Ninety Seconds of Sky

Chapter 018: Ninety Seconds of Sky Twelve seconds was not enough time to save anyone. Mira knew that before Keth said it, before Clay's eyes cut toward the lower grate, before Ari Hall's fingers tightened so hard over hers that the child's nails bit through the torn skin at Mira's knuckle. The manual sky vent groaned above them, blue air narrowing into a stripe. The fan behind the cooling room gathered itself with a wet mechanical cough, ready to take back the breath it had lent them. "Hold her face in frame," Mira said. Mara shifted Oren's camera higher with her left hand. Her right arm stayed hooked around Nima's trapped wrist under the shutter. The position bent Mara sideways until her shoulder shook, but she kept the lens on Ari, on the duplicate Seven tag, on Elise's oxygen line pulsing in Dr. Keth's grip. "I have her," Mara said. Her voice sounded as if each word cost blood. "Ari Hall. Duplicate Seven. Nima sees her." Nima tapped once against the shutter. Elise answered from bed twelve with one rail tap. Ari heard both sounds and turned toward them, not toward the officers coming down the red corridor. "Is she my sister?" "You get to ask her when she can answer," Mira said. "Right now you help us keep both of you real." The panel behind Ari fell from 12 to 9. "The vent is closing," Keth said. She had Elise's oxygen line looped over her wrist and the compressor tube pinned with two fingers. "When the fan restarts, bed twelve loses the relief. If I borrow more line for the cooling room, Elise pays." The Northstar representative pointed past Keth. "Doctor, step away from the private utility branch." Keth did not look at him. "It became medical the moment a child breathed through it." Below the grate, metal scraped. Liora's breath came in harsh bursts from a dark blue gap Mira could not see. "The ladder is under the Crescent drain. Child-width. June painted it blue so the little ones could find it if smoke took the lights." "Flooded annex," the donor guardian said quickly. "No person can travel it. It was sealed after the water came up." "Then why did you know its name before she finished?" Mira asked. He shut his mouth. Vale's speaker cracked loud enough to make Ari flinch. "Any movement of a minor through that lower route will be recorded as abduction from protected medical containment. Officers, separate the unauthorized adults from the children." The first officer reached for Ari. Mira could not block him with both arms; one shoulder still held the cooling-room door, and her hand was under Ari's. So she did the only thing she could still do. She moved Ari's palm, with her own beneath it, against the cooling-room glass where Nima could see. "Nima," Mira said, "if Ari Hall belongs to your family line, sign once. If you do not know, sign twice." The officer caught Mira's sleeve. "Interpreter Sol, release the minor." Nima did not hurry. Her trapped fingers lifted through the shutter gap, trembling in Mara's hold, and drew one small split-kin sign against the glass dust. One sign. Not coached, not spoken for, not given to the court to improve. Ari watched it like the corridor had opened a second sky. "Record family recognition before separation," Mira said. "Recorded," Mara said. Oren, half crouched beside her, gripped his injured wrist against his ribs. "Lens has Nima's hand, Ari's tag, and Elise's tap light. Mara, tilt three inches left." "I have two hands and one of them is saving a child," Mara snapped. Clay stepped closer, palms still open. "May I brace the camera body only?" Mira heard the trap inside the useful offer before Vale could. If Clay touched the wrong control, the route became his incident. If he braced a witness device by request, he remained a witness. "Brace the camera body," Mira said. "No route command. No override. Say it." Clay set two fingers under the cracked camera casing and said, clearly enough for the record, "Read-only support to witness camera. No route command accepted." The Northstar representative smiled as if he had been waiting. "Mr. Rourke has already entered operational support." "Witness support," Mira said. "You heard the difference because you hate it." The panel reached 5. Liora swore under the grate. A blue rung clanged somewhere below, then another. "It opens from under here, but only while the vent holds the pressure lock. I can pass one flat thing through before it seals." "One thing?" Keth asked. "Maybe two if the first is paper." Everything in Mira tried to choose Elise first. The oxygen line. The sister she had lost once and was losing by inches again. But Elise was on the bed, visible, breathing under Keth's hands. Ari was in the cooling room, visible for one more second. Nima's hand was trapped, visible only because Mara refused to let go. Liora was below with the route. The system could erase any one of them by choosing the record it liked best. "The strip," Elise tapped from bed twelve. Mira turned. Elise's eyes were open. She was not strong enough to lift her head, but her fingers struck the rail again. Tap. Tap. Then she dragged one finger toward the donor-wall strip in Mira's fist. "Not your line?" Keth asked softly. Elise tapped once. Ari understood before Mira did. She pulled the duplicate Seven tag over her head. The cord snagged in her hair; Mira freed it with a motion that almost let the officer take her sleeve. Ari pressed the tag into the same hand that held the E-SOL strip. "If the ladder knows June's paint," Ari said, "it should know what they called me." The fan coughed. The vent panel hit 3. Mira thrust the strip and duplicate tag down through the low grate. Liora's fingers appeared, wet and scraped raw, closing around them. "I have them." "Camera saw transfer," Mara said. "Not a child," Mira said to the officers and the speaker. "Evidence passed through a preserved emergency route by family witness request." Vale answered instantly. "Evidence transfer through unauthorized infrastructure is contamination." "Then why are your officers trying to stop it?" Mira said. The corridor lights pulsed red. The panel reached 2. Clay's free hand hovered near the route map display, where a green option had appeared under a warning: command override could hold the blue ladder open for six minutes. Mira saw it. So did Northstar. So did Clay. "Mr. Rourke," the Northstar representative said, suddenly gentle, "if you care about the children, accept the emergency route command." For the first time that night, Clay's face went slack with wanting. Six minutes would be enough to pull Ari out, enough to pass Liora's roll, enough to lift Nima's shutter before the officer's next grab. It would also make every movement Clay's order, every child a rescued subject under his failed old clearance, every record a fire-marshal intervention Vale could quarantine. Mira did not tell him no. That would make it her fear. She kept Ari's hand against Nima's sign and waited. Clay lowered his hand. "No," he said. "I will not make myself the door." The panel reached 1. Keth pulled Elise's line tight as the vent began to shut. "Brace." The blue air vanished. The fan hit the cooling room like a hand over a mouth. Ari buckled toward Mira, but Mira caught her under both arms and drove her knee against the door wedge. Mara screamed once, not in fear but effort, as the shutter tried to take Nima's wrist. Oren's camera jolted, steadied on Clay's lowered hand, then on the command override still glowing untouched. Below the grate, Liora shouted, "Blue ladder received the tag. June's lower lock opened." The donor guardian whispered, "That is impossible." Then the grate under Mira's shoe clicked from the other side. Clay looked at the green override, then at Mira. "There is a slower manual latch below us," he said. His voice shook, but his hands stayed visible. "I can read you the sequence." Vale's speaker cut in before Mira could answer. "Do not instruct her." Mira looked down through the blue dark, where Liora's bloody fingers pushed the first rung upward. "Read only," Mira said. Clay swallowed. "Then listen fast."