F-Rank Mimic Chest: My SSS Mimic Skill Lets Me Become Anything

The center shaft kept coming down.

Its weight squeezed air across Dane’s open seam. Three slow vibrations traveled from the shaft into the floor, each deeper than the last. Around his full base, lye water changed course between raised stone channels. Wet cloth dragged one way. Loose buckles and a broken jaw clicked into a different groove.

The sorting floor tilted. Tess’s ankle pain collided with Ada’s through the Party Link; their combined weight slid across Dane’s rear leather.

Ada struck both surviving rods against the floor. ”Middle channel closes first. Get his left edge onto the drainage ridge before it does.”

Rod one caught. Rod two skidded, caught again, and made a narrow rail beside Dane’s long body. Holt’s breath broke beside Tess. Her bad left ankle flared through the Party Link when his shin struck it, and both bodies dropped hard against Dane’s split rear leather.

Brant’s borrowed shield scraped under Dane’s rear corner. Brant drove it with his boots and the bound length of his left forearm. His right arm stayed pinned to his mail. Blood warmed the cloth above the splint where Voss had cut him.

Vera landed near Dane’s forward lock. Her wand and chalk pouch struck stone with her, but her burned hands stayed off his iron.

The descending press unlocked two inner faces.

Something padded moved on Dane’s left. A harder face answered Ada’s rods on his right. They had not closed yet. The floor was feeding everyone between them.

* * *

Above the slatted gallery, Buk watched Grib hammer a tracing nail into the living route board.

An eyelid opened around the nail’s round head. Red veins led from it toward the false cistern fork. A green vein pulsed down through the gallery floor, keeping time with the press below.

”The board reports my asset in two locations,” Grib said. He stood on his authority crate to drive the nail deeper. ”One route has been falsified under an emergency seal.”

Skarn dragged his chain away from the slats. ”Trace it before the press leaves you scraps.”

Grib held the hammer still. As the eye rolled past red and fixed on green, both padded faces below began folding inward.

Under his apron, Buk closed one claw around the new appointment chip. A stool was carved on one side and a wall hook on the other. He had spent most shifts crouched in drain water while supervisors sat above the runoff. The stool would have kept his tail dry. The hook could have held a ration bag beyond the reach of taller workers’ boots.

The tracing nail had an empty counter-slot beneath its eye.

Buk pushed the chip into it.

The slot’s little teeth sheared through the stool picture, dropping half the chip to the board’s ledge while the wall-hook half stayed in Buk’s claw.

Red veins tightened around the nail; its eye jerked from green to the false cistern coordinate.

One of the padded faces below stopped for a single heavy beat.

* * *

The pause reached Dane as pressure disappearing from his left side.

The right face continued inward. Ada’s rod one bent against it, and the vibration shook through Dane’s base. The left face tasted blood along Holt’s torn palms, found Tess’s wax-burned waist, and resumed with both of them marked as laundry. The right kept sounding Dane’s iron, Vera’s burns, and the black ownership thread buried in his damaged body.

Claimed metal went right; bloody cloth and flesh went left.

The left face drove Holt between the shoulders into Dane’s long flap, his injured palms sliding toward the seam. Tess hit beside him, her hip pinning leather while stone forced her head closer to Dane’s teeth.

The delayed flap lifted.

Holt’s shoulder entered mouth range. Tess’s skull followed as a second pocket of heat. Dane’s tongue knew the blood on Holt’s right hand before the hand touched it.

His hinge wanted to close. The empty place behind his teeth tightened with the remembered heat of feeding. Holt would stop taking room if Dane broke the shoulders. Tess would stop taking room if he caught the head first. The surviving three could fit beside a trunk made lighter and less broken.

Dane bit the split in his own tongue, and fresh pain loosened it from Holt’s wrist. Hunger remained, robbed of its first movement.

Rod one gave a high metal complaint.

”It has eleven breaths before it folds,” Ada said. ”Less if Brant has to keep carrying this corner.”

Tess tried to turn under the compactor. Her bound left forearm caught on Dane’s flap. ”Then tell me where you need my shoulders.”

”Left one under the leather. Holt goes after you.”

The one-beat pause was ending.

Vera spoke close to Dane’s lock. ”Tess under the flap, Holt sideways. Dane, front handle until they’re clear?”

He knocked the loop against the floor once.

Her wet wrappings closed around the handle. Pain crossed the Party Link when the burns opened under them. She pulled only far enough to turn Dane’s mouth away from Holt’s neck.

The padded face resumed.

Tess’s burned waist ground against Dane’s long flap. Air tore out of her. The cutter handle slipped from her injured right hand, struck Dane’s corner, and started down a water channel. She trapped it against her bound left forearm, then closed the split right palm around it again.

Holt’s hand slid between Dane’s flap and base.

Blood crossed the tongue Dane was still biting.

At Control 0.08%, shutting without taking the hand felt like holding a door against someone stronger on the other side. Dane kept the hinge where it was. Stone advanced another finger’s width.

* * *

The tracing eye strained toward green again.

Grib saw the missing stool half and turned on Buk. ”You fed your appointment into my trace. Pull it out.”

Buk rubbed his thumb over the wall-hook carving he still held. ”Only the stool went in.”

”There is no partial appointment after falsifying a recovery board.”

As the green vein swelled beneath the nail, someone screamed far below. Buk closed his claw over the wall-hook half while the press reclaimed its lost beat.

Grib took a bar of orange correction wax from his coat. Thin black hairs ran through its center. ”Full hide. Limbs included. No cooling water, and correction before meal consideration. Remove the counterclaim.”

If Buk obeyed, the eye would follow green and find the party. If he did not, Grib could erase the wall hook with one thumb and leave him lower in the meal line than he had begun.

Buk remembered another place below a table: a wounded chest holding its teeth apart, then a bent copper nudged far enough for him to buy half a stolen roll. He had eaten the bread so fast the crust cut the roof of his mouth. His stomach cramped at the memory.

”The hook—” he began.

”Depends on what your work leaves me.”

Buk’s claws dug into his own palm. He pressed his thumb into the wax.

Orange sank beneath the scales. The trapped hairs tightened until his whole forearm shook, then arranged themselves into a time mark under the skin. Correction still waited for him, but the marked limb already trembled around its outline.

At the marked thumbprint, the route board sent one green flare beneath Grib’s boots.

Below, the sorting floor opened a rejection throat for one cycle.

* * *

Air rushed past Dane’s left corner, carrying wet wool, rendered fat, and the sweet rot of discarded flesh. Between two floor ridges, rubbery lips peeled around a steep throat where brushes and ownership hooks rattled.

Its opening lay beyond Holt and Tess. The press was driving both deeper into Dane’s mouth while their bodies blocked his route to it.

One bite would make the gap.

Dane reached for the gaping upper-rear root. Strap Cinch gave one hot tremor before the root sagged; another contraction would tear it free without moving anyone.

Instead, he drove that failing corner against the raised floor ridge.

Vera held the front handle within the permission he had given. Brant shoved his shield beneath Dane’s rear edge and drove with both legs while his splinted left forearm kept the wood from turning. Ada let rod one bow until its fibers screamed.

An ownership hook under Tess’s hip caught Dane’s long flap.

The left compactor advanced.

Leather tightened from the hook to the gaping upper-rear root. The first brass staple pulled through living tissue. The second left a hot round hole. A third came loose with meat still clenched beneath its head.

The split ran from the ruined root to Dane’s left corner.

Pain threw the flap wide. Holt’s right wrist remained inside, pressed against the tongue.

Dane held his teeth apart.

Tess shoved the cutter handle through the new split and folded her injured left forearm over it as a brace. Her good right boot caught Holt above the elbow.

”I have you,” she said, though her voice broke halfway through it.

She rolled into the rejection throat and kicked Holt’s forearm clear. His pulse left Dane’s mouth. Blood stayed on Dane’s tongue.

Dane shut on empty air beside Holt’s fingers. Holt followed sideways with one ruined palm against Tess’s boot as three brass buttons popped from his coat in separate impacts. Every throat hook missed skin.

Vera’s burned hands left Dane’s handle as soon as Holt cleared. The iron loop rang once against the floor.

Ada freed rod one. Rod two remained wedged in the other compactor.

”I’m not leaving two,” she said to Brant. ”Catch the kick.”

She stamped the rod’s lower end. Brant turned his shield into its path. Metal slammed wood, the shield rim struck his left splint, and the fresh cut opened through the wrapping. He kept rod two from flying into the press and went through Dane’s torn flap with shield and rod together.

Ada followed. Vera looped a wet shirt around Dane’s outer corner and pulled on the cloth, never taking another body surface.

The compactors met behind them.

Stone crushed the trapped laundry hard enough to spit buckles, buttons, and a broken jaw into the rejection channel. Bone struck Dane’s lid and spun away. The throat’s hooks entered the split flap, dragged living leather another inch, and released it only to catch again lower down.

The completed press cycle boomed through the floor.

No living body remained inside it.

* * *

Inside the rejection throat, Tess braced the cutter handle across two ribs. Holt took her bound forearm instead of the tool, keeping his cut palms away from its edges.

”Green again,” Tess said. ”The worker who moved the peg paid for this one too.”

Holt shifted his grip when her bad ankle struck a brush. ”You knew he would?”

”I know he wants food, a better hook, and Rook loose. Trusting him would be a different mistake.” She forced the cutter handle level for Holt’s next handhold. ”I still did mine.”

Holt answered by putting his shoulder under her left heel and keeping them moving.

The route cycle carried the party away from the press.

* * *

The red overflow doors opened in the false cistern.

From the board ledge, Buk watched Skarn measure the columns, then unbuckle his breastplate. The armor hit red water and threw it across Grib’s boots.

”That is issued recovery equipment,” Grib said.

Skarn dropped both shoulder plates beside the breastplate and fitted his narrower body between the overflow columns.

Three chained hooks came off his belt. He fed one chain through the left water slot, crossed another to the right, and lowered the last beneath the rejection-throat mouth. Each hook passed out of sight while all three chains stayed slack in his hands.

Below, the throat coughed.

* * *

Tess struck a narrow ledge first. Holt hit behind her and stopped her from pitching forward. Ada landed on both feet with rods one and two still in her hands.

Brant hit on his borrowed shield and left hip. His useless right arm stayed pinned to his mail. Vera came through with only the wet shirt in her burned hands; she caught its free end around the shield rim and hauled Brant away from the drop.

Dane emerged last.

The throat caught his split flap and tore it another handspan before releasing. He hit broadside. Most of his base found wet stone. His forward lock found nothing beneath it.

Black water poured around his corners and fell into the cistern overflow.

Below the ledge, three separate chains scraped once against stone and went still.