From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The dead body moved again when Ty rewound the footage.

He did it three times.

The first time, everyone watched the sheet.

The second time, everyone watched Jade.

The third time, Heissman made them watch the nurse.

"There," he said, pointing with the corner of the chain-of-custody page. "Her right hand."

The nurse on the grainy footage walked beside the gurney with one hand on the rail and the other near the sheet. When the covered hand twitched toward Jade, the nurse reacted before the guard did. Her fingers pressed down on the sheet as if she had expected movement.

JJ leaned close enough to fog the monitor. "She knew."

"She anticipated," Heissman said. "Knowledge would require testimony, which we do not yet have."

"Do you ever get tired of being like this?"

"Frequently. It has not improved me."

Ty kept his eyes on the screen.

Jade appeared at the end of the hall again. Mouth open around his name. One shoe untied. Rage and grief in the same body. The body under the sheet moved toward her, not enough to live, not enough to speak, only enough to refuse the file by a finger-width.

The nurse pushed the sheet down.

Ty paused the frame.

"Who is she?"

Omina opened the file and checked the intake sheet. "Nurse initials only. R. Vale."

JJ looked up quickly. "Vale?"

"Common enough," Heissman said, though he looked less dismissive than the words sounded.

Ty did not chase it. Names could become traps. Erebos had built half a war out of names that felt important.

"Find her later."

Yun-Jin glanced at him. "Later?"

"Zunoder is here now."

The basement lights flickered red again.

Above them, the chapel crowd grew louder through the pipes. It came down as a dull human pressure rather than clear sound: shoes shifting, prayers overlapping, someone calling the face brave, someone else yelling that the hospital owed him entry.

JJ touched her wrist panel. "Jade's statement is up."

She turned the panel so they could see the official wording.

INCOMPLETE RECORD.

UNVERIFIED CLAIMANT.

FACE USER.

NAMED WITNESS.

Ty read it once and felt something in his ribs settle.

Jade had not made it pretty.

That meant she was still herself.

The computer monitor flashed.

PUBLIC LANGUAGE DETECTED.

CLAIM CORRECTION RESTRICTED.

RETURNED BODY CLAIM MUST PROVIDE WITNESS.

JJ read the prompt twice. "Witness is singular."

Heissman looked offended by the grammar. "That is either imprecision or predation."

"Pick the worse one."

"Predation. Imprecision would be less thematically committed."

Omina tapped the desk with one cuff. "It only needs one person if that person confirms the right wording."

Ty watched the monitor. "Then Jade will make the wording wrong for him."

JJ looked at him. "You sound sure."

"I know her."

The simple answer hurt without softening the room. The next sound from the pipes felt closer.

Omina's cuffs smoked. "That buys time."

"Minutes," Heissman said. "Possibly seconds if the route has discovered a charismatic idiot in the chapel."

Yun-Jin shifted toward the hall.

The floor tiles beyond the records cage had begun to lift, one by one, as if fingers pressed from underneath. Paper hands slid through the gaps, hospital-white this time, each wearing a patient wristband.

JJ backed away. "Those are new."

"Same route," Ty said.

"I did not say I wanted a taxonomy."

The first hand slapped against the cage.

The wristband on it read:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE

PROPERTY HOLD

Omina moved before Ty did. She lifted both wrists, and the last of her field authority ran bright through the cuffs.

"Record objection," she said. "No property transfer without signed removal log."

The hands froze.

Heissman looked almost proud. "You are becoming delightfully insufferable."

Omina did not blink. "You make it easy to practice."

Yun-Jin cut the first hand at the wrist. It dissolved into paper strips and hospital dust.

More hands came through.

Ty grabbed the file and the hospital tag. "Keep them off the monitor."

JJ stepped beside him, not behind him. Her wrist panel glowed rich pink.

"If this thing tries to classify you as property again, I am suing a basement."

"Can you?"

"I can make paperwork suffer."

"Good."

He pressed play on the footage.

The clip moved past the finger twitch. The gurney rolled toward a double door marked MORGUE ACCESS. Jade fought the guard. Another person entered the frame from the side hall.

The person was only a shadow at first.

Tall. Coat collar up. Hair or hood too dark for the camera. He never looked directly at Jade, the nurses, or the body. He walked like someone who did not need permission from cameras.

Ty felt the missing finger pulse.

JJ saw his hand tighten. "Erebos?"

The word made the basement colder.

Heissman squinted at the screen. "The posture is arrogant enough, but arrogance is a sadly crowded category."

Omina's voice hardened. "Can we enhance it?"

"This is a hospital security feed from years ago, not a spy opera," Heissman said. "We can enlarge the blur and feel professionally disappointed."

The shadow passed a wall clock.

At the exact second it crossed behind the gurney, the timestamp jumped.

22:59 became 23:07.

Eight minutes vanished.

Yun-Jin moved closer to the monitor. "Can a hospital camera lose exactly eight minutes by accident?"

"Yes," Heissman said. "The same way a knife can accidentally enter a man's back if a murderer trips with conviction."

JJ made a strained sound that almost became a laugh.

Omina wrote the time jump on the intake folder. Her handwriting was sharp enough to look like a threat.

"Eight minutes is a route," she said.

Ty looked at her.

"Enough time to move a body, remove evidence, and return the hall to a version that looks dull."

He hated how much sense that made.

JJ tapped the frozen timestamp. "If Rose Vale was sent upstairs before the eight minutes, she can be honest and still useless for the part he needs."

"Not useless," Heissman said. "Limited. Limitations are how honest testimony survives predators."

Ty looked at the blank removal line again.

Rose could prove the body moved.

She could not prove where it went.

That gap was where Zunoder wanted to stand.

The gurney was no longer in the hall.

Jade was on the floor.

The guard stood over her with one hand out, not touching her, afraid to.

The nurse R. Vale was gone.

The shadow was gone.

The file drawer under the desk opened by itself.

Inside sat a sealed evidence sleeve.

Ty picked it up.

It contained a small strip of medical tape with dried blood on one end and a handwritten note.

RIGHT INDEX RESPONSE OBSERVED.

REMOVAL AUTHORIZED BY EXTERNAL ORDER.

The signature line had been cut away.

Yun-Jin's blade shook in her hand. "Someone cut the signature from the evidence."

"No," Omina said. "Someone cut it out because the rest of the page still mattered."

JJ looked at Ty. "External order from who?"

The missing finger pointed at the monitor.

Ty wanted to chase the shadow.

He wanted it badly enough that blue fire crawled over both arms. If Erebos had stood in that hall while Jade broke on the floor, if he had watched the body move and let someone take the finger, then every road since had teeth marks older than Ty knew.

The route wanted that anger.

He could feel it opening under his feet.

Yun-Jin noticed too. "Ty."

He closed his fist.

"Later."

JJ stared at him. "You are actually going to leave an Erebos clue alone?"

"No."

"That sounds like leaving it alone."

"I am leaving it alive."

He pressed the evidence sleeve against the chain-of-custody page.

The blank line warmed.

Words appeared, burned into the paper without flame.

REMOVED ITEM: RIGHT INDEX FINGER RESPONSE SAMPLE.

AUTHORITY: EXTERNAL ORDER.

WITNESS REQUIRED.

The hospital record resisted the correction. The letters flickered. The word AUTHORITY tried to erase itself.

Omina slammed her cuffed wrists onto the desk.

"Recorded under former command authority."

The word stayed.

The paper hands screamed without mouths.

Yun-Jin cut two more at the cage. JJ threw a pink light across the floor, pinning wristbands down long enough for Ty to take the page.

Heissman grabbed the old tape recorder from the archive shelf. "We now have three useful facts. The body moved after death. The right index response was observed. An external order removed or authorized removal of evidence."

"Four," Ty said.

Heissman looked at him.

Ty stared at the frozen frame where Jade was on the floor and the missing eight minutes sat like a wound in the timestamp.

"Jade was there before they finished hiding me."

The chapel noise above them changed.

It became applause.

JJ's panel flashed with a public feed.

Zunoder stood at Mercy General's chapel entrance beside a crying woman in a nurse's jacket. He held her hand gently, face lowered in practiced pain.

The caption printed her words.

NURSE: I saw him that night.

Zunoder looked into the camera.

"Here is my witness."

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