Chapter 6
KYLDAK
Iwake before the alarm can even think of starting. The pale morning light is just a whisper through my window slats. My body is a rack of glass and gears. The prosthetic interface hums in my skull, reminding me: you’re not broken beyond repair. Maybe.
I rise. The brace on my leg and the servo in the shoulder joint hiss protest as I shift weight. Pain—and the promise of it—ripples. I grit my teeth and step forward anyway. Each movement tastes like iron and burned ozone.
I brush past clothes thrown on the floor, touch the edge of the bed where last night’s sleep left me half-drowned in nightmares. I go to the holo-console and flick it on. The air is thick with expectation—like I’m stepping into a sniper’s moment.
News feeds cascade in. Peace rallies clouding city plazas.
Veterans with missing limbs brandishing signs, “We were promised more.” A close-up: a man’s hand, trembling, holding the remains of an Alliance flag.
Rain falls. Somewhere a mother wails. Behind it all, smoke rising like the last gasp of dying fires.
My fists clench. My cybernetic arm socket hums. The blood behind my implants pulses. Rage is a coiled thing inside me—tight, simmering, dangerous.
I slam the holo off. The silence kills. My own heartbeat pounds in my ears. I blink, willing the shadows of memory to recede. They don’t.
The gym doors hiss. I enter. The floor smells of iron weights, spilt sweat, old gristle, ambition. The weight platforms gleam under cold lights. Muscles twitch at the edges.
I find the bar. Load it. The plates slide with authority. I grip it, wrists smarting. The servo in my shoulder protests. But I push. Push until the joint whines, until the prosthetic shoulder flickers like it’s going to burn. Sparks? Maybe.
I push more. A sputter. Finally—a pop. The system hiccups. My grip slips. The bar crashes. Echo of metal against rubber. Tools clang in other bays. I stand, chest heaving, eyes locked on where the weight fell.
She appears. Jaela, in the doorway. Her face is fierce. Her eyes storm. She doesn’t rush. She lets the air crack.
“You went too far,” she says. Voice low but sharp. The echo of leather and mechanical breath between us.
“I’m trying,” I rasp.
“Trying what? To bury yourself in metal and pain until no one can reach you?” She steps forward. Her boots echo on tile. The lines of her jaw are drawn. “You’re doing this for everyone but yourself.”
I flat laugh. “You think you know me?” My voice cracks. “You think I let people in?”
She doesn’t blink. “I think you’re scared of being human again.” Her tone is accusation and plea both.
I close the gap. Forehead to hers. Her breath is soft and sharp and close. A struggle of heat. “Stop fixing me,” I whisper. “Just feel me.”
Her pupils dilate. Her breath hitches. The tape of restraint cracks.
But she shoves me—not gently, not cruelly—but strong. Enough. Enough to carve space. Enough to hurt me. “I won’t be your project,” she hisses, voice broken.
She turns, storms away. I want to catch her. To tell her that she is not a project. But my legs refuse me. My chest roars. I stand rigid.
After she’s gone, I don’t move for a long time. The echoes fill the gym. The weight lies on the floor. The machines are silent watchers. I taste my anger. A bitter tang.
Night comes later, and sleep is no refuge. I pace my quarters. I watch the sky. The stars are cold witnesses. I feel too much, and not enough. Bones ache, metal hums, memories burn.
At dawn I slump to the window sill. Dawn tastes of ash and glass, of promise and threat. The wind brushes my cheek and it feels like judgement.
I think, If I were whole, would she stay?
And the silence answers with nothing but my own ragged breathing.
I slip out of the sleeping quarters before the first flux of daylight betrays me. My joints ache with memory. Every metal pin, every synthetic wire in my limbs hums in protest. But I need air. I need space. I need—something unmoving and real.
Outside the therapy bay, I find her. Jaela.
Kneeling by the edge of a panel workbench.
Hands stained with copper wires and solvent.
She’s adjusting a neural-feedback collar—tiny interface nodes, delicate conduits, a design I recognize as hers before I even see the insignias.
The low hum of the lab’s backup systems buzzes around us.
The smell of warm circuit boards mixed with sweat and ozone presses in.
She doesn’t notice me at first. I stand two paces off. My stomach roils with guilt, regret, and that thread of desperate hope I’ve been telling myself was dead.
I clear my throat. She jumps, fumbles a connector. Sparks flicker. She steadies.
“Caffeine?” I hold out a nutrient cube. Unflavored, bland, but it’s something. She glances at it.
I step closer. “Thought you could use this.” My voice is rough, but soft. Vulnerable.
She takes it, studying me. “You don’t owe me apologies,” she says. “And I don’t know what I’d do with one.”
I crouch beside her, laying the cube on the bench. “You don’t have to. I’m here instead.”
We sit, side by side, knees angled. The lab light warms my face with sterile white. I keep my hands to myself.
I say, “When the shuttle exploded… I thought I was dead. I saw fire, and flames, and fragments of my friends’ faces as they screamed. I held my own arm in what was left of my hand, trying to find if I was still me. If I could… if I could bleed.”
My throat hurts. Blood rings metallic in my mouth.
She doesn’t flinch. She listens. Her fingers twiddle a stray copper wire. “My father—after he came home from his tours—he was here physically. But not here. He walked around the house like a ghost. I’d talk to him. He’d only stare. He got new legs, but never a new mind.”
I glance at her in the corner of my vision. Her eyes glint wet. She shifts.
We talk. We share bits. I tell her the friend who turned when the blast hit, whose name I still taste in my nightmares. She tells me about her childhood rooms, the silent dinners, the way her father’s laughter died in stages.
It’s not flirtation. It’s not seduction. It’s two wounds opening so each can see the scab.
After that, I look up and she’s watching me. Just—watching. Like she’s memorizing the lines of my face, the patterns in my scales, the tension in my spine. Her lips part. I catch the memory of heat in her eyes.
I cough, shift.
Later, when no one else is around, we slip to the therapy pool. The humid steam clings to us. Chlorine stings our eyes. The water’s cool but forgiving as I enter behind her, both of us fully clothed—my jacket, her scrub shirt.
She stiffens when I step in beside her. The water laps around our hips. Shadows drift across the pool floor below us.
We swim—the motion is clumsy. Hands drag wet fabric. I splash inadvertent droplets onto her shoulders. The wet cloth molds to her skin, intimate in a way that’s dangerous. We circle each other.
She laughs, short. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s necessary,” I grunt. “To feel water again. To remember life beyond steel.”
She doesn’t answer. She glances at me, the reflection broken by ripples. “You’ve got fire in your ribcage you don’t let out.”
I move until I’m close. We tread water. Lights overhead refract in her eyes. My heart thunders. My arms ache. My curse is desire.
I lean in. She’s so close her breath is salt, her heat is flame. My lips hover—too close. The world narrows. I taste the wet chlorine and the tang of metal in my own mouth.
And then she pulls back. A quick flinch. A break.
I stare. The water parts. My heart roars. My hands tremble.
She turns and swims toward the exit. Her footprints disturb the water as she climbs out. The pool echoes emptiness.
I remain. Shoulder deep in water that tastes of sorrow and maybe, just maybe, hope.
I lift a hand to my lips. The memory of her skin echoes there. The damp air, her scent, the clarity in her eyes.
I don’t move for a long time. My fists curl. My chest aches. I feel dangerously alive. And heartbreakingly unmoored.
Eventually I exit. The lights flick overhead. The corridor smells like wet concrete and chlorinated air. I pull off my jacket. The wetness clings to me, cold.
I walk slowly back to the quarters. My legs feel too long, too foreign. I pause outside her lab. She’s gone. The collar she was building sits on the bench.
I trace the edge with my fingertip, heart like a fist clenched in my ribs.
I whisper to the silent walls: I almost touched you. I almost meant it.