A trickle of blood runs down my arm, curling round to drip from my thumb. I kick away the Zarathustra files and pop the next stitch, breathing deeply to clear my head. Two down, ten to go. And I still need to pull them out. The curled black thread is hanging from one side of the cut, glistening with blood. I snip the next five as quickly as I can, snagging the scissors on my skin, adding more trickles of blood to the spatter on the floor.
I close my eyes, fighting a surge of nausea, a throbbing pain radiating from my forearm. The memory of the flesh on my back bubbling and splitting rears up through my mind, and I force my eyes open. If Cole doesn’t hurry, we won’t have time to do this properly.
Maybe we should just amputate my arm.
I pop another stitch, and the thin film of new tissue along the incision tears apart with a rush of sparkling pain. The wound stretches open, revealing bloody bubbles of fat in a three-inch diamond along my arm. I bite my lip and work through the rest of the stitches, my eyes brimming with tears, when something shifts under my skin.
A humming starts up, and the lights on my forearm flicker off. The incision stretches wide like a bloody, unseeing eye. I wince, gritting my teeth against the pain as my forearm bulges, the panel vibrating under my skin.
It’s auto-ejecting. The panel has realized that I’m trying to get it out, and it’s decided to help me.
A dozen tiny black wires wriggle through the wound, coiling and squirming like snakes, dragging the soft pink plastic of my panel into the air. It squelches, wires flicking and coiling, shoving a scarlet-streaked flap directly out of the wound.
The walls spin around me. I gag, managing to lurch over to the sink, spitting out a mouthful of acid and bile. My body shakes with adrenaline as I sink to my knees on the concrete, staring breathlessly at the wound.
An army of squirming black wires fans out across my skin, stretching the wound open, trying to lift my panel out. But they can’t. It’s stuck. The incision isn’t long enough.
I glance at the door. No one’s coming. I’m going to have to do this myself.
‘OK, OK, OK,’ I whisper, groping on the floor for the scalpel I pulled out of the medkit. My fingers are shaking, slick with blood. They slide over the cold steel handle twice before I manage to pick it up. My hand shakes dangerously as I bring the blade to my forearm, trying to figure out the best way to open it. I could make it longer, or cut across it, or turn it into an L shape. I don’t remember which way is better, and I don’t want to cut a vein.
‘L shape, L shape,’ I mutter, dredging up a distant memory of some kind of training with holoscreens, practising on other kids. I close my eyes, pressing the tip of the scalpel to my skin, and draw in a deep breath.
But I can’t do it.
The invisible hands of fear are locked around the scalpel, keeping it frozen in midair.
‘Come on,’ I growl, throwing my head back. I press the blade into my skin until it stings, but I can’t make the swift, clean stroke that could end this.
So it can’t be swift, then. I grit my teeth, jabbing the blade into the edge of the wound. Blood wells up and my fingers clench, but I’ve started. Now all I have to do is drag it two more inches across my skin.
The panel’s lights flash as I suck in another breath, steadying myself. It shivers and hums, the black wires writhing like a thousand tiny snakes, coiling closer to the panel’s body. They wrap around the strip of plastic, enveloping it completely.
It shifts back into my arm.
‘No!’ I shout. It’s changed its mind. It doesn’t think I’m trying to get it out – it thinks I’m hurt, and now it’s installing faster to help me. ‘No, no, no, please!’
The lights blink on, racing up my arm, and I scrunch my eyes shut and drag the blade across my skin.
The pain is like a firework. I feel it whistle as it rises, promising heat and light and fury, until it finally detonates. It shatters across my skin, and I let out a strangled cry, buckling, clutching my arm to my chest. The warmth of my blood trickles down my stomach. The panel is humming again, shifting, changing back to its ejection protocol. A fresh cry rips from my throat as it slides, warm and slick, straight out of the wound.
I let out a gasp, shaking with relief. Tears drip from my cheeks, forming clear patterns in the sheen of blood that covers the concrete floor. I drop my arm, grabbing the warm bundle of wires that is my panel, but feel a tug of tension all the way up my arm. A single cable stretches into the wound, jutting from the back of the panel, the same thickness as my little finger. It’s black flecked with gold, marking it as one of the network of cables that pumps nanites through my body. Most are no thicker than a human hair, but this is the primary distribution cord. It runs to a socket in my shoulder that must have locked and stopped it.
But that’s OK. I’ve bought myself a few more minutes before the panel tries to turn itself on again. This butchered thing is still hooked up to the cabling inside my body, but at least it’s out of me.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and find myself swaying, a rush of heat creeping up the sides of my neck. The room blurs, and I throw my hand out for the wall, but manage only to slide down it, leaving a scarlet streak on the concrete.
Somebody shouts outside, their voice punctuated with footsteps. The door whooshes open, and a hand slides around my head, cradling my face. I blink, expecting to see Cole, but instead find bright green eyes, rogue strands of red hair plastered to a freckled forehead.
‘Dax,’ I whisper groggily. He’s soaked, stinking of disinfectant. ‘You found me.’
‘Yes, Princess. It’s OK, I’m here.’ He turns me to my back on the floor, pushing the hair from my face with his pale, slender fingers. I’m still just in my bra, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters any more. Dax found me, and now everything is going to be OK.
‘You did it,’ he breathes, lifting my wounded arm carefully. ‘Oh, good girl, you got it out.’
Cole appears like a ghost behind him, every muscle in his body tense, his eyes wide and haunted as he stares down at my arm. ‘I …’ he whispers, his eyes flashing to black. ‘I can’t be here. I’m sorry …’ He stumbles back out of the room.
‘Some hero,’ Dax mutters, turning the panel’s body in his hand. ‘What’s wrong with the primary cord?’
‘Shoulder socket. It’s jammed, like when I hacked my panel. The cord won’t retract.’ I clench my good hand into a fist, trying to draw my mind back into focus. If we can’t disconnect the panel in the next few minutes, its emergency fail-safes will try to turn it on again. That might prompt a surge of emergency healing tech to race up the cable and into me. With my hypergenesis, that’s a death sentence.
‘We have to get it out, Dax,’ I say. ‘We need to yank it.’
‘I’m not yanking anything. That socket branches into your spine. It’s too dangerous.’
‘But the cord is graphene coated – we can’t cut it.’ I glance at the blood-streaked mess of the panel and force my eyes to the ceiling. ‘We’ll have to reboot the socket.’