From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The fourth cot lost a wheel at the lift threshold.

Denna caught the frame before the patient rolled onto Toman. The lift hung six inches below the Switch Nine floor, held there by a brake shoe with half its teeth stripped. One cot remained inside with its rear legs wedged against the cage. Three others crowded the floor behind Denna, leaving a path barely wide enough for the hand-pump patient to reach the street.

Toman squeezed the pump bag against his coat. Blood from his split palms marked each fold.

"The next chain slip drops the cage below my remaining leverage."

"Then spend your leverage on the bag while I move the wheel."

Denna put her shoulder under the cot rail. The patient was awake, a woman old enough to know when people softened their voices around a bad chance. She gripped the blanket above her knees and watched Denna work.

"My left hip carries a steel cup, so dropping that side will cost everyone more time."

"Keep telling me where the expensive pieces are, and I will keep them off the floor."

The woman pulled the blanket tighter and kept reporting every change in the cot's angle.

Near the broken grille, two black legs lay across the old cell hinge. Their owner had entered the wall at the waist and stayed there after Palla closed the road. The boots had moved twice since the others crossed. Both movements had pulled against something too heavy for Switch Nine.

Denna kept one foot away from them.

She pried at the missing wheel mount with her cutter handle. The cot rose far enough for a clinic worker to push a folded board under the axle. He stopped when boots struck the street outside.

The first replacement seal hit the switch-house door.

Its stamp drove through the wood with a sound Denna knew from freight seizures. Five more stamps followed. The marshal had brought the exact number Toman promised, which would have amused her if the final cot were already outside.

"Forewoman, the street crew says Marshal Sorn brought twelve officers and two burial clerks."

"Tell the street crew to keep carrying patients while the officers practice counting doors."

The clinic worker stayed beside the cot. His brother worked Gate Three, and the marshal could erase both wages under the same emergency account. Denna saw him make the calculation before he put both hands on the rail again.

The black legs kicked.

Force struck the buried hinge from beyond the wall. The grille rose, bent around the trapped waist, and slammed against the lift chain. Three links jumped the guide wheel.

The cage dropped.

Toman threw himself across the pump cot while Denna held the fourth cot by its front rail. The broken axle slid off the board. One rear leg remained inside the descending cage, dragging the old woman's steel hip toward the threshold.

Waddell's one-pound weight bounced from the pump cot and struck Denna's boot. Red tape still circled its middle.

She caught it, drove it between the brake pawl and the chain rack, then kicked the pawl until the weight disappeared under the iron tooth.

The cage stopped after another inch.

"That block came through the road from Earth," Toman said.

"Today it came from the floor, so keep squeezing."

Denna crawled beneath the fourth cot. The cage edge pressed the broken axle against her upper arm. She turned the cutter sideways, used its jaw as a temporary wheel, and shouted for the clinic worker to push.

He pushed until a marshal officer entered the room and ordered him away.

The worker's hands left the rail. The cot moved backward across Denna's shoulder.

Marshal Sorn followed his officer through the split door. His coat carried rain marks below the knees despite a dry street, which meant he had crossed the drainage wards before coming here. He was broad through the middle and old enough to remember the last fever burial.

"Your officer took two hands from a loaded cot, Marshal, so he can replace them or explain the body."

Sorn looked from the old woman to the black legs caught in the wall. "Every person exposed to unlicensed cadaver movement enters district custody under the fever articles."

"District custody can begin after your officer lifts the left rail."

The old woman raised her blanket. "My steel cup is on that side, and your floor appears poorly trained."

Sorn removed his gloves. He gave one to the officer and closed both hands around the cot rail.

"Push toward the forewoman when she clears the broken mount."

Toman kept the pump moving and watched the burial clerks enter behind him. Each carried three rolled seals in a shoulder case. One clerk reached for the Switch Nine ledger.

"That book contains worker names under active wage dispute, and taking it makes your office responsible for every missing payment."

The clerk withdrew her hand. Sorn glanced at Toman.

"Your muster brought unauthorized dead labor into a living rescue."

"My first bell stroke carried command pressure, and the later request named every choice separately. The ledger records both failures and eleven living workers returned from Gate Three."

"Awakened bodies remain subject to burial custody regardless of useful conduct."

"Then sign beneath the eleven names and accept their unpaid rescue shifts before you seize them."

Sorn's grip tightened on the rail. Denna felt it through the cot.

"Move the patient before we discuss your accounting theory."

"That is the first sensible order your coat has given today."

Denna pulled the cutter handle. The broken axle rolled over its flat jaw while Sorn and the clinic worker drove the cot forward. The old woman's steel hip cleared the threshold. Her remaining wheels struck the Switch Nine floor, and six hands kept her level until Denna crawled out from beneath the frame.

The hand-pump bag gave a weak fold in Toman's hands.

He had bled enough to lose his grip.

Denna took the bag and pressed it between both palms while Toman wrapped his hands in a strip torn from the bell-rope curtain. Two clinic workers turned the fourth cot toward the street. Sorn allowed them through, then placed officers on either side of every patient.

"The cots travel to the reserve ward under guard. Everyone else remains inside this building for exposure review."

"The reserve ward lost pressure when your first seal closed the drainage line."

Sorn looked at the speaking tubes. "Which line still carries clean pressure into the reserve ward?"

"East laundry reaches the ward through a gravity tank, but your fifth seal is hanging from its valve door."

One burial clerk opened her case and checked the remaining rolls. Sorn held out his hand. She gave him the fifth seal, and he tore it across the stamp before it touched the valve.

The clinic workers saw him do it. So did the officers.

Denna pushed the pump cot toward the street. "Keep the sixth one rolled until all four patients cross the curb."

"The sixth seal belongs on that hinge and everything attached to it."

The trapped legs pulled again.

This time the force came along the floor. The grille split from the hinge to the lift shaft, opening a line no wider than Denna's cutter blade. Gray dust rose through it, followed by a length of black chain.

The chain carried fresh street tar on one link and a sliver of white ceramic on the next.

Sadle used stone streets. Switch Nine owned no ceramic that clean.

Denna kept the pump moving while the chain dragged itself another foot into the room. The black legs turned with it. At the waist, the old wall opened enough for Denna to see a gray room beyond, then daylight past a second narrow plate. Rifles moved across that distant daylight.

Toman knelt beside the crack without touching it. "The road has crossed another jurisdiction since Palla left us."

"The road is carrying an unlicensed dead body through my district," Sorn said.

"Your district has become one end of the load, Marshal."

The final cot cleared the switch-house door. Outside, workers lifted it over the curb while an officer counted the patients twice. The hand-pump woman went last, Denna walking beside her and matching each squeeze to the rise beneath the blanket.

All four reached the street.

Sorn waited until Denna stepped back inside. He pulled the sixth seal from the clerk's case and wrapped its red strip around the chain rather than the broken hinge.

"I am placing the foreign route and everyone operating it under district custody. The patients remain outside this seal under guard."

Toman opened his ledger to a clean line. "State whether custody includes wages, injuries, and any deaths caused by closure."

"Record that the question remains disputed until custody ends."

The seal's stamp closed around the chain.

From the daylight beyond the gray room, something pulled hard enough to lift Sorn from his feet.

Denna caught his coat before his head reached the grille. Toman caught the ledger. The sixth seal held, dragging the marshal and the buried hinge toward a city none of them had named.

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