From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

A severed gray sleeve raised two fingers from the triage pile. The defender it had left kept both bare hands on his rifle.

Jade's white hand copied the empty sleeve. Her index and middle fingers opened around Ty's loose rib while her living shoulder stayed locked against her chest.

One clear pulse bead rolled through a chip of blue brewery paint, circled the same crack, then tapped the desk leg. Jade wanted someone to step on it. The next tap reached her right wrist before the sound reached her ear.

She stamped the bead flat with her boot. Her borrowed fingers stopped.

"That sleeve copied me after its wearer put both hands on a rifle," Jade said.

Nessa followed Jade's gaze. Her cage fiber ran from the numb side of her hand to Ty's rib, where two loops had cut pale grooves into the bone. "The dead tissue kept its last cage instruction."

Commander Vey leaned over the brewery roof. Medics were still cutting black nerve clamps from three defenders while the west rubble answered in scattered pulses behind them. "Drag every empty section beyond the living pulse line, and mark the hands that leave them."

"Keep them close enough for my cage to reach. I can split the pull once, but these fingers have started lying about what they feel," Nessa called back.

Vey checked Nessa's curled fingers, then pointed two medics toward the pile and sent the injured rifleman to supervise the living ports. "Every wearer closes a bare hand before the clamp leaves."

The medics worked down the roof stairs. Each defender gripped a copper marker with the hand that still answered, then released it after the black clamp came free. The injured rifleman watched every release and wrote the working fingers on strips torn from a flour sack.

The second defender failed to drop his marker. A medic put the release blade beneath his clamp, and Jade saw the empty sleeve beside him open its thumb first. "Wait until his bare thumb moves before you cut anything."

The defender forced his wrist against his knee. His thumb opened after the sleeve and let the copper fall. "My thumb is mine, but the suit reaches it first."

Nessa pointed her working thumb toward the black clamp. "Then his clamp stays until we give the dead pulse somewhere else."

Jade kept seeing the sleeve on the street. Its empty shoulder ended at a severed clamp. The fingers lifted again when the gray glove around the Reaper's scythe flexed, but the defender's marked hand stayed wrapped around his rifle stock.

The gray glove copied the sleeve again. The defender shifted his bare grip on the rifle, and nothing followed.

Ty moved between Jade and the Reaper as the scythe came off the pavement. One sickle caught beneath the haft. The other hooked over the widening blade where Vale teeth had grown through the edge. The chain inside Ty's left side tightened, shifting two ribs while the loose bone in Jade's palm pulled toward the gray glove.

"Your hand has better aim when it is trying to kill me."

"Keep insulting it because I need to track which movement is mine."

Ty gave the scythe another inch, then took it back by turning both sickles against each other. His feet scraped through broken glass. The Reaper held the weapon with one hand and reached toward Jade's eye with the other.

Palla drove Sorn's drawer rail through the fourth desk and pinned it to a crack in the street. She kicked the nearest empty suit against the rail. "Stack the dead material here, and keep every living clamp uphill."

The medics obeyed because the rail stopped the first sleeve from crawling. Gray arms, chest plates, and split collars gathered against the desk. Some still clenched around rifles that had already been removed. One leg kept trying to kneel until Palla laid a broken signpost across its knee.

Nessa crouched beside the pile. Her smallest finger stayed buried in her palm, and the next two moved with a delay that made her miss the fiber on her first reach. She caught it with her thumb and started to wind it around her wrist.

Palla slid the drawer rail under the line before it touched Nessa's skin. "Use the metal, Captain, because your hand has enough passengers."

Nessa gave her a hard look and changed the path. She wound the fiber around the desk rail, then pulled the line across three empty nerve clamps. The suits bucked against the metal.

"My cage can give the pile one shared direction."

Vey descended the roof stairs with two unarmored defenders behind him. "I am counting living hands, Captain, because the city cannot replace them."

"Then keep your soldiers out of my dead circuit."

Vey checked each flour-sack marker against its defender before ordering the medics back. He took the rifle from the man with the stripped tendons and passed him a box of safety catches for the evacuation crew. "Your left hand teaches safety while medical decides what the right one can still carry."

The defender tucked the box beneath his good arm. "Recovery remains my assignment after the tunnel clears."

"Argue that point with medical after you have students."

The west rubble pulsed five times. The empty suits hit the desk rail together. Jade's white hand tore away from her chest and reached toward them. She caught her wrist with her left hand, but the skin at her shoulder pulled hard enough to reopen the split beneath her eye.

White blood ran over her lower lid. The moving drop snagged her attention because it traveled toward her temple rather than her cheek. The skull piece was still pulling upward toward the Reaper's hollow. Jade let the borrowed arm extend.

Ty turned his skull toward her. The scythe dropped far enough for one Vale tooth to scrape his collarbone. "Tell me you chose that reach before I break the elbow you just recovered."

"I chose the pile, while you keep the blade off my face."

She drove from her living shoulder and put the white palm against the nearest empty chest plate. The suit tried to close around her wrist. Jade pushed deeper until her fingers reached the dead nerve clamp inside it.

Nessa pulled the cage fiber across the rail. The whole pile copied Jade's open hand. On the Reaper's scythe, the gray glove closed.

Jade's borrowed fingers tried to follow. She forced her thumb against the empty clamp and moved only that joint. The pile's thumbs answered first. The gray glove answered after them.

"You want dead armor badly enough to peel a city. Take what nobody is wearing."

The Reaper pulled. Every empty suit collapsed toward Jade's hand. The rail kept their weight below her elbow while Palla braced the desk with both boots. Gray plates folded into strips, passed between Jade's fingers, and crossed the street toward the scythe.

Nessa's fiber cut through the dead clamps one by one. Each break left its former wearer standing with a copper marker in a bare hand. Vey counted those hands from the street and sent medics to anyone whose marker dropped. The Reaper gathered the last empty sleeve around its weapon.

Jade kept her arm. Her ring finger opened when she ordered it. She closed it again, opened the smallest finger, and turned her wrist toward Ty without touching his throat. The white thread behind her eye slackened against her skin.

The scythe moved anyway. Ty's right sickle lost the grown edge when Vale teeth broke across it. He caught the haft under his left arm and shoved the loose rib between the gray glove and the blade.

"That bone already knows the road, and I am keeping the damage where we can still see it."

"You keep calling damage a plan whenever I am watching."

The Reaper twisted the scythe. Ty's loose rib cracked along the two cage grooves. A strand of gray tissue entered one split, followed by a white line too thin for Jade to catch. She seized the bone with her recovered hand, but the line had already crossed the fracture and reached the matching gap in Ty's open side.

The rib pulled out of both their hands. It struck Ty's chest, seated crooked between two broken bones, and closed around the Reaper chain. The gray-white thread cinched the crack from inside.

Ty drove both sickles into the street and stayed upright. Jade put her white palm against his sternum. The hand remained hers. Beneath it, the repaired rib knocked five times against the chain.

Vey watched the movement, then looked toward the defenders still crossing the brewery tunnel. "Mark both arrivals as breach survivors under armed quarantine, and keep their route away from the tunnel."

Nessa rose with three fingers dragging behind the others. "They just kept your living soldiers attached to themselves."

"That changes their treatment and leaves the perimeter intact."

The sixth knock came from beneath the west wall. All the dead armor buried under its rubble stood up at once.

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