The borrowed hand caught the brace before she could get her knee over its wrist. Teeth in the palm scraped iron. Her elbow followed, dragging her across the tank until her cheek struck the glass.
Outside, Omina stamped on Erebos’s reaching hand. Green bars closed around his forearm, and Yun-Jin pulled the violet thread tight enough to lift his shoulder from the rail. The brass control sprang back. Beneath the woman’s feet, something clicked into place and kept pulling.
She wedged her heel against the lower pump. Her new jacket held, but the wrist seam began leaking into the current again. Through the glass she could see JJ looking from her arm to the handle that needed holding down.
That look frightened her more than the brace. JJ was working out what she could afford to break.
The woman pushed her living hand through the service sleeve and caught JJ’s coat. With two fingers still bent from pressure damage, a buttonhole was easier to catch than the collar. She hooked them through it and pulled until JJ leaned close to the opening.
"Keep both pumps running. Take the whole tank off this train."
JJ’s mouth moved against the sleeve. "The pumps sit on a plate cast into the engine. I can’t lift you without taking that plate."
The woman looked past her toward the station. Dry stone lay beyond the train’s step. There were wheels there, too, beneath a trolley loaded with clamps. She pointed until the worker holding a keg hook followed her finger, then jabbed toward the space under the pumps.
JJ understood first. She turned her head and shouted for the trolley while keeping the copper braid against its contact. The woman with the hook began throwing clamps onto the platform. A rifleman caught her shoulder before she could bring the empty trolley across the marked buffer.
Vey approached with his rifle lowered, studying the brace that had climbed through the floor into her tank sleeve.
"That thing stays behind my line until we know what it’s fastened to."
She wanted him closer. She wanted him to put his fingers where hers were and explain the line again. The graft pulled her elbow another inch, and she kicked the tank wall hard enough to hurt her heel.
JJ looked at Vey. "Bring your line around the trolley, then. She needs both pumps, and we need somewhere to put them."
He glanced along the platform. Men were already backing away from the train, pulling a hose reel behind them. Vey sent one to the clinic and another to move the shields. Only then did he wave the trolley through.
At the step, its small front wheels dropped into the gap and jammed beneath the edge.
From farther down the car, Zunoder called for a loading board. Someone swore at him. He came into view carrying the board himself, one end dragging, and shoved it under the trolley wheels while the hook caught its front rail. The tank woman had time to notice his sleeve caught beneath the board before the pain in her wrist spread through her shoulder.
The brace was drawing her graft down toward the floor. If her elbow reached the rim of the sleeve, the next pull would fold it backward.
She braced her forehead against the glass and tried to unhook the teeth with her good hand. One came free. Before she could reach the next, the loose tooth caught again farther down the iron.
Across the car, Kegaku twisted against his bed straps. His remaining hand was clamped between his knees. He watched her arm with an expression she disliked almost as much as JJ’s earlier one.
"Keep watching me. I’ll hold my hand shut while you move yours."
She shook her head. He clenched harder anyway, his knuckles whitening, and the graft stayed exactly where it was. The next tug came from below her feet while his hand remained closed.
Kieran crouched beside him with the flute case pinned beneath her knee. She moved his fingers out from between his legs before he crushed them, then put his open hand on the bed where the woman could see it.
The woman reached through the service sleeve again. This time she pointed down the outside of the tank, past the pump jacket to the cuff holding the graft’s sleeve against the frame. JJ followed her finger, bent, and vanished below the rim.
A wrench touched the cuff. The pressure changed by so little she almost missed it.
She tapped the glass with her heel. JJ turned the wrench again.
The cuff loosened. Fluid pushed into the sleeve, lifting it away from the teeth. Her arm was still caught, but she could roll her shoulder now. She pulled her knee up against her chest and squeezed it between the graft and the wall.
"Leave that much room. I can turn it if you leave that much."
JJ kept the wrench in place. Beneath them, the trolley scraped along the board. Omina set a green bar under the pump plate and raised it until both handles shifted against JJ’s arms.
The left hose flattened.
The woman drove her good hand under it before the fold closed. Pressure crushed her fingers against the tank rim. Her chest tightened, then released when JJ lowered the handle. She kept her hand there, too frightened of the next stroke to move it.
Omina lowered the bar a fraction. The trolley wheels settled under the plate. Through the water, the woman watched JJ pass the braid from one hand to the other and wipe her useless thumb on her trousers.
"I’ll keep the handles level. You tell me if either hose pulls."
The woman nodded against the glass. There was no spare room for anything she wanted to say about that thumb.
Two engineers crawled beside the trolley with a screw jack. Each turn pressed its wooden block harder beneath the plate until the metal stopped resting on Omina’s bar. One engineer reached for his saw, then looked up at the woman before touching the frame.
She pointed to the strip of iron running beside her caught wrist. Cut there and the brace would go with her. She spread her hand over the opposite edge instead, where the plate met the engine.
He changed sides.
The saw shook her teeth. She shut her eyes against the vibration, opened them again, and watched the cut through the tank floor. JJ was bent over the other pump, with its housing blocking her view. Omina was holding the bar with one hand and Erebos with the other; Yun-Jin stood against the rail, keeping the violet restraint clear of the engineers.
At the second corner, the brace tightened. Her knee slipped from between her arm and the glass. She caught the graft’s thumb with her living fingers and bent it across its own palm.
Black fluid ran out of her wrist seam.
She had to keep bending. The first tooth lifted. She drove that gap against the sleeve cuff before it could close, using the loose metal to hold it open. JJ saw what she was doing and shoved the wrench deeper beneath the cuff.
The next tooth came free against the wrench. The last scraped along the brace as she twisted her whole body away.
Her graft struck her stomach. She folded over it and held it there with both knees.
Outside the tank, the empty brace punched through the space her arm had occupied. It struck the cuff, broke the wrench, and buried itself in the floor.
One engineer dropped flat. The other pulled the saw out before its blade bent. With the brace pinned through the boards, Omina drove her green bar down beside it and held the shaft against the car.
"Finish the far corner. Keep your hands above the cut when it falls."
The woman pressed her shoulder against the tank wall to keep her knees closed. Her arm wanted to open again. She watched the engineer saw the last corner, counting nothing, waiting for JJ to look up.
The plate dropped onto the jack with a noise she felt through her spine. Both hoses stayed round. JJ caught the trolley’s near rail, and the woman with the hook pulled from the platform while Zunoder held the loading board down with his boot.
Water washed over the rim as the tank rolled. The woman tasted it and coughed against the glass. When she lifted her shoulder, the engine’s tug stayed behind in the car.
She kept the graft trapped anyway.
The trolley reached stone. Vey’s men shifted their shields around it, leaving the train and Erebos on the other side. JJ came with her, walking backward, hands occupied with the pumps. Her coat caught on the broken step, and she tore it free without looking.
Under the tank, the severed plate tilted against the trolley bed. Its exposed copper contact touched a brass rail along the platform.
A pink lamp lit above the western service door.
JJ pulled the contact away. The lamp stayed on. From somewhere behind that door came the squeak of cabinet wheels, followed by three knocks.
The woman found JJ’s buttonhole again and held on.