Chapter 377: Sixty-Six Percent Monster

Bram Kitt cut the telephone wire before the tiny frame reached it.

The severed copper fell between them.

At Mercy, Caleb’s breathing vanished from Elara’s receiver.

She asked Kikaru for the ordinary backup line. Its wall jack carried the same east conduit, so Kikaru left it disconnected.

The field console could restore contact through three Array relays. Elara kept its cloth cover in place.

"Tell Kestrel I remain out," she said.

Kikaru sent the words by a runner who needed eleven minutes to reach the next working telephone. Elara received no live picture of the foundry and supplied no direction into Caleb’s fight.

The three-centimeter body put one silver foot on the wire and pulled.

Thirty meters of copper came through the wall.

It did not tear free from clips or conduit. The whole length folded into the ceramic pan as a road no wider than thread.

The frame ran down it.

Bram dropped the pan into the quench box and closed its manual lid.

Something struck once inside.

Then twice.

Four blows lifted the box from its floor bolts.

"Hall One out," Sela Orr called.

Her crew left through the east equipment door. Bram took the west stair. Each operator retained a separate exit, and neither waited for the other to make departure mutual.

Caleb released his small rail brace and grew.

At four meters, his remaining right foot crushed its support shoe.

At nine, the flattened chest plate caught beneath Hall One’s crane beam. He bent forward until the metal cleared his spine.

He stopped at eighteen meters.

His former body had carried enough silver to stand above the foundry roof. That body no longer existed.

The left hip ended in three open holes and a fresh tear. No leg grew beneath it.

Caleb planted his right foot beside the foundation trench and put both hands on the floor.

Three points held him.

The quench box opened.

Its lid became a jaw. Cutter rails joined behind it as ribs. Copper wound through both ship-plate machines and pulled them upright.

Hall One supplied no single creature. Its parts remained ordinary steel, motors, blades, concrete, and three drops of stolen silver.

The silver taught them Caleb’s old arrangement.

A left leg built first.

It reached twenty-six meters from hip joint to cutter foot.

The torso followed around a vacant right side. It copied Caleb before Foundry Twelve, reversed across its middle.

Soma counted thirty-one workers beyond Hall One’s marked fall line.

Two remained inside.

Power keeper Deya Sorn held Cutter One’s dead switch because its cable still fed the growing torso. Crane keeper Omi Pell stood on the north gantry with a mechanical brake under his hand.

Either could release. Neither release controlled the other machine.

Caleb offered to crush the silver joint in the ceramic pan.

Soma measured the route.

"Your right hand crosses Deya’s cable and Omi’s crane. No."

The copied body stood.

Its cutter foot came down where Caleb’s old left foot would have met it.

Caleb shifted onto his absent side.

There was nothing to carry him.

He fell through the predicted block and struck the floor on his left hip.

Concrete broke beneath the open holes. Silver peeled from their edges.

The cutter foot missed his chest by less than a meter.

Caleb caught its ankle with his right hand.

Short compression remained his.

He accepted the ankle only.

Metal collapsed between his fingers. The copied knee stayed upright, carried by crane cable and Hall One’s west wall.

Caleb could not pull both supports into one grip.

Deya killed Cutter One’s power.

The torso lost its right ribs. She released the switch and ran for the equipment door.

The dead cable followed her.

It wrapped her boot and pulled her beneath the copied hip.

Sela reached the marked line with a thermal lance. The cable lay six meters beyond her accepted work zone.

"Deya, I can cut if you release the boot."

Deya opened the boot clasp. Her foot came free while the boot and cable vanished into the hip joint.

She crawled across the line with two broken toes and a stripped heel.

No one extended Sela’s zone after the rescue worked.

Omi released the north crane brake.

Its suspended hook dropped through the copied shoulder and tore a cutter rail loose.

The rail struck Hall Two.

Furnace Four’s brick face collapsed onto rigger Taro Menn before he cleared the aisle.

Two workers lifted brick from his legs. Soma stopped a third from using the overhead hoist because its cable had entered the copied spine.

Taro remained conscious until the second row of brick shifted.

Then the weight crossed his chest.

His local treatment file recorded death before the body could carry his voice anywhere else.

Rigger Pela Orn reached his right hand from outside the brick fall. She checked the wrist twice, then left his glove where it lay.

Soma asked whether recovery could wait until the copied arm lost Furnace Four.

Pela answered for her own work crew only.

"His body stays under my line. The machine does not get to move him. We will not pull while the brick is carrying that arm."

She painted Taro’s current boundary on the floor and assigned two workers to keep the frame from using the body as another joint.

The copied frame used the collapse to build an arm.

It swung Furnace Four’s door at Caleb’s head.

His old left correction would have shifted chest and leg together.

The correction was gone.

Caleb moved his shoulder. His hip stayed on broken concrete.

The door struck his flattened chest and drove one edge through silver.

He lost another sheet from the right side.

It hit the floor without returning.

Sela called its measured mass over the hall horn.

"Eight hundred twelve kilos separated."

Caleb counted what the loss removed. The lower chest could no longer press against his right hip. His next large shape would buckle six degrees farther before the external frame caught it.

"Waste custody," he said.

Soma marked the sheet outside his current body. Caleb kept fighting with less metal rather than let the enemy offer his own mass back through its joint.

The enemy reached for that sheet.

Bram sent an empty ore wagon down Hall Two’s gravity rail. Wagon keeper Ila Venn released at the first marker. Rail keeper Pavo Dinn released at the second.

The wagon struck the loose sheet and carried it into Furnace Two’s cold ash trench.

Caleb did not reclaim it.

He used the impact to roll onto his right knee.

One foot and one hand lifted him. The missing left side remained open air.

The copied body raised both arms to meet the stance he used before the cut.

Caleb had never possessed that stance in his current body.

He dropped his right shoulder and drove forward on one leg.

His head struck the vacant center beneath its copied ribs.

Sela released Hall One’s west wall from cutter service.

Omi released the fallen crane from the north gantry.

Soma accepted one collapse zone containing no current worker.

Caleb pushed.

The copied torso fell into the empty foundation trench as the wall folded and the crane dropped under separate releases.

The foundry shook hard enough to break windows across two streets.

The enemy body split at its silver joint.

Its right half stayed in the trench.

Its completed left leg remained standing.

That leg had copied the load angle Caleb lost at Foundry Twelve. It carried no torso and needed no balance correction.

Caleb reached for the hip joint.

The leg stepped into the open space beneath his missing side.

His hand closed on air.

At Hesh, Jori Neh’s lower probes reported a new road under the roof hospital.

The road had the width and load angle of Caleb’s dead left leg.

Sixty-one treatment beds occupied the ground above it.

The copied foot began to rise.