Gears (NaNoWriMo 2017) (#1 Below the Machines)

Chapter 13

"Stay still."

The words ran through me like lightning, shaking me until I obeyed. Each and every word they spoke, each and every word anyone spoke, had its affect on me. Suddenly, gone was the girl who dreamed of her past. Gone was the girl who took pity on her maid. Gone was the girl who had thought of rebellion, of emotion.

Back came the girl who killed the soldier.

I stayed rock still as they put the moulds onto me. They wrapped it around my arm, made of what looked like a type of peach - coloured wax. It fit like a second skin over the top of my metal arm, which is what I supposed it was supposed to be. I clenched my jaw as they applied a glue - like substance over the top, encasing the mould into place, covering the small slit that had been made to help with the process of slipping it on. It held a solid, fleshy shape, and when I blinked, I always felt the same gasp of air choking my throat. There was a feeling of shock that never left me, even though I felt nothing else.

The Designers worked quickly, efficiently, fixing me up within the time span of half an hour. Three women, each about in their late thirties, judged from appearance. They each wore the maid's outfit, except their dress colours were black, with a single silver strip down their right shoulders. I was sat in a chair, and when they finally finished up, they twirled me to face a mirror, which I took in a final check - over. A single look was all it took for me to bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from either screaming or crying in happiness, anger or sadness. I never felt such a whirlwind of emotions before, which completely knocked the breath out of me, leaving me feeling a dumb numbness which I have never experienced before either.

When I looked, the girl in front of me was almost no longer recognisable. My chin-length hair had been pulled into a bun, netted with brown, settling at the top of my head. It was tied with an orange ribbon, which was then hidden by an even brighter orange hairband that settled into my hair, combing it backwards. This alone was enough to hide not only the length of my hair, but reveal more of my face. My forehead shined in the light, the skin seeming strangely pale compared to the rest of my face. But that wasn't even the beginning of my shock, as my eyes trailed down the compulsory uniform, splashes of tangerine and white.

No, the shock lay in how realistic my hands looked. How realistic my body looked. For the first time since the surgery, I felt... human. I looked human. I flexed my normally metal hand, watching in fascination as the fingers twitched, perfectly in tune with the mould around it. No faults, no cracks. Just perfect, smooth, skin.

A shuddery breath finally forced its way out of me. My real hand's fingers stretched out to touch the other one, almost afraid that I would believe that it was real.

No — afraid to believe that it I wanted it to be real.

I closed my eyes firmly, and reopened them, my fingers hovering centimetres away from the synthetic one. Then, brushing down the wave of thoughts, I touched it.

I couldn't hide my thoughts anymore as I touched them, the feeling of skin so frighteningly accurate, so familiar — so real. But then my touch withered away as I realised the difference. My fake hand was cold. No warmth. And when I looked at it, really looked at it, I saw the faults.

There wasn't any patterning on the skin, and it lacked wrinkles that only real skin could replicate. The nails were too hard, too shiny, too fake to be real. All my hope swept out of me at once, leaving me with a lump in my throat and the lack of emotions again. I looked one last time in the mirror, and nearly choked.

The only thing that I hadn't noticed until then. My eyes.

They were blue.

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