From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The heating pipe knocked five times above Tyree's head. His right index finger struck the laundry-cart rail before the missing sixth beat could arrive.

Fire pressed beneath his fingernail. The cart's dented side carried three strips of Caelin's red tape, one laid crooked across the word EMPTY. Tyree kept looking at the trapped corner of the E while his finger pulled toward the steel cover bolted over the intake vent.

"Strap my right hand to the cart before it answers."

Waddell had been watching the pipe. His eyes dropped to Tyree's finger, then to the damp burn blanket across Tyree's shoulders.

"The cart tried crossing that wall yesterday, and I refuse to trust it with another volunteer."

Tyree looked around the cleared laundry wing. Two empty cots waited behind the second fire door. One had a bent steering arm and a canvas restraint folded beneath its mattress.

"Use the cot, and face the buckle away from the pipe."

Waddell rolled it into the corridor without arguing. That worried Tyree more than an argument would have. He laid Tyree's forearm along the steel side rail, wrapped the wet blanket twice around the wrist, then fastened the canvas over both. The release tab faced Waddell.

"Pull hard enough to make yourself believe this bad idea works."

Tyree pulled. One wheel lifted from the floor, and the brake held. Heat spread through the blanket but stayed too low to steam it.

"I believe the cot more than your laundry equipment."

"That makes one useful belief in this hallway."

The pipe knocked again. The first beat gathered heat along Tyree's thumb. The second moved it across his palm. By the fifth, every finger wanted the cart rail. The canvas tightened before his hand reached it.

Waddell crouched beside the bolted cover. He kept his skin away from the steel and watched the blue detergent left from the first crossing. Tiny rings moved across its dried edge whenever the pipe sounded.

"Tell me where each beat puts the fire."

Tyree closed his eyes and lost the pattern under the hum of the cafeteria generator. He opened them again. The loose metal tongue on his buckle quivered toward the ceiling pipe, stopped, then quivered toward the wall return.

"The first four walk across my palm. The fifth gathers behind my knuckles and turns me toward the wall."

"Does the missing beat want heat or movement?"

Tyree waited through another set. The answer reached his shoulder before his hand. His elbow tried to rise, turning the strapped wrist toward the intake cover. "It wants me to knock where the black wire entered."

Waddell took his radio from his belt. "Caelin, clear every hand from the heating valves."

Caelin answered from beyond the fire door. "The boiler volunteer is already leaving the service room."

A second voice cut through the radio while Caelin was still speaking. "Gojaro at the north alley, with Rosa and Oscar beside me."

Tyree leaned toward the sound and pulled the cot half an inch. The last time the radio placed them, a crowd had trapped them two streets away. Now Gojaro's breathing carried the short drag of someone who had stopped running only because the next corner required quiet. "We cleared the crowd and reached north alley, but every outer utility lock is missing."

Waddell stood. "Those locks were present during the last perimeter check."

"Then your perimeter check is older than the hands outside."

Caelin's aide brought the camera tablet to the red line and set it on the floor with the screen facing Tyree. Gojaro's body feed shook through a view of the north service alley. Rainwater filled the wheel ruts. A delivery van sat with both rear doors open, blocking half the lane.

Rosa moved first across the screen. Her fox ears lay tight beneath a torn hood, and a line of fire stretched from each hand to form a web across the alley mouth. She kept the strands low enough to catch legs without feeding the fuel beneath the van.

Oscar planted his sword through a crack in the pavement. The barrier rose from the blade and divided the alley into two narrow lanes. Three altered bodies stood on the wrong sides of those lanes.

One wore a transit mechanic's coat with the name patch torn away. It carried bolt cutters and worked at the brass plate on a district heating box. Another crouched beneath the van with a length of chain already looped around the shelter's north exit handle. The third waited near an injured camera operator who had fallen behind a concrete planter.

The injured operator remained untouched within six feet of them. The body near him picked up his camera and turned its lens toward Rosa.

"They assigned one body to watch our response," Gojaro said. Rosa snapped her wrists apart. Her fire web closed around the mechanic's knees and pulled it away from the heating box. It fell, rolled before the flames could settle, and threw the bolt cutters beneath the van.

The chained body caught them. Oscar shifted his sword. The barrier lane narrowed around the van, trapping both bodies between its clear walls. The one holding the camera backed away from the injured operator and moved toward the storm drain.

Tyree's attention caught on its shoes. The left sole dragged. The right foot landed clean every fifth step. "Gojaro, the camera body is walking on our pipe count."

The feed turned as Gojaro followed it. "Oscar holds the alley while Rosa takes the drain."

Rosa cleared the planter and spread one fire line across the storm grate. The camera body stopped outside her reach. It lowered the stolen camera, used its free hand to tear a narrow metal plate from the heating box, then tossed the camera toward the injured man.

He caught it against his chest and crawled behind the planter. The body had chosen the route plate over a hostage.

Tyree's strapped hand pulled hard enough to shove the cot toward the red line. Waddell caught the footboard and drove its brake deeper with his heel.

"Keep the buckle closed because the fifth beat changed."

"I noticed when your cot tried joining the enemy."

The next pattern reached Tyree out of order. Two beats struck the ceiling pipe. One came through the wall. The fourth traveled up the cot rail beneath his arm. His fire gathered between his middle fingers and stopped there, waiting.

He stared at the crooked EMPTY label until the extra red strip made sense. Caelin's aide had covered an old arrow beneath it. The arrow pointed past the intake vent toward a smaller return pipe running under the north wall.

"The sound is using the laundry return, not the main feed."

Waddell followed his gaze. The return valve sat behind the damaged cart. Reaching it meant crossing the old wire's line beside the intake cover.

"Tell me which way I turn that valve while your hand stays out of the answer."

Tyree listened with his hand pinned open. The valve wheel trembled clockwise on the first beat and relaxed on the third.

"Turn left during the fourth beat, then stop before five."

Waddell took the laundry tongs and caught one spoke of the wheel. He waited through three knocks, pulled left on the fourth, then released the tongs before the fifth reached the wall.

The pipe gave a blunt kick. Rust fell across his sleeve. Tyree's fire struck the canvas restraint and burned a thumb-sized hole through the outer layer, but the wet blanket held beneath it.

Outside, the body beneath the van dropped the bolt cutters. The mechanic kept moving.

It tore one leg free of Rosa's web, leaving burned cloth and skin behind, then shoved its hand through Oscar's barrier until two fingers bent against the pressure. The trapped body reached the torn brass route plate and slid it along the pavement toward the storm drain.

The chained body watched the shelter door. Its head turned when the shared rhythm stopped, but it left the plate where it lay and tightened the chain around the exit.

Three bodies had received the same opening. One still wanted the map. One kept the door. The third had spent itself making both possible.

Gojaro saw it too. "Rosa secures the plate while Oscar keeps both lanes closed."

The camera body stepped onto the storm grate before Rosa reached it. Fire crossed its ankle. It kicked the brass plate away from the drain, choosing distance over the object, then ran toward a row of apartment steps where six civilians were trying to get inside.

It passed within arm's reach of the slowest woman. She pressed herself against the railing while it climbed past her and tore the municipal heat-service placard from beside the basement door. It took the side stairs two at a time and caught the fire-escape ladder above the landing.

Tyree's hand relaxed inside the restraint. On the tablet, the chained body kept working at the shelter exit after the rhythm died. The mechanic crawled toward the first route plate. The third body carried a second piece of the city's heating map across the apartment roof.

Waddell looked from the feed to the pipe above Tyree. "They are mapping every warm road into this shelter."

Tyree tested the strap once. The fire stayed beneath his skin, but the cart's crooked label kept pointing toward the north wall. Three dead bodies had worked outside. The sixth beat had recruited its fourth set of hands indoors.

"Leave my hand tied. I was supposed to open their door."

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