It was not a comfortable night.

Eu had gone off and found a few more mattresses to sleep on, but Keri was definitely not used to sleeping in such close proximity to a bunch of strangers. Or anyone, for that matter. She had always liked her privacy, and would laugh off the attempts of the occasional nightly visitor whose expectations included a stay of more than a happy[1] hour or two.[2] In a world where the double bed was standard, hers was defiantly single.

The room had no wash area, and she was forced to use a small one down the hall that was shared with the building’s other inhabitants. Awaking in the middle of the night and stumbling down the ill-lit corridors, she had the unpleasant experience of pushing through the door into the toilet to encounter a wide-eyed, extremely surprised example of one of these other residents. She quickly returned to her thin bed and elected to wait until morning. It made for an uncomfortable sleep.

The morning wasn’t any improvement. A small sink with pitiful water pressure was all she had to clean herself with, a few splashes to clear the worst of the previous day's dust from her eyes, and not even a sonic for cleaning her teeth. Anisa gave her a small, bristled brush, the first time Keri had seen one. It left her feeling little better than without.

When she returned to the room, someone else had joined them.

He was a small, skinny man, head darting around in nervous movements as if trying to keep an eye on everything at once. Everything about him spoke of a pent-up energy barely held back, like a hyperactive child, and he spoke rapidly, frantic bursts of words that crashed over each other in his haste to get them out.

"And you saw it?" he was saying eagerly. "An actual bio-augmented human?"

He was speaking to Cassandra, who was leaning against the ledge of the now-open window and staring out at the world beyond.

"Yeah," she grunted. "It flipped our damn truck. Hard to miss."

"Incredible! An actual bio-aug, in our city! I wonder where it could be hiding?" he said, half to himself.

"I wonder where it will show up next," said Cassandra, turning from the window and looking annoyed.

"Oh, you shouldn't worry. Not now you've called me," said the little man.

"Who's this?" asked Keri, stepping in as if she hadn't been listening from the door.

The man spun around in surprise, startled for a brief second. He composed himself quickly.

"Ah, and you must be the one who saw it first. Please, please," he said, advancing towards her with hands held out towards her. "You must tell me everything. What did it look like? Where exactly was it augmented? How did it move?"

The man was holding up a small black rectangle, probably a 3d recorder. Behind it the light of his corps screen glowed, more routines running than she could count, each confined to its own small area of the display, arranged in three dimensional layers where the slightest movement of the tendons could move them up or down, forward or back.

There was something strange about the display, though. It was green. Keri had never seen a green one before; as far as she knew, all corps displays were the same shade of blue.

"Hmmm, interesting. You're a Standard; Anisa failed to mention that. I'm afraid you're really out of your element here, aren't you?"

The man's eyes narrowed as he spoke, and his expression turned from a questioning to an examining one. He scanned her up and down.

Keri leapt back in fear when she realised that was exactly what he was doing.

"He's augged!" she shouted, raising her hands in futile defence.

The man's irises were a steel grey, and clearly metallic. Delicate petals spiraled over each other and across the pupils, moving in the manner of a camera lens. They did not respond to the light of the room but only to what he was focusing on, widening and narrowing in ways no biological eye ever would. Keri could just about make out the back-scatter scan of herself displayed on the corps screen he was looking at.

"Oh, calm down,” said Anisa, striding in through the same door Keri had come in from. “He's harmless. Well, unless you've got some piece of tech he really wants."

Anisa laid a hand on Keri's shoulder and gestured to the man.

"Keri, this is Kilgore. Kilgore, Keri. Now, stop scaring the tech-head and tell me if you can help us," she said.

This 'Kilgore's' attention changed in an instant. Now, he focused on Anisa.

"Well yes, of course I can help you. There's no need to worry, no need at all. I merely need the find the thing," he said, excitement filling his voice, "and it’ll be mine."

"Now, just wait," demanded Keri. "Who is this man, and how is he going to stop a Butcher? He is a Butcher!"

Kilgore laughed.

"Oh, my dear, no. If only! I am but an artificer, modifying what we already have. But a Butcher... oh, I can only imagine."

Kilgore stared into the distance, enraptured by something only he could see.

"You like the Butchers? You admire those maimed and disfigured inhumans?" Keri asked, incredulously.

"Well..!" he replied "To be able to sense so many wavelengths of the spectrum, to be free from fatigue and to process faster than any pure organic... incredible!"

He seemed to return to reality, gaze softening and dropping to the ground.

"Of course," he continued, "it's not possible now. Not when the necessary immunosuppressants are denied to those who would use them.”

He turned to Keri, his strange, flexing pupils staring directly at her.

"That’s how they stopped them, you know. Halted the manufacture of anti-rejection drugs. Died slowly as their own bodies turned against them, poor things."

He stared at her a moment more, seemingly watching for her reaction, and when none was forthcoming began rummaging through the files of his corps, flexing through screen after screen so fast Keri couldn't keep up.

"In fact..." he said, "I've got some of the pictures stored here somewhere, I believe. Quite gruesome, of course, but nevertheless extremely informative."

"Uh, that's, uh, quite alright," said Keri.

She'd always wondered how the Butchers had been dealt with in the end. Odd that she hadn't searched this out herself.

“Kilgore is a modder,” explained Cassandra. “Hacks himself. Even managed to upgrade his corps. Well, he says it’s an upgrade.”

Keri stared in horrified fascination at the man’s arms. Indeed, the glowing projection lines of the corps stretched far further along the arm than any should, reaching almost to his elbow, a row of thin scars in the skin through which they shone.

Each scar was straight, precise, clearly made with great care and well stitched afterwards. It was highly likely they would not be visible without the glow from within revealing alternating lines of light and dark.

“You hacked your corps?” she gasped.

Kilgore glanced distractedly up at her.

“What? Oh, well, yes, but the hacking was not physical. I only had to access the corps physically to install an expansion. More of a jury-rigging than an actual upgrade, of course, but I did manage to successfully broaden both data-stream access and functional range. A proof-of-concept as opposed to something of any practical use, you understand, but nevertheless a great success.”

Keri struggled to follow this stream of language.

“You can… do that?” she asked.

“Oh yes, indeed. Are you aware of Moore’s Law? Its definition has changed quite a bit since it was first conceived, but the basic principle of continual technological progress has only been broken twice in our history. Did you know that?”

Keri didn’t have time to answer, even if she had known how to.

“The first was shortly before the so-called Body Butcher era, and we are living through the second. A period of purposely-chosen stagnation and wilful developmental retardation. That is the real butchery, I tell you.”

Kilgore’s voice became tinged with anger during the final few sentences, and his previously frantic movements became more purposeful, mouth turning into a thin line of resentment as he clenched and unclenched his fists with more power than was strictly required to change the displays.[3]

"But what I don't understand is where he has been hiding," he continued. "It's been decades since the last truly augmented human was spotted. Was, aha, deactivated. Where was he all this time? How has he managed to survive? His body should have gone into systemic shutdown long ago; there's nowhere he could be getting more suppressants."

Kilgore was flicking through the screens of his display faster and faster. He was looking at a myriad of video feeds, each one playing extremely rapidly. He was running some kind of search algorithm, Keri guessed.

A few seconds later he looked up with a sigh, arms falling to his side and cutting off the display.

"Fascinating. And impossible. I can find no recording of him on any of the security feeds, public or private. I cannot even find you from several seconds before the attack to when you all reappear, sans truck, minutes later scattered around the district."

This modder could hack the security feeds? Keri was surprised to hear this, but she was realising that if she voiced every surprise she encountered around these people she would never stop, so she kept quiet.

"And Andreas? Did you find him?" said Anisa impatiently.

Kilgore slowly shook his head.

"But that is not surprising, given his... talent," he said slowly.

Anisa and Cassandra both nodded. Keri caught herself doing so too, and felt herself flush at the look she received from Cassandra for her foolishness. She hated not knowing what they were talking about.

As if on cue, Eu came rushing into the room.

"Andreas! He made it. On his way up now," she said.

Eu's gaze swept over everybody in the room, but were pulled back to Keri with a strange look.

"Uh, yes, um, Keri dear, you should probably be prepared for..."

Keri had never seen the man who came in through the door. It wasn't Andreas - it couldn't be. Oh, he was the same height and frame, and his face was also a mass of scars and lines, but the features were... wrong.

"You all made it, I see."

The voice was Andreas', though. Keri leaned in closer, curiosity overcoming trepidation.

Wasn't the nose longer, the cheeks higher? Were his eyes always that narrow? She felt sure they weren't, but she had only met him briefly.

"No time to explain," he said, spotting her inquisitive stare before turning back to the others.

"How did you get away?" asked Anisa, skipping any pleasantries.

The man who was apparently Andreas took a deep breath, wringing his hands together.

"I wish I knew. That thing had me, I know it. Bullets just bounced off its body. The last thing I remember is feeling it right on my heels and then... well, then I woke up with a blazing headache. Thing must have smacked me on the back of the head."

He rubbed the back of his skull and winced.

"No idea why it left me there. I wasn't able to defend myself. It could have finished me off there and then."

Anisa gave a thoughtful hum.

"But listen!" said Andreas suddenly. "You'll never believe what I heard. I wouldn't have thought it was possible, if what happened to us hadn't happened."

"Wouldn’t have thought what was possible?" demanded Cassandra.

"The Terminal," Andreas replied. "It was attacked."

[1] At least, hopefully happy.

[2] Again, hopefully.

[3] The equivalent of jabbing a finger at the keyboard.