“It’s your life, man. At least dreaming is free.” Pritchard points a finger gun at me and winks. “All right!” he yells, turning to the crewmen on the barge and waving them off. “Sending it up!” He swings the pallet of empty crates onto their deck, where they disconnect the ropes and reattach them to a full pallet of crates for him to bring down.
“Hey!” I shout to Donovan, but it’s too late for him to put the wheeled skid in place to receive the new pallet. “Send over the skid!”
Pritchard spits from the window of the loader. “Come on, man! I’m breaking, like, four codes leaving this in the air!”
“Keep your pants on!” Donovan shouts, kicking me the skid to align under the hovering pallet. But just as I get it in place, he starts shouting again, this time to the barge pulling away from the dock. “Wait! Cut the rope!”
I don’t see what he’s talking about or pointing at until the rig light catches one of their ropes still attached to the bottom of the suspended pallet, threatening to upend the whole thing if the barge keeps pulling back. The loader’s crane creaks as the bottom of the pallet starts to lift.
Pritchard swears. “Ryder, get out of there!”
Donovan shouts something else, but all I hear clearly is the crack of the pallet’s alignment sticks. I jump back as the crates slip free, landing hard on the wet pavement with a crash that leaves my ears ringing. I scream until I cough, and searing pain shoots straight from my hip to my teeth.
Don’t look, I think. Never let them look. The pain is always worse when they know.
But I look anyway.
And the pain is worse.
The wheeled skid and several crates cover most of my legs, and all at once, everything seems a few layers away—some kind of strangely barbed, red fruit rolling everywhere . . . the differently-colored broken bottles glittering in the dock light.
“Heads up!” Donovan yells as the now-freed pallet swings violently over us.
“Sonofabitch . . .” Pritchard says under his breath. “Disconnect the hook and send it here!” He waves at Donovan, and there’s another crash in the distance. Pritchard launches a barrage of curses into the dark before turning back to me. “All right . . . all right . . . We’re going to get this up. You’re all right, Ryder. Just hang on—Don! Now!”
The hydraulics starting up again focus my attention, and I know that any second, more pain is going to flood my whole body. I grab Pritchard by the collar of his shirt. “Listen to me . . . that skid won’t stay together. It’s broken. If anything is . . . unattached under there—a leg or a foot—you need to get it fast and get out again.”
The blood drains from Pritchard’s face. I shake him.
“All right! All right . . .”
“In the air!” Donovan shouts from the loader just as the skid lifts a few inches off my legs. Nausea explodes in my stomach, and the sudden heaviness in the back of my head almost drags me into unconsciousness.
I yell again as Pritchard starts pulling me out. “You’re clear! You’re clear!”
I vomit, but the seizing convulsion is exactly what I need to keep from passing out.
Don’t look . . . I think. Never let them look.
But I have to know.
I stop in the middle of a breath when I see my blood-soaked pants . . . my boots turned sideways in opposite directions.
“Tourniquet . . .” I say through my teeth.
“Don, throw me your belt!”
“I don't have one!”
Pritchard swears again and takes off his over-shirt, then tears it in half and twists each section into a cord. “Tell me how.”
“Tie one around each leg as tight as you can. Tight.” Another wave of nausea crashes into me. The blood rushes behind my ears in tandem with the surf, loud and suffocating until it’s interrupted by sharp jolts of pain as Pritchard works.
“And call the sweepers!” he barks to Donovan.
“But Wu will can us!”
“Damn it! Call them right n—!”
“Don’t!” I interrupt, gritting my teeth again. “It’s too much . . . to risk.”
“Are you crazy!?” Pritchard turns his attention back to me. “You need a medic!”
“I am a medic,” I growl again, and whatever else they’re saying to me sounds like muffled noise here in the dark. “Just take me to Nyssa.”
I black out and come to several times before I wake up at Nyssa’s flat, strapped down to a table. I pull against the restraints, and Donovan is talking before I can get a word out.
“Ryder, wait, don’t—Nyssa! He’s awake!”
I pull against the restraints again and glare at Pritchard, who’s as big as a moose at the foot of the table in this small room. “What is this!?”
He opens his mouth to talk, but only manages to glance at the blanket covering my legs. I don’t feel anything except adrenaline hitting my bloodstream when I try to move my feet and nothing happens.
“It’s okay . . . Don’t panic,” Nyssa says, rushing into the makeshift emergency room with a large tablet in her hands. “Sorry for the straps,” she says, motioning for Pritchard to undo them. “I just couldn't risk you waking up and struggling while I was working.”
“Why can’t I feel my legs?”
“Because I haven’t started the sync,” she says, frantically typing something into the tablet she’s gripping. “There. Try it now.”
I try to move my feet, and the blanket jumps. I pull it off and see long, metal rods surrounded by wrapping wires where muscles might be around a bone. Clear sleeves clamp over about five inches of my bandaged thighs—apparently, all that’s left of them—which makes my skin feel like it’s on fire. The . . . feet are a collection of smaller metal rods with more wires weaving through them, all of it encased in some kind of long, clear gel sock on the left and a similar gel sock on the right—that one, blue.
“Nyssa . . . ?” I trail off.
She must be able to read the questions in my voice because she starts babbling answers. “Knox, it’s primitive because I didn’t have enough material to make it any other way, but—”
“What happened to my legs, Nyssa?”
“I’m sorry,” she says carefully. “I . . . I had to amputate. But I was able to save your hip joints.”
All my words leave me in an exhale. I take in another breath hoping it will restore them, but I still can’t think clearly enough to say anything. I shoot a look at Pritchard, who just thins his lips into a flat line and crosses his arms over his chest.
“How—how is it all . . . connected?” he asks.
“Well, the femurs fused nicely to the titanium,” Nyssa starts to explain, but stops when I look away.
Pritchard grips my shoulder. “See, it’s not so bad. Saved you at least a ten-year bill at the hospital, and you can still walk.” He nods, glancing hopefully at Nyssa.
“Theoretically. Do you want to try?” Nyssa raises an almost invisible eyebrow at me, but I’m still processing what’s real and what’s not.
My legs are gone. They’re gone?
“Do I . . . just . . . ?” I start.
Nyssa smiles. “Just try to get up. I programmed the chips to receive your neural input. They should read the command from your brain like your real legs would.”
I slide the new legs off the table, but I don’t feel anything except heaviness, like each foot is filled with lead.
The back of the right foot hits the leg of the table with a loud thud.
“I can’t—” The words stop in my dry throat. I swallow and start again. “I can’t feel anything, Nyss.”
“It’s okay,” she says, entering something else into the tablet. “The material isn’t premium, so it’s heavier than your muscles and bones would be. But you should be able to translate that to power—jumping, running, all that.”
“So he’s what, bionic?” Donovan tries to chuckle.
Nyssa narrows her eyes at him before tapping something else into her tablet and nodding to me. “Try again
now.”
I move slowly off the table with Pritchard under my arm and still nearly fall over, unprepared for the jolt of new pain. I hear the feet hit the floor, and after a few seconds, I can feel the cold tile.
“Take your time,” Donovan says. “Breathe, man.”
I press my teeth together and focus on the blue lights running up and down either side of the rods that are apparently my shinbones.
“Nyss, can you um, make a covering?” Pritchard asks. “Good job, Ryder. Try a step.”
“I can make some flesh-tone casing. That hard gel is all I had on hand here.” Nyssa gestures to the feet, which have a springy quality when I put my weight into moving forward. She grins. “Sorry they don’t match.”
I blow out a breath, dizzy from so much all at once. “Nyss . . . Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”
“Not bad for an illegal Grind medic?” She smiles at me as a blush washes over her face. I swallow the lump in my throat and pull her against me, taking shallow breaths to keep myself together.
“It’ll be okay, Knox,” she whispers, and I don’t realize I’m shaking until she tightens her arms around me. “It’ll just take a little time.”
Donovan exhales loudly. “So! This is good. It’s all good again,” he says, raising an eyebrow at me and smiling a little. “Ready to go get some pants on now? What’s left of those is barely enough to be swim trunks.”
“Actually,” Nyssa says, looking up at me. “It's going to take several more hours for the rest of the neural circuits to sync, and you’re going to be in a lot of pain until they do. You better stay here.” Donovan and Pritchard exchange looks as Nyssa puts her tools away across the room. “I have some old coveralls in the back that should fit you since your pants are, well . . .” she gestures to a bloody heap of what must be the legs of my khakis.
“Even better,” Pritchard says. “Then we’ll go back to the dock and clean up, Ryder. Don’t worry about anything. Just get some rest.”
I exhale and nod at him, but my head is still spinning, lost in a surreal in-between place, and the last thing I think I could do right now would be to rest. “Thanks, man. Both of you.”
Donovan grips my shoulder before they make their way to the door, stopping to hug Nyssa before they head out.
I smile to myself in a deluge of appreciation for the three of them, but the whole scene is shattered when sweeper droids crash through the door and grab them all.
“You have been reported for participation in an unauthorized medical procedure,” the robotic voice of the first unit says. A green laser from its helmet scans the room and stops on me. “Knox Ryder, you are under arrest for sanctioned Services Evasion—Medical Class A.”
Another sweeper droid grabs my arms. I struggle until my whole body seizes and everything goes black.
I wake up in a cold, cement cell to the excruciating pain in my knees, the electric hum of the bars vibrating my teeth.
“Hello, Mr. Ryder,” a man’s voice says from somewhere on the other side of them. I look around, but don’t see anyone. “My name is Cross. I am an associate of Mr. Wu.”
I sit up on a hard, metal bed. “Where are my friends?”
“Nyssa Blair, Marcus Donovan, and Adam Pritchard are currently in Mr. Wu’s custody.”
“Where? What’s happening to them?”
“Nothing. Yet,” Cross says, taking a seat at a molded chrome table just on the other side of the electric bars of my cell. “We can dispense with the restraints.” He waves a hand at the sweeper droid, and the bars disappear. I get to my feet, but fall against the wall because the pain is almost blinding.
“What is this?” I shout. His angular face shifts, feigning concern.
“Tell me, do you have nineteen thousand and forty-seven credits, Mr. Ryder?”
I blanch at him. “Of course not.”
“Then, I assume you would have paid for your surgery with legacy units at an authorized hospital? Roughly fourteen years of your natural life, once we add the seven percent interest, if my math is correct.”
“Why are you here?” I demand, the pain now almost nauseating, sobering, and I remember all over again that my legs are gone.
“And since your sweeper scan revealed a blood contamination—lethal, now that we’ve seized your unauthorized antibiotics—you may only be able to pay roughly six months of that life debt. The remaining time would be passed onto your parents, who, according to their last census scans, have plenty of time between the two of them to cover the years.” Cross raises a heavy eyebrow.
“Stay away from my family,” I say through my teeth, pressing against the cold, concrete wall to straighten, despite the pain. My head swims.
“But you didn’t seek authorized treatment, Mr. Ryder. Your modifications are illegal, so by law, they will be removed by authorized personnel at a cost of twelve thousand, nine hundred-fifty credits. Or roughly, eight years of your natural life. After interest and legal fees.”
This news hits me like a bus, and for a second, I can’t move.
I clear my throat. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
“I want to give you a scholarship to The Citadel, Mr. Ryder. In exchange for, shall we say, a work-study arrangement.”
“What do you mean?”
“You would make a delivery once every two weeks, just an hour of your time.”
None of what he’s saying makes any sense to me. I shake my head at him. “What kind of delivery? And why me?”
Cross’s thin lips stretch across his face again in another humorless smile. “Mr. Wu needs someone with your . . . foresight. Your self-discipline. With such a severe injury, statistics show that most others would gladly pay to relieve the pain by any means necessary. Even with their future. Even with that of others. But not you.”
He presses a button on a small remote control, and a floating screen appears. The scene at the docks plays back, the falling crates, the argument over calling the sweepers.
My heart starts pounding as heat crawls up my throat. The sick feeling in my stomach rises again as I watch it all—as I hear my screams.
“All right!” I shout. Cross stops it a second later, after I demand to see Nyssa.
I sit back down on the metal bed and grip the edge, lightheaded as I stare at the clear sleeves over what’s left of my bandaged thighs . . . at the mismatched hard gel and the muted blue lights below the knees shining through it. The urgency to run away from all this is overwhelming, but I can only sit here, exploding in my own skin because all this is part of me now.
“Mr. Ryder?”
I tear my eyes away and find Cross’s expressionless face. I try to copy it . . . to feel nothing, like he must feel nothing.
“And what about my friends?”
“If you agree, they will all be offered scholarships to The Citadel as well. If you do not, they will pay the fine for executing and abetting medical service evasion. Fifteen years for Nyssa Blair. Ten years each for Marcus Donovan and Adam Pritchard.”
“You people are the criminals!”
“It’s simply the law, Mr. Ryder. But the choice is yours.”
One year later . . .
The guards masquerading as medics in their long, white coats are already flanking Nyssa when I enter The Citadel lab wing. Both guards have hard, scarred faces, one of them with a nose that looks smashed flat against his face. They both tower over her, the one with the flat nose burying his hand under his lapel as his eyes dart around the room. I shake my head and try not to look exhausted by their façade.
Nyssa’s blonde hair is tied back, making her wide blue eyes look even bigger. It’s only been two weeks since I was here picking up the last briefcase, but she looks older somehow. I tell myself it’s just the new hairstyle, but I know better. The Citadel has taken its toll over the past year.
“Hello, Knox Ryder,” she says with a little smile. I start to greet her, but one of her fake assistants cuts me off.
“Where are the others?” Fl
at-nose asks.
“In the car, like always.” I look from one of the guards to the other. “What’s the problem?”
“New security measures. Get one of them up here.”
“Since when do—”
“The clients are waiting,” the other guard says, cutting me off. He narrows his beady eyes at me, and with his pinched little face, he looks just like the white rats in the cages along the far wall.
I blow out a breath and message Pritchard.
“Are you okay, Nyss?” I ask, studying her face. She gives me another weak smile.
“Yeah. A little tired, but that comes with the internships, right?” She forces a laugh and glances up to the corner of the room. I nod, sneaking a glance of my own in the opposite corner to find a mounted camera. Apparently, these are also part of the new security protocol.
“What’s wrong? You okay?” Pritchard says, bolting into the lab almost out of breath.
“Fine. I guess I need a babysitter now,” I answer, regretting it until the guards’ expressions don’t change even a little, but Nyssa gives me a warning blue glare.
“Uh, okay, well, here I am.” Pritchard clears his throat when no one says anything else.
Nyssa carefully takes the briefcase we came for off the metal rolling cart behind her and holds it out for me. “Remember, keep it still, okay?” she says in a quiet voice. I start to remind her that she doesn’t have to tell me to be careful every single time we pick up these briefcases, but Flat-nose starts talking before I have the chance to do more than open my mouth.
“The client is waiting. You have your instructions?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Goodbye, Knox,” Nyssa says a little more loudly this time. “It was good to see you.” She takes a few steps backward without turning around, like she’s trying to look at us as long as she can before the guards each take one of her arms and push Pritchard and me toward the door with their eyes.
“You too, Nyss . . .” I nod in return and take a deep breath to hold back everything else I want to say to her, everything I want to ask her, but can’t.
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