From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The four fingers under the desk bent around its steel foot.

Jade stepped on them before they could reach Palla. Nails and knuckles pushed against her sole, although nothing joined them at the wrist; white bone dust pressed up through the floor crack whenever they pulled.

The two pink hairs dragged across Jade's palm in opposite directions. One pointed toward the gray glove station. The other slipped between the desk and the human-world wall.

Palla drove Denna's ruined key into the floor crack. Its burned teeth caught two fingers and left the other pair scraping for room.

"Hold them down while I find what keeps feeding bone into that hole."

"Find it before my boot becomes part of the equipment."

Behind them, the Reaper heaved against the hinge closed around its waist. Ty had wrapped its chain twice around his forearm and once around the missing desk bolt. Each pull drew the chain across the open gap in his left ribs.

He braced both heels against the fourth desk. "The bolt will tear free before the Reaper stops pulling."

Jade watched the desk shift. Three legs remained bolted to the floor. The missing bolt let the fourth corner travel in a narrow arc.

"Let it pull once more, but give me the chain when the desk moves."

Ty looked at her closed eye. "Your plans improve when they begin with someone else bleeding."

"You brought a skeleton body and made that my available material."

The Reaper dragged the chain toward the shut hinge. Ty released one loop as the desk lurched. Jade caught the slack with both hands, stepped across Ty's legs, and fed the chain around the desk's back brace.

Palla understood before Jade asked. She moved Denna's key from the floor crack to the nearest bolted leg and hammered it under the mounting plate with Ty's spare sickle.

"Pull across the room instead of fighting the hinge directly."

Ty rose with one arm clamped over his ribs. "That puts the Reaper's strength through the desk and into Palla's key."

"It also puts Palla beneath the desk if your grip slips."

Palla flattened herself beside the mounting plate. "I survived municipal engineering, so your dead collector can wait its turn."

Jade hauled the chain sideways.

The Reaper pulled toward Sadle. Its force traveled around the brace and turned the desk on the three remaining bolts. Metal tore out of the floor in a half circle. The four loose fingers lost their grip and came up with the moving foot.

They belonged to a keeper carriage beneath the desk.

The carriage was brass and no wider than Palla's shoulders. Ten cloudy glass plates sat around its rim, each held in a separate iron jaw. Two jaws carried pink hair through their hinges. The center held a hand-shaped socket with four fitted fingers and one empty cup.

Ty stopped breathing out of habit and stared at the empty cup. His left hand closed around an absence he could no longer touch.

The fitted fingers reached toward him.

Jade stamped on the carriage bar. The fingers missed Ty and caught the Reaper's chain. Their joints closed with enough force to flatten two links.

"That empty place wants the finger you lost. Erebos may have built it from the absence alone."

Ty shifted his hand behind his hip. "It recognizes what is gone without holding it. We learned that lesson before."

"Then help me make the machinery regret remembering you."

Palla crawled to the open side of the carriage. Blood from her palm marked the brass without entering its grooves. She used Denna's key as a wedge between the center socket and the ten plates.

"This was built to turn while the desk stayed still. The missing bolt made the whole desk easier to move than the route inside it."

The Reaper jerked the chain. One of the fitted fingers cracked at the middle joint but kept its hold.

Its hook swept across the floor toward Jade. She ducked beneath the curved point and caught the shaft under her arm. White gathered behind her eyelid as the hook passed close to her face.

The hair leading to the gray glove station tightened.

Jade knew that pull. It carried the same wrong cold that had sat behind her eye when Ashaiki's broken neck reversed in her hands. Earth lay at the other end, behind Waddell's steel cover and every person he had moved out of the laundry wing.

She pressed that hair beneath the gray glove's wrist cord. "This one stays on the guarded line, and nobody turns my eye into its handle."

Palla pushed Denna's key deeper. The Earth plate stopped rotating.

The second hair cut across Jade's palm and pulled toward the stripped human-world wall. A cloudy plate on the far side of the carriage turned in its jaw. It carried scratches around the rim, deep enough to come from tools rather than fingernails.

Ty saw them from the floor. "Someone on that world tried to open this from their side."

"They used a six-point driver and broke two tips inside the rim."

Palla reached toward the plate, then pulled her hand back when the four fitted fingers changed direction. "They knew this was hardware, which makes them less helpless and more dangerous."

The Reaper twisted its trapped body. The hook shaft rolled under Jade's arm and tore free, striking the second plate with its point.

Around the metal, the cloudy glass cleared onto a street beneath a white sun.

Half the buildings had been pushed into defensive walls. People in sealed gray armor fired from the upper floors while something with six legs climbed over a wrecked transport below.

One defender landed on the creature's back wearing a black shell that flexed like living muscle. Tubes ran from the shell into a rifle grown around his right forearm. When he fired, the weapon stripped a piece from the creature and fed it into the armor along his shoulder.

Palla stared through the plate. "Those people are wearing the enemy they killed."

"Erebos watched them because they learned to make invasion useful."

Ty tightened the chain around his forearm. "He also left them a road they have been trying to unscrew."

The second pink hair slid into the plate's broken rim. The view widened past the size of the glass and spread across the empty screen mounts on the wall.

The four fitted fingers released the Reaper's chain.

They seized the black knuckle bone beside the gray glove and folded around it. The bone settled into the empty fifth cup sideways, too short to fill the space but enough to complete the pressure across the socket.

Every glass plate turned one notch.

Jade grabbed the carriage bar while Palla fought to pull Denna's key free. The key had bent under the center socket and now held the Earth plate and the second-world plate in the same stalled turn.

"Leave the key where it is because pulling it opens every jaw together."

Palla stopped. "Then the desk keeps my last piece of Sadle until we break the center."

The Reaper reached for the completed socket. Its hook had opened the second world, and now its fingers searched for the hair leading back to Earth.

Ty kicked the hook away. The movement widened his rib gap, and the chain slipped off his forearm into the wound. He caught it before a link lodged between the bones.

"Jade, turn the desk farther while the broken plate still faces us."

"The route already sees this room, and turning it may give that soldier our floor."

"He has tools on his side, while we have a hand trying to steal my missing finger."

Palla put her shoulder under the desk brace. "Give the soldier one clean target before he chooses among four bad ones."

Jade looked through the open plate. The armored defender had reached the wrecked transport. A cluster of small machines moved around him, cutting pieces from the six-legged creature and sealing them into boxes. His helmet turned toward the breach.

He could see Room Four.

Jade wrapped the Reaper's chain around the carriage bar. "Ty, give the collector enough line to pull without freeing its waist."

Ty unwound one turn from the missing desk bolt. The Reaper lunged for the Earth hair, and its own chain dragged the carriage sideways.

Jade and Palla pushed with it.

The fourth desk turned until the second plate faced the human-world wall. The four-fingered mechanism tore itself from the center socket with the black knuckle bone trapped in its grip. It ran across the carriage on its fingertips and jumped toward the open world.

The armored defender raised his grown rifle.

The first shot crossed Room Four as a white spike and pinned one loose finger to the desk. The second struck the cracked helm and drove it under the Reaper's chest.

The field hand abandoned its severed finger. Three fingers and the black knuckle bone reached the other side before the defender caught them beneath one armored boot.

His suit opened along the wrist. A human hand pushed through the black shell and grabbed the edge of the broken plate.

He pulled hard enough to drag the entire fourth desk six inches toward his world.

Then the rifle under his other arm turned through the breach and aimed at Jade's damaged eye.

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