Friday, September 2, 2022

Charlie’s apartment, TriBeCa, Manhattan, New York, United States

The next morning, Ella got out of bed voluntarily. She took a shower and combed her hair, applied a light bit of makeup. Her cheeks were gaunt and she felt weak. Crystalline eyes stared back at her but, for the first time in a long time, they weren’t hers, they were a stranger’s.

When she emerged from her room at the breakfast table, Charlie, Jade, and, surprisingly, Arcsa were there and they all looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

She woodenly moved over to pour a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee and sat down.

The others continued to eat, but she could feel their glances.

Without preamble she began, “The woods were dense and there were always snipers and traps. We knew we were in the heart of their strength.” Her voice was even and calm, inflectionless. She took a bite of cereal.

“So we found a clearing, and set the trees on fire. Not just a small fire, but multiple large fires which I encouraged with magic. I built that fire up as much as I could… Trees exploded as their sap boiled. The sound of them cracking was like thunder.”

She took a sip of coffee.

“You were there, Arcsa. You saw when that arrow just missed me and killed Belili. She was so kind…”

Arcsa nodded, but didn’t say anything. Jade and Charlie had stopped eating.

“Five days later, the fire reached a small town. We were covered in ash already, the heat was unbearable. We were low on food and fresh water. And the town started to burn. The people couldn’t run anywhere, the fire had surrounded the town.”

And now her voice finally trembled. She reached for the coffee mug but then put her hand back down.

“A family ran out, towards us. I cut them down with a tripwire. They fell into pieces.” Her voice was still flat until the end where it became a whisper.

She stared at the bowl of cereal, but instead was reliving that moment.

“There was a baby on the mother’s back… It… didn’t suffer.”

Ella shuddered, now she was at the cusp, as bad as that was, there was still an admission she could not make.

Jade and Charlie looked at her and knew. Arcsa had been there, had partaken in their collective sins, but he said nothing.

“You have to say it,” Jade said tersely.

But Ella sat there and kept quiet, trembling and pale. Charlie and Jade waited helplessly. The sound of the spoon stirring cereal echoed in the silence.

She wasn’t ready. They sat there for what felt like eternity. Eventually, Arcsa nodded to her, “Let’s go see about your arm.”

---

The prosthetic arm fit pretty well. it was a matte titanium sheen, and various joints were coated in a gold-bronze color. The technician adjusted the straps fitting it to where her left arm had been.

“It has programmed movement patterns that you can switch up here,” the technician pointed at various controls and then pulled out his phone and launched the programming app for the arm. “You can add more sequences here…” and he spent time walking through the control app. It was pretty simple for Ella to follow along.

“We had to make a number of modifications to it to equalize your strength as much as possible. but there are weaknesses where it mounts to your arm and others as well.”

Ella triggered the movement of the arm into one of its preset sequences. She wouldn’t be able to fight well the way this is setup and she wasn’t convinced she would ever be able to fight well again… Not that she ever wanted to again. She grimaced and suppressed the thought, she had to keep moving forward for now.

She focused on the problems at hand, she began thinking about placing a magical sensory net coordinate system over the arm to capture touch and sensation. To controlling it directly and forging linkages to the IC chips directly. Reinforcing. Weaponry. Anchoring it better to her arm. Did she even need the electronics or just something she could manipulate directly with magic.

It was a problem for another day.

The arm spasmed as she fumbled the control signal. The arm would train on and train her on how to control it best. It would learn myolectric nerve signals and eventually she could launch sequences based on those signals.

It was a miracle of medical technology. And it sucked.

The tech continued the lessons in frustration.