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Carrie took the mirror with her left hand, and just looking down sent a jolt of horror through her. All the skin on her hand and upper arm that was visible with the garment she wore was now light blue, with the luminescent circuit-veins she’d come to associate with cyborgs. “What happened to my arm?”
“It was incinerated. There was nothing left to salvage, so Owen made you a prosthetic.”
She held the mirror for a moment before laying it on her lap so she could test her grip. She tightened her fist and released it slowly. She was amazed that it felt exactly the same to do the process as it had for her entire life. It looked different, but it didn’t feel any less intuitive than her own hand would have.
She breathed a small sigh of relief as she lifted the mirror again, at first conscious of how tightly she held it before quickly realizing it didn’t require any thought on her part. It was practically autonomic, just as it had always been. She didn’t have to think extra hard to bring up the mirror to look at herself either.
Carrie let out a gasp of horror at the first sight of her face. The creamy complexion was gone, replaced by light blue skin and a network of visible blue veins delivering the nutrient fluid throughout. The shape of her nose was different from what it had been. It was now a stellar example of classical perfection, rather than the shorter, stubbier version she’d had all her life.
At first glance, her lips appeared to be the same, and her eyelids and eyes were the same too. It was only when she looked closer, bringing the mirror nearer, that she realized there was a difference. Her left eye was no longer brown. Instead, it was black, with a clear iris. “My eye?”
He squeezed the hand he still held, and it provided an amazing amount of reassurance, considering with what she was dealing. “Owen will calibrate it to match your other eye the next time he sees you. It wasn’t a priority when he was trying to save your life. This is the eye’s default setting, but they’re programmable to match the recipient’s other eye. Had you ended up with two artificial eyes, you could have chosen whatever color you’d like.” He said it in what he probably meant to be a lighthearted way, but his levity sounded forced.
“Is my right eye still my right eye?” She was certain it was as she stared at it, abruptly realizing she had a better range of vision with the left eye than she’d ever had before. That alone suggested her other eye was the original. “How much of my face did he have to replace?”
“He had to rebuild almost the entire left side, along with part of the right side. There was structural damage to your skull and cheekbone, so that was reinforced with a metal polymer. He chose to replace all your skin on your face to give you a uniform look, so you wouldn’t end up with half of it blue and half of it your original color. He assumed you would prefer that.”
She nodded, though she wasn’t certain. Was it better to be completely blue, or to be half-and-half? The question prompted a rise of hysteria, and she had to breathe several times to stave it off. “What else?”
He let go of her right hand to pull down the sheet covering her, revealing the left side of her body.
She cried out in shock at the sight of her body neatly bisected almost exactly down the midpoint. Everything to the left had blue skin and the network of luminescent veins, while the right side looked like the body she had been born into.
Panic was threatening to take over, and her body twitched. Her left leg jumped off the table and slammed back onto it with a thudding sound that jarred her. “My leg too?”
Davis nodded. “He couldn’t save what little remained, so he amputated and replaced it with a prosthetic. It will feel just like your leg when you walk and use it. I promise you that.” He tapped one of his legs as he said the words, clearly reminding her of his own prosthetics. The difference was, he was uniformly blue everywhere, not a patchwork freak put together by a mad quilter.
“You should have just let me die.” Those were the last words she managed as she dissolved into tears. Hard sobs escaped her, abrading her raspy throat, and the more she tried to rein them in, the more difficult it became.
She thrashed and fought against him as panic overwhelmed her, only briefly aware of NKI’s return, followed a step behind by Owen. She couldn’t spare a thought for them. She was too busy trying to escape from the bed and the firm hold Davis maintained on her. Carrie didn’t know where she was going to run, or why she was trying to escape, but she felt the deep-seated need to flee.
“Hold her steady,” said Owen.
The words filtered through her brain, but had little meaning. A sharp prick in her neck accompanied them a moment later, which only added to her panic. She increased her efforts to escape, until lethargy abruptly overtook her. In seconds, she had slumped against the metal bed with its thin mattress, allowing all of her pain and betrayal to reflect in her eyes as she caught Davis’s gaze. He flinched, but didn’t look away from her as her eyelids slowly drifted shut, and she sought escape in oblivion.
***
THE NEXT TIME SHE WOKE, Carrie felt far calmer. She suspected they had given her something to ensure she would awaken that way, but she was grateful for it. She didn’t want to succumb to panic, as she had earlier. She didn’t want to seek escape in the sedative either. She woke with a calm certainty that she would have to accept what happened to her, and that it had been necessary to save her life.
That didn’t mean she had to like it, or even truly feel appreciative for their efforts, but the alternative was death, which wasn’t a choice at all. She could either live like this, as half-human and half-cyborg, or she could cease living at all. That thought sent a pang through her, and faces of all the people she loved came to her. Penny’s was among them, but Davis’s was the one that dominated her thoughts. Whatever they had, and whatever was forming between them, it was precious enough that she wouldn’t throw it away.
With those thoughts in mind, she pushed back the cover over her body and spent a moment staring at it before she realized someone was in the room with her. She looked up to find Raven seated near the bed. Her gaze softened when she saw Penny beside her. “There’s my baby. How are your babies?” She asked the question of Penny, who wagged her tail.
“Owen says they’re healthy. They’re sleeping in the other room, but we figured Penny would be comforting to you, so she’s spending her time between the outer room and your recovery room.”
Without thought, she held out a hand to her dog, and Penny came immediately toward her. Carrie realized she was extending the left hand, and she held her breath as she waited to see Penny’s reaction. The dog hesitated for just a second, sniffing her, and then her tail resumed wagging forcefully, and she jumped up to put her front paws on the bed and tried to lick Carrie on the face.
She reveled in the dog’s acceptance, wrapping her arm around her and allowing Penny to kiss her. Her face was still slightly tender, but it wasn’t painful to allow the dog to bestow affection, and she needed it as much as Penny did.
“The general will be here momentarily. He overrode Owen and insisted that the computer system in the base notify him as soon as you woke again. It was the only way we could convince him to go rest for a few hours. He hasn’t left your side until three hours ago.”
That warmed Carrie’s heart. “How long have I been out this time?”
“Two days. Owen thought it best to keep you completely sedated until you had finished healing. You’ll have a little bit of tenderness and an adjustment period, but you’re free to leave the medical center as soon as he examines and clears you.”
She was grateful for that consideration, siding silently with Owen. It was better to let her heal when she didn’t have to deal with the realities of the situation. She had enough emotional recovery and acceptance ahead of her that she was relieved to be able to bypass most of the physical discomfort of her new state. As it was, she currently felt exactly as she always had. “Do you have a mirror?”
Raven nodded as she stood up, moving around the bed to retrieve the requested object. She held it out a moment later.
Carrie lifted the mirror to look at her face, surprised to find the color of her skin had faded slightly. It was still blue, but it wasn’t quite as vibrant blue. The veins networking across her face and down her neck weren’t quite as luminescent either. They appeared to have settled in and blended well.
She opened her left eye as wide as she could, confirming for herself that the iris was now brown to match her other eye. Other than her blue skin and new veins, she looked almost the same.
Her nose was too perfect, but she didn’t actually mind that. She hadn’t been fond of her old nose, and rhinoplasty had been something she had considered as a one-day, vague possibility that she doubted she ever would have actually undertaken.
Hesitantly, she pushed the covers away completely and started opening the garment covering her. Raven averted her eyes, and she glanced down at the line bisecting her middle. It wasn’t nearly as obvious today. Both sides had faded and blended into each other in surprising harmony.
She still looked half-and-half, but it wasn’t as unsightly or as unsettling as it had been the other day. Hesitantly, she touched her right side, tracing a network of the luminescent veins moving across her chest and down her stomach. “I don’t remember seeing these the other day.”
“You probably required additional support for your new vascular system. Perhaps Owen upgraded your cardio system and your digestive system too. Whatever changes he made would have been to save your life, I’m sure.”
Carrie nodded, having accepted that. It was still a jarring sight to see how rapidly she had changed, though she was relieved that the changes were integrated with better attention to aesthetic today.
The door opened with a hydraulic hiss, and Davis rushed inside a moment later. Penny had still been leaning against the bed, her paws on top with her head resting on Carrie’s stomach, but she accepted Davis’s usurpation of her spot with what appeared to be doggie graciousness.
Carrie watched her dog pad out of the room, assuming she was going to check on her puppies, before finally bringing herself to look at Davis. At first, she wasn’t certain why she didn’t want to see him looking at her, but as his gaze focused on her left side and move down, she realized why.
She didn’t want him to like her new side better than her old. It wasn’t just about her accepting the changes. She was the primary one who had to conform and adapt to what had become of her body, but these changes could also fundamentally alter her relationship with her mate.
Strangely enough, she wasn’t worried about him being repulsed by the changes so much as she was concerned he would obviously prefer the cybernetic side to the human side. Would he find her lacking now that there was such a visible discrepancy between the two halves of herself, one showing him what she could be if she was fully like him? Would he wish for her to become completely cybernetic?
That seemed like a possibility in light of how Owen had been managed to save her and replace parts of her body that had been irreparably damaged, but that wasn’t something she even wanted to consider. In her heart, she was human and always would be, and she couldn’t imagine giving up that side of herself completely, even to please her mate—especially to please her mate. That sort of request would be the kind of thing that would destroy her soul and break her heart. It would also end the bond between them, and she braced herself to hear it.
He made no mention of her appearance as he bent his head and brushed a kiss against the left side of her face. The cyborg side.
She tried to shove aside the thought, reminding herself he was on the left side of her bed, because Raven was on her right. It didn’t mean he had a preference, or that he was drawn to the cybernetic side of her. She needed to give him time to adjust, and she certainly required the same. She couldn’t afford to dwell on such trivialities under the circumstances.
That didn’t keep her from periodically noticing that Davis remained on her left side even when Raven excused herself a few minutes later. His hands remained on her at all times, always touching one part of her. His right hand was firmly enclosed around her left hand, and his left hand brushed ceaselessly over her body, resting at different spots in different times as he talked to her in a soft and reassuring tone.
Each time he repositioned his hand, it was always to touch a part of her that now had blue skin, luminescent veins, and cybernetic parts. What did it mean? Was she letting her imagination run away with itself, or was he expressing an unconscious preference for the cyborg?