The handler's name was Yuxing. He volunteered it himself — said it was his name from before, whatever that meant. Pei Jin didn't offer one in return.
Yuxing was useful in a bounded way. Four years on this floor. He knew the handlers, knew the mages' habits, knew which rules were enforced and which were decoration. That made him a useful node, not a partner. Pei Jin made no mistake about the difference.
The scrolls, Yuxing said, were impossible. Sealed with a ward he had no authority to touch. End of that conversation.
But he had something else.
The red-wax jars in the storeroom — a specific batch, he explained, designated for live absorption testing. Restocked the previous month because the prior batch had been exhausted. Where it had gone he didn't know, but he knew the protocol: not injection. The subjects drank it.
"Drank it," Pei Jin said. "And?"
"Most died." Yuxing looked at nothing in particular. "Two didn't. They were taken upstairs. Haven't come down since."
Pei Jin worked through this. "The two who survived — do you remember anything about them?"
"One had been injected more than three times with standard enhancer and hadn't broken," Yuxing said. "The other had a burn. Mage-fluid burn on his arm. Shouldn't have healed on its own. It had — mostly."
Pei Jin thought about the young man in the corner. The mottled scars on his left arm.
"Is there anyone like that in this cell now."
"Your cell, yes. The one against the far wall. Scarred arm." Yuxing paused. "And you. Upstairs flagged 0738 this cycle. Data came back irregular. Not enough to warrant action yet. But you're on the watch list."
That matched what he'd calculated. Watch list meant time. Not much, but some.
"I want one of the red-wax jars," Pei Jin said. "The full jar."
Yuxing looked at him the way people look at something that might be about to do something irreversible. "You know what that batch is for. You know how many died."
"I know."
"What do you want to give me for it."
He had anticipated this. He had no goods, no intelligence that Yuxing didn't already possess, no token or pass. The only currency he held was something Yuxing didn't yet know was his problem.
"The person you wait for at the end of the corridor," Pei Jin said. "Mid-pass, every day. Who is it."
Yuxing's face did something small.
"I'll resolve that problem," Pei Jin said. "You get me the jar."