From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The pink hair bent around Jade's fingertip, and her damaged eye tried to replay Ashaiki's death.

Masabi's hand closed around Ashaiki's neck. Bone broke. Ashaiki struck the ground while white fire took Jade's arms and forced the fatal instant backward.

Jade pressed her eyelid shut. The black restraint wire snapped tight around Denna's ruined key and dragged it against the grille.

Ty caught Jade's wrist before the hair cut into her finger.

"Give me the strand before your eye turns that memory into a door."

"Your ribs are already holding one side open, so you stay behind the bell frame."

Jade took two round gauge covers from Toman's workbench, laid Ashaiki's hair between them, and bound the glass with the wire from her torn coat. The strand stopped touching skin. Her eye kept pressing against the lid, but the pull lost enough strength for Denna's key to fall flat.

The Reaper stepped across the lower platform and set its hook behind Ty's injured ribs.

Jade kicked the shaft away before it settled between the bones. The hook cut a line through the floor and lodged beneath the bell frame. Ty moved behind the frame as ordered, then wrapped his right arm around the support post.

"I appreciate being promoted from luggage to structural damage."

"Keep talking and I will assign you to the drainage crew."

Palla crouched at the buried hinge with Denna's ruined key braced beneath her good knee. The prison wire ran through its handle, crossed the narrow seam, and pulled hard enough to lift her leg whenever the funeral engine passed outside.

The seventh beat vanished. A shout came from the tank car.

JJ leaned from the rear platform as the engine crossed the switch-house windows.

"The graft lost another support beat, and the right pump is chewing its own return hose."

Kegaku lay behind her on the moving pressure bed. His head turned toward the glass in Jade's hands.

"I brought Erebos three strands after the pink-haired woman survived Masabi."

Erebos stood near the tank controls. He watched the hair pass the window and reached for the brake lever.

JJ drove her elbow into his hand and kept her body between Erebos and the controls.

"Touch my engine again and I feed your fingers through the bad pump."

Palla waited until the train cleared the building, then levered Denna's ruined key against the lower keeper notch. The seam opened around the restraint wire, thin enough that the melted teeth scraped both sides.

"The wire carried the key back, so it can carry one prison object toward us."

Denna had climbed to the speaking-tube platform. She held three mouthpieces against her chest while workers shouted from the clinic lifts, Gate Three, and the east drainage room.

"Pull whatever you need before the next circuit. I have patients between floors and six people learning jobs from broken labels."

"Turn the emergency crank backward until the wire starts climbing," Palla said.

"That crank opens the buried line before it moves a lift."

"Backward strips the far bracket without feeding the hinge."

Denna looked at the three speaking tubes, then threw the clinic-lift mouthpiece to Toman.

"Keep both cars level by hand and count every patient before you move either chain."

Toman caught the tube against his chest. His palms had opened again.

"The lift crew has never worked without route marks."

"Then describe the chains until they stop needing paint."

The clinic tube rattled in Toman's grip. A lift operator shouted that the lower car had jammed with four patients inside, one of them tied to a hand pump. Denna took the tube back and ordered the operator to lower the counterweight by chain length rather than floor mark.

Toman watched her listen for each link through the brass mouthpiece.

"Your key is gone, and the marshal will bar this building before sunrise."

"The marshal can stand outside while I empty his lifts."

"Palla intends to take that road away from Sadle."

Denna wound the crank rope around both wrists. "I stay until every patient reaches the street. What leaves afterward is her problem."

Denna took the crank with both hands. Palla wrapped the black wire around its axle while Jade held Ashaiki's hair between the gauge covers and kept her body away from the seam.

The Reaper pulled its hook free of the bell frame. It walked toward Ty, turning the blade until its inner curve faced Jade.

Ty came around the support post with one sickle raised.

"It wants us across from each other before Denna turns anything."

The hook's inner curve faced Jade while its shaft blocked Ty against the post. The wire ran between them. Ashaiki's hair sat in the lamp where the broken neck kept trying to happen. If Denna turned now, the road would receive Ty on one side and Jade's open eye on the other.

She pushed the two glass covers into Toman's route lamp and closed the metal door.

"Turn the crank while I remove the witness it brought."

Denna hauled backward. The axle fought her for half a turn, then tore something loose beyond the seam.

The wire jumped. The Reaper struck at the lamp.

Ty caught the hook with both sickles. His left ribs separated under the strain, but he kept the blade above Jade while she opened the lamp's fuel valve.

Fire filled the small glass chamber. Ashaiki's hair tightened between the gauge covers and burned from both ends. Jade's damaged eye opened against her will.

Ashaiki's neck broke. Jade arrived in white fire. Masabi remembered the kill after the world refused to keep it.

Jade closed her good hand around the lamp door until the strand became ash.

The Reaper abandoned Ty and drove its fingers through the lamp vent. Jade opened the waste catch first. Hot ash fell into the return oil beneath the workbench and broke apart across the moving surface. The white fingers scraped the empty tray while the oil carried the burned hair into three separate drain channels.

The Reaper's hook lost its angle. Ty shoved the blade into the floor, and the white figure fell to one knee beside it.

"Ashaiki survived because I chose to save her," Jade said. "That death buys no second fare through me."

The prison wire still held when Denna turned the crank again. A metal corner appeared through the seam, followed by a strip of black casing and a row of tiny red lights. The object came edgewise and caught against the old hinge.

Palla put her damaged palm behind it. Denna pulled the crank while Jade pressed the ruined rail key deeper into the keeper notch. The casing moved one finger's width, taking skin from Palla's palm and another heartbeat from the pump return.

The funeral engine crossed the window. Inside the tank, the unnamed woman folded around the graft sleeve as black fluid burst across JJ's forearms. Kegaku struck the pressure bed with his heel, forcing the next beat through before the right pump lost its rhythm.

The monitor corner cleared the hinge. Palla caught it against her chest and sat hard on the floor.

It was one tile from a larger monitor wall. The restraint wire had been looped through a bracket on its back. Four screw holes surrounded the bracket, and the number four had been scratched beside the power socket.

Erebos saw it when the funeral engine returned. His shadow crossed the gap between cars and reached the switch-house window before the rest of him moved.

Kieran brought the repaired flute across his wrist like a club.

"You guarded that room harder than you guarded Kegaku's life."

Erebos pulled his hand back. The engine carried him beyond the window while Kieran kept the flute between him and the brake lever.

The tile flickered in Palla's hand on Kegaku's sixth beat. On the seventh, the image vanished and the tank pump struck its housing hard enough to shake dust from the switch-house ceiling.

Jade turned the tile toward herself while Palla wrapped her bleeding palm around the back bracket.

The shelter laundry corridor appeared in broken squares. Waddell moved cots away from the old intake vent while Caelin's younger aide wrote names on strips of tape and fixed them to each bedframe. Neither could see Jade.

The image died. Kegaku's next six beats brought it back.

Waddell had stopped beside the vent. He reached between two bent slats and pulled until a black wire slid out over his knuckles.

It matched the restraint wire tied to Denna's key.

Jade lifted the monitor tile while Palla held the burned key against the keeper notch.

"Waddell has the other end inside the shelter."

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