The fire stayed inside the wall for three breaths, which made it worse.
Open flame would have been honest. The seams behind the receiver glowed in clean rows, each one thin enough to pretend control still existed. Heat rolled out anyway and crawled across the bridge rail, the tray, the glass case, and Ty's torn bandage.
Blue kept the dead fuse pinned in Daemon's cut.
"The fire line is taking the wrong path, but it is feeding on pressure," she said.
JJ held the case frame and watched the frost vanish from the glass.
"I need that sentence to end somewhere survivable," she said.
"Then we keep the fire moving away from the board and bodies."
The wall thumped again behind the receiver plates.
The next row of seams opened above the first. Orange light ran through them in a straight band, then bent toward the tray. The board warmed under the service pin. The two sickles opened wider, their hooked tips following the heat lines as if they expected the correction path to turn back.
