Chapter 18 Oblivion #3
The thermal cauterizer was already prepped. Sabine stepped aside to allow the secondary surgeons to begin cauterizing the wound before he died of blood loss.
The monitors beeped erratically. He neared dangerous territory.
Talor’s gloved hand settled on her shoulder. "He will make it," her husband said.
Sabine forced the faint tremors from her frame—there was no place for such weakness here. "He will. We didn’t go through all of this for him to die on a table."
They would build him anew, piece by piece, until not a single flaw of humanity remained.
Kit faded in and out of consciousness for days—weeks—as his body healed.
His arm was a stump. Thick, white bandages over the side, wrapping around his chest. He felt turned inside out.
A phantom ache swept through his right side, where his arm once was. The fingers of his left hand flexed. The hospital gown was scratchy and uncomfortable. His head was still foggy. The doctors said the chances of ever being healed entirely were slim.
He struggled to speak. Mornings and evenings were the worst. His words came disjointed and ragged, snapshots of broken-up thoughts, all discordant.
One face always managed to pierce the veil of disordered fog.
White hair, grey eyes.
When it was bad and he felt like he might never survive this, the shade shifted—the pale skin turned softly tanned and the hair turned brown, glittering under sunlight, eyes to match.
Vesperin. He repeated the name aloud when he was alone.
In the quiet dark of night, when the door to his room was shut and the monitors beeped, still closely tracking his vitals as he healed.
A constant mantra.
"Vesperin, Vesperin, Vesperin."
There were times he couldn’t say her name because too many eyes were watching. So, he did it a different way. Eight letters—three vowels, five consonants—traced into his thigh by the trembling fingers of his left arm.
He would never let himself forget.
His mother and father were here, wherever he was. He knew that was a bad thing. He knew they didn’t love him like parents should, but the fear felt distant, as if a thick sheet was between him and his emotions.
Kit sat by a window, the wheels of his wheelchair locked as a nurse had rolled him here to watch the midmorning sun, covered by thick clouds. Every so often, the image would glitch, distorted. He blinked, and it disappeared.
They would bring him breakfast, plain oatmeal and water, countless vitamins, and yet the window would display sunset. Sometimes, he caught the clouds overlapping strangely, skipping and pausing, then their flow would repeat. Only to do it all over again.
Kit’s head throbbed. It was hard to keep upright.
He coughed, chest catching painfully. Parts of his shoulder blades, sternum, and ribs had been replaced with metal plates.
He shivered on the examination table, lying flat on his back. The metal fused to his flesh formed a harsh, rigid line. His skin was still red and inflamed, struggling to accept the intrusion.
The doctor pressed along the seam. "You’re healing well," he said.
Kit hadn’t seen his mother in a few days. She came less and less, and his father even more rarely.
"I suspect within the next few days we can fit you for your new arm."
A flicker of sadistic glee darkened the doctor’s eyes. Kit was aware enough to understand that any doctor in this place was evil.
It was time for the transfusion of his new arm.
Both Sabine and Talor were here. Kit had stopped referring to them as his parents. They no longer were. Not when they viewed him as an experiment more than a son.
The dark, gleaming prosthetic limb rested on a metal cart beside the examination table where he lay.
It didn’t look natural—not a normal prosthetic. Something about it was sharper, harsher, under the fluorescents. Wires crossed over the joints of the elbow, hollow and thrumming with blue liquid.
The doctors began to prepare him. He struggled against them, but they easily kept him down, pushing him flat to the bed. Straps were fit over his chest, keeping him secure. Trapping him.
He bucked and thrashed, eyes wild. Dread gripped him tightly and made it hard to breathe.
"No, no!" Kit yelled. The buckles on the straps clinked, and the bed shook as he strained against his bindings.
He couldn’t think past his panic.
He just knew this couldn’t happen.
He would rather die.
"Sedate him!" one of the doctors barked.
"Get your fucking hands—off me," Kit snarled.
Cold, gloved hands gripped his hair, yanking his head back against the bed. He saw the gleam of a silver syringe, felt a prick of pain on his neck, then…
Nothing.
When Kit woke up, it was to a dull pain in the flesh of his upper arm, where the sleek metal of the prosthetic had been surgically fused to his flesh. And something else—
Because the sensations running through him were different. Abnormal.
He imagined curling the fingers of his right arm, and the prosthetic’s fingers moved. He imagined raising his arm, and it did that too.
That night, staring at the white wall of his hellish prison, he made a fist and punched his pillow, feeling the angry line of where the prosthetic was fused to his flesh ignite with pain from the strain on his healing body.
He was left alone to recover for a few days, then taken to physical therapy.
He was allowed to walk now and didn’t need the wheelchair.
But he still had to walk slowly. The blast on the ship had torn muscles and tissue in his hip and upper thigh.
Kit only saw glimpses of thick staples when he showered, unable to inspect his body fully because he was always monitored.
The physical therapist was an older man, greying hair and beady eyes that Kit wanted to gouge out with his fingernails.
"I’m sure you have picked up on this by now, but that’s no cosmetic prosthetic. State-of-the-art mechanical components. Wires run from the joints of the prosthetic." The physical therapist’s fingers skimmed over the elbow of the prosthetic down across the forearm to the fingers.
Kit had been forced to remove his shirt, and he shivered in the cold room.
The place where his skin met the sleek prosthetic was even more gruesome in the harsh lighting.
Bandages still crossed over parts of his chest, and a small patch had been placed on the side of his neck.
The area was tender when he moved his head too suddenly.
The physical therapist continued, "The surgeons fused the ends of the receptors just here.
" He touched the side of Kit’s neck, right over the bandage there.
"They ran them from the end of the prosthetic under your skin. It connects to the nerves of your brain. So with practice, you’ll be able to use it just like a normal arm.
Only better. The strength is tenfold that of a normal human man. "
Only better, the words scraped through his mind. If his strength was tenfold, then how much of him was still human?
Time was hazy. The window in the small, colorless lounge area was almost always the same. Kit was more lucid now. He knew it wasn’t a window.
He still watched it, though, sitting on the plain white couch, imagining the sun’s warmth against his cheeks and the rustle of wind in his hair.
He stared at the prosthetic, resting palm-up on his thigh, and curled his fingers. It was as easy as breathing now, after countless physical therapy sessions.
He’d figured out long ago that in the myriad of pills they forced down his throat, somewhere in there was a Stella suppressor. He couldn’t use his Stella.
He tried not taking the pills once, but they stuck a tube down his throat and poured them straight into his stomach. For a few days following that, even drinking water hurt.
Curling his other hand into a fist, he raised them both, staring at the difference in skin and bone of his left compared to the sleekness of his right.
If only he had his Stella, he could do something. If he couldn’t escape, he sure as hell could take them down with him. Make them hurt like they’ve hurt him.
Somewhere during his time being trapped and prodded like a rat in a lab, Kit’s apathy had turned to sick, hot rage.
The doctors noticed. Of course they did.
So they took that from him, too.
Sabine was here to visit him.
Kit didn’t look away from her cold eyes, hoping she’d look into his and see the monster they’d turned him into.
She sat across from him in the lounge, legs crossed as she folded her hands over her knees. She was dressed impeccably. "You’re looking so much better."
"Like you fucking care," Kit spat. His words hitched just barely this time.
His head had been pounding since two days ago, when he’d woken up to blood crusted around his nose and mouth.
He knew what that meant.
Experiments. It seemed they employed the same methods he and Rin had been forced to endure. Was Somnocept somewhere in those pills?
Sabine sighed, pulling a photo out of her pocket and sliding it across the low coffee table between them. Kit didn’t look at it—didn’t let himself touch it.
"Take it," Sabine said.
"No," Kit replied.
"You don’t want to see how your Soulbond is doing?"
The room tilted to the side. His breath caught in his tight chest. He reached for the photo, fingers trembling. He used his real hand, unable to stomach the thought of touching anything that had to do with Rin with this monstrous technology forced onto his body.
Kit’s throat tightened as he held the photo, his thumb stroking over the side. Rin.
Her white hair was tangled around her face, a soft smile on her lips.
The edges were faint, like a painting unfinished—like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to smile or frown.
Her small hand was tucked onto the chest of another man.
Lucien, who held her tightly against his chest, where they sat on a couch together.
If Kit had any tears to cry, they would’ve fallen from his eyes then. But everything inside him was dried up and corrupted.