Chapter 11 #2
I look at him warily. My mouth begins to open before I remember Mero’s command and close it again.
“This estate is old,” Talarin says. “So is its Med-Bay. It responds to High Aurelian. It is measuring your weight and vital signs.”
A narrow line of blue-black light appears above my head.
“Face the wall.”
Fine.
I turn towards the blank surface, feeling ridiculous as the light travels from the top of my head to my bare feet. It leaves a faint prickling sensation behind as it passes over my skin.
The Med-Bay answers in High Aurelian.
I glance over my shoulder. My mouth opens again, but this time I clamp it shut before making a sound.
“Speak.”
“What did it say?”
Talarin pauses.
“One hundred and six pounds.”
“That can’t be right.”
He speaks another word in High Aurelian.
The pale wall in front of me darkens, becoming a perfect mirror.
I stare.
The black collar circles my throat, its little bell resting against my chest. Beneath it, my collarbones stand out more sharply than I remember. My ribs show beneath my skin, and there are hollows around my hips that were not there in the body I carry inside my mind.
There is still muscle upon me. Wiry strength in my arms and legs, built from climbing, running and carrying everything I need to survive. But it is stretched too tightly over bone.
I blink several times, waiting for the reflection to become familiar.
It does not.
“Can you turn that off?”
Talarin speaks to the room again. The reflection disappears, leaving the wall pale and blank.
“On the slab.”
I cross to the nearest one. Its metal surface is built for an Aurelian and rises awkwardly high against my smaller body, but I grip the edge and pull myself onto it easily.
The bell tinkles as I settle.
Talarin gives another command in High Aurelian. The surface shifts beneath me. I sink slightly as the metal reshapes itself around my hips and thighs, moulding itself to my much smaller body.
“Hands by your sides.”
I place my palms against the slab. The surface yields beneath each one, forming perfect impressions around my fingers.
I lift one hand experimentally.
The hollow remains.
When I lower it again, my palm fits precisely into the shape it left behind.
Talarin takes that same hand and lifts it from the slab. I let it hang limp within his enormous palm while he turns it over and studies it.
For a moment, I do not feel like a person. I do not even feel like a pet. My body is a machine he has been given to inspect, each worn part lifted and tested before he decides what needs repairing.
Thick, uneven calluses cover my palm and the bases of my fingers. One has split near the edge, leaving a pale crack through the hardened skin. Talarin runs his thumb over it before examining my nails and turning my wrist.
At first, I have to fight the urge to flinch every time his fingers move. He continues with the same slow, measured patience, and little by little, the tension begins to leave my hand.
He follows the scratches along my forearm, then places my hand back into the indentation made for it.
Next, he lifts one of my feet.
His palm nearly swallows it. One thumb moves across the gnarled callus covering my heel, then follows a deep crack along its edge. A small blister has formed beneath one toe, buried under skin that has grown too hard for me to notice it.
I barely feel the pressure of his thumb through the thickest calluses. When it passes beneath my arch, a faint, muted tickle reaches me.
He examines my other foot with the same care, then moves upwards along my ankles and calves, finding every small scrape and half-healed cut.
The clear respirator whispers with every breath he takes.
There is nothing hesitant in his touch, but nothing careless either. By the time his hands reach my arms and shoulders, I no longer have to fight myself each time his skin meets mine. I relax more deeply against the slab while he presses gently around the tenderness near my ribs.
“The scan will remove your body hair and repair the accumulated damage to your skin.”
My mouth falls open.
Talarin’s eyes meet mine through the transparent mask.
He says nothing.
“Lie back and close your eyes. The light is not dangerous, but looking directly into it may give you a headache. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I lower myself onto the slab. It shifts beneath me again, the shallow cradle around my hips loosening and reforming beneath my spine, shoulders and head until I am lying flat inside a shape made precisely for me.
Talarin speaks a long phrase in High Aurelian.
“Ael-varnai mar-keth-drenarem; melai mar-khar-kethem; sethai mar-kethem drakoth.”
I close my eyes.
A circle opens in the ceiling above me. I hear the quiet movement of an articulated arm descending, followed by a low hum that travels through the slab and into my bones.
Blue-black light flares beyond my closed eyelids.
Warmth passes over my scalp, down my face and across my body. A thousand tiny prickles spread beneath my skin until every inch of me is tingling and strangely sensitive to the cool air. Across my hands and the bottoms of my feet, the sensation becomes strangely warm.
The light makes another pass, and the tingling deepens before the hum finally stops.
“You may open your eyes.”
I blink against the sterile room and push myself upright. For a moment, I cannot understand what has changed. Then I look down.
Nearly every trace of body hair is gone. Beneath my arms. Along my legs.
I expect to see myself completely bare, but to my shock, he has left a narrow, perfectly groomed strip of hair above my sex.
It is too precise to be an accident. Talarin chose this.
The narrow line draws the eye down, framing the part of me I most want to hide and leaving his choice marked upon my body. He decided how I would look there. Not me. Every time I look down, I will see myself exactly as he wanted me.
The deep tan I have carried for years has faded to a pale shadow. My skin is several shades lighter and faintly pink, as though years of weather and sun have been lifted from it. Every scratch, rough patch and half-healed cut has vanished with it. The tenderness along my gums is gone as well.
I run one hand along my opposite arm.
Too soft.
My gaze drops to my hands. The calluses are gone.
I turn them over in disbelief. My palms are smooth and vulnerable, the deep ridges across my fingers erased as though I have never climbed stone, drawn a bow or held a knife in my life.
They do not look like my hands. They look weak. Like they would blister the next time I climbed a tree. Like the first hard pull upon my climbing spike would tear them open.
I draw one knee towards my chest and turn my foot enough to see the sole. The thick callus over my heel is gone. So are the hardened ridges beneath my toes, the cracks along the edges and every trace of the blisters I earned before my feet learned to carry me across stone and bark without pain.
I press my thumb against the smooth skin. It yields.
Those were not injuries. Not all of them. Every blister hardened because I kept walking. Every ridge formed because I climbed another tree, crossed another stretch of broken ground or ran when stopping would have meant being caught.
I look down at my body, soft and smooth. It is a body made to be...
Pampered. Weak. Soft and dependent.
I shudder with the realization.
I’m an indoor pet.
Anger burns through the shock. The respirator keeps Talarin from smelling it, so I make certain he can see it. I want him to know how much I hate him in this moment.
He repaired my body as though everything I built was damage. My hands and feet were shaped for a life on my own. Now he has reduced them to something else.
I cross my arms tightly over my bare chest and continue shooting daggers at him.
Talarin studies me through the clear respirator. His gaze moves from my face to my folded arms, then down towards my softened hands and feet. His expression does not change.
My fingernails remain long and uneven, with faint traces of dirt caught in the corners. They are the only part of my hands I still recognize.
Talarin opens a recessed drawer and removes a small silver instrument.
“Hand.”
I keep my arms crossed.
His eyes narrow.
“Do not mistake my mercy for weakness. If you hesitate to obey my command again, I am going to turn your ass red.”
He means it.
I uncross my arms and extend one hand, hating how sulky and petulant I must look, naked and collared while I am forced to present it to him.
His fingers close around my hand and turn it palm-down before he positions the silver instrument over my thumbnail. It’s a nail clipper, and a big one.
It closes with a clean click. I don’t flinch because I know he won’t cut the quick. He’s just so... precise.