Useful fingers waited in front of Jiang.
That made it worse.
Jiang remembered what those fingers could do: unlock his phone, turn keys, cook something that had never been frozen, touch his mother's shoulder after lying that he was already on his way home.
Gredudande opened the palm wider.
Blackness folded above it into Jiang's drowned phone. The cracked screen lit with his mother's name, and the ringtone he had ignored in the alley filled the chain chamber.
"You can answer this time," his old mouth said.
Jiang's right foot moved against the sling.
Behind the hanging iron, the human shape lowered itself. Its knees bent the way his used to. A tired line marked the borrowed forehead, copied from mornings Jiang had studied himself beneath office bathroom light.
"Tell her you ate," it said. "Tell her you are coming home. Use a mouth she knows."
Ringing filled the chain chamber.
Jiang wanted the hand.
He wanted it without a lesson attached. He wanted a shower handle, a keyboard, a warm bowl, and one ordinary door that opened at the height he remembered. Most of all, he wanted the right to hear his mother's suspicion and answer badly in his own voice.
Through Martelli's palm, the chain tightened.
His injured hand jerked toward the false body. Two fingers remained curled while the others dragged behind them. The core was using every useful memory to pull against the binding.
"That phone is made from the knot," Nerea said. "The call has no line beyond this room."
The ringtone stopped by itself.
Jiang's mother's voice came from the black slab instead.
"Jiang, where are you?"
Gredudande had recorded the real question while holding Jiang's phone in New York. The concern inside those words belonged to his mother, even inside a thing that belonged to nobody living.
Aylin's damaged voice barely crossed the chamber. "You can want the hand and leave it empty."
Jiang looked at her.
She kept both hands on the rear sling loop. No green chain reached for him. Her Spirit Link carried fear that he might accept and a harder refusal to make that fear his command.
A smile crossed the human body.
Its skin changed at the corners. Lucia's narrow jaw surfaced beneath Jiang's cheek. Martelli's bruised eye passed under his old brow. Aylin's black-tipped ear pushed through his hair before sinking out of sight.
His reach and voice filled the shell.
It had no life that belonged only to him.
Nerea tilted the rod just far enough to inspect the open palm. "The core cord runs through that arm and ends at the skin. It needs your contact to close the body."
Gredudande curled the offered fingers. "Touch is cheaper than everything you have paid."
Jiang studied the faces moving under his old skin. The price was merely hidden inside people the creature had already taken from.
Jiang pressed his beak into the sling and gave Devika the signal they had used at Nerea's room: floor under his body, support at the injured side, choice left open.
"Floor or retreat?" Devika asked.
He pointed his beak at the counterfeit ankle.
"He chooses the floor," Aylin translated.
Devika checked the movement beneath his breast. "No standing. No pressure hold. I release when both feet touch stone."
Along the padded fork, Nerea angled the sight rod. "The shell is tied to the core through its left heel. I can see the black cord beside Martelli's gold."
"Can you keep seeing it?" Devika asked.
"Until the aperture breaks or turns."
Martelli leaned his shoulder into the silver door. Blood had soaked the fresh cloth around his hand. "The chain holds while Nerea's answer remains true. The body she named is under that heel."
"Then keep your hand where you chose it," Aylin rasped.
Devika lowered the front sling loop.
Aylin matched her from the rear. Jiang's belly met stone, followed by the edges of both webbed feet. The left arrived numb. The right curled its claws into a joint and held.
Devika released the cloth.
Gredudande reached for him.
Above Jiang, the human arm swept over beak and shoulder, built for seizing a body that rose from the floor. He stayed low. Black fingers closed where a human neck would have been.
Inside that fist, the false phone rang.
Both feet drove backward, sending Jiang's belly beneath the arm. Blocked by hanging iron, his good flipper folded close while his rigid torso carried the scrape across outer feathers.
Across him stepped the body, but its left heel landed late.
Tactical Strike marked the delay Jiang had already watched: the black cord pulled first, the copied calf tightened after it, and the borrowed foot landed last. No strength entered him. The opening became visible and remained his problem to reach.
Nerea shifted the lamp.
Three false ankles appeared across the floor. Through the rod, only one carried the black cord beneath its skin.
"Toward me," she called.
Aylin threw cool essence across the far two shadows. They tore like smoke, leaving the solid heel between Jiang and Martelli.
At the waist, the human body bent.
Jiang's old hand came down with the phone held between finger and thumb. His mother's recorded voice kept asking where he was. Taking that hand would end the distance for one heartbeat and make the core's stolen body complete.
He opened his beak under it.
Then he turned past the palm and bit the cord at the heel.
Black fiber filled his mouth. It tasted of wet iron and the bitter oil from Elias's stole, two stolen routes grown from the same hunger.
The counterfeit kicked downward.
Its heel struck Jiang's damaged shoulder and rolled him against the floor. The support around his left flipper caught beneath his breast. Cloth tore. Heat spread across the skin the dressing had protected.
Devika moved toward him.
Jiang clamped the cord in his jaws and hammered his right foot against stone.
She stopped at the boundary he had chosen, close enough to catch him when the action ended and far enough to leave the bite his.
Martelli's chain shook.
The false body pulled upward, trying to take the cord out of Jiang's mouth. His neck extended. His belly lifted from stone, and every injured place objected at once.
Aylin caught the shell's knee with green light.
Her essence stayed cool. Fire would give the human shape a bright wall and turn the black cord invisible. She pinned the borrowed leg in the body Gredudande had chosen.
"Nerea," she forced through her torn throat.
Under strain, the sight rod groaned.
Nerea braced it against the fork. A hairline fracture crossed the dark aperture, splitting the core image into two offset knots.
"I have the original," she said. "Pull toward Martelli's blood."
Lucia closed the upper lamp after one hard tug on the return line.
Across the walls, chain shadows vanished. Nerea's hooded beam left one human body, one pinned heel, and one emperor penguin hanging from the cord in his beak.
Matthews hauled on the line from above.
It tightened around the iron anchor and dragged the real chain sideways. Martelli's gold binding moved with it. The core knot struck the padded fork beneath the floor.
Jiang bit through the cord.
From heel to throat, the human shell split.
His old face lingered. Its mouth stayed open around his mother's next word while Lucia's jaw, Martelli's bruise, Nerea's scar, and Aylin's ear separated across the tear.
The phone fell beside Jiang.
Its screen showed `MOM` until black liquid filled the cracks. He watched it collapse without touching it.
Devika caught the sling beneath his breast before his shoulder hit again. "Action ended. You are mine for the next breath."
Jiang was too empty to argue.
His left foot had stopped answering, and blood warmed the torn sling beneath his shoulder.
Aylin released the false knee. With her body behind it, Nerea forced the padded fork deeper while Martelli kept his wounded palm against silver.
In strips, the human body sank through the floor.
Under Nerea's broken sight, the true knot lay exposed between two roots: green into Aylin and dark silver into Jiang. The shell had failed; the anchor remained.
Cold text opened across Jiang's vision.
`[FORM COHERENCE TRIAL: BREAK THE CORE AS THE BODY YOU CLAIM]`