From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Orin Vale saw the covered body sit up and wrapped both arms around the clinic cart's brake. The body pulled the other way, one bare foot striking the stones between the food stalls before the second found enough purchase to drag Orin and the cart toward the freight line.

Denna recognized the porter's green sleeves from the locomotive cab.

"That man carried my sister through her fever last winter."

She reached across Palla for the route brake. Palla caught her forearm while the funeral engine rolled past the first clinic branch.

"Brake now and the returns close behind us. The tank loses both pumps."

"Orin dies first. I know which body I can reach."

Denna drove her elbow into Palla's jaw and reached again. Jade trapped Denna's wrist against the control frame before the fight cost them the throttle.

"Show me a way down that keeps this engine moving."

Denna pointed toward a maintenance cradle folded beneath the cab window. Jade released her, and Denna kicked the cradle latch, clipped its cable around her belt, then stepped through the open window while Jade took the second cable and Palla kept the locomotive below yard speed.

The cradle dropped them beside the clinic cart, where Orin's boots slid across spilled flour as the dead man dragged him closer to the rail.

Denna landed behind the cart and locked both wheels with her cutter. Jade caught the dead man's wrist before his next pull tore Orin over the handle; the hand felt warm from the afternoon stones, and its fingers kept working against hers with the patient strength of someone repeating a familiar task.

"Senn, release the porter and tell us what you need."

Orin stared at Denna as though she had struck him.

"He died before sunrise with half his chest crushed."

Senn turned his head toward Orin. Gray dust covered his beard. One cheek still carried the square imprint of the clinic sheet.

"Orin left my boots beside the washing furnace again."

His voice scraped from a throat packed for burial. Orin's grip loosened around the brake.

"You complained about those boots every week you owned them."

"The left one pinched me until noon. It earned the complaints."

Senn looked down at his bare feet. The square pressure mark from a burial strap crossed each ankle.

"My last three weeks of clinic pay remain inside the right heel."

Orin closed his eyes and swore into the cart handle. Denna knew that sound. Sadle clinics paid porters after each burial cycle, which allowed the office to call every missing payment an unfinished shift.

"The burial clerk took both boots before sealing the transfer."

"Did the clerk know you kept your wages inside them?"

"Every porter knows because the clinic charges for safe boxes."

Senn bent toward his right ankle and found bare skin again, but the pull from the rail brought him upright before he finished searching. Orin caught the back of Senn's shirt this time. His hands shook against the cloth, but he held on.

"I will find the boots after we learn who stole your body."

Senn studied Orin's face. His mouth worked twice before the words arrived.

"Find my pay first because my daughter already buried me."

Senn released Orin and stepped toward the freight rail, his right hand closing around the air beside his hip in search of a tool that belonged there. The Reaper dropped from the funeral engine behind him and swept its hook toward the loose seam between Senn's shoulders. Jade shoved Senn aside. The blade opened her coat across the back without reaching skin.

Ty came off the second funeral car with both sickles forward. He caught the shaft near the blade and planted his feet between the Reaper and Jade.

"Take the hook out of him. He still owes Orin an answer."

The Reaper twisted its weapon. Ty's heels carved two lines through the flour while Jade pulled Senn behind the clinic cart, and Denna brought her cutter down across the scythe shaft. Its iron jaws held for one breath before white frost split the lower handle.

"That thing keeps finding you before the warnings reach anyone else."

"It follows Jade. I stay close enough to disappoint it."

Ty forced the damaged hook toward the stones. The Reaper pulled away from all three of them and paced beside the moving funeral cars, waiting for a cheaper angle.

Senn resumed walking toward the rail. Jade held his shirt, felt something hard beneath the cloth near his breastbone, and tore the burial seam open. A brass fitting had been driven through the crushed ribs and closed with a square municipal key.

Denna touched the stamped face with two fingers.

"Clinic property uses blue fittings, while city reserve uses brass."

Orin moved close enough to inspect the mark and kept one hand twisted in Senn's shirt.

"The burial clerk installed that after I signed the transfer."

"Which clerk handled the body before the cart reached you?"

"A city man took the form and wore Marshal red."

The fitting pulled beneath Jade's hand when Kegaku's next heartbeat traveled along the rail. Senn turned toward the freight yard and raised his empty hand as though answering a work bell while Palla leaned from the cab window and the engine continued beside them.

"That fitting carries an order beyond Kegaku's waking pulse."

"Can you remove it without tearing Senn apart again?"

"Bring him aboard before the next junction chooses for him."

Denna lowered the maintenance cradle. Orin climbed onto it with Senn while Jade and Ty held the Reaper away from the cable, leaving Denna beside the track to open a street control box with her cutter key.

The city diagram inside showed six clinic branches feeding Switch House Nine, and red lamps had begun lighting from the lower morgue toward the central wards. Denna pulled the first clinic lever. It refused her full weight.

"Someone locked the branches from the switch house."

Jade caught the last cradle line as the locomotive drew ahead.

"Come aboard and take us directly to whoever holds that lock."

"Switch Nine stands two miles ahead beside the reserve ward."

"Two miles. Get me there before another clinic opens itself."

Denna climbed while Jade hauled the line. The Reaper struck at Jade's exposed side, and Ty took the blow across his left ribs. Its hook slipped between two bones and lifted him from the stones.

Jade released Denna's cable with one hand and caught Ty's forearm. With his weight hanging below the cradle, its frame drove hard against her shoulder, and the damaged eye tightened until a white line crossed her sight. She held Ty while Denna used the rising cable to swing both boots into the Reaper's chest.

The hook tore free of Ty's ribs. He caught the cradle rail, and Denna climbed over him into the cab.

"Your dead fiance catches blades like it is a greeting."

Jade pulled Ty beside her as the cradle rose.

"He saves the polite version until people stop trying to kill us."

Inside the rear platform, Kegaku strained against the pressure-bed straps while Senn approached him. The brass fitting in Senn's chest clicked with every beat Kegaku supplied.

"I can feel six clinic branches pulling through that metal."

JJ pressed both hands around the torn graft wrist inside the tank's access sleeve. Black fluid worked between her fingers whenever the pumps changed speed.

"The graft survives another hard turn if everyone stops volunteering it."

Denna shifted the freight points toward Switch House Nine while Palla watched the city route map rotate beneath the controls.

"The reserve ward never appeared on keeper maps before my sentence."

"Sadle closed the condemned reserve nineteen years ago."

Palla studied the brass fitting through the rear window.

"Sadle changed the signs nineteen years ago, which costs less."

The locomotive entered the next yard. Clinic workers crowded behind locked gates while covered carts struck their doors from the inside. Some bodies kicked. Others called names through their sheets. One sat on the stones and refused every pull from the brass fitting in his chest, and their separate voices followed the train toward Switch House Nine.

Denna expected a freight tower. The building ahead carried clinic-white walls and the city marshal's red seal above its doors, with every window open and a living clerk leaning from the highest one as he hauled a bell rope with both hands.

Fresh white paint failed to hide the word RESERVE cut into the iron plate beneath him.

Senn raised his empty hand when the bell rang. Palla tore the brass fitting from his chest before the hidden order could finish pulling him upright, but the fitting kept clicking in her damaged palm.

"Kegaku woke the bodies, but someone living called them to work."

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