“That time of the year already?” The question escaped Zax’s mouth without his input.

“Pff. Hm? Pff. You said, pff, something? Pff.” Strange Girl queried without interrupting her series of sit-ups.

“I just got an invitation from the education centre.”

Even as he replied, he couldn’t help but stare at her casual display of fitness. During a conversation about different ways to influence mutations, the impact of physical training had come up. Consequently, she did daily physical exercises of her human parts. She still wasn’t sure how she wanted her bird parts to progress, but she definitely didn’t want her human ones to worsen.

Therefore, Zax had learnt that no matter where she came from, she was intimately familiar with her own limits. She presented Zax with a workout schedule he found nothing to comment on; he only pointed some exercises that would also work her less desired parts and the generally high numbers. She dismissed the later as “no big deal” and she quickly fixed the former.

He had been speechless when the ‘sit-ups’ required her hanging from the ceiling by her talons, and fully folding her body in two, upside down. Making a handle for her to grab hasn’t been difficult, but all her exercises were the same type of shocking; soliciting the same muscle groups as the normal version, but with the difficulty ramped up to eleven.

If that wasn’t enough, and while he couldn’t be sure because her body scan’s continued failures, he was certain this aptitude wasn’t supported by her mutations; her human parts were fully human. The light shine of normal, natural sweat also attested to it. What he was seeing was the result of pure hard work on a normal human body.

He had been satisfied of his above average purestrain attributes before. Now he had an example of what such a body could do, and while it still paled compared to normal mutants, he felt like a slouch. Fortunately, he wasn’t the jealous type. After a few days, he was more used to it, but it wasn’t any less impressive.

He also had a nagging feeling the exertion helped her keep stay sane in her self-imposed confinement in his apartment.

“They send one every year for ‘present your work’ day. I didn’t notice it was that time already.”

“Neat. Pff. Are you going? Pff.”

In another casual display of agility and coordination, she let go of the handle, twisted her body and lightly landed in a standing position. Over time, Zax had acquired the certitude that with more space, she would be flying. And that she would never truly renounce her wings.

They are perfect for her.

Which had its own implications about her and her past, but that was not here nor there.

“Not sure. I haven’t seen the guardians in a while, but I don’t want to leave you alone. Guess that’ll depend on Aran’s free day. She can keep you company.”

A few day ago, she would have seen that as a jailor’s threat, but now she could recognise his concern for what it was.

“You don’t have to babysit me; I can handle myself.” She huffed and crossed her wings in a way that was all but natural. She had already caught her breath.

A blank face answered her.

“It’s true!” Her offended tone would be a lot more impactful without her doubtful expression. “I’m not a child anymore! I’ve been here for almost a week already, I learnt enough to handle myself for a day.”

“Glad you specified ‘for a day’, but I mean in case you have an attack.”

“… I only had the one tho?” The tone tried to be casual, but she couldn’t hide her awkwardness at the mention.

“True, you hadn’t had another panic attack or even a flashback since your first morning here.” Zax nodded, “but you still haven’t solved what caused it in the first place. We don’t know what it was, so we can’t make sure it won’t happen. We will not rush you or press you; it would be counterproductive.” He hurried to appease her. “But we won’t leave you alone either. Not until you’ve talked to at least one of us and we can all be sure you’ll be fine. I would still advise to consult a professional tho. You don’t even have to give details; they have ways to let you just express what you feel. Even if they can’t heal your deeper scars, they could at least point you in the right direction.”

He had let subtle hints about therapy throughout the week, but now was the time for straightforwardness. Seeing her not immediately rejecting the idea or closing in on herself, he felt encouraged and gave a final push:

“Imagine, there might even be nights you won’t cry yourself to sleep. Although I admit, those improved too.”

“You… you heard that?”

The surprised recoil was expected. The embarrassed blush less so, but the boy took it in stride. He hoped it was embarrassment, anyways.

“Well, yes. The noise isolation is only good between units, not inside. I never had a reason to pay for that upgrade.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think it’s too early to leave you alone for so long. We’ll see if she’s free.”

Strange Girl didn’t find anything to add. She wordlessly went back to working her sweat up.

It turned out, Aran had one and a half free day she didn’t know what to do with. She didn’t mind using it to spend time with her winged friend while her unwinged friend was away, but another point of the conversation she was retold attracted her attention:

“A professional? You want her to see a shrink? That pretty random, no?”

“Not really.” Zax offhandedly defended. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. They helped me a lot when I needed it.”

“Wait, you? You already followed a therapy?”

Strange Girl energetically nodded her agreement to Aran’s comment.

“Of course, I didn’t grow into who I am now on my own. Like everyone, I was influenced by my environment. Therapy was a key part of my development, and it took a lot of work on myself to become someone I could live with.”

He wasn’t that sure about the last part since the Core, but he had more pressing concerns to deal with.

“What could you possibly have needed a therapist for?”

“What do you think? All my friends and even younger children mutated before me. I felt inadequate. And when puberty hit and I still didn’t, I felt worse. Therapy helped me overcome my crippling inferiority complex and see my own worth. It set me in the direction I still follow to this day.”

The two girls exchanged a glance full of meanings Zax failed to parse. For some reason, he wasn’t sure nanites would help with that specific analysis.

“That’s why I think it would help you a lot.” He concluded. “Both of you, actually, but your issues are not as destructive as hers, so it’s not as urgent.” He added to Aran. “You’re actually getting better on your own already, so it might not even be necessary.”

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Strange Girl curiously looked at Aran, who was struggling in her own mind about how to feel or react. She quickly gave up and settled for a sigh:

“And here I thought I was used to your directness.”

The case was heard. Zax would go present his work to students of all ages at his old school, while Aran would take a rest day to spend it with her friend, and as a bonus the seed of the therapy idea was planted in both of them.

The conversation moved to less sensitive topics, including one Zax actually wanted to bring up since the previous day.

“So, I’ve been thinking about why I couldn’t make your templates, because my ‘you’re too high energy for normal equations’ theory, that was already wobbly at best, doesn’t work at all with Strange Girl.”

“She is pretty active tho?” The tailed girl defended. “All those exercises…” She added with a shiver.

“True, but even when she’s exhausted and inert, my scans don’t work. Plus, yours is more of a constant, ongoing flow, as if you were physically unable to be below a certain level for more than a second. Hers is a more common large pool connected to a dam, and she can control the floodgate thanks to her training.”

“Training? Not a mutation?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe minor parts of her mutations helped, but she knows too much about training her body and her own limits to discount it.”

The winged girl felt strangely proud of that declaration, and she wasn’t sure she liked it or not, considering how she had obtained said familiarity. Regardless, Zax wasn’t done:

“On the other hand, her brain scan works just fine, so I went on a limb and reworked the data to model individual organs. And guess what? It worked! But they wouldn’t fit together. So I fit them manually, piece by piece. And it worked fine as long as I didn’t include a specific part. Not the same for the both of you.”

Their blank faces showed they didn’t understand what he was getting at, but he wasn’t discouraged:

“The left kidney for you,” he pointed to Aran. “And parts of your skeleton. Not sure if it is the whole bones or part of them.” He told Strange Girl. “I don’t understand why. Nothing wrong with them; as I said, they work fine. They are what they are supposed to be and do what they are supposed to do, but their template will just… not click with the rest.” He helplessly shrugged. “So… Any idea of what it could be?”

He eagerly looked at the huddled pair in front of him. He had looked in every database he could, from all angles he could think of, but in vain. Any hindsight they could have would be his best shot. It didn’t look promising.

“Sorry, I… don’t think there’s… something weird… with my bones.” Strange Girl answered first, hesitant, but only because of the strangeness of the query.

“They are perfectly normal bones, only the shape is notable and even that is perfectly compatible with avian anatomy.” Zax nodded in confirmation. “But do you know if something happened to you, that would leave an impact on your bones? An illness or an accident in your childhood? Maybe a calcium deficiency or something similar?”

“Ah.”

Aran’s sound of realisation attracted his eyes so fast Zax felt a pull in his neck.

“Yes?” He pressed when the silence extended.

“It’s… personal. Can you… secure the room?” She fidgeted, looking at her twisting hands in her lap, her tail all but screaming her desire to run away from an imminent threat.

They had never seen the tailed girl so flustered. It wasn’t embarrassment either, it was… fear?

Zax and Strange Girl exchanged a glance, but he complied without question. They sat her in the couch, between them, comforting hands and wings grabbing hers as a matter of course. The wordless support probably helped, because she took a deep breath and started her tale, slowly, watching her words:

“When I was a child, I fell seriously sick. Renal failure. It’s when, er, when your kidneys don’t work well enough.”

Unusual, but not unheard of, easy to cure, and definitely not something to hide.

“I heard that normally, it’s easy to cure. Well, I don’t know how easy, but there are systems to make it affordable. But I couldn’t get them. Because of… my father.” Her face scrunched at the mention. “He was addicted. Gambling. Any unit we had, he lost it. The Main Computer can’t force someone to go to detox until they do something illegal, but it can refuse to give him benefits until he pulled himself together. And that… refused to see there was something wrong with him. We were out of options, so, in despair, my mother took a huge risk. She asked for help from… unsavoury people. They agreed. They had this thing they could do, they called it ‘surgery’, I think, that could save me. My mother didn’t want me to know more, and I don’t remember the details. They made me fall asleep, and when I woke up, I felt weak, and I was home. Several days had passed. And I can confirm that my first mutation happened way later. But after that, I got better. I was cured. I could finally leave my bed. Go outside. Play with my friends. I never had health problems since. Nothing related, I mean.”

“That would also fit with your ‘can’t stay in place’ and ‘friends with everyone’ attitude.” Zax faintly nodded.

It might feel like a cold comment, and it was, because he had distanced himself emotionally for the difficult retelling. It was the only way to let her finish. He still broke the mask for a tight group hug when it was done. He couldn’t relate with family issues, but he could tell she needed it.

“Thank you for sharing that with us.”

Her eyes were shut. She didn’t cry, but she hugged tighter. When she let go, Zax attempted:

“I know it was difficult, but I have questions. Can I…?” After a steadying breath and a nod, he continued. “Someone did something to heal your defective kidney when you were a child, and it didn’t have any side effect besides disturbing my scans. And you don’t know what it was. That’s something. Do you know who were those shady people?”

Aran didn’t react, but Zax had unstoppable arguments.

“To secure the room more than usual, you must want to hide it from the Main Computer itself. If that’s the case, rest assured: it already knows. There is simply no way to hide several days of absence or unconsciousness. Especially if it let you live longer than expected. If there were consequences to have, they already happened.”

“Unless it happened in a Circle.” Strange Girl pointed.

“Yes, unless it… uh. I never thought about that.” Zax deadpanned. “Did it?”

“Ah, no, I never left the dot. It was all inside. I think.”

She still wasn’t inclined to answer the other question, but surprising everyone, Strange Girl had her own idea:

“It was the Black Market, wasn’t it?” Two faces turned to her at once, but she didn’t flinch. She just looked sad and distant. “Surgery is their specialty. And they are good at it.”

The foxy girl’s cowering, her tail trying and failing to wrap around her was all the confirmation they needed.

“It exists?” Zax felt his blood surge. “I thought it was an urban legend, popularised by movies and memes and that ended up in our pop culture. I even use it in jokes.”

A wordless, languishing nod would have to be enough.

“Uh. So… what’s that ‘surgery’ thing?”

“It’s when you cut people open to manually change the body. Remove, add, replace things inside. If it’s a sick part, you are cured after.”

“That’s… horrifying.” The programmer paled. “How can anyone survive that?”

“Anaesthesia. I don’t know the details, but it’s not a secret. I’m sure you can look it up.”

“How could that cure me?” Aran’s voice was barely audible. She was even paler than Zax and clutching her belly like it might fall off.

“I dunno. I’m not an expert.” The winged girl helplessly shrugged. “Remove your kidney? Replace it with someone else’s? I know it’s possible, but compatibility is a barrier only 3G can solve. Maybe you got lucky with a naturally compatible one?”

“Found it. Surgery: a branch of medicine requiring manual and instrumental intervention.” Zax read from his research. “Which means… healing the body, with… hands and tools? Oh, in the ‘before 3G’ era, it was the best, sometimes the only way to heal many issues, including but not limited to organ disfunction, organ failure, tumours, cancer… Organ failure, there’s a link. Procedure, graft and organ transplant. Funny, I already heard those words for trees, but I would’ve never thought it worked on humans too. But how does that help? Example: renal failure. Oh.”

It absolutely was not a secret; the open database had a lot of information from all ages. It was merely hidden by lack of public knowledge; nobody knew there was such a thing to look for. Similar with nanites, actually.

He dove in the research of that brand new field. It didn’t take long to understand why it wasn’t used anymore: even the lightest intervention was risky and could lead to a myriad trouble down the line. 3G could help with those, but a judicious use of 3G could solve the original issue with no risk, no complication and even a possible improvement. Maybe it was related to Aran’s boundless energy?

An interesting venue of study, but something else troubled the programmer. He questioned his winged guest:

“Surgery leaves scars, but enough basic 3G activations would take care of that. No wonder I didn’t see traces of an operation. But how did they operate on so many of your bones? Did they try to replace your whole skeleton?”

It was an insane thought, but the whole practice still felt unreal to him. It made perfect sense when he read about it; it was undeniably a field of science, but… cutting someone open to rummage inside, it sounded like a horror game scenario made by an edgy teen.

“Ah, no.” the winged girl shook off her haze. “I, had a… bone marrow transplant.”

A few queries in his bracelet and a deep shiver later, Zax knew what she was talking about. First extracting bone marrow from someone, subsequently inject it in someone else’s blood stream so it is assimilated by the bones all over their body.

Fighting to keep his breath steady and calm his stomach’s queasiness, he concluded:

“Yes, it is consistent with my findings.”

After what he rushed to the sink.