every fragment, grit sprayed across the lid and rattled into its seams. The pulse drove into the jam, stopped, and shuddered back through the straps.
They tore loose from the coffer with a wet iron shriek.
The freed lengths whipped toward Pell. Something struck his ribs from inside, once, twice, then wound tight with a sound like wire dragged around a nail. His boots skidded, and his coat seam spat a dry hiss of dust.
Rod one clicked against Pell’s coat, then rattled in tightening circles around the key.
"Straps are on the shaft," Pell ground out. "Box is clear. Key still has me."
In the slot, the grit flashed warm across Dane’s rails and vanished, leaving the teeth empty.
Pell pitched forward hard enough to jar the floor. Holt’s boot stopped one step away. "Want me?"
"Not yet. The key thinks Bay Three is north." Pell planted a cracked boot. "I’ve been disagreeing with supervisors longer than I’ve been dead."
He forced the other boot crosswise.
The key turned. His shoulders snapped toward Bay Three while his hips tried to follow the coffer. Dead tendons creaked along his neck. He caught the lid with both hands and dragged his second step along a direction the order had not named.
"It owns where I point," he said. "I choose how ugly I get there."
Holt’s bindings rustled as he stepped back. Beneath the coffer, Brant worked his shield farther in.
Against the latch, Dane held the two open rails. One mismatched leg unfolded, then a second; all six found the floor, and the leak slowed to a cold drip.
From inside came two deliberate knocks, followed by the four work echoes.
Pell answered with his knuckles. "Night porter Pell. Moving all six off Bay Three. Anyone awake, keep making a nuisance of yourself."
One knock returned.
Then the second worker answered from farther down the lid.
"Overseer calls that damage," Pell said. "Files it out before the next shift. If the box goes back, those two don’t come out of Bay Three."
"After they’re clear?" Vera asked.
The key ticked behind Pell’s ribs.
"After, I decide what clocking out means."
Dane drew the rails into his front corners. The cold outline collapsed, and his body offered only the familiar ache of his separated hinge. The longer lock tear and tongue puncture still burned. Beneath the crooked tooth, the space left by the acceptance pieces stayed raw.
Pell took one side of the coffer. Brant took the other with his shield and left shoulder. Holt guided the uneven legs with his forearms. Buk called each patch of clean stone from the litter; Ada confirmed it with rod one. Tess kept the rear until Ada asked about a white seam.
"Tears toward the wall," Tess said.
They turned the coffer away from it.
One body length.
Pell’s key clicked and tried to rotate him back.
Two.
"Front right," Buk snapped.
The coffer lurched. Holt caught the lid on his forearms while Brant levered the folded leg straight with his shield rim.
Three.
The chamber bell rang and drove iron against bone. Inside Pell, the key turned a quarter circle. His body whipped toward Bay Three, but he threw one boot sideways and hit the coffer instead of the wall.
"Slot’s smoking. Grit’s gone," Vera said. The bell passed through the surviving route without a catch and found Pell’s key alone.
Down the drawer corridor, three compartment latches rang on the work count. Doors struck their runners. Three sets of dead feet met the floor in the same beat.
Behind them, a bone hook scraped one drawer handle, then the next. Each handle answered with a cold shiver through the stone.
Pell stepped between Buk’s litter and the corridor.
"Three reclamation workers," he said. "Overseer behind. Night shift hates an empty route."