From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The surgeon began with a bent keg tag and Nessa's eyes shut.

He pressed its rounded corner against her index fingertip. She named the finger. The middle answered next. On the ring finger, she felt the metal at the base and guessed wrong twice above the second knuckle.

The smallest finger gave her nothing.

Somewhere overhead, beer struck the inside of a brewery tank whenever the street moved. Nessa used each slosh to keep track of the west wall. Three close together meant rifle fire. One long roll meant something heavy had leaned against the building again.

The keg tag touched her palm below the curled fingers.

"That point sits under my smallest knuckle, near the wrist."

The surgeon opened her eyes with two fingers against her eyelid. He had turned a barrel-loading table into an operating board and covered its old price marks with boiled cloth. "You felt the palm. The dead patch crosses both middle joints and stops one finger-width above the wrist crease."

He drew a wet brown line where sensation returned. It ran beneath her ring finger and hooked toward the edge of her palm.

"How much hand remains mine after you finish cutting?"

"Three fingers and your thumb. I take the affected sections here, or the next surgeon takes your hand after the gray reflex reaches the wrist."

Nessa tried opening her hand against the table. The index and middle fingers lifted. Her ring finger rose because the surgeon moved it, then folded when he let go. The smallest stayed tucked into her palm like a tool returned to the wrong drawer.

A stretcher struck the clinic steps before she answered, carrying the one-armed rifle instructor sideways between two brewery workers. He hugged the wooden box of safety catches to his chest. Behind him, the damaged arm dragged with its sleeve cut to the shoulder. Two gray cords beneath the skin lifted his elbow whenever gunfire reached the tanks.

"Put him on the grain scale beside this table," Nessa said.

The surgeon caught her shoulder when she tried to stand. "Your choice expires while you solve other people's injuries."

"Then keep the blade ready while I solve one."

The grain scale held him with his legs curled. Its dial spun past sacks, kegs, and the red mark for an overloaded cart.

His damaged arm jerked toward the clinic door. One gray cord pulled through the torn muscle and opened the wound farther. Blood ran into the grooves worn by years of grain dust.

The surgeon shoved a folded cloth into Nessa's working hand. "Hold pressure above those cords, and keep your numb fingers clear of them."

Nessa set her thumb on one side of the wound and her index finger on the other. Her middle finger pressed the cloth while the two folded ones landed without telling her where. With her other hand, she moved them clear and hated needing the correction.

The instructor looked toward his box when another pull shook his shoulder. "Every loose rifle outside still needs one of those catches."

"Your students already learned how to check their own weapons."

"They learned one lesson during one retreat. That makes them dangerous with better posture."

The surgeon reached under the scale and found a brewer's hoop clamp. Its screw was sticky with malt. He pushed the curved band under the defender's shoulder while Nessa kept pressure on the wound.

The gray cords pulled west again. The scale rolled six pounds heavier although nobody had touched it.

Nessa watched the needle quiver. "The thing outside is weighing itself through his arm."

"Then give his living hand work before the next pull," the surgeon said.

Nessa tipped the safety-catch box onto the defender's stomach. Twenty brass pieces spilled across his shirt. His good hand reached to stop them. The smallest pieces slipped between his fingers and rang against the scale.

"Sort every intact catch into the lid by spring direction."

He stared at her as the surgeon tightened the hoop around his upper arm. "You assigned a rifle instructor to count spare parts."

"I assigned your living hand something the dead one cannot copy."

That shut down his argument. He caught the next brass piece, tested its spring with his thumbnail, and placed it in the lid. The gray cords jumped toward the door. His useful hand continued sorting.

Nessa counted with him by watching the lid. Four catches faced left. Three faced right. One had lost its spring and went onto the painted number seven near his hip. Her fingers could lie. Brass on a scale had less imagination.

The surgeon slipped a black clamp over the first gray cord. It bit down while the defender named the next spring direction. The scale needle fell by two pounds.

The second cord tried to bury itself deeper. Nessa felt it shift under the cloth through her index finger. Her folded fingers reported an empty table.

"Move the hoop one notch toward his shoulder before clamping."

The surgeon checked her hand position, found the change she had felt, and moved the hoop. The cord came up against the pressure rather than beneath it. His second clamp closed.

The instructor dropped a catch into the lid. His damaged elbow settled on the scale and stayed there through the next burst of gunfire.

"Blood flow holds, both gray cords are trapped, and he keeps the arm until somebody opens it properly," the surgeon said. "Your borrowed minute has ended, and this hand comes next."

Nessa lifted the cloth. Neither clamp moved.

The defender looked from her hand to the wet brown line below her fingers. "Take your table back before your wrist joins my lesson plan."

"Your safety work kept five defenders and one baker useful."

"Save the gratitude and return my recovery assignment. I can teach belowground while the right arm stays clamped."

Nessa looked at the sorted catches. He had put the broken one apart from the others without being told what to do with it.

"You run weapons recovery from this clinic. Every returned rifle gets checked before it goes upstairs, and nobody calls your current condition discharge."

He tucked the lid under his good elbow. "Write the assignment where Vey cannot improve it later."

The surgeon had already pulled Nessa's operating cloth straight. He pointed at the table with the keg tag. "Sit down and choose which argument you want to keep having."

Nessa sat. The smallest finger caught under her palm. She freed it with her other hand and laid both curled fingers across the old loading prices.

"Cut through the clean side of your brown line. Preserve the palm and whatever still answers above it."

"That costs two fingers through their second joints."

"Then charge the west wall for every piece you take."

The brewery workers strapped her forearm to the table. One tied the knot used for securing keg carts and apologized because it was the only knot he trusted. Nessa told him to pull it tighter.

Cold mash covered her wrist. The surgeon drove a thin needle beside the brown line, sending pain through her palm until it stopped short of either folded fingertip. Another pass with the keg tag followed.

Nessa named her palm, the first joint of her ring finger, and the place where the smallest finger should have complained. That last answer came from memory. The tag could have been on the table.

"Begin now before I invent another assignment for myself," she said.

The blade scraped bone on the first cut.

Nessa fixed her attention on the safety catches moving across the grain scale. The instructor sorted left, right, broken. He lost count at eleven, swore at the painted numbers, and began again from the lid rather than asking anyone to help.

Overhead, the tank rolled once. Rifle fire came through the floor in a long burst. A brewery worker beside the steps called down that Vey's people had driven one live Vale body away from the tunnel mouth.

The surgeon dropped the first severed section into an empty yeast jar. Nessa saw the ring fingertip and waited for her hand to report its absence.

Her hand reported the table beneath three fingers.

The second cut took less time. The smallest finger had been gone to her before the blade reached it. Its remaining section joined the first in the jar, curled exactly as it had been while attached.

The surgeon closed each stump with thread meant for filter sacks. He left the knots long enough to cut later and wrapped the hand without hiding her thumb.

"Open what remains and touch each fingertip to your thumb."

Nessa touched index, middle, then the shortened ring finger. The last contact hurt enough to make her shoulder pull against the strap.

She looked for a fourth touch out of habit. Her thumb crossed empty space and struck the bandage.

The instructor stopped sorting. "How many rifles can that hand still clear?"

Nessa reached into his lid, picked up one safety catch, and turned it twice between her thumb and index finger. "Enough to inspect your work before it leaves this room."

A metal blow bent the clinic door inward.

Vey shouted from the stairs, "The second Vale body opened a feeding tunnel beneath the brewery. Ty wants the quarantine line moved to its mouth."

The surgeon cut Nessa's arm strap while the instructor swept every intact catch back into the box. Nessa stood with one hand wrapped and the other holding the broken catch.

Above them, bone struck the feeding tunnel from two directions at once.

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