“Lower the exo,” the man demands.
Pneumatics hiss. The metal spine rolls over my own, adjusting to the length of my back as it aligns. Each of its joints corresponds to a bone. Something heavy settles at my neck, and three needles press insistently at the base of my skull. When I shift against the restraints, they edge into my skin.
“In position,” the woman confirms. “All right, girlie. Once you’re in, it’s not giving you back. You ready?”
It’s the kind of question that deserves a derisive snort, but I grunt something vaguely affirmative around the plastic in my teeth.
“Starting neural integration in three…two…one.”
I tense. The exorig clenches around me, the needles drive into my flesh, and for a moment white-hot pain obliterates my mind. It’s like someone’s poured molten wax along my spine, molten wax that burns through my skin and seeps into my bones. Tracks of wet heat curve around my neck, my ribs, my hips. Every prayer I’ve ever known leaves me. My vertebrae crack as the exo delves into them and latches itself around my nerves. I bite down on the plastic cylinder until my jaw creaks.
Now my tears aren’t the only things leaking into the drain.
The piece at my neck convulses, and I can feel its components rushing toward my brain, reaching out to embrace it. My mind reels as a new consciousness runs headlong into it, one that’s robotic and cold and unfeeling. The spine rears up, trying to lift me from the bracing board, and I finally understand how Pascao came out of here in pieces. I fight against it, but the strength of the exo is relentless. Raw Scela power—this machine is the root of it. A scream leaks from my throat, pushing its way past the cylinder in my mouth.
This isn’t a handshake. It’s a headlock.
Human, human, human, my blood sings for the last time. I plummet toward the point of no return at terminal velocity.
And then something snaps into place. The integration wraps around my brain, and in that moment my mind skews machine, flooded with the understanding of the exorig as part of my body, as the new spine, the better one, the one that will make me the General Body’s perfect tool. Its thoughts rush through my brain, overwhelming my own. The metal at my back relaxes, rolling me flat as the restraints slacken, and it’s like coming home.
Sheer relief takes over what’s left of me, pushing past the pain until my mind is filled with nothing but bliss.
“Neural integration locked,” the woman confirms. “We’ve got one!” At the edge of my vision, I catch a glimpse of the giddy, relieved smile she shares with her colleague.
But the euphoria doesn’t last long. The agony comes rushing back in tendrils that creep up my fingers. I can feel the exo fighting it inside me, trying to block it from my brain like a dragon defending its hoard. There’s a war for my body and mind between the pain and the new, strange creature that’s latched on to my nervous system.
Then one of the techs slides a needle into my neck, and the pain stumbles away in spurts, replaced by a numbness that spreads from my core outward until my whole body feels like it’s floating. The exo seems to be the only thing unaffected—I can still feel its pulsing, crackling energy, frustrated that it’s gained control over my body only to lose it to a mere drug.
Gentle hands brace my skull, and a buzz starts up behind my ear. I don’t feel the razor’s passes, but I see the tech carrying away a twisted black knot a few seconds later and dropping it into a bin. Now it doesn’t matter that I lost my scarf—there’s nothing left to cover up. Something deep in my machine-wrapped mind winces at the thought, but it’s barely a twinge against the unyielding peace in the rest of my head.
The techs loosen the bindings and lift me up out of the saddle, carrying me over to the waiting gurney. I’m laid out carefully on my stomach, my head lolling to the side as we start to wheel forward. Not back to the waiting room, like Pascao’s twisted remains, but deeper into the suite, out of the first operating room and into a sleek, dark chamber where a surgery tank waits.
One of the techs unties the smock and shucks me out of it, but I don’t mind. Might be the drugs. Might be the exo. Might be both. Might be neither. Maybe the pain of the integration has made me realize there are more important things than covering myself up.
Another twinge. The familiar, sickening aftertaste of guilt on my tongue. It washes away on my next breath.
The technicians lift me gingerly off the gurney, position me inside the tank, and start to fill it with a thick, clear gel. I remember reading about this part of the procedure in the orientation docs. The gel’s meant to keep most of my blood inside me and help with the massive undertaking of healing my body once the surgeons’ knives are done slicing me up and remaking me. The parts of me I’m sure are me are ambivalent about it.
The exo is thrilled. It can’t wait for my new body, a body that will match the Scela power that the neural integration begs for. It whispers to me in time with my heartbeat, a steady hiss of I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive. And as the gel folds over me and one of the techs pushes a breathing tube past my unfeeling lips, I whisper back, I will be the General Body’s weapon. I’ve paid my price, and I will be paid in turn. I will save Amar. I will save Malikah.
When the surgeons come in, when the steady hands start the work of my unmaking, I let that hope curdle inside my chest, let it distance me from the sight of my body being flayed and broken and reshaped. My flesh peels back. My bones are sawed and spaced and lengthened. Endoscopes burrow through me, paving metal highways along my skeleton, weaving matrices of nanofibers through my muscles, sewing new circuitry into my nerves. Ports blossom from my skin, promising a place in my anatomy for the metal rig that will make me nigh unstoppable. The surgeons work with careful precision, all too aware of what they’re crafting, leaning over me with something like holy reverence in their eyes.
Bit by bit, I become more than human.
Bit by bit, I am made Scela.
I wake. Or maybe the voice inside my head does. Something hauls me back into hazy consciousness, my awareness dampened by enough drugs to drop a horse. The world glows outside my eyelids, but I keep them shut. No bright lights. Not yet.
My brain feels like a second mind has thrown down bags inside it and made itself at home. A mechanical hum rattles my bones. I can’t remember if it belongs there.
“Miss Tanaka?” The voice is older. Male. Walking on eggshells.
I snort, because it’s hilarious. Miss Tanaka—what part of me deserves anything remotely close to the word Miss? Maybe the old Key Tanaka. The First District sweetheart. Not what she’s become.
Apparently the snort is answer enough, because the guy keeps talking. “You’re coming out of Scela conversion surgery.”
No shit.
Well—
On the one hand, that’s definitely what’s happened to my body, and it explains a little of what’s going on in my head. But there’s still something off about all this, and an ache prickles at my temples as I try to grasp what that offness is.
“You’re going to find movement very difficult during the first few hours of consciousness.” I try to give him an earned gesture, but it only confirms what he’s saying—I can’t lift a single finger. “This is perfectly normal. It’s all part of your neural integration getting to know you. The exo is a conduit of will, and it has to get used to processing your will specifically, as it relates to your body. We’ll be monitoring you very closely for the next two weeks, and we’ll make sure you know if anything is wrong.”
I decide to risk cracking an eye open, which seems to be within my body’s abilities. The guy leaning over me doesn’t look quite like what I expected. My eye struggles to focus as I try to give him a once-over. He seems to be in his late thirties, and he has the look of someone who grew up in one of the frontend districts. Polished, poised, put together—with the notable exception of the tattoos covering his arms where th
ey aren’t sheathed by the sleeves of his lab coat. Not artwork, but text. Like he’s been taking notes on his skin. I squint, trying to make out the words against his dark complexion, but my vision is still hazy.
He bends down, pries back my eyelid with a finger, and shines a light on my pupil. I make a strangled, startled noise, but I can’t force my mouth around the unkind words I want to spit at him.
“Calm down,” he soothes. Like the words calm down have ever had their intended effect on anybody.
I try to relax anyway. Better not get on his bad side while my muscles are still useless. He turns to make a note on his datapad with a jolting, uneven step, and my gaze drops down to his legs. His right one is cased in a brace that starts at his hip and ends at his ankle. When he turns back around, he catches the line of my sight. “Don’t get any ideas,” he warns, smiling in a way that makes him look boyish. “A particularly rowdy, newly converted Scela did that. He panicked, and I got a shattered femur for my troubles. Promise me you won’t give me a matched set, okay?”
Guess that explains the bedside manner. My mouth finally feels like cooperating, and I take a deep breath, ready to tell him exactly where he can shove his easy charisma.
But then the thing on my back wakes. Its vengeance slams down on my brainstem like a hydraulic press. For a moment I lose my body, lose any sense of the person Key Tanaka is supposed to be—I’m nothing. Machinery in the hands of the exo. And then it’s over, and my lips mumble nothing but a quiet, hoarse “Okay.”
Something’s definitely wrong with my mouth, but it goes beyond the exo wrenching my control of it away. My teeth don’t set the way they used to. I run my sluggish tongue over the wrongness. The ridges of my molars feel too sharp, their edges too smooth. I don’t know what to make of the change.
The doctor doesn’t seem to notice my discomfort. “Name’s Dr. Ikande. But please, call me Isaac,” he says. “I’m head of Medical on the Dread, so you’ll see me around a fair bit.” His mention of the ship triggers my memory at last. I’m on the starship Dread, First District, and before that I was on—
The exo burns a warning into my nervous system that swats me back into the present. I want to lash out, fight back, do something, but I don’t even know how to go about confronting this strange beast woven into my nervous system.
“I’m Key,” I announce, mostly because the exo seems to think it’d be polite. I’m surprised to find that the choice to speak is mine and mine alone. From the way it’s been shoving me around, I thought that the exo was calling the shots. But its forceful suggestions are just suggestions. Only I can tell my mouth to move.
“You’re doing great so far, Key. Around now, you’re going to start getting some sensation back in your toes. See if you can wiggle them.”
I can. The exo basically does it for me. Nothing about the slight motion twitching the bottom of the sheets feels the way toe wiggling used to feel. It’s like the orders to control my body have to get processed through the machinery strapped to my back before they get sent all the way down my nerves. I guess this is what Isaac meant by “conduit of will.”
I feel my muscles flex. Feel the gentle tug of sheets over my skin. There’s something a little terrifying about it. Wiggling my toes didn’t use to feel like it might snap my bones.
“Very good,” Isaac says. It sounds like the sort of thing that should be condescending but isn’t when it comes out of a mouth that’s probably done this a hundred times or more. “Fingers?”
It’s easier now that I know what to expect. I test my control, twitching my index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers on each hand. Then I try out the gesture I wanted to flash earlier, plowing past the exo’s buzz of protest.
Isaac smirks, but he seems unfazed. Judging by the brace on his leg, he’s dealt with worse from recently converted Scela. “Looks like you’re on track. When you feel comfortable, start experimenting with your arms.” He sits back on a stool, his fingers flicking over his datapad. He tips the screen for me to see, and I watch the readouts jump and jolt with every impulse I feed my new muscles. “During post-op, we monitor your head directly—makes it easy to ensure that the new connections are working,” Isaac says, turning the charts back toward himself. “Plus it helps us stack you up against the other new Scela.”
The notion digs into me like a spur, and I clench my fists hard, pulses of sensation throbbing up into my wrists. The commands my nerves send flow through the exo, but my hands are starting to feel more mine. Next come my elbows. I lift my forearms off the bed but falter before I can get them more than an inch in the air. I grit my mismatched teeth and try again.
For the first time, I can see my body. As I raise my arms into view, I take in what the conversion has done to me. My forearms are striped with bright red lines where my flesh has been resealed around the enhancements woven into my muscles. Ridges of metal run parallel to my lengthened bones. Ports stick out around my joints, begging for the attachments that will let me use the full potential of my Scela power. My flesh bulges in awkward places, betraying the machinery beneath my carved-up skin.
The more I look, the more wrong it feels. My mind goes flimsy as buried thoughts hack their way toward the surface. I process the sight of my body, I think of what I know, and the exo helps me ground myself in the facts.
I know who I am. I know my name is Key Tanaka. That I’m eighteen years old, most of those years spent on the starship Antilles, First District. I know this puts me at the top of the Fleet’s pecking order, and I know how much I enjoy that. I remember zero-G galas, beautiful dresses, a life of the best things our wandering ways could offer.
I remember our Fleet’s mission. The seven tiers of ships, three hundred years of history at our backs, searching for a planet to call home.
I remember my parents. Cold, distant, but never unkind beyond reason.
I know myself. I know who I was before my mind got crossed with a machine.
But I can’t, for the life of me, remember why I did this.
The thought feels like missing a step—there’s no memory to catch me, and by the time the exo’s strongly suggesting I think about something else, I’m already too far gone. I don’t have any memories of before the surgery. No memories of the conversion itself. No justification for why I’m lying in a ward bed. What brought me here? I close my eyes, trying to block out the new feelings itching up my legs, grasping for the reasons I ended up this way. Why did I do this?
I come up empty. There’s nothing there. No explanation for the metal and fiber laced into my biology.
I can’t remember why I became Scela.
Isaac notices I’ve stopped testing my limbs. “Something wrong?” he asks, his demeanor still pleasant.
What do I tell him? Do I tell him? “I don’t remember…,” I start.
“That can happen sometimes,” he says. His eyes are already back on his datapad. “The drugs we use post-integration have to be powerful enough to subdue both you and the exo.”
“But I can’t remember the start of my surgery,” I counter, my voice growing stronger. “I don’t even remember deciding to take the metal.”
“It’s unusual, but not unheard of. The orientation docs they gave you gloss over that part, unfortunately.” The exo urges me to notice the hint of terseness in his voice. A lie? A deflection, at minimum. Something’s off. And I don’t remember any docs anyway.
I push myself upward far too fast, my hyperpowered muscles nearly catapulting me from the bed as I wrap my arms around my head. I’m vaguely aware of Isaac shrinking back, no doubt worried he’s risking another snapped bone. “Easy, easy. Deep breaths, Key,” he suggests.
But all I can really focus on is the unnatural—natural, the exo insists—protrusions around my head, the bracing supports sprouting from my shoulders that keep it upright despite the massive weight situated at the back of my skull. I run my fingers over
the ports embedded in my chin, in my cheekbones, all places for larger equipment. Equipment that will turn me into a monster—a tool—for the General Body to wield at will.
The drugs have cleared from my blood. The frantic nudges from the thing on my back aren’t enough to keep my panic pinned down. My breathing doubles, triples in speed, and Isaac hits a button on his datapad that dims the lights as he retreats to the other end of the room, pressing his back against the door.
“Key,” he warns. “I can knock you out through the monitoring software, but that’s something I’d really rather not do when your integration is so new. Try to focus on relaxing your muscles—it’s not good to stress them like this so early. You can shred them if you winch them too tight too fast.”
He has a soothing voice. I wish it did something for me. There’s too much chaos, too much noise, too many blank spaces in who I am. The scream builds in my lungs, rattling out between my teeth as I dig my fingernails into the flesh of my forearms. The exo tries valiantly to talk me down, but I fight its noise, straining against the strings that control my muscles. If I had the strength for it, I’d rip the damn machine right off my back. I don’t want it in me. I don’t want the presence in my mind, urging my fingers to loosen. I don’t want this thing to keep me from destroying it. I’ll take it out with me if I have to.
My muscles lock, and suddenly I feel more than just the darkness of the room creeping over my vision. My eyes roll, finding Isaac furiously swiping at his datapad.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he says.
My vision fades, the holes in me growing until they consume me. Until I’m nothing but an empty girl, more holes than substance, and somehow in my last second of consciousness, before the darkness overtakes me, I feel…
I feel right.
I’m six days into my life as a Scela and flat on the floor of my recovery room.
Please, I beg God, beg my exo, beg myself. Please just let…let me…I’m not even sure what I’m asking for. Ever since I woke up in this unfamiliar body, I’ve been floundering for control. Yesterday I thought I made solid progress—I took my first steps.
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