Gold to Airy Thinness Beat

Chapter Thirty

Stephanie was staring at the ceiling.

It occurred to her that she'd been staring at it for a very long time.

She felt...ill, in a way she hadn't since before the serum. Her head was pounding, her body ached and it felt like gravity had increased, pressing down on her and making her body feel far heavier than normal.

She was lying on a bed, a thin mattress and coarse blanket under her. Her legs were curled up and to the side and one arm was lying flat on the mattress next to her head, the other across her stomach.

She allowed her head to roll to the side to examine the room. It was small, nothing but four cinder block walls, a concrete floor and a solid metal door. There was a grate over a small slat set in the door at eye level. It could be opened from outside to let someone peer in but the grate would prevent her from manipulating it from inside.

A cell then.

Wherever she was, it wasn't friendly.

She turned her head back toward the ceiling.

For a little while longer she allowed herself to stay completely still, her body limp. She felt a deep lethargy and part of her desperately wanted to simply stop fighting her the desire to close her eyes and sleep.

Instead she forced herself to slide her arm off her stomach, moved her other arm down to her waist and very, very carefully worked herself into a seated position.

The ache in her body worsened, and she could feel a bone deep soreness and tightness every time she moved as if her body had been in one position for a very long time and had locked up that way. There was also a sharp, stinging pain in her left wrist and shoulder. She looked down toward her hand...and froze.

The hand currently pressed into the bed...was metal.

A sense of slowly growing panic settled in her gut as her eyes traveled along the fingers, to the wrist that still ached when it shouldn't because it was metal and not flesh, along the segmented plates of the arm and to the shoulder where bright metal vanished under the sleeve of the black t-shirt she was wearing. Hesitantly, and struggling not to give into the panic she felt at having a body part missing, she pulled the sleeve back. Her entire shoulder was metal, the seam where it met flesh extending well down along the side of her left breast before moving back to complete the circle. The metal appeared fused somehow directly to her body, the skin swollen and just a bit hot to the touch. She could also feel a dull, burning pain, all of which together suggested the procedure had been recent and still in the process of healing.

Carefully, she drew the tips of her fingers along the metal arm, catching on the edges of the segments. She mentally commanded the appendage to move and it did just as her other arm would. The action brought a burst of sharp, biting pain along the seam and she bit her lip, before settling the arm carefully in her lap. She worked the fingers and wrist and found all of it moved and behaved just as a real arm would though she had no idea how it was possible. She'd seen prosthetics before and they were usually plastic contraptions used more for aesthetic value than anything functional.

The memory of white hot agony tearing through her side ran through her mind and she hesitantly pulled up the hem of her shirt. Tender but unmarked skin met her gaze. She ran her fingers along her side, pressing gently but couldn't tell if what lay underneath was bone or more metal.

A strangled sound escaped her lips and she squeezed both hands into fists as an irrational desire to rip the thing off her shoulder and throw it ran through her. The very thought of her arm being torn off, and a new, alien one put in its place -- she shook her head frantically to try and dislodge the thought process and focus on the here and now.