From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The bell rope came down again as the funeral engine entered Switch Nine yard.

Denna saw Toman Rell's hands above the window ledge, both palms split from a rope he had pulled too many times. His clerk coat had lost its top button. He wore the same crooked spectacles he used whenever she argued a freight fine at his desk.

He planted one boot against the wall and hauled for another stroke.

"Toman, leave that rope before I cut the tower under you."

His head jerked toward the engine. The relief on his face lasted until he saw Palla beside the controls and Senn standing on the rear platform with his burial shirt open.

"Get that condemned train off my line. Eleven workers are trapped below Gate Three."

The bell struck. Senn's empty hand rose beside his head, and three covered bodies behind the clinic gate began dragging their carts toward the switch house.

Denna reached for the brake lever. Palla slapped her hand away.

"Close the returns here and the tank loses both pumps."

"Then keep driving while I remove the man attached to the problem."

Jade had already clipped herself to the maintenance cradle. Ty stepped in behind her and caught the frame with his right hand, leaving the left pressed across the gap the Reaper had opened in his ribs.

"You stay aboard because your bones are trying to leave without you," Jade said.

"They have been independent since the day we met."

He climbed into the cradle before she could use the cable to tie him down. Denna joined them, kicked the release, and dropped toward the switch-house wall while the locomotive rolled beneath Toman's window.

The Reaper kept pace on the clinic roofs. Its damaged hook scratched a white line through every gutter it crossed.

Denna swung the cradle toward a narrow iron door below the bell room. She had used that access twice during winter freezes, when Toman preferred sending complaints down the ladder to sending his own boots.

Her cutter key turned the lock. The three of them spilled into a room packed with speaking tubes, route handles, and brass wheels that should have been painted freight blue.

Toman stood on the upper platform with the bell rope wrapped around his forearms. A red marshal seal covered the release box beside him. Below his boots, a gauge needle trembled close to the empty mark.

A speaking tube barked with a man's voice.

"Gate Three lost the west chain. Water has reached the second stair."

Toman leaned toward the mouthpiece without loosening the rope.

"Brace the inner wheel. Reserve crews are moving toward you now."

Denna looked through the floor grille. Six brass route lines left the bell housing and divided beneath the clinic labels. Each stroke sent a small hammer down every line.

"Those are bodies from the clinic wards, not reserve crews."

"They took municipal burial, and the contract includes emergency service after death."

Toman gave her the burial clause number without looking away from the gauge. Blood had soaked through the rope around his right palm.

"How many contracts did you watch them sign themselves?"

"I have eleven breathing workers under this floor. Bring me a cleaner answer after they are out."

He pulled. Denna caught the rope before the bell completed its swing, and the strain lifted both of them onto their toes.

Jade climbed the platform and locked an arm around the rope above Toman's hands. Ty moved below them, following the brass lines toward the clinic branches.

The Reaper's hook punched through the open window and caught Ty between the same two ribs.

His left arm folded. The brass wheel in front of him took his weight before he struck the floor, and every route line jumped under his hand.

Jade released the rope and went over the platform rail. Toman lunged to finish the bell stroke. Denna drove her cutter through the rope below his grip, leaving him with a useless length wrapped around both arms.

The bell stopped halfway through its swing. Ty caught the Reaper's shaft with one sickle while Jade pushed the hook back through his ribs. The bone around the wound had chipped into short white teeth. He ground the sickle handle against the shaft until the Reaper withdrew to the window ledge.

"It keeps choosing the hole it already paid for," Ty said.

"Then stop offering it the same side of your body."

Jade tore a strip from the back of her opened coat and bound it around his ribs, pulling the bones close enough that his left arm worked again.

Toman threw the cut rope aside and grabbed the sealed release box.

"The west chain is gone. Those workers cannot hold the wheel alone."

The speaking tube carried coughing, then the scrape of several boots over stone. Someone below counted nine names and started again when no one answered the tenth.

Denna set her cutter jaws around the marshal seal.

Toman stepped between her and the box with one hand braced against the falling gauge.

"Break that seal and your rail key burns before sunrise."

"Keep ringing and Orin spends tomorrow collecting friends from the street."

"Orin is above water, which makes him easier to save."

Toman had once stood on a wrecked grain car and heard Denna order three men past a crushed brakeman because a child was screaming beneath the next axle. He had climbed past the brakeman with his face turned away. Now he looked at Denna's cutter and kept both feet planted.

She squeezed the cutter handles. The red seal split through the marshal's stamped face, and the two halves struck Toman's shoes.

His fist caught her across the mouth. Denna tasted blood and kept turning the exposed release wheel until the six clinic hammers lifted away from their brass lines.

The pull went out of Senn first. Through the window, he lowered his raised hand and wiped the palm against his burial shirt.

Two bodies behind the clinic gate kept walking from the force of their last steps. Another sat beside its cart. A woman in a burial sheet tore the brass fitting from her own shoulder and threw it through the gate bars.

The lower gauge dropped another mark. Toman looked from it to the clinic lines, and Denna shoved the speaking-tube selector into his chest.

"Ask them with your own voice, and be ready when some refuse."

"They will refuse while eleven people drown beneath us."

"Then you finally learn what your emergency plan was worth."

Orin climbed through the maintenance door with Senn behind him. Palla followed, carrying the removed brass fitting in her damaged palm.

Senn stopped in front of Toman and blocked his reach to the release wheel.

"Your burial clerk stole my boots and three weeks of pay."

Toman looked from Senn's crushed chest to the clinic route lines. He reached for the release wheel again. Denna rested her cutter against his wrist.

"Record what he said before you ask his body for labor."

"Gate Three may fail while I open a wage complaint."

"Then write faster than you usually do at my freight desk."

Toman pulled the duty ledger from beneath the bell controls. His hands left blood on the page while he wrote Senn's name, the missing wages, the boots, and Orin's witness mark. Senn watched every word.

"My daughter receives the pay, and Orin finds both boots."

"I recorded both conditions under the marshal emergency account."

Senn turned toward the clinic speaking tube while Orin watched from the maintenance door.

"Tell the others what failed and let them answer for themselves."

Toman swallowed, opened all six clinic lines, and leaned close enough that his spectacles touched the brass mouthpiece.

"Lower Gate Three needs hands on the inner wheel. Eleven living workers are trapped below it. You may refuse, and the city will record that refusal."

The people below coughed through the open tube. A clinic cart wheel squealed on the first branch before anyone answered.

Senn took the first route handle. A dead nurse at Clinic Two answered because her brother worked lower gates. Three porters refused. A man on the fifth branch wanted his burial debt removed from his wife's account before he touched another city wheel, and Toman had to read the cancellation back twice before the man believed him. Denna moved each volunteer's line by hand.

Kegaku's next heartbeat reached the freight rail. The volunteers moved. The porters who had refused remained beside their carts, even when the loose brass fittings jumped against their burial clothes.

The gauge stopped falling after the sixth volunteer reached Gate Three. At nine, the needle climbed above the empty mark. The speaking tube filled with boots, water, and a woman below shouting that the inner wheel had begun to turn.

Toman counted all eleven workers when they reached the upper stair.

Palla stayed beside the lower gauge while Toman counted the rescued workers. She pressed Senn's loose fitting against its pipe and frowned when the clicking moved away from the flood line.

"The return is pulling beneath the gate, not toward the river."

Denna wiped her mouth and knelt beside her. The pipe entered the floor through an iron collar marked with an old cell number.

Palla scraped away the white paint. Four hinge bolts sat inside the collar, blackened along one edge where a rectangle of wall had been torn free. She measured the spacing with two fingers, then checked the old break in her damaged palm against the lowest bolt.

"That hinge broke this hand before Erebos came."

Ty looked down through the grille. Far below the floodworks, a dry rail descended past the waterline and ended against a black seam in the earth. A strip of stone beside it had been sheared smooth, the same width as the cell wall Erebos kept outside time.

He pressed two fingers between his open ribs, remembering the cold that had reached him through that stolen door.

"Erebos stole this wall when he took Kegaku."

The volunteers forced Gate Three into place. Water drained from the second stair, but the lower needle kept rising as something beneath Sadle pulled on the old cell bolts.

Denna gripped the floor grille and looked across at Palla.

"Where does a buried rail like that lead?"

Palla closed her damaged hand around Senn's fitting.

"His prison. That return line ends at the door he stole."

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