From Human to Skeleton: Revived with Infinite System Crystals

The first stripped hinge lifted again while Nessa watched it.

Kestra Vol drove two floor hooks through the crate runners. The storehouse chain pulled left, the delivery rail pulled right, and the box settled between them with its lid bowed upward.

"Your unloading shift begins after the cargo stops moving my wall."

Nessa put the flat of her cutter across the hinge. "Your wall can wait until I know what is pushing from inside."

Ty's skull occupied the shelf above his rib sling. Jade stood beside him with her white hand tucked against her waist and her open right eye turned toward the box.

"Five routes leave that lid in different directions," Jade said. "Only one returns toward the hardware taken from Oltin."

Kestra passed a return cord around the far runner. Her copper knee tried turning with the crate until the strap at her belt stopped it.

Nessa closed the cutter around the first hinge pin. The stolen West Four joint gave way at the maintenance punch, exactly where a field armorer would break it to preserve the useful shoulder arc.

The lid rose against her blade.

Warm air moved across her wrapped fingers. Someone inside pushed a heel against the wood and let it fall.

Nessa cut the second hinge without lifting the lid farther. "Kestra, bring every empty breathing shelf and leave the object racks closed."

"Three beds remain, and your crate needs four."

"Then bill Griswald's clerk for the fourth after I leave you hinge marks, a cut cage, and three living witnesses."

Kestra disliked the answer enough to obey it. She cleared three low shelves while Jade tied the lid to a floor ring.

Nessa opened the crate.

Three adults had been fitted around a metal spindle. Gray washing cloth passed beneath their arms and across their mouths, keeping each head against a different wall; between their knees sat five pieces that had never been made to work together.

Through the second carrier's ankle lock, the nearest woman's left wrist was tied to the spindle. Whenever her chest moved, the square rail tooth pressed into his heel. The third carrier received air through the white tube, but every pull at that tube tightened the black joint across both wrists beside him.

Nessa marked each strip of washing cloth with a different grease line before moving anything. One line across the chest belonged to the woman. Two around an ankle belonged to the man beside her. Three went beside the breathing tube, where the last carrier's jaw kept slipping away from its mouthpiece.

Kestra brought her empty shelves and stopped at the crate. "Separate one person carelessly, and the other two pay through the spindle."

"Then support every attached joint before my cutter opens the first restraint."

Kestra slid one shelf beneath the ankle lock. Jade braced the breathing tube with her living hand. From above them, Ty called the angle whenever his fixed skull could see a strap Nessa's shoulder blocked.

A blue Oltin cage arc held the nearest woman's chest against the spindle. A square rail tooth crusted with flood silt locked the second carrier's ankles. Black iron joined both of his wrists through cuts that repeated along the edge like links in a blade.

The last two pieces were a white breathing tube and a red stone rivet. One carried heat without warming the cloth around it. The other kept pulling toward the crate floor after Kestra's chains lifted that side.

Jade shifted her damaged eye from piece to piece. "The fragments have five origins, and each carrier is holding more than one."

From his shelf, Ty studied the black joint. "Those cuts resemble Cross Link work, and Todd's blade is my only comparison."

Nessa put that observation behind the immediate count. All three carriers moved air. The woman beneath the Oltin arc managed the least.

Seven impacts passed under the blue metal.

Nessa set two fingers against it. The pattern struck her index finger three times, crossed the cage joint, then finished four times beneath her thumb.

The stolen field fingers had tapped the same count against Palla's drawer rail and the far platform hook.

Nessa followed a strand from the cage arc into the crate wall. It passed through the moving hinge, entered the delivery channel, and pulled toward the wash basin. Far below, three light taps answered through stone.

Those field fingers had crossed Meren's west wall, responded to the hidden cargo jaw, and carried stolen Oltin evidence deeper into the prison road. Recovering them would give Vey a live sample before the next Vale body reached his city. Losing them left West Four with cut hinges and guesses.

The strand offered Nessa a path wide enough for her cutter and arm. She could let it take both after the fingers while Kestra held the crate. Ty occupied separate shelves, Jade's damaged eye remained tied to five origins, and two other carriers still depended on the spindle Nessa would leave behind.

"This carrier is keeping our route to the field pieces open."

Kestra tightened the runner chain. "Cut her loose and the channel forgets which delivery belongs here."

"Leaving the arc in place keeps her chest from taking a full breath," Jade said.

Nessa found the cage release beneath the woman's shoulder. The catch required six working contacts followed by a living pulse.

With her shortened ring finger, Nessa could reach the sixth point; the seventh sat beneath the empty side of her hand. West Four had adapted her cutter around that loss. Inside the crate, the same loss returned as the final lock.

Nessa placed her compact cutter beside the cage arc and connected both with the brass catch from Iven's box. If the cutter repeated the living count, the delivery channel might accept metal long enough for her to remove the body.

Using thumb, index finger, and middle finger, she pressed the first three contacts and closed the next two through the cutter handle with her shortened ring finger. Across the sixth, her forearm rolled the brass catch.

Nothing touched the seventh point.

Nessa drove the edge against the final contact. Metal answered metal. The strand into the delivery channel loosened, then snapped tight around the woman's shoulder.

Six impacts traveled through the cutter. The strand stayed wound around the woman's shoulder.

"I can keep the path or remove the arc, but this cutter cannot become her pulse."

Ty's voice came from above the crate. "How many more breaths can she lose while you follow it?"

Nessa watched the washing cloth at the woman's mouth. It moved once, stopped through the next seven impacts, then drew inward by less than the width of a nail.

"One more attempt spends breath that none of us can return."

The three taps below the basin moved farther down the delivery channel. Nessa could leave now, follow the field pieces, and return before the cage took the rest of the woman's breath. That promise required the prison road to hold one distance, a behavior absent from every crossing Nessa had recorded.

Iven had torn the last gray cords from his shoulder to keep dead armor from using him. Perr had reached the clinic because Iven spent the arm West Four hoped to repair. Nessa could recover three fingers by making the woman in the crate spend her lungs in the same manner, only without asking her.

Beside the crate, Nessa's damaged hand held six contacts and an empty place. The seventh contact matched the missing side of her hand.

Vey's order remained in Meren with Palla. The line he had written around the hole in an evacuee's ruined pressure tag required that nobody remain behind to preserve equipment.

She put the cutter around the blue arc.

Kestra caught the handle. "Closing that channel leaves every stolen Oltin piece beyond your recovery order."

"Vey wrote that nobody remains behind to preserve equipment, so my recovery order ends before your channel turns this woman into a handle for three fingers."

Nessa drove her forearm into the brass lock. The cutter closed through the cage arc and stopped against the spindle.

The woman's chest pulled away from the broken metal. Jade removed the washing cloth from her mouth while Kestra lowered the nearest breathing shelf beside the crate.

Under the wash basin, the three taps stopped.

The delivery strand withdrew through the hinge faster than Nessa could catch it. The moving pin settled. Black grease filled the gap and hardened around the West Four maintenance punch.

Nessa had lost the field pieces, Sela's cracked disc, and the broken gravity nail in one cut.

The woman drew enough air to lift her own shoulder. Nessa slid both arms beneath her and moved her onto Kestra's shelf without disturbing the red rivet tied to the next carrier.

Jade kept the freed wrist raised until Kestra loosened the cord linking it to the second carrier's ankle. The rail tooth settled onto the support shelf rather than cutting deeper into his heel. Ty called the third carrier's tube angle while Nessa retied it to a floor ring, giving the remaining pair room to breathe without separating the five fragments yet.

"Two more people remain inside, and neither becomes a storage fee."

Kestra opened her ledger. "Then your unloading shift grows until every borrowed bed is paid."

Nessa rested her damaged hand beside the freed woman's wrist. She needed to count the pulse again before cutting the other harnesses.

Seven taps touched her skin.

The delivery channel stayed quiet while the woman's fingers repeated the stolen field pattern against Nessa's shortened hand.

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