T-036 Mending Jar

Threshold Institute · Case file T-036

Number

T-036 in the catalogue

Kind

Object

Class

Class I: harmless while it is left alone

Found

Year 35, month 4, day 19

Where found

The well (T-024), on a flat stone at the edge of its ring, forty paces from the rim

Status

Contained

Now

At the lab and in the rift

Part

Part III: Going through (the objects)

Containment procedures

The Mending Jar is held stoppered, on a shelf in a sealed object cell. It is unstoppered only for a wound that would otherwise kill, on the leave of the head of research, with a medic present. Whoever is treated with it is kept in the infirmary for three days after and is given the treatment for poisoning. Its uses are logged. Since its third use the jar is dry, and it is kept so; no one is to fill it.

Description

A stoppered jar of thick green glass holding a green paste, about the size of a fist. It never seems to empty. Spread on a wound, the paste closes every open wound on the body within seconds, cuts, bites and bullet wounds alike, and leaves no scar. After its third use the jar is dry.

The cost is in the blood. Everyone treated with it showed poisoning afterwards, with the cough, the sweat and the shaking the infirmary later learnt to know from bad air (see T-047), and worse for each use on the same body.

Discovery

No team had set the jar on the stone; the well had been visited twice since the surveyor was lost to it (T-024), and the stone had been bare both times. Rehn lifted it with a pole from outside the ring. On the line home surveyor Mats Ekholm tore his forearm open on the wire at the shimmer, and Rehn spread the paste on it to stop the bleeding before he could think better of it. The wound closed while they watched. By the gate Ekholm was coughing. The finding was the first sign the teams had that something in the rift was leaving things for them to take, and Okafor wrote it into her training notes as a warning: a gift found on a run is to be treated as bait until it is proven otherwise. The rule was kept for every object after it, and it is the reason the coin (T-040) was never knowingly taken.

Addenda

Addendum T-036-A

Medical log, Dr. H. Ek, Year 35, month 4, days 20 to 24

Surveyor M. Ekholm. Forearm: closed, no scar, no sign that it was ever cut. Cough, sweat and shaking from the first evening, a fever on the second day. Blood: a poison I cannot name. Treated as for poisoning; recovered on the fifth day.

Addendum T-036-B

Use log

Second use, Year 35, month 11, day 2: a guard's bitten hand and the gash in his thigh closed together, under one spreading. Poisoning as before. Third use, Year 38, month 6, day 14: a surveyor shot through the shoulder on a run, who would not have lived to the gate. She lived, and was a month in the infirmary for the poison. The jar was dry after it. Rehn's note in the margin: it never seemed to empty, and then it was empty. I would like to know who fills it, and I would not like to meet them.

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In the file

• People: Tomas Rehn, Mara Okafor, Dr Hanna Ek and Mats Ekholm.
• Places: The cells and The land beyond the rift.

In the game

The note you find in the game:

Year 35, month 4, day 19. Found at the well, on a flat stone at the edge of its ring, where no team had set it; the stone had been bare on both visits since the surveyor was lost there. Tomas Rehn lifted it with a pole from outside the ring and on the line home spread it on the surveyor Mats Ekholm's torn forearm: the wound closed while they watched, and by the gate Ekholm was coughing.

A stoppered jar of green paste that never seems to empty, and then, after its third use, is dry. Spread on a wound, it closes every open wound on the body within seconds. Every subject treated with it showed raised toxicity afterwards.

Held in a sealed cell, stoppered; since it, every gift found on a run is treated as bait until it is proven otherwise. Status: contained.

Today it is found at the lab and in the rift.

It is an item you can carry: Mending Jar.