Petra Vane's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

The tin cup sat clean and empty. But the next fugitives were already close, and Petra's hands knew a worse truth. She drew her scalpel across her thumbnail and watched it drag. Dull. Her spare blades were worse. She had cut too many chips from too many necks, and steel wore down. A dull blade tears instead of cutting. It bleeds a person out on the table. She could not remove one more implant with the tools she had. She knew where the good tools waited. Her old storefront, in the crumbling city block she had fled months ago. The tall rusted shelf still held her real kit, sharp blades, sealed sutures, bottles of medicine she had left behind in the raid. Going back meant crossing open streets past patrols who knew her face. "I have to go back," Petra said. "The old place. The shelf near the window." Lior stood by the tunnel mouth with the three-legged hound. She shook her head hard. Then she pointed at herself, at the dog, and down the dark passage. The girl who could not speak made her meaning plain. She would go. Petra would stay. "No," Petra said. "It's too far for you." Lior crossed the floor and took Petra's dull scalpel from her hand. She held it up to the lamp, turned it, frowned at the worn edge. Then she set it down and pointed at Petra's steady fingers, then at the tunnel. The message landed like a slap. Petra's hands were the only ones that could cut safely. If Petra died in the street, everyone in the tunnel died too. Lior was not a child asking permission. She was choosing the smaller risk. Petra saw it then. The girl had watched her work for weeks. She knew which shelf held the blades. She knew what sutures looked like, what a sealed vial meant. Lior was not just a lookout anymore. She had become something closer, a second pair of hands, the one who would carry the work forward. Petra knelt and gripped the girl's shoulders. "The shelf by the broken front window. Top tier. A black roll of blades. Two brown bottles beside it. Bandages below." Lior nodded at each word. The hound leaned against her leg. Petra tied a folded sack across the dog's back. She pressed her own gloves into Lior's small hands. "If a patrol comes, you hide and wait. You do not run." Lior touched two fingers to the dog's crutch leg, their old signal, and slipped into the dark. The wait stretched long. Petra counted her own breath. When the click and drag returned, Lior stepped out first, the sack heavy on the hound's back. Inside lay the black roll, sharp and whole, the brown bottles, clean bandages. Petra unrolled a blade and tested it on her nail. It bit clean. She could cut again. But the girl's bare feet were smeared with fresh blood, not her own, and Petra understood someone in the old block had followed the dog home.