From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Nessa's smallest finger bent against her palm.

Jade noticed because it was the only hand in the intersection that moved before hers.

Jade's white hand copied it around Ty's neck.

The copied grip lasted half a beat before Jade forced her wrist against the ceramic bolt. Ty turned inside her arm, caught the bone heel of her hand against his jaw, and kept the burning fingers from closing.

Nessa pulled on the cage fiber with her teeth clenched around the molar speaker. The cord beneath her upper arm tightened. Her remaining Vale armor drew close to her skin as if bracing for a strike.

Commander Vey watched from the roof with his rifle fixed on Jade's right shoulder.

"Captain Cord, release the shared line before it reaches your spine and takes the rest of your suit."

"Releasing it gives that arm back to the collector."

"Then we remove the arm before the collector receives it."

Jade drove her heel against the desk and stopped the Reaper from pulling her another inch.

The word remove stuck harder than Vey's threat. Jade tried to order what mattered. Keep Ty's jaw clear, hold her elbow, close the road, check Nessa's hand. The list rearranged itself whenever the piece behind her eye scraped bone.

"You can discuss removing me after we close this road."

The white fire had reached her cheek. Sight returned through her ruined eye in broken pieces. She could see Ty's skull, Nessa's bent needle, and a white hollow where the Reaper's face should have joined together. Everything else arrived doubled, so Jade chose one version of each person and ignored the copies.

Ty kept his sickle beneath her forearm. The edge faced away from her bone.

Years late, several bodies short, and he still worried about cutting her.

"Tell me which part still answers when you move."

Jade tested her shoulder against his blade. The joint moved. Her elbow pulled toward the Reaper. Her fingers wanted Ty.

"The shoulder is mine, while everything below it bargains."

"Then I will hold the argument above your elbow."

Vey moved two defenders along the brewery roof. Their restraint cords stayed linked to the net around Jade, Ty, and the Reaper. Each soldier carried a strip of gray Vale tissue from wrist to shoulder beneath clear pulse beads.

Jade's borrowed fingers flexed, and both gray strips answered beneath their beads.

Crawling under Ty's open ribs, Palla let the Reaper chain scrape across the back of her coat. She pressed her damaged palm against the nearest glass bead and pulled it away with a wet strip of skin missing.

"Your cage has built another hinge through every linked arm."

Vey shifted his rifle toward her without taking his sight from Jade.

"That hinge is keeping the contamination inside this intersection."

Palla pointed with the hand that still worked. The line ran from Vey's defenders through the restraint net, around Nessa's needle, across Jade's white wrist, and into the skull-piece dragging toward the Reaper. Sorn's red seal completed the lower side where it wrapped the chain.

"Your cage loops through the collector, and it owns the pull."

Her warning reached Sorn through the plate. His shoulder and bare hand had crossed into the advanced city. Denna held his coat from Switch Nine while Toman kept one arm around her waist.

"That seal carries district custody over whatever crossed from Sadle."

"It also gives this thing a handle on your district."

The Reaper pulled.

Sorn's shoulder struck the plate edge. Denna's boots slid across the broken floor behind him. Toman dropped the ledger long enough to catch her belt, then trapped the book beneath his knee before it entered the road.

Jade's white hand tightened against Ty's jaw.

Nessa's hand tightened around empty air.

One of Vey's roof soldiers screamed as the dead strip under his sleeve squeezed his living arm.

When the defender beside him reached for the release blade, the injured soldier knocked his hand away with the rifle stock. Two scarred cords disappeared into gray tissue where living tendons should have reached his fingers.

"Keep that blade off me until the civilians clear below."

"Your arm is already turning against the cage controls."

"Then disconnect the cage before you amputate my work."

Behind Vey, three families were still crossing through the brewery tunnel, bent low under falling brick dust. His rifle lowered before the release order came.

Vey reached for the pulse control on his chest.

"Tell me what opens your hinge without releasing her arm."

Palla dragged the freed desk closer to the chain. One drawer rail had bent during the blast. She kicked it loose, jammed the metal beneath Sorn's seal, and leaned until the red material lifted from one link.

"The seal leaves first, and your cage changes rhythm afterward."

Sorn stared at the section cutting into his hand. The seal was the only district mark that had survived the road.

"That mark is the last custody my officers can verify."

Denna pulled his coat hard enough to choke the rest of his sentence.

"Your officers watched eleven patients leave alive without that seal."

Through the plate, the old woman with the steel hip lay on a cot beneath two officers' coats. The hand-pump patient still breathed because a clinic worker counted each squeeze aloud. Sorn watched the worker's hands until his grip on the seal loosened.

He wrapped the loose end around his fist.

"Keeper, lift the rail when my hand reaches your side."

Palla changed her grip. Sorn tore backward while Denna and Toman pulled him toward Switch Nine. The seal split across its custody crest. Half remained on the chain. The other half came away with skin from Sorn's palm.

The loop opened at the bottom.

Jade's white hand released Ty's throat and punched through the desk instead. Two fingers sank into the wood. Her elbow kept pulling toward the Reaper, dragging the desk with her.

Nessa fell against the ceramic bolt. Her smallest finger stayed curled, and the numbness had reached the side of her hand.

"Vey, break the cage rhythm before it copies her again."

"The next pattern will hit every wearer connected to it."

"They are already wearing the same hand she is fighting."

Vey struck the pulse control twice, waited through one beat, then struck it three times. The roof beads answered out of order. One defender dropped to a knee. Another tore his glove off when the Vale strip beneath it crawled across his wrist.

Jade's borrowed arm jerked between Ty and the Reaper.

Ty reached into his open side. Jade knew that stupid reach. He broke loose the rib already split by the chain, pulling one end through damaged tissue that had started growing around the link. His knees struck the street, though his right hand kept the bone raised.

Palla caught his wrist before he placed it inside the net.

"That bone gives the collector a cleaner road into you."

"It already crossed three worlds to reach my ribs."

"A known road can still become wider than the first wound."

Jade tore her fingers from the desk. White fire filled the holes left in the wood.

"Give me the rib before my hand chooses something worse."

Ty pushed the broken bone between her palm and the ceramic bolt. Her white fingers closed around it. The Reaper pulled the rib toward the hollow above its right eye, but Jade still owned her shoulder.

She turned with the pull and drove the rib sideways through Nessa's trailing cage fiber.

The fiber wrapped the bone twice. Nessa bit the molar control until it clicked against her teeth. Vey sent the uneven pattern again, and the borrowed hand opened around the pulse traveling through Ty's rib.

Palla wrenched the drawer rail upward.

The remaining half of Sorn's seal tore from the chain. The red strip passed through the narrow plate and slapped against Toman's ledger on the Sadle side. Denna pulled Sorn clear before the road closed around his empty coat sleeve.

Jade's elbow stopped pulling.

She folded the white arm against her chest and held it there with her left hand. The fire along her cheek withdrew to the split eyelid, leaving the skin beneath it numb and pale. Her right eye stayed open. The white piece remained lodged halfway through the wound. A white thread caught it to the hollow in the Reaper's skull.

Ty kept the rib inside the cage fiber.

"Can you move those fingers without reaching for me?"

Jade opened two fingers. The others remained around the broken bone.

Her ring finger bothered her most. She had waited years to put that hand on him again, and now the collector had decided what it wanted the hand to do.

"I can manage enough movement to disappoint the collector."

Nessa tried to straighten her smallest finger. The one beside it curled with the same delay.

"My cage pinned her arm, but it kept a copy."

Vey signaled his roof team to disconnect their wrist cords.

The first soldier reached for his clasp. The gray armor beneath it lifted away from his living arm before his fingers arrived. Clear beads popped from the tissue and bounced across the roof.

The dead Vale strip peeled from his shoulder, taking cloth and two lines of skin with it. He caught the railing with his free hand while the armor dropped into the street.

It landed on its cut edge.

The strip folded once, found the Reaper, and crawled toward its scythe.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!