Too tired to risk starting another argument, I take the towel Cal forces into my hands without dissent. She starts digging through a cabinet while I head past a bamboo screen and into her bedroom.

The whole apartment is one big open space, there’s not exactly much in the way of privacy, and the plants she has growing as a divider have plenty of gaps between. Her private space is even darker than the apartment’s main room. The bed is set at floor level, so low I almost trip over it at first. Amber running lights kick on around it when I stub my toes and hiss out loud. More subtle light features activate atop the lone end table, illuminating sparse mementos that are as simple and clean as the rest of her home. A guitar-string ring lies atop a closed sheaf of holographic shopping lists. Closer to the bed are a pair of sunshades, two fishbone earrings, and a masterwork platinum watch. The same metal preferred by the Champion. Same metal as her knife, too.

The washroom is a harsh-angled chamber of onyx marble. Automatic sensors slide the door seamlessly shut behind me, cutting off the clattering noises coming from the kitchen. The moment I’m out of sight, I slump against a mirrored basin with a groan of pain, laying Dad’s jacket to dry on the black stone. I strip off the tatters of my sweater. With my left hand, I feel around blindly for where the prosthetic connect to my right shoulder. I gasp out loud when I shut my arm off and pop the release. My teeth chatter as I stay there unmoving. Fingers firming and unfirming around the joint, too scared to pull at first.

I’ve never worn my arm for so long continuously. But I can’t leave it connected anymore. It’s coded to my biology. Living nerve circuits. The longer it stays connected, the more it will fuse and infest my body, and I refuse to allow that. I have always been more than this weakness.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I shove the towel between my teeth and yank.

Bloody iron fills my mouth. I nearly bite off my tongue as the first half-grown technerve pulls out of my shoulder like a distended muscle fiber. More tug out of my flesh in stringy grey ropes of spiderweb thread, leaving crimson pinholes behind in the rounded nub of my real skin. One final jerk gets the arm fully off me. I drop it to clatter against the stone and curl over the sink, immobilized and blinded by agony. Rocking back and forth until some sound from Cal’s bedroom pulls me back to the brink of reality.

I stumble over to the open space where the shower is, paw it on to create a veil of sound, then throw open a window high on the wall to vent the air. Cold mist rolls through, pressing against the steam that immediately billows from the broiling water. A flash of unfamiliar color jerks my gaze back to the sink. For a single instinctive moment I look in the mirror and see a stranger. Then my brain spasms and reminds itself, Oh. That’s me.

I should be used to it now, but I still expect to see who I used to be. The me in the mirror is a miserable parody of that girl. Haggard and spent. Skin paled without the constant embrace of the sun. Tight-lipped and bitter, cut off from the pulse of the world. Dark, distraught circles ring my eyes. I reach up instinctively with my one hand to touch the bruises that mottle my brow. Dried blood stains my freckles. I pull back my hair to get a better look, tracing the ragged slice up my cheek, then fingering the still-throbbing notch across my nose.

And that’s just the start of the injuries. I’ve accumulated so many in just two days since arriving in the capital. I’m so tired, I just laugh at the bleakness of it.

I’ll never save Jolie at this rate. I’m going to end up dead within a week.

The aura smoking out of me is the only thing I can fix on my own. I’m not sure I even should bother. But leaving myself opened up, letting my body stay sensitive to the flow of ki in the world and letting it continue to pour from my heart, is like leaving an open wound untreated. I can’t fix what’s sickening my ki at the root, but I can close myself off from that flow again. Seal the sickliness back up. The process is exactly like a high-level ki fighter technique for nondetection- pulling one’s aura back into oneself and suppressing it. The irony that I’m doing said technique now just to stop my body from hurting itself isn’t lost on me.

I pull out my JOY and set it on the basin. Close my eyes. Think back, as I always do, to the garden. My thumb plays over the JOY’s shell completely by memory, clicking through the menus, pulling up one of the oldest video logs that I’ve watched countless times. Watery audio of a gym takes me to another world. One of clanking iron and heavy electronic rumbles.

It begins, as always, with the patrician accent of a young duelist. “…You really can’t focus, can you?”

My chest tightens instinctively.

“Cool classes. Can’t help it,” my father’s voice replies. Far younger than the larger-than-life hero who raised me. I’m nearly as old now as he was then, I think.

“Are you finished?” the duelist sighs. They banter more before Dad finally settles down. “Before every fight, before every decisive moment, I always have a way of focusing myself,” the duelist continues. “The method differs for everyone. Some use deep breathing. Others yoga, or hasu, or meditation. For me, it begins with picturing my blade as an extension of my body. And how I guide that blade always starts in my hands.”

Another pause as he readies his blade for a thrust from the right shoulder. “First comes hands. Sometimes I even say it aloud when I fight: ‘first comes hands’. I’m sure it sounds silly. But it’s the truth. Focus comes from the hands. Not the feet or hips or mind. It, like all power, is something you guide. Not something you stoke.”

I breathe in deep at the same time my father does, but where he exhales smooth as a polished mirror, the air just shudders painfully out of me. I repeat the words along with him, no louder than a whisper.

“First comes hands.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I picture in my mind the strings of ki that make a web of living energy around me. My heart, a scarred candle deep in my chest, hidden within that web. Just a fingertip away from being snuffed and dark isolation returning. With my mind, I pull those strings away one at a time. But they keep shaking away from me. I’m trembling too much. Not just in my body, but in my mind.

“First comes hands,” I whisper again, almost begging.

Control slips away just as fast.

My nails scrape brutally against the stone. I can’t do this. I’m not what I used to be. I’m just a shell of what was. That girl I expected to see in the mirror is long gone. She was unstoppable. Confident, vivacious, growing stronger every time she fell. The kind of girl that someone like Thane would watch with wonder, not pity.

I’m not her. Not anymore. My focus is like dragging fraying thread over the shattered glass in my head.

My teeth grit so hard they feel like they’re going to break. My fingers curl into a fist. I smash it against the counter and am about to go bury myself in the shower when a sudden knock at the door almost makes me jump out of my skin. I whirl just as the wall whisks open, revealing a freshly-changed Cal on the other side. My eyes catch on her arms and the stark paleness of her skin. Short sleeves, a faded maroon shirt that hangs just past her hips, large enough to have been a hand-me-down from her brother. Then the surprising length of her let-down hair, the alcohol-damp washcloth she’s got in one hand, and finally, the unmarked aluplast spray bottle in the other.

I clamp my hand over the nub of my shoulder and turn so it’s hidden from her. “What do you want?” I growl.

Her eyes flick from the dismembered arm on the floor, to the steaming shower, then to the smoke still coming from my chest. “Nanospray.” She wiggles the bottle. “Better to get it started now, since we’re set on rescuing your aunt. And you’ll sleep better if you don’t feel like a walking road rash.”

I exhale and hold out my hand for the spray. Cal’s eyes linger on my brutalized torso. Taking in the lean lines, the network of injuries old and new. And the rest of me, too. Then, inclining her head in an obvious signal for me to sit on the edge of the onyx tub, she slips a hairband off her wrist and holds it between her teeth.

“Go on.”

I look down at her. “I spent most of my life alone. I can use a nanocan myself.”

“Put your hair up and sit.”

“I said I can do it myself,” I repeat, reaching for the sprayer. She lifts it away before I can grab it. I don’t bother trying again. I could take the bottle in a dozen different ways if I really felt like it. I’m too tired to try anything but words right now.

“Give me that, please.”

Her yellow eyes harden in warning. “Sit.”

“I-”

Cal puts one indelicate hand on my chest and pushes me down onto the side of the bath. She keeps dangling the bottle out of my reach until I relent and take the offered hairband. I only tie back the half of my head with the ear wound. The other half keeps its messy flower petals, spilling over my shoulder.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She asks, humoring me with a complacent little smile. Almost makes me want to kick her right off the bath when she sits down next to me. “You really don’t know when to stop being stubborn.”

“Just let me use the cloth. It’s gonna hurt if you do.”

“I built my own autobike, Tay. I know how to use a rag.”

She gives me time to close my eyes before she starts spraying. The spurts of nanospray itch like burning ice. Then the numbness. Seeps into the nerves, advanced healing biotics developed by master Biohancers for mass production over a century ago. The washcloth that follows is shiver-inducing. And like she promised, gentle enough that I don’t feel more than a light sting as she starts to massage my numbed-out back.

She peers weirdly at the smoking ki. Takes a testing sniff, obviously isn’t satisfied.

“Ki doesn’t have a smell,” I snort.

“What even is your aura? I’ve hung around enough ki fighters at the M; the ki they make is nothing like this.” She tries to catch some in her fingers just to watch it sizzle out. “It’s usually all fired up. This looks… sick.”

“All ki comes from the heart- that’s why each person generates a different color. It’s a manifestation of your soul, kinda. Like a musical instrument.” My fingers tighten around my kneecap. “If your heart is hurt or scarred or broken, it’s not tuned right, and the energy it makes comes out really bad.”

Almost in sync with my words, the black smoke starts pulsing faster, leaving my skin with a faint airy hiss. A cold palm presses against the nape of my neck. “Hey, hey. Relax.” Cal shifts a little closer. “Relax.”

Her work takes on a gentle rhythm. Hiss-hiss of the spray, long lulls of silence. Shower steam wetting my skin. With the gentle massage of the cloth, it unspools the tension in my body one knot at a time.

“There we go,” Cal murmurs, concentrating more fully on the cleaning.

I peek out in small glances while she works. She’s looking at the nub of my missing arm now. Reaches out to touch it. Her fingertips are about to brush the skin when she feels me tensing and pulls away smoothly, reaching instead to move a length of white hair away from my face. An artisan’s touch. The gentle pressure of her hand pads along my cheekbone. Her tired eyes still shine with curiosity as she peers closer at one of the friction burns, brow narrowed in concentration. She catches me looking and smirks quietly. I glance away far too quickly.

“You know,” she says, “Between having to constantly badger you into behaving and the number of times we’ve beat the shit out of each other already, I’m starting to think doing is better than saying when it comes to communicating with you.”

My eyelids flutter back open. I didn’t even realize I closed them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is me thanking you.” She sprays at a bruise under my jaw, smoothing it in with her thumb. “When we jumped out of Jolie’s office, I know you took that fall for me. And I deserved a lot worse than you gave for almost murdering you.”

Rewetting the cloth, Cal continues to massage the bruise until I become accustomed to the feeling. Her fingers sift through my hair from time to time. Just brushing away loose petals. I sit as still for her as I can. I feel the tension in her hands while she works. What I almost did to her in that lift at the Metro Blockhouse, and the rooftop after, is still too fresh a memory for her to fully relax.

I look down at my left hand. “Are you afraid of me?”

Cal works the cloth along the corner of my mouth, slowly straying from the wounds. “I thought you were going to kill me back at the M,” she nonchalantly answers. “Which is fair. I mean, I was considering it too. Thane warned me of how dangerous you are. That there were only two people in the Section he wasn’t sure he could beat, and you were one of them. So I was ready to finish the job. But things turned out a little different than I expected.” Her shoulders lift in a tiny shrug. “We’re all afraid of something. Yeah?” She leans back and removes the cloth, turning it over in her hand. “I think you’re a long way from making the list.”

We sit there for a long moment. I watch her fingers. She watches my eyes. Then she starts to stand, glancing down with a crooked smile. “Would you look at that,” she murmurs, bopping the rag against my cheek. Black ki no longer smokes from my heart. “All better.”