Inspector Dorr stepped over the fallen collector without looking down at him. His heat-resistant coat carried an Association badge at the throat, while the rifle scar beside his jaw made him look like somebody who had learned to survive his own mistakes.
The procedure had left Vell seated beside Yenna's table, both hands held above the exposed read. Dorr saw the position immediately, which gave him the confidence of a man who believed a still target had already lost.
"You cannot fight while you maintain that connection," Dorr said, leaning against the hallway frame, "so stop making your partner suffer for a stunt."
"You sent collectors into a locked procedure," Vell said, following the node's slow resistance, "do not call it concern when you came to finish the job."
The inspector spread one hand toward the damaged room, letting the cameras at his shoulder record the floor. He had brought his own evidence crew because he expected a branded exile to look guilty from any angle.
Yenna saw the recording lenses before Dorr moved again, then shifted her chain around the table leg. She had eleven percent strength and an injured hand, yet she used both to make the room look less helpless.
"Tell your cameras why you installed the anchor," she said, watching him across the broken corridor, "then I might make your arrest easy."
"Your core failed before I met you," Dorr said, touching the badge at his throat, "you were discarded because no guild could rely on damaged equipment."
His words landed too neatly, which made them sound practiced rather than true. Vell did not waste time arguing, because the node showed a change whenever Dorr spoke near it.
The artificial lock inside Yenna's core was responding to his mana signature. Dorr had not merely carried the order; some part of the collar work recognized him as an authority.
Vell shifted the Forge read toward that response, forcing the node to reveal the control route hidden beneath Yenna's healthy channels. The action cost him a surge of pain through both palms, but it gave him something to break.
"The lock knows you," Vell said, keeping his eyes on the node, "you should have sent somebody less involved."
Dorr's expression tightened before he drew a short heat weapon from inside his coat. The weapon was smaller than the collector's lance, built for cutting restraints and load-bearing beams without wasting charge.
"Your salvage card does not make you untouchable," he said, raising the emitter toward the table, "it only gives us a better record when you fail."
Vell had placed the iron worktable beside the hallway for a reason, leaving a loose support pin under its rear leg. The trap needed a person standing in the correct place, so he waited until Dorr moved past the frame.
He kicked the pin with his heel, and the table fell across the hallway. Dorr moved aside before the iron reached him, proving he was Grade 2 and not stupid.
The fall still forced him near the meat hook line, where the disabled collector's heat-lance lay beneath Yenna's table. Vell could not reach it without breaking the read, but Yenna had a chain in her working right hand.
"Left wall," Vell said, keeping the node pinned open, "throw the short chain."
She did not ask why, which let the throw work at all. Her dead left arm stayed folded against her ribs while the right one worked.
The chain crossed beneath the fallen table and caught the heat-lance handle, dragging it toward Vell's boot.
Dorr saw the weapon move and fired his own emitter at Yenna's chain. The beam cut a link, yet the impact drove the loose lance against the broken hook line and turned its muzzle toward the inspector.
Vell trapped the trigger guard with his heel, then pulled the wire he had wrapped beneath the table before the collectors arrived. The lance fired once, not at Dorr, but at the lower beam behind him.
The beam blew apart and sent a sheet of dismantled metal down from the ceiling hooks. Dorr raised his coat to deflect the first edge, though the second strip wrapped around his weapon wrist.
Yenna snapped her remaining chain through the gap beneath the fallen table, catching the strip while it still hung around Dorr's arm. She pulled with every safe fraction of her output, turning his attempt to retreat into a stumble toward the iron table.
Vell guided the node's authority route through the heat-lance's exposed cell, making Dorr's own control signal interfere with the emitter. The weapon discharged against the floor, throwing him sideways beneath the collapsed table frame.
The iron bar struck his shoulder and pinned the sleeve of his coat to the boards. He could have torn free, but the metal strip held his wrist close to the live emitter while Yenna kept her chain tight.
"Record that," Vell said, looking toward Dorr's camera crew, "your inspector used a control signature on a civilian core."
The nearest collector reached for his camera, then looked at the broken stair behind him. The footage had seen the anchor react to Dorr before it saw him try to cut Yenna open.
"You cannot prove what that signal means," Dorr said, fighting the bar with his free hand, "you only proved you can turn a sick woman into a shield."
Yenna laughed once, then winced at the sharp movement of her injured side. She held the chain anyway, refusing to let the pain decide whether Dorr got his arm back.
"I chose this table," Yenna said, pulling the chain another inch, "you chose to come upstairs."
The node bucked in Vell's hands as Dorr's mana struck it through the collapsed metal. He kept the lock open while the Forge traced a second key route, one that led out through the parasite core instead of further into Yenna.
The camera crew had kept their lenses trained on Dorr because he carried the badge. That habit turned against him when the forged lock pulsed every time he drew close to Yenna's exposed core.
One cameraman lowered his recorder to check the image feed more carefully. Vell saw doubt on the man's face, then made sure Dorr saw it too before moving the Forge read again.
"Tell them why the anchor answers you," Vell said, holding the control route open, "you cannot call this a medical failure once they see the command link."
"You do not know what you are touching," Dorr said, pressing his free hand against the iron bar, "the Directorate built that measure after uncontrolled cores killed people."
"Then you admit it was built," Yenna said, tightening the chain beneath the fallen table, "say whose core you used to test the measure."
Dorr did not answer, and the refusal landed harder than another denial would have done. His crew had arrived to record a reckless scavenger; they were now filming an inspector explaining why a woman should accept control.
[Combat adaptation confirmed: Grade 2 command route countered.]
[Vell Ardan | Temper: 24% -> 63%.]
The change tightened Vell's control over the read, which Dorr noticed before his pinned hand moved toward the emitter's overload dial.
Vell drew the control route toward the exposed heat cell, making the node recognize Dorr's mana as its instruction source. He needed the lock to show itself once more before the procedure could sever it.
The black thread rose inside the shared read, reaching toward Dorr's pinned wrist. Yenna gritted her teeth as the anchor tried to obey him, then pulled the chain so the inspector could not tear free.
"You feel it listening," Yenna said, watching his face instead of the procedure, "that is why you came without a warrant."
Dorr twisted the overload dial before the claim could become a clean recording. The heat emitter began cutting through its casing, leaving Vell only a few seconds to choose between the proof and Yenna's core.
The heat cell changed pitch as its casing split, sending a narrow line of fire across the beam behind Yenna's table. Every person in the hallway understood what the weapon would do, because nobody could pretend the building was safe anymore.
One collector ran for the stairs, but the cameraman stayed put with his lens raised. Fear had made him careful, while the recording made him more useful than any of Dorr's armed men.
Vell used the exposed heat cell to trace the command pattern back through the lock. The route showed every choice Dorr had made inside Yenna's core, including the hidden instruction that would close her Grade 2 channels on contact.
"He is cutting the floor," Vell said, keeping the parasite core against the root, "the next decision belongs to us."
Yenna wrapped her chain through the table leg and around Vell's waist in one movement. The line gave him an anchor against the coming fall, although the procedure still kept both of his hands inside the Forge read.
"Keep the lock open," Yenna said, bracing one foot against the wall, "I will make sure you survive the drop."
Dorr saw the chain settle around Vell and realized the collapse would not separate them as he planned. He drove the overload dial another turn, gambling that a broken room would still bury the evidence with both witnesses.
The beam split above them, scattering burning dust across the canvas below. Vell held the control route open while the upper floor began to sag beneath the table.