From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

Kegaku's remaining hand tapped five times against the pressure-bed rail.

The funeral engine gave him plenty of rhythms, from wheels striking rail joints beneath his spine to pump valves knocking behind the sixth car. One loose roof pipe clicked whenever the locomotive leaned east. He had spent the last hour separating those sounds from his own heart.

This tapping climbed through his fingers from the iron.

His thumb landed first, followed by the third finger, the smallest, and two more in a pattern his hand knew better than his head. The sixth tap hurt inside the arm Kieran had cut away.

Kegaku trapped his living fingers beneath the bed strap. The phantom ones kept playing.

Across the gap between cars, Kieran lifted her head from the tank. The repaired flute case remained hooked under one elbow.

"That is the exact fingering you used before my arm turned against Jade on Earth."

"I remember what it did, but I cannot remember learning it."

The curse under Kegaku's collar tightened. Street dust coated his tongue, followed by helicopter fuel and Masabi's fingers closing around his jaw. A boy's voice came out of Kegaku's own chest, too pleased with its courage, and gave Masabi the old name Regaku Sarabi.

He could see Masabi's face and Kieran running toward them under a command she had mistaken for freedom. Looking down inside the memory gave him small hands, bluish skin, and too many eyes closing across his body. His face remained outside his own view.

The pressure bed jolted. His trapped hand completed the pattern beneath the strap.

Inside the tank, the severed graft struck the glass five times, but the woman caught it against her ribs before the palm teeth reached the seventh support line. Her living hand spread over the gray fingers while both wrists shook together in the current.

She struck the glass with her living hand between the fourth and fifth taps. The off-beat blow repeated until JJ looked up from the pumps. Kegaku felt each correction in the phantom fingers of his missing arm, and her fifth strike drove his phantom thumb sideways before it could complete the pattern.

JJ pulled the left feed handle down. The right handle dropped with it.

Both pumps drove fluid into the tank on the same beat.

The woman's body rolled against the remaining wires. Black fluid burst from the graft seam and clouded the extraction current while the gold rim hammered its record-box supports.

"Both handles moved together, and this patient cannot survive pressure landing on both sides at once."

JJ hauled the right handle up with both hands. The left rose in the same motion, leaving the hoses empty between strokes.

Omina drove a green bar through the pump sled and into the funeral-car coupling. "Hold one handle while I separate the housings."

"The housings are already separate. Something copied the timing underneath them."

Kegaku looked past his boots. A gray pulse ran through the pressure pipe, too faint to color the iron but strong enough to lift rust from each joint. It entered from the locomotive rail, crossed beneath his heart, and split toward the tank.

Five small dents appeared in the pipe clamp.

The pressure carried the same drag as the scythe that had hooked his bed beneath the execution yard. This time it arrived as five separate finger commands.

Kegaku forced his palm farther under the strap until the buckle crushed his knuckles. "The collector found Sadle's burial rail. Break the pump plate away from the engine before the next pattern arrives."

Erebos knelt at the right housing and pressed shadow under its base. The shadow came back carrying iron filings and a strip of old funeral cloth.

"The plate was cast into the locomotive frame. Removing it drops both pumps between the cars."

"That answer does nothing for a patient who needs both pumps," JJ said.

The sponsor glass on her wrist flickered while she held the right handle. A crack split its pink edge from the earlier claim fights, and the braided conductor beneath the band showed through two worn places.

JJ glanced once toward the empty stretch of roof where Ty had last stood. Her thumb found the panel release.

"Your wrist route still carries contestant support and financial access," Erebos said. "Cutting it here leaves you without any remote repair route."

"The account is mine, and the woman needs pressure."

JJ drove the edge of a pump key beneath the band. The first twist broke the panel clasp. The second pulled a braided length from inside the glass, peeling skin from her wrist where the sponsor mark had grown around it.

The panel went black.

JJ touched its cracked face twice. No account light returned, and the sponsor mark beneath it faded until only torn skin remained visible. She pulled her sleeve over the dead glass before taking the pump key in both hands.

She wrapped one end of the conductor around the right pump contact and passed the other to Omina. "Keep this wire off the engine plate while I close the circuit by hand."

Omina lifted the braid on a narrow green fork. JJ touched the loose end to the upper contact, counted one stroke from the left pump, and broke the connection before touching it again.

The right handle rose alone. Inside the tank, the woman stopped striking the glass and pressed her living palm over the graft's leaking seam. Her mouth formed two words the water kept from them, but she pointed at JJ before returning her hand to the failing support.

Fluid began alternating through the hoses. The woman in the tank uncurled enough to pull her graft away from the seventh line, though black fluid continued leaking between its fingers.

Kegaku's relief lasted through three pump strokes.

The roof pipe clicked west, east, then west again. Its loose collar spun free and struck the flute case in Kieran's arms.

The case latch opened.

Two broken sections of the flute rolled into the gap between cars, still joined by three metal braces. Kieran caught the lower half with her boot. The cracked mouthpiece stopped beneath an exhaust nipple where the roof pipe vented pressure.

Air entered the flute.

The first note dragged Kieran's right shoulder toward the tank. Her old control scar pulled beneath her breastbone, and the gold blade in her hand turned toward Kegaku.

He ripped his fingers from under the strap. Skin stayed inside the buckle.

"Cover the second hole before the next note reaches your chest."

Kieran drove two fingers over the body-control opening. The pipe pressure fought under her grip. A note leaked between her knuckles and made the dead operator in the cab pull once against his safety belt.

Erebos reached across Kegaku for the flute. Kieran put her blade between his wrist and the brace.

"Your repair stored commands in every brace, so you can explain why you kept the weapon intact after bringing him home from Earth."

"Breaking the instrument stops every stored pattern at once."

"You could have broken it before sending him to Earth."

Kegaku's remaining fingers began the pattern again. Thumb. Third. Smallest. The phantom graft answered from inside the tank, bending the woman's borrowed wrist toward the glass.

The old name tightened around Kegaku's throat with each position.

The boy on Earth had laughed when Kieran's arm moved for him. Kegaku remembered enjoying it. His fingers still knew exactly why.

He caught the roof pipe with his bleeding hand and pulled its exhaust nipple away from the flute. Hot pressure opened his palm across the old buckle cuts, bending the pipe while the final burst stayed trapped inside it.

Kieran scooped both flute sections against her coat. Gold fire sealed the second hole while she wrapped the broken brace around the mouthpiece twice.

"The instrument remains with me until every old command is gone."

"Keep it after that, provided you never call this forgiveness."

"I was planning to keep it for the next trial."

JJ completed another manual circuit. The right pump answered after the left, and the woman's pulse settled enough for Yun-Jin to tighten the tank braces without cracking the rim.

"Your account cannot call another tool through that dead panel," Yun-Jin said.

JJ wound the loose conductor around two fingers before touching the contact again. "Then this tool keeps working until my hand gives out."

Kegaku held the bent pressure pipe away from the case. Blood moved down his wrist and collected at his elbow. Under his collar, the curse loosened without releasing the old name.

The final burst remained trapped below his hand.

It traveled backward through the pipe instead, past the pressure bed and into the locomotive frame. Kegaku felt it pass under his heart before the rail carried it toward Switch Nine.

Five taps left the engine.

The missing sixth answered from somewhere beyond the funeral line.

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