Chapter 3: Scar Tissue & Shifting Steel

  The silence left behind by Doctor Heshara wasn’t silence at all. The room itself hummed. A low, resonant thrumming that vibrated up from the floor, through the thin mattress, into Core’s bones. It felt like lying strapped to the casing of some vast, sleeping machine. The antiseptic tang in the air was sharp, clean, failing utterly to mask an underlying scent of ozone and something else, something metallic and faintly organic, like dried blood.

  He y there, adrift in the wake of her unsettling presence, her intense violet gaze still feeling like physical pressure against his skin. Exhaustion pressed down, heavy as a burial shroud, but sleep felt impossible, a distant country he’d lost the passport for. The phantom itch fred behind where his left knuckles should be. He ignored it.

  Slowly, forcing limbs that felt weighted with lead, he sat up. The room swam slightly. He focused on the thing attached to his shoulder.

  Metal. But not just metal. The gunmetal grey surface caught the ft fluorescent light with an oily, iridescent sheen. Segmented ptes overpped, like the chitinous armor of some deep-trench monstrosity. The joints weren't simple hinges; they were intricate, multi-faceted knots of alloy that clicked almost silently when he dared to will movement. He forced himself to look closer, at the point where the alien thing met his own body. Not a clean weld. Flesh, raw and angry red, puckered like a poorly healed burn, seemed melted into the metal, interwoven with it. Dark, vein-like tendrils, thick as old coaxial cables but pulsing with a faint, sluggish rhythm, snaked from beneath the metallic edge, disappearing back into the muscle of his shoulder, rooting the parasite deep. And the surface wasn't smooth. Etched into the alloy, finer than hairline cracks, were swirling patterns. Hieroglyphs. Familiar yet distorted, they seemed to writhe just at the edge of perception, shifting, rearranging themselves if he stared too long. The arm radiated a penetrating cold, yet paradoxically, the fusion point pulsed with a low, feverish heat against his skin. And beneath it all, that constant, low thrumming vibration, felt deep in his teeth, like the idling engine of something waiting.

  He reached across his body with his right hand, fingertips hesitating just above the cold metal. He wanted to touch it. He wanted to tear it off. He did neither. Just let his hand hover, trembling slightly. The heart monitor beside the bed, a silent, diligent observer, began to pick up its pace. Beep. Beep. Beepbeep.

  He tried to make a fist with the metal hand. The command felt distant, filtered through static. The segmented fingers obeyed, snapping shut with unnerving speed. Pain, white-hot and tearing, exploded deep in his shoulder socket, like muscle ripping, reforming. He gasped, biting down hard on his lower lip, tasting copper. The monitor shrieked a faster rhythm. Beepbeepbeep! He willed the fist to open. It resisted, locked tight for a sickening second, then sprang open sluggishly, one joint catching with an audible, grating click. He tried lifting the arm. Dead weight. Staggering. It pulled at muscles that screamed silently. Less controlling a limb, more wrestling something alien that had burrowed into his nerves. He let it fall back onto the thin mattress with a heavy, solid thud.

  A polished metal panel on a nearby diagnostic machine threw back a warped reflection. He forced his gaze towards it. Saw the familiar mess of dark, curly hair. The pale, androgynous face, the crooked nose. The permanent bruises of exhaustion beneath his eyes. And then… the thing. The sleek, brutal lines of the gunmetal grey appendage grafted onto his shoulder, throwing his entire silhouette off-kilter. The asymmetry was grotesque. It didn't look like an addition; it looked like a repcement. Like something invasive had hollowed him out and built its nest. Interesting, a cold, distant part of his brain observed. Almost aesthetically… wrong. Nausea surged, hot and acidic. He turned away sharply, pressing his forehead against the cool, smooth wall, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

  The grey scrubs id out on the foot of the bed felt like a uniform for inmates or b rats. He dressed slowly, the process a clumsy agony. His right hand fumbled with fastenings designed for two. The metal arm was a heavy, uncooperative burden, swinging loosely, bumping against his side, sending jolts of phantom pain and real, grinding ache through his shoulder. The cold metal scraped against his ribs. He finally wrestled the drab fabric on, feeling less clothed, more… packaged. He looked at the heart monitor leads still attached to his chest, then ripped them off with a single, decisive tug, letting them dangle uselessly from the machine. The silence that followed felt accusatory.

  He needed out. Out of this white box. Out of his own skin, if possible. The door slid open silently as he approached. He stepped into the corridor. More white. More grey. More humming fluorescent lights. More dark, watchful camera lenses. Identical numbered doors recessed into the walls at regur intervals. A sterile maze designed for disorientation. He started walking, no direction, just putting one foot in front of the other. His gait was uneven, the weight of the arm pulling him slightly to the left. It hung inert, a dead weight, a constant, chilling reminder. He stared straight ahead, gaze unfocused, letting the bnd uniformity wash over him. Trying to find the familiar numbnesHe rounded a corner. Maybe his foot caught on a nearly invisible seam in the floor. Maybe the suffocating silence just became too much. Maybe the memory of Heshara’s violet eyes sparked something deep and reactive. A surge of pure, unadulterated panic cold, sharp, overwhelming fred through the static. His body reacted instinctively, throwing his arms out.

  Tearing.

  The sound wasn't metal on metal. It was wet. Organic. Like wet canvas ripping, amplified, echoing in the sterile corridor. Pain, blinding and absolute, erupted from his shoulder, radiating outwards. He stumbled back, hitting the wall hard. Looked down.

  The metal casing of his left arm had split open. Not cleanly retracted, but cracked, peeling back like the shed skin of some monstrous insect. Underneath wasn't wiring and pistons. It was glistening, dark red bio-muscle, slick with an oily sheen, pulsing faintly. Thick, bck tendrils, like corrupt nerves, whipped out, interwoven with fiments that glowed with a sickly green-violet light. Sharp, chitinous ptes shifted, clicked into pce. The metal shards reformed, elongated with impossible speed into a grotesque, asymmetrical bde – five feet long at least, jagged, serrated like something dredged from the deepest ocean trench, edges shimmering with barely contained energy. Oily, iridescent fluid wept from the seams of the transformation, hitting the pristine floor with a faint sizzle, leaving rainbow slicks. The embedded hieroglyphs burned white-hot, searing phantom shapes onto his vision. The low thrumming exploded into a violent, grinding buzz that vibrated through his entire body, rattling his teeth.

  He stared. Just stared. A choked, strangled sound escaped his throat. Pain was a roaring inferno in his shoulder, in his skull. Nausea threatened to buckle his knees. Panic wasn’t just cwing anymore; it was shredding the inside of his chest. Get it back. OFF. WRONG WRONG WRONG. He tried to force it with will alone, squeezing his eyes shut, focusing all his fractured attention. Back. Now.

  It resisted. Twitched violently. The bde hummed, spitting faint sparks. Then, slowly. Agonizingly. With sounds like grating bone and tearing flesh, the bio-tendrils retracted, the bde-shard telescoped back into the arm. The metal casing tried to knit itself closed, but it was buckled, warped, cracked. Glimpses of the dark, pulsing biomech remained visible through the fissures. He leaned heavily against the wall, gasping, sweat dripping into his eyes, the acrid smell of ozone and something else—something metallic and alive—filling his nostrils.

  Still staring at the ruined, malfunctioning appendage, still trying to shove the sheer horror back down beneath the static, he didn’t hear the soft footsteps until a gentle pressure bumped his right shoulder.

  He looked up, startled, vision blurry. A young woman. Shorter than him. Soft features, messy light brown hair. Warm brown eyes, but strangely unfocused, looking somewhere over his shoulder. Same grey scrubs. And… arms. Both of them. Gunmetal grey. Segmented. Hieroglyphs swirling faintly on the surface. Just like his. She held a steaming ceramic mug, chipped at the rim.

  "Oh." Her voice was soft, quiet, almost a whisper. "Oops." She blinked slowly, her gaze drifting down to his damaged arm, then back to his face. No shock. No arm. Just… mild, distant curiosity. "You spilled something," she noted, nodding vaguely towards the iridescent slick sizzling quietly on the floor. "New?"

  Core stared. Her face. Her arms. His arm. The corridor. The buzzing in his own bones. The world tilted. Two? Like me? The question stuck in his throat. He couldn't speak. Just shook his head slightly, a tremor running through him that had nothing to do with the cold.

  "It does that sometimes," she offered, her voice still soft, floating. She gestured vaguely with the mug towards his arm. "The resonance gets… loud. Especially at first." She took a slow sip of whatever was in the mug. Chamomile, maybe? The scent drifted faintly. "I'm Lyra," she said, as if remembering a forgotten detail. "Lyra Vasari." She looked at him, eyes still not quite focusing. "You're Core, right? Doctor Heshara is quite… interested." A tiny, almost invisible shiver ran through her. "Her interest is… strong."

  He finally found his voice, rough, scraping. "What… is this?" He gestured weakly at his arm, at her arms.

  Lyra looked down at her own metal hands, turning them over slowly, as if examining unfamiliar tools. "Oh. These?" She flexed her fingers. The movement was perfectly smooth, effortless. Practiced. "Keres Strain interface. Somatic resonance augmentation." She shrugged lightly, a small, disconnected movement. "They call it Soul-Forging sometimes. Sounds dramatic." Her gaze drifted back to the bnk wall. "It lets us… interact. With the echoes. From the Du'at." She took another sip. "It hurts less, ter," she added, almost as an afterthought. "Mostly."

  Suddenly—

  SCREEEEEEEEEEE!

  A shrill, ear-splitting arm ripped through the facility hum. Red emergency lights pulsed, strobing down the corridor, bathing everything in rhythmic crimson fshes. Lyra startled violently, dropping her mug. It shattered on the floor, chamomile spshing across the tiles. Her unfocused eyes snapped sharp, pupils diting, locking onto Core with sudden, startling intensity.

  "Ah." Her voice was still soft, but the hesitant quality was gone, repced by a tight urgency. "That's… not good. Fraying event, Sector Gamma. Close." She looked down the corridor, then back at him, decision made. "Okay. New pn." She reached out, her metal hand closing around his good arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong, the metal cool against his skin. "You need to come with me. Now."

  She pulled, hard. Core stumbled, shocked into motion, dragged along in her wake down the strobing red corridor as the arms wailed, the sound echoing the frantic pounding in his own chest, the malfunctioning biomech arm heavy and buzzing like angry hornets at his side. Towards what? He didn't know. Didn't care. Just moved, pulled forward into the noise and the fshing red light, the scent of antiseptic and ozone and something ancient and angry thick in the air.