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

The second knock lifted Dane in his cradle, root pegs shrieking beneath him as pain ran from the folded right corner to his widened left hinge. The tear below his lock opened warm against the listener groove.

The reed packet rasped across the root table. Its bitter archive scent had already settled into every old seam in Hingehold.

Three knuckles struck the outer-sill pattern Lir had used during Dane’s crossing test.

The sound came through the stone under him.

One of the threshold workers stepped toward the gate before Lir caught his belt.

”I made those knocks yesterday,” she said. ”The floor made them now. Back on the inner peg.”

The worker’s heel found wood. A line grated between two floor plates, and Dane felt his cradle roots pull away from its widening edges.

”Five rib drawers,” Lir said. Her breath clipped on the count. ”No chest around them. Black wax at every joint.”

Bone ends rasped against stone. Five separate drawer fronts chattered below Dane, each carrying a dry membrane buzz without lungs behind it. Dust touched his tongue. The wax smelled sweet enough to hide rot and failed.

Holt reached for Buk’s litter.

”Take Buk,” Buk said. His good claws scraped over his new record. ”Leave table if table wants floor. Name comes.”

”You are on the litter,” Holt said.

”Then move litter. Buk just got spelled right. Floor can wait its turn.”

Holt threaded his forearms under the poles. The courier caught the root table before its leg dropped into the opening, then tucked Kesh’s reed packet under the same elbow and took the far end of Buk’s record. Buk’s left claws stayed hooked in his half.

A drawer clicked open.

”Guard out. Carts stop.”

Brant’s exact voice came from under the plates. A threshold guard obeyed the old command before thought caught him; his ash bar lifted clear of the left lane.

Another membrane spoke in Buk’s flat work-yard rhythm.

”Gray wrist. Same scout.”

Boot leather turned toward the outer sill.

Something cut the air beside Holt’s jaw. He dropped flat over the litter. A forked point struck the lintel where his throat had been and buried itself with two hard taps.

”High line!” Vera called.

Brant’s shield rim hit stone, caught the filament, and skated toward the seam. His useless right arm knocked once against its bindings. He stamped the shield lower with his boot and leaned his left shoulder over the boss until the strand sang against the metal.

With the ash bar abandoned on the floor, nobody trusted another order yet.

The second filament found Dane.

Its hook entered his raw left strap socket and scraped down the old fastening channel. Cold went through the wound. His body tested the thing against owner, carrier, route, feed. Each possible use tugged the hook one notch deeper.

Dane struck twice.

Stop. No.

The answer came back from beneath him in his own knock pattern. One pair became four, then eight, all traveling through the listener groove until his refusal sounded like an invitation given by a crowd.

No one touched his cradle.

”Clean frame is still seated at the right root,” Lir said. ”One turn would put the floor on its far side.”

Ada’s rod tapped near Dane’s lock and stopped. ”One turn will grind the folded corner. His lock is bleeding already.”

Vera took a step close enough for Dane to smell salve beneath the char on her hand wraps. She kept those hands clear of him.

”Can you separate the floor sounds from us without closing the path between?”

The false knocks kept climbing through his base. Dane shifted his lock toward the clean frame. The movement belonged to his body. No drawer could borrow it.

”He chose the angle,” Vera said.

Lir and the two threshold workers took the cradle roots. Brant stayed on the shield. They rotated Dane one peg at a time while his folded corner ground across wood. His lid lagged behind the pain and snapped on empty air.

Living breath pressed at one side of the aligned frame. Stored knocks hammered at the other. Dane held the difference until the floor noises dulled into blunt impacts stripped of direction.

”The far side has gone gray,” Tess said. The dead collector cord rasped as she wound it around her fist. ”Strand crosses without bending.”

The filament in Dane’s socket proved her right by pulling harder.

Vera planted her boots beside the cracked root. When she spoke again, her voice reached Dane cleanly from the room side.

Ada touched rod one to the outside of his wounded socket. ”I can lift the hook out of the old channel. The rod goes under it and nowhere else. One knock if you want me to try.”

Dane struck once.

No copy answered from her side of the frame.

The brass hook slid into his torn wood. Ada raised the filament one wet notch, rested, then raised it again. Black wax pulled between iron and socket in strings. Each turn of the rod tried to pry his strap route wider.

Iron jaws clacked near his base as Holt took the root shear by its forearm loops; his wrapped palms could no longer close around the handles. Cloth dragged across metal already dark with seepage from the wraps.

Three drawer fronts slammed open together.

The third filament coiled around rod one and tried to wrench it through Dane. The fourth cinched Holt’s forearm to the shear. The fifth caught Ada above the elbow and snapped her sideways.

Rod two rang against bone. Ada laid it across one of the five rib units and pinned the pull there. The shaft, bent before this fight began, bowed farther until its middle touched the rattling bone.

”The one in Dane first,” she said. ”It is ratcheting into the old socket.”

Holt’s breath tore between his teeth. ”Your arm is going into that floor.”

”If his hook seats, we lose the route into him. Keep me attached and cut him free.”

Holt shoved both forearms deeper into the loops. Brant left his shoulder over the trapped lintel line and drove one boot against the shear handle.

The jaws closed.

Holt’s palm cloth split under the loops. Blood ran to his wrists and greased the hinge. The hooked strand flattened, held, then burst with the intimate rip of a tendon parting beside Dane’s ear.

The severed tip thrashed inside his socket. Ada caught it on rod one and hauled it clear before it could find the channel again.

Dane’s mouth opened for it.

The loose flesh smelled of spoiled wax and responsive storage, close enough to repair that hunger made the lie feel kind. He could take it in. Seal the wound. Learn what had tried to own him.

He set his crooked tooth against the cut already crossing his tongue and bit down.

The pain came after the choice. Blood covered the taste of the thing until Ada flung it against stone.

Below his lock, the lowest of the five drawers drove something flat through the listener groove.

Horn scraped both sides of the tear. Small notches ticked along its edges, testing the delay between pressure and Dane’s late lid, while preservative wax and bone dust worked into the cut on his tongue.

The horn entered his front seam.

It passed the shattered token pieces, scraped close to Vera’s fringe caught at the root, and found the final free copper in his gutter. The deeper keepsakes stayed beyond its reach. So did the dirty coin below his intake.

The copper moved under the horn’s first pinch.

Dane used Crude Drag to pull it away by fractions. Sticky wood resisted. The notched tongue followed each fraction and corrected faster each time.

”Those marks are matching his lid,” Tess said. Fear flattened the usual edge in her voice. ”Every correction is smaller.”

Ada grunted as the line on her arm pulled rod two against bone. ”Then it is almost seated.”

Vera said nothing. Her boots remained beside the cracked root; her wrapped hands never entered Dane’s wound.

He dragged the copper away once more. The horn followed.

A measuring piece needed a measure.

Dane reversed the pull.

He held the copper against the next descending notch. The horn pinched it hard enough to score the rim, then retracted with the coin caught against its tongue.

Cold traced the copper’s path out of his front gutter, past the token shards and the strip of Vera’s fringe. The dirty coin stayed deep beneath the reach of hunger.

The horn vanished into the lowest drawer.

Calcified gears counted Dane’s late lid against the stolen surface. On the second turn, the copper slipped crosswise into a groove too narrow to receive it. The drawer crushed the coin flat. Bone struck metal once, lurched off rhythm, and tried to close through its own timing tongue.

The impact shook every wound in Dane.

Four other drawers answered wrong. Brant’s cart order began in Ada’s voice and ended as a knock. Buk’s copied warning dragged backward through a membrane that tore on the last word. The strand around Holt’s forearm loosened; the line on Ada’s arm jerked against itself.

”Slack changed,” Tess said. ”Arm line. Forearm. Rod. Lintel stays pinned.”

Dane struck once through the living side of the cradle.

Ada rolled her shoulder under the fifth filament, trapping it against rod two. Holt set the shear with his forearm while Brant drove the lower handle by boot. The jaws met.

The line parted.

Its recoil tore Ada’s sleeve open and took a strip of skin from above her elbow. Blood struck the floor in a warm scatter. Her breath broke, but rod two stayed across the rib.

”Forearm line is riding the left jaw,” Vera called. ”Half a hand lower.”

Holt lowered his shoulder. The fourth filament sawed across his already soaked wraps instead of flesh, and Brant stamped the handle through its last fibers.

Two mobile strands remained.

The third still strangled rod one. Ada kept rod two bowed over the rib while Lir kicked the free shear jaw beneath the coil. Holt’s swollen fingers hung open; he shoved through both loops with his wrists. The courier braced his back with Kesh’s packet clamped under one elbow. Bone and iron screamed together. The strand snapped away from rod one and vanished below the plate.

The first filament remained forked in the lintel, pinned beneath Brant’s shield edge.

”Ash bar under the fork,” Lir said. ”Use the wall, not your hands.”

The guard and one worker lifted the bar from the floor and seated its end beneath the embedded fork. Brant changed his boot angle. The filament rose just enough for Holt to catch it between the shear jaws.

He dropped his weight through his forearms.

The last strand parted. Its upper fork rattled loose from the lintel. Its lower length whipped through the plate seam and was gone.

All five rib units folded at once, then jammed against their own closing order. Drawer mouths bit down on severed lower strands. One membrane gave a wet cough in Brant’s voice before calcified bone crushed it silent.

Hot wax spat through the frame and struck the root table. Buk threw his named record over Kesh’s packet. The courier swore, slid the packet free beneath it, and covered both with his coat while wax pattered across stone.

Floor plates settled one at a time. Each impact traveled through the cradle roots. One. Two. Three. Four.

The fifth stopped a finger high.

Metal clicked underneath it. The flattened copper had caught the lowest drawer crooked in its bed.

Ada worked rod two beneath the raised edge. The injured shaft trembled against stone.

”I can lift the drawer,” she said. Blood ran from her elbow to her wrist. ”The rod may fold, and the other four mouths may follow it open. Do you want it raised?”

Dane struck twice.

Ada pulled rod two free.

The plate settled crooked. Its weight closed over the drawer without completing the last fraction. Dane felt no filament leading from it, only the flat copper trapped beneath stone and the faint resistance of a mechanism that could neither open nor finish closing.

Lir broke the clean-frame alignment. Floor sound returned from every direction. Holt sagged against the root table while the courier tightened fresh cloth around his palms. Ada sat with rod two across her boots and packed her own missing strip of skin under a folded dressing until Vera could knot it with her teeth and wrapped wrists.

Buk rubbed black wax from the edge of his record with one claw.

”Still says Buk,” he said.

The courier checked the reed wrap beneath his coat. ”Kesh’s packet is whole.”

”Packet whole matters,” Buk said. ”Kesh asks packet before Buk.”

The courier tucked it beside the named record. ”She sent me. I checked you first.”

The empty circle in Dane’s front gutter was exact. His free copper count had become none. Far below, the dirty coin had not moved, and the familiar deeper weights behind it remained in their places.

Iron rang under Hingehold.

Once.

A long pause held the room. Then iron struck twice.

Lir’s next breath stopped halfway in. ”Undead labor bell. No living crew has used that shift call since this threshold was built.”

Beneath the crooked plate, the sealed lowest drawer struck Dane’s flattened copper.

Once.

Twice.

The trapped organ answered the bell.