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

Before the ash bar cleared its notch, Buk screamed from the intake annex.

With Ada’s rods returned to her, Holt set both forearms beneath the bar and pried Brant’s shield under Dane. Tess fed waxed wool below his base with her right hand until her bad ankle slipped on the fungal mat. Vera caught the loose roll beneath her boot before it could twist into Dane’s torn hinge.

Brant lay beside the shield and steered with his heel. ”Left corner first. His left. Mine has contributed enough.”

The shield lifted. Dane’s front tear dragged across iron, then settled on wool. Every root between the room and the corridor carried the rattle of his crooked tooth.

They raised the bar again after they passed. Their paid room stayed closed behind them until Buk’s second scream ran down the corridor.

Heat reached Dane before the annex did: solvent wax stung his seam above scorched hair, old blood, and the greasy-sweet stink of skin cooked into a drain.

Vera stopped their shield. Her voice turned as she measured the chamber for him. ”Round room, three sanctuary passages, waist-high calcite rail. The correction berth is across it, and Buk’s fixed to the frame.”

Ada’s rod tips clicked once against stone. ”Comb under the right wrist. Two rollers over the ribs. Wax from claws to shoulder.”

A square key entered brass across the rail.

Claim-Clerk Orth spoke without raising his voice. ”You brought the recovery seal.”

”We brought the people who watched it dissolve,” Vera said. ”Skarn’s hand and slate went into the cistern with it.”

”My desk cannot file witnesses where the seal belongs.”

Buk pulled against four cuffs. Iron answered from wrist, wrist, ankle, ankle. ”Buk was told bring seal, keep skin.”

”You brought neither the seal nor a completed correction.”

The key turned.

Tiny crunches ran beneath Buk’s right scales. The first few were dry. Then the comb found skin, and the sound became wet enough to feel through the rail.

Buk’s scream hit the high vents. Something broad and slick slapped into the runoff gutter.

”Wrist to elbow,” Ada said, too fast. ”Scale plates and upper skin. Muscle exposed. Black-red bleeding.”

The blood warmed the room’s smell.

Dane’s lid rose the width of his free copper. The coin rolled against the safe side of its front gutter. Vera’s boot stopped near his lock and came no closer.

Orth let the key rest. ”One registered pass. Hingehold records duration, method, and waste for every sentence leased before entry. Mercy was not included in mine.”

”The counterfoil names him as a witness,” Holt said.

”It names a maintenance unit in an unfinished promise.”

Ada set rod one along the sanctuary rail. ”Then we finish the witness entry before you turn that again.”

Orth touched the key. Tess’s cutter handle knocked against the stone beside Dane.

She had put it down where everyone could hear.

The locking bead on her damaged cord clicked against her buckle. ”There is one Candle Row condition knot left. It stops a seller changing the body after inspection. It will name the cord’s route.”

”And your claim?” Vera asked.

”None on Buk. The knot burns. The bead stays.”

Brant scraped his heel over the shield rim. ”Holt watches the cord. You have my approval.”

”Mine too,” Vera said. ”Use one knot.”

Holt shifted close enough for his sleeve to brush Tess’s waist, keeping his ruined palms lifted. ”I can see the silver. Throw it.”

Tess worried the thread loose with her teeth. She spat a taste of old wax, pinched the short knot in her right fingers, and dropped it into the hot runoff.

Silver struck the hot runoff; wax snapped around it, and the gutter rang upstream. A metallic tremor crossed the rail as key, comb, rollers, and cuffs struck one note. Orth tried the key. The mechanism held it at the first fraction of a turn.

Vera read what the condition knot raised on the frame.

/==[ Market Condition Hold ]==\

| Subject: Unentered Living Cargo\

| Condition Alteration: Suspended During Testimony\

| Token: Consumed\

| Ownership: Unresolved\

\==[ Witness Must Declare Before Count Ends ]==/

”Candle Row,” Orth said. ”Damaged collector cord. One valid knot.”

The locking bead remained at Tess’s buckle when she wound the shortened cord around her waist. She picked up the blunt handle only after Vera said her name.

Orth set a burning count strip into his slate. ”If Buk stays silent until the last mark, the hold ends and the sentence resumes. Seal recovery would leave two meal bells eligible, including solids. Adverse route testimony keeps the machine still until challenge and voids both bells.”

The promised stool was already gone. Buk had lost it before Skarn reached the cistern.

One mark burned away.

Buk’s breath scraped through the pressure over his ribs. ”Buk quiet. Comb starts after count. Meals might stay?”

”If the seal returns.”

Another mark vanished.

”Buk speaks. Teeth stay. Two bells gone.”

”Including solids.”

Buk’s claws worried the cuff until iron squealed. Two weeks of bowls arrived in the pause between his breaths: broth thin enough to drink beside a drain, then the rare lump that had to be chewed. His mouth worked once without food.

”Buk moved green laundry peg one socket,” he said.

The cage gave a higher note. The burning count stopped.

Orth asked, ”Why?”

”Blue scent needed living bend. Red cistern line needed look bright for hooks. Buk put blue under red.”

Vera pushed Pima’s folded counterfoil onto the calcite rail with the flat of her wrapped wrist. ”The threshold took the fold,” she said. ”Five witnesses present. Hingehold receiving.”

Calcite clicked around the paper’s edge, and ink began scratching inside it. Buk tried to draw a deeper breath; the frame answered with a choked rattle.

”Lower roller is holding his ribs down,” Ada said. ”The drive is frozen. Right flank has three teeth seated under the plates.”

”Can he finish where he is?” Brant asked.

Buk tested the breath again. The last sound never became a word.

Ada’s rod tapped the gear housing. ”We lever the entire frame back by hand. The teeth stay fixed while he moves across them.”

Holt leaned both forearms on the rail. ”How much of him?”

”A handspan, if the plates tear clean. Worse if they don’t.”

The machine remained silent. Orth’s key stayed trapped under silver while Buk hung there with blood running from his bare forearm.

”Move frame,” he said. ”Buk still speaks.”

Brant gave the work in whole sentences. Ada wedged rod two between the locked gear teeth. Tess took the frame rope with her right hand and braced her good foot. Holt hooked his forearms beneath Buk’s apron. Brant drove the shield skid under the berth with his heel.

Vera stayed beside Dane’s front corner, both wrapped hands against her own ribs. ”I have the fall. With my boot.”

”On three,” Brant said. ”Hold the left side low or the teeth twist. One. Two.”

On three, shield, rod, rope, and Holt’s back forced the correction frame away from its locked drive.

The frame slid back. The flank teeth stayed locked in the berth while Buk’s body traveled across them.

Three plates tore loose one after another. The first made him grunt. The second pulled a scream through the breath the roller had given back. The third stayed tied to him by white fibers until Tess hauled once more and the connection snapped.

A hand-wide sheet struck the gutter. Hot blood pattered across Dane’s lid, Holt’s sleeves, and the rail.

The apron strap tore under Buk’s weight.

He fell chest-first over Dane’s front band. One leg hit the lock. The open right flank landed above the mouth seam, and blood found the narrow space between two teeth.

Mimic hunger reached the wound before Dane finished understanding the impact.

Living meat could pack the split hinge. Blood could wet the roots. One pull would drag Buk past the crooked tooth, out of Orth’s machine, out of every claim except the one inside Dane.

His delayed left side lifted. The free copper jumped in its gutter.

Vera started forward. Her next step stopped outside his bite line.

”Buk. Left knee down,” she said. ”I’m under your shoulder. Push if you still want out.”

Buk’s left claw struck Dane’s lockplate. His knee dragged against the shield. Vera wedged her boot beneath his hanging shoulder and took enough weight for Holt to pull.

Dane drove every usable fraction of 0.09 percent into his lid.

The crooked tooth opened his wounded tongue. Buk’s blood touched the hot intake. Dane tasted iron, old wax, and living repair.

He shut.

The copper struck the safe wall of the gutter. Buk slid over the closed lid and onto Brant’s shield while Holt hauled by the apron. Cloth rasped through Holt’s wraps, spreading fresh warmth inside both palms as Buk landed on his back and shuddered.

The machine had given him room to breathe and taken most of the breath in payment.

”Orange runner line,” he gasped. ”Grib called maintain tension. Hands opened. Orange stayed. Then line went dark.”

His left cuff and Pima’s counterfoil answered in the same ringing note.

”Skarn primary line broke at hand. Seal and slate went into cistern channel. Black line dissolved there. Recovery board filed over Core mark after. Buk saw board take it.”

When the count strip’s dry burn ceased, all four cuffs snapped open and the key jumped loose. The comb and rollers stayed locked away from Buk while Ada dragged rod two from the gears; its deeper curve held. Brant pulled the shield fully onto sanctuary stone as Holt dropped beside it, both sleeves wet to the elbow.

Metal sang once around Buk’s left wrist. Vera read the entries that followed.

/==[ Low-Status Witness Hold ]==\

| Formal Entry: Maintenance Unit / Spoken Name Buk\

| Testimony: Route Board / Recovery Command / Seal Loss\

| Condition: Preserved Pending Challenge\

| Compensation: Two Meal Bells / Solids Voided\

\==[ Personhood And Final Claim Unresolved ]==/

Buk listened through the last line. ”Wall hook?”

Orth scraped the consumed knot’s ash into a paper fold. The correction key came out, entered a lockbox, and turned once. He took the counterfoil’s impressed copy without touching the sanctuary rail.

”Still under review,” he said. ”Your hold lasts one cycle or until challenged. The dissolved seal remains due to my desk. When I return, the claim will compel an answer.”

His steps receded through the leased corridor. The correction machine stayed behind the rail, washed, locked, and ready.

Buk bared his teeth at the ceiling. ”Wall hook is good hook.”

The party let him keep that comfort for himself.

They carried him back on Brant’s shield. He bled through three wool pads before the sanctuary door opened a basin alcove and pushed a low reed pallet from the wall. Ada packed the forearm first, then the flank, keeping the torn plates beside the dressing for the neutral assessor.

Two routes pressed into the inner lintel.

Vera read them aloud. ”Remain for the cycle we bought. Pay the threshold bell. Hear Buk’s challenge. Or leave through an undead storage shaft and end shelter at entry. Current claims stay outside only until the bell.”

Cold dust breathed from the second route. Tess described stacked coffins with a stair cut down through them.

Ada tightened the third flank pad. ”That stair kills him tonight.”

”Buk can hear,” Buk said.

”Then disagree after you stop soaking the reeds.”

Buk considered it and kept his answer.

Brant counted the adults who could still stand without swaying. Holt checked the locking bead at Tess’s buckle. Vera rested her boot beside Dane’s shield, close enough for him to locate and well outside his seam.

At Dane’s knock, the living wood swallowed the route choices. Their closed room remained theirs, along with the bell price and the coming challenge.

One question rose across the door.

WHO COUNTS AS INSIDE WHEN THIS DOOR CLOSES?

Vera read the names already set in the grain. Ash Company. Dane Rook.

She stopped at the empty space beside Buk.