Eien stared at her.

She made no other comments. She merely stared at the top of the hill as if waiting for something.

“What do you mean…you’re not…human? I mean, you have two arms, two legs, and you look human. You…you were human? Are you…are you an animal then? Or a plant?” She didn’t move.

Eien felt at his wrist where the flap of skin opened up to a red, warm lump.

“How did you break it?”

“I overrode the system.”

“What? What does that mean?”

Contracts were supposed to be unbreakable.

When he was conscripted, one of the first things they did was contract him with the government. It was irreversible, complete, and compelling.

It was surprising that he even was able to get as far with Aino as he did. After all, they were still calling him once he left, even if it was weaker.

He felt around at the back of his head. There was the soft, coolness of her contract. He felt it. It was like ice to the fire of the government. He still viscerally remembered the trauma of the government contract.

“Eien Sho. You’re next.”

He was in a dimly lit waiting room with the other nervous conscripts, all just completed with their physicals and evaluations. A white-robed doctor motioned him to enter the laboratory.

He shivered as he passed through the door, feeling a heaviness set into his body. The realization of the magnitude of what he was about to do set in, and everything within him screamed to run.

Numbness set in as he put one foot in front of another, his bare feet slapping loudly against the cold floor in the hallway. The hallways were closing in on him, tightly wrapping him in their grip, and he started to breathe a bit too fast.

The doctor took him into a large chamber with machines and other kinds of metal contraptions Eien could not begin to describe. A few other doctors in white were present as well as man in a suit.

Ice ran through his veins, and he would have vomited if he had any actual food in his stomach. The man in the suit eyed him, a slight smile on his face. Eien avoided the man’s eyes, scrunching himself in like a balled-up piece of paper. The scrubs he was given were suddenly too thin.

The doctor led him to a platform with a pole in the center. At the top of the pole was an orb, glowing an eerie red. One of the other doctors approached, taking a clipboard. She eyed Eien as if he were a slab of meat she was inspecting to see if she could eat it.

“Stand where the marks are,” she said, pointing to the X’s in the floor, “Lift the wrist flap and expose the pith.” He lifted his skin flap, feeling the cool air hit his exposed pith. The red, fleshy part of his wrist started to pulse, aching like a dull throb.

“Place the pith upon the contract sphere, making sure to make complete contact. It may hurt, but do not pull your hand away or you will be disqualified.”

His mouth was suddenly like sand. ‘Disqualified’ was probably another word for ‘dead.’

In one motion, he shoved his hand to the orb. It was like a burn, and his instinct was to pull his hand away, but instead, he pressed it in further, blocking out the pain.

He focused on the face of his sister, smiling at him. The pain started to subside.

A hot pain shot through his skull, brief and quick. It started to sear the back of his head where the neck attached to the skull. Then it settled.

Instead, he felt a pull. It was a weird feeling, the pull. He dropped his hand from the orb and looked up at the doctor. She was writing something on her clipboard.

“Okay, we will test it now,” she said. The man in the suit approached him; Eien turned to face him and held his hands to his sides to keep them from trembling.

The suited man pointed to the end of the room at a contraption with a variety of levers and pulleys.

“Go there. Complete my task.”

Eien felt a sensation in his head. It drew him to the machine like a bug to fire. He couldn’t stop himself. He walked there.

What task? The man had told him absolutely nothing, but he felt a burn happen when he looked away from the contraption. He pulled a random long lever. Pain in his head. Pain. PAIN.

“Fuck,” he whispered, “Okay…” He felt it then, the relief. A small green handled lever stuck out to him, clearing his mind. He pulled it.

The machine moved. Ropes moved; levers started to pull themselves. Nothing else happened, but the pain in his head left him, and he looked back over at the doctors.

They were writing notes and the man in the suit was grinning.

He felt the pull again, so he walked over to the man in the suit.

Eien’s heart almost stopped. He wanted to run out of there, away from the man in the suit. He had to run away.

But his feet kept moving.

When he looked away, the pain drew his attention back.

“Well done, Conscript Sho,” the man said when Eien stood before him, “I look forward to good things from you.” Eien nodded mutely.

“Doctor, he’s ready to ship out,” the man said, turning to a third doctor in a white coat.

Eien numbly followed the doctor, avoiding looking at anyone else. His sister. This is why he was doing this. He wanted to protect his sister.

Eien followed him down more hallways to a loading dock in the back of the building. Other conscripts were lined up in the backs of trucks like milk cartons. He sat next to a boy with sandy colored hair and freckled skin who looked more like an old piece of bread than a boy. His face was like one who saw too much. Eien felt the intrusiveness deep in his bones.

“Will…will it always feel like that?” he asked the sandy-haired boy. Grimly, the boy turned his face to Eien and confirmed his deep fears.

“Yeah. I think it will.”