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

The dawn bell found the clot in Dane’s left hinge.

Its first note traveled through the living lintel and tugged every old tear awake. Under the second, Ada circled his root cradle; cloth whispered near lock, hinge, then lid as she waited through one attempt to lift it.

”The clot held through the night. Your lid is still one breath late, and that tongue is still a problem.” Her voice shifted toward Lir. ”One quarter-bell. Two knocks, fresh blood, more delay, wider separation, or the tongue blocking him ends it. A clean result ends it too.”

”Clean result means we stop?” the threshold guard asked.

”It means you get to be boring somewhere safer,” Ada said.

The guard’s boot scraped the calcite line a full stride to Dane’s right. ”Before I lend him my pulse, show me how I leave.”

Lir lifted the inner ash bar. Wood grown through stone groaned clear of its roots. ”Say back. Walk back. Nobody bargains.”

”And if somebody decides a bite is useful evidence?”

”I close the lane and you keep walking.”

”I come back for the person holding the pen.”

The guard walked his retreat once. His steps moved from the corridor, crossed the frame well beyond Dane’s mouth, and returned without anybody calling him brave.

Lir had every other position spoken aloud. One empty cart waited outside. Holt held the second inside with his forearms under the handles so his torn palms bore no load. Brant’s shield rested against Dane’s folded right corner; Brant could kick it free if the cradle shifted. Tess counted two hinges, four axle pins, and both route tags aloud. Buk’s litter creaked in the room behind Dane.

Vera called from the exterior witness mark. ”Lane, groove, and lock are clear. My hands stay off.”

Dane remembered the heat of Vera’s palm from the room. She had pulled away there. Here, with workers listening and a living man offering his body, her distance did more for him than that remembered touch.

Lir laid out the rest in pieces, letting the guard interrupt.

The block allowed one approach and, if the guard still chose it, one crossing. From the painted lane outside bite reach, he could say back for any reason; Dane’s two knocks, Lir’s call, or Ada naming an injury ended the attempt.

”No second walk,” the guard said.

”You leave after one,” Lir answered.

”No touch. No bite. No claim. He gets none of my blood, thoughts, or memories.”

”You left out feed,” Tess said.

”If he bites me, Crowe, you can shout it while I run.”

Tess’s cutter handle clicked once against her damaged cord and went still.

The guard planted his boot on the retreat line. ”Start with wood. Wood complains less.”

The outer cart rolled.

Before the wheels reached the frame, cold stole into Dane’s right corner: axle iron, root planks, space with nothing alive inside it. Hollowness flexed his intake as though each piece already had a place. Below reach, the dirty copper trembled against something hard.

His body wanted the cart stored inside him.

Dane knocked as it approached and again when the wheel-rumble passed his lock. The workers called the crossing complete.

Holt pushed the inner cart out with his forearms. This time the cold hollow pressure entered through Dane’s damaged rear hinge. It dragged along the root scar and left by his front lock while Lir struck three false knocks on the sill. Dane answered the moving weight and ignored the noise.

”Outside to room, then room to outside,” Ada said. ”Both before the copied knocks.”

The cart wheels stopped. Dane’s hinge kept throbbing after them.

Lir announced herself and entered the lane.

Her work mark reached the lintel first. It caught the old ownership damage buried in Dane’s raw strap sockets. His tag heated. The tear under his lock tightened around the memory of a key that had never belonged there. For one ugly instant, his lid wanted to sit square and wait for her hand.

He knocked for the approach.

”Did that feel like the carts?” Ada asked.

Two knocks.

”Could you tell it was Lir without hearing us name her?”

Two.

Authority filled the pressure while identity stayed empty.

Lir completed the crossing. ”My coat bosses the roots. He answers for himself.”

Then came the guard.

His boot touched the lane, and warmth pushed through Dane’s lock tear. A heel strike gave him the man’s weight. The next step brought sweat, old leather, muscle, and a pulse hard enough to stir Dane’s wounded tongue.

The cart had pressed like space waiting to be filled. This pressure made the space inside Dane squeeze back.

He wanted meat.

The guard paused halfway. Dane heard a sleeve shift and a breath held deliberately still.

”Back,” the man said.

Lir repeated the word. His boots withdrew along the route he had tested. The hot pressure thinned, step by step, until it left Dane’s lock. Dane knocked once.

The guard exhaled. ”Now I believe the line.”

He chose to try the full crossing. Lir put the outer cart behind him and Holt’s cart inside, both set to halt before the center mark. The open listener groove would carry Lir’s false knocks beneath their wheels.

From the corridor, the guard started. Holt shoved with both forearms, sending wood toward Dane from two directions.

Cold emptiness pulled through his hinge while living heat approached his lock; neither resembled the copied taps striking stone.

Under the wheel noise came a bitter smell he knew from claim tables and burned skin.

Black wax.

Something thin scraped through the listener groove. It touched his lockplate, searched the seam, and slid between his front teeth.

”Back,” the guard snapped. His boots were already retreating.

”Carts down,” Brant ordered.

Holt let the inner handles settle across his forearms. The outer wheels struck their chocks. Buk’s litter ropes creaked hard behind Dane.

”Gray wrist,” Buk rasped. ”Same narrow scout. Half hand from Dane mouth.”

Ada swore at Buk to lie down. Wet cloth answered her; his warning had opened seep through the flank wrap.

The scout drove the waxed probe deeper.

Its brass core scraped Dane’s cracked tooth. Backward hooks caught the groove, and the shaft levered his lid up to the copper-width limit. His crooked tooth took the load. Pain shot through the tooth root, crossed his lock, and tore at the old clot in his left hinge.

The scout’s wrist beat just beyond the seam. Dane smelled salt in the ruined palm and fresh blood waking under stretched skin. His tongue surged toward it, then bunched beneath the brass and trapped its own swollen length.

The lid strained for the wrist. His mark burned for the claim tool, but brass grinding in the cracked root drowned both demands in pain. The wrist smelled edible. The rod was already in his mouth.

Dane drove his crooked tooth into brass.

The casing crumpled. Wax squeezed hot across his gums. The scout yanked, and the return hooks locked against the stone behind him.

The pull went through Dane’s tooth, through his lid, through the hinge clot.

The clot tore.

Blood crawled warm down his own grain as the scout pulled again. The shaft shuddered between Dane’s teeth. A close scream shook the lockplate. One of the hooked teeth had punched into the soft inner wrist; the retreat dragged it toward the heel of the hand.

Buk’s throat clicked. ”Skin coming.”

The scout kept pulling.

Wet fibers parted against the metal. The scream broke into breathless grunts, each one timed to another jerk. Hot blood misted Dane’s outer band. The living wrist lurched closer, pulse pounding so near that Dane’s intake opened around the scent.

He bit down on the rod.

The scout abandoned it before his hand crossed the seam. His weight vanished from the other end. Dane’s lid slammed the remaining width, snapped the brass behind its sampling head, and caught nothing living.

The crushed wax bladder burst outward through the groove.

Stone scraped. A maintenance seam struck shut. Retreating boots slapped once below the sill, then disappeared under the noise of Lir dropping the listener seal.

”He is gone,” Vera called. Her breath came fast, but she had not crossed into Dane’s bite line. ”Wax left three runs. One follows the contract vein. One found the living root. The last stops exactly where the black and red claims stop.”

”He mapped the exclusion edge,” Tess said.

Lir’s wedge hammer hit the sealed groove. ”Outer watch moves now. Nobody wipes that wax. Plate comes after the sample is out.”

The broken probe lay trapped between Dane’s teeth. His shortened tongue remained wedged under it. Hunger worried at the blood on his outer band, unable to reach it without opening for the metal again.

”I need the shaft,” Tess said. ”Cutter handle only. Vera, Brant?”

”Approved for that probe,” Vera answered from outside.

”Approved,” Brant said. His boot kept the shield loose against Dane’s right corner. ”Holt watches.”

”Watching,” Holt said.

Tess hooked the broken end without touching Dane’s mouth and drew it into a stone evidence bowl. The last backward tooth came free with a brass screech. Dane’s tongue unknotted after three breaths and lay swollen against the floor of his mouth.

Ada listened to his lid once, then twice. ”Old hinge clot opened. No new separation. Lid lag matches the start. Tongue is clear again. Work is over.”

”Both carts crossed before the wax,” Vera said.

”Outside first, then Holt’s from the room,” Ada replied. ”Both answers came before the wax. Those stand. Everything after the probe goes to the injury strip.”

”The lane stays shut today,” Lir said.

Lettering pressed pale ridges through the grain beside Dane’s lock.

/==[ Threshold Preparation Record ]==\

| Two-Sided Pressure: Repeatable In One Frame

| Reflex Sorting: Food / Authority / Inventory

| Identity Content: None

| Crossing Control: None

| Control Gain: None

| Form: Unchanged

\==[ Preparation Only / Gate Marked ]==/

Preparation had hurt and given him one useful fact. Command stayed out of reach.

The guard returned only after Lir barred the groove and declared the bite lane closed.

”I was out before that rod entered,” he said.

”I heard you call back,” Vera answered.

”Put this at the top. My yes was for the chest. The hand under the floor had none.”

Lir’s stylus cut his words across the top of the clay injury strip. The guard listened to every scratch before walking out under his own power.

Workers fitted a removable calcite plate over the three wax runs. Brant sent the next watch to the outer sill. Ada replaced Buk’s wet flank dressing while he complained that proof should not require sitting up.

The outer bell answered him with two quick knocks, one dragged, then two quick.

Buk stopped complaining.

”Kesh cadence,” he whispered.

Lir called through the new plate. ”Hands and burden?”

An outer worker answered, ”Empty hands. Reed packet. Crossed-broom seal at the throat. Adult runner.”

The courier’s voice came through the frame, rough from distance or dust.

”Kesh asks for proof. Buk breathing. Buk choosing. Buk still Buk after human paper.”

The litter ropes ceased creaking. Buk’s next breath caught halfway in.