From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The Vale feeding tunnel had teeth in the floor and a brewery pipe between them.

Each bite crushed copper flat, pulled it underground, and sent beer across Ty's ankles. The foam made the quarantine paint disappear from the stone. Vey's soldiers kept repainting the line around Ty while the line floated away in white clumps.

"You wanted my quarantine at its mouth. The mouth keeps removing your border."

Vey dragged a paint stick through the beer and marked a smaller box behind Ty's heels. "Then keep your skull inside the part I can still see."

The floor opened again. Flat teeth caught a brewery support and bent it toward the hole. Somewhere below, the Vale body pulled through a tunnel made from its own throat. Every swallow moved the opening closer to the clinic stairs.

Jade stood at Ty's left with her white hand around the chain crossing his ribs. The loose rib seated on it kept turning toward the hole before the rest of him chose to move.

"That rib has voted without me three times," Ty said.

"I stopped accepting its vote after the first bad decision."

She took a handful of blue keg chalk from a worker and drew one stripe across Ty's left arm, two across the right, then numbered four ribs. The chalk caught in the grooves of his bones and made him look like inventory from a very cheap warehouse.

"Keep your skull outside the tunnel where I can count it," Jade said. "I need one part that complains where I can hear it."

"My skull handles complaints better when attached to everything else."

"Your skull has never handled complaints better than anything."

The nearest defender made a noise behind his face guard. Vey looked at him, and the noise became a cough with excellent discipline.

Another tooth rose under Ty's right foot. He drove a sickle through it. The blade sank, but the tooth folded around the metal and pulled. Ty let his wrist joint open before the feeder could take his whole shoulder.

His detached hand vanished with the sickle.

Pain arrived through an arm he no longer wore. It pulled down, turned beneath the broken pipe, then hooked left. Distance never came with it. Ty closed the empty wrist and felt the missing fingers close below the floor.

"My right hand still answers me from inside the tunnel," he said. "The sickle remains trapped beside the hand somewhere below."

Jade put two chalk marks on the stone. "The right hand is yours and stays on my count. The loose rib still answers the chain and stays excluded."

The tunnel bit the support again. A crack ran up the brewery pillar. Dust dropped through the clinic stairwell, followed by the surgeon shouting about his clean cloth.

Vey spread three unarmored defenders behind Ty. "Fire only on sections Jade calls unclaimed. Any shot through his chosen bone crosses our agreement."

One defender adjusted a rifle against a shoulder already bruised from losing its suit. "Your agreement has too many moving pieces for one firing lane."

"Then listen faster and keep your barrel below his spine."

Ty pulled against the swallowed hand. The creature pulled back through the sickle. A contest using his whole body would give it exactly what its teeth expected.

He twisted his left shoulder until the joint cleared its socket.

Jade caught the arm before it fell. "Tell me where this one goes before you donate it."

Ty pointed with his chin toward the far side of the hole. Beer had found a lower crack there and vanished before reaching the teeth. "Feed the left arm through that drain. Let both hands meet behind whatever keeps swallowing."

"That plan sounds familiar enough to be yours."

She passed the striped arm to a brewery worker, who stared at the fingers moving around his forearm. "Does this hand know where people normally prefer being held?"

"It knows, but its owner keeps making workplace exceptions."

The worker carried it to the drain and pushed the elbow into the beer. Ty crawled the hand down the pipe with two fingers at a time. Copper narrowed around the wrist. He flattened the thumb, lost the little finger for three pulls, then felt it scrape free inside the feeding route.

His right hand struck the trapped sickle from below.

The jolt crossed both detached arms and met inside his chest. Black fire pushed between Ty's open ribs, revealing the knot of blue fire his bones usually hid. Jade's borrowed hand tightened around the chain before the chained rib could turn toward it.

"Both detached arms are answering Ty from inside the feeder," she called. "The single unmarked rib still answers only the chain."

Vey's defenders shifted their rifles. Two barrels followed a swelling under the floor. The third held on the loose rib until Jade shoved it back across Ty's left side.

Inside the feeder, his hands found one another around wet cords thicker than wrists. The right still held the sickle by two fingers. The left closed over the back of the blade and forced it through the first cord.

The floor bucked under Ty. His skull struck the edge of Vey's painted box.

"My right forearm has stopped answering below the elbow."

Jade rubbed out one chalk mark. "Right hand still moves. Right forearm is unknown."

Vey pointed to the swelling. "Unknown section crossing the west edge. Hold fire until it separates from his marked hand."

The tunnel dragged the brewery support lower. Ty opened three rib joints on his right side and pulled them free one by one. He slid the first under a tooth as a wedge. The second went beside it. His third rib rolled into the beer, missed the opening, and knocked against Vey's boot.

Vey looked down at it. "Your counterattack has reached my footwear without useful instructions."

"Kick that piece toward the near tooth before it embarrasses us both."

Vey kicked. The rib crossed the paint, caught under the rising tooth, and split its root when the mouth closed. Ty sent the next two after it. One disappeared beside his right hand. The other jammed crosswise and held the throat open wide enough for the defenders to see inside.

Wet gray tissue pulled around black attachment cords. Ty's marked hand climbed over them with the sickle. Farther back, his left hand had reached a knot anchored to the live Vale body's chest.

Jade leaned over the opening. Blood from beneath her damaged eye struck the beer and broke apart. "Left hand is at the rear knot. Right hand carries the blade. Two striped ribs remain under the near teeth."

"And the unmarked rib keeps trying to climb into my soul."

She braced her white palm against it. "That rib stays outside your count until you choose it."

The exposed knot in Ty's chest pulled toward her palm. His scattered bones went quiet until the feeder swallowed.

His right shoulder slid to the hole. Vey caught Ty's spine with one arm and planted a boot against the broken pipe. Jade held the loose rib rather than Ty, trusting Vey with the part that belonged to him.

Ty found the left hand again by the keg chalk grinding against a cord. He closed those fingers. The right hand answered next, turning the sickle against the pressure.

"Both hands are mine. Cut the swelling above them."

Jade repeated the call. Vey's three rifles fired into the unmarked tissue crossing the west edge. The shots opened the feeder's outer wall without touching either chalked hand.

Ty pulled the sickle through the rear knot.

The Vale body released the brewery support. Its feeding tunnel clenched around everything it had swallowed, but Ty's ribs kept two teeth apart. His hands tore opposite directions inside the wound. Attachment cords came through the opening with them, wrapped around finger bones and the sickle handle.

The left arm crawled out through the drain. Vey hauled the right free by its striped upper bone while Jade called each joint that still answered. Ty snapped both shoulders back into place. His right forearm arrived last, bent around the sickle and carrying three Vale teeth.

Below the floor, the severed tunnel folded into itself. The brewery pillar settled against its cracked base and stayed there.

Ty reached for the loose ribs. Two returned when he pulled. The third remained buried beside the split root, still answering in small angry taps.

"Leave that rib until the floor team braces the pillar," Vey said. "I prefer your body counted after the building stops moving."

Ty looked down through his open chest. Black fire gathered around the exposed knot of blue fire, but the bones had spread too far to close over it.

One clean pulse left the knot.

It passed through Jade's hand without answering the Reaper chain. Vey's remaining cage went still. Every drop falling from the broken pipe hung long enough to show its round shape, then struck the floor together.

Jade looked above the brewery tanks. "That pulse crossed the route without using your rib."

Ty felt the missing distance pull once behind his soul. Through the buried rib, he felt a white ring close around the bone, test its width, and vanish.

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