“They’re not sure. I’ve heard them talking, and they seem to think you’re augmented. With augments they’ve never seen before.”
A white room story. That was the term. Mr. Bartel used it for one of the clichés they were supposed to avoid during the creative writing unit. A woman wakes up alone in a white room, unsure of how she got there or even who she is. He was really excited about just getting to teach one of those creative writing units at all. He promised he would edit an anthology of their stories. Share it with other schools. Put the whole thing in the library system where other students in the province could read it. Hwa realized she had never turned in her assignment on time. Never even turned it in at all. Just shrugged and turned the other way and focused on the killings. She probably had so much homework to make up. She was never going to graduate.
She held out her left arm.
Still clean.
She swung her legs off the bed. Stretched them out.
Her left leg was just as pale as her right one.
“Shall I fetch someone?” Nail asked.
“I guess.” He stood, and Hwa grabbed awkwardly for his elbow. He turned. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for sharing your voice with me.”
He beamed. “Rusty will be glad to know you are well. All the Mistress has asked for since you’ve been here is pasta and bread and cake. It was as though she were trying to eat your weight in comfort food.”
He left. The floor was soft under her feet. Moss. The longer she stood there, the more moss grew around her feet, blue and springy and pleasantly alkaline smelling. She dug her toes into it. Flexed her feet. Her ankles had no pop. Her joints felt flexible and loose.
It was her eyes, she decided. Her eyes were probably so damaged that she had needed new ones. Or contacts. Some ocular prosthesis that would replace her melted eyes and also allow the installation of a filtered perspective. So of course her stain was filtered out. She ran her right hand over her left arm. It didn’t feel any different. One long smooth line of skin. No change in density. Just skin. Just like the other arm.
She pinched it. Scratched it. Watched her fingernails drag down the skin, leaving little white lines in their wake. Studiously avoided the mirror near the door.
Branch couldn’t be right.
She wouldn’t allow him to be right.
Why would I edit it out?
A sound bubbled up to her mouth. A whimper.
“It’s your eyes,” she whispered. “It’s just your eyes. You’re still you.”
Her mother’s face would not be waiting for her in the mirror.
“Stop being such a pussy.”
She walked over to the mirror with eyes closed. Trailed her fingers along the wall. Stopped when they hit the frame. Entered walking position. Her muscles still felt the same. Light. Ready.
“Ready.”
In the mirror stood the woman she had seen in the crystal ball.
Behind her stood Daniel.
*
“A beard?” Hwa asked. “Really?”
He stroked his chin. “You don’t like it? I sort of like it. I stopped shaving once you were in here. There wasn’t much point.”
“I thought you were dead. I saw you…” Her voice shook. It was suddenly much deeper and rougher than it should have been. She reached out and touched the beard gingerly. “I watched you break.…”
“I know.” He kissed the tips of her fingers. “I watched the footage.”
She spoke in a whisper. “How is this possible? How is any of this possible?”
Daniel snapped his fingers at the mirror. She turned to look, and a swarm of machines appeared in the glass. They swam along in schools, occasionally pausing to wriggle their hairs at something before continuing along their merry way. As she watched, one of them divided in two.
“Those look like…” Her head tilted. “The Krebs. But different.” She enlarged the image. They were so delicate. So fluid. Like animals. Like cells. Like something alive.
“That’s your blood,” he said. “Our blood.”
She looked up at him. “What?”
He pushed the Krebs to one side and opened another file. This one had his name on it. The same machines were gathering in thick clusters. When he zoomed out, he revealed his rib cage and collarbone. The pattern of broken bones. The machines were literally scabbing over his bones to mend them.
“If you’d just waited,” he said. “Just a minute a longer.”
Hwa shut her eyes. “Please don’t make me look at that.”
“All right.” She felt him move behind her. “It’s all right. You can look.”
When her eyes opened, the Krebs were back. But he zoomed the image out, and there was her name on top of the file. The Krebs danced across her whole body. But they were most densely concentrated in the place where her stain used to be. They were there, under her skin, a second stain of proteins and circuits.
Hwa swallowed. “How? When?” She turned to him. “Did you let them do this? Why would you let them do this?”