When Sobon next woke, sun­light was seep­ing through a poor­ly-sealed win­dow, and a child was cough­ing some­where to his right. His mus­cles burned where they had torn and ached where they'd been hit, but as he did his best to take stock, he found that his in­ter­nal or­gans were no longer in agony, and his rib seemed mend­ed.

At­tempt­ing to move, though, only made the pain and heat grow, the feed­back telling him in no un­cer­tain terms that while his des­per­ate play to get away from the butch­er had saved his life, the dam­age was too se­vere to do any­thing but lay here, at least un­til the next threat. So in­stead, he fo­cused on his spir­it, reach­ing out to the thin wire cir­cle and thorn he had made, find­ing them lay­ing qui­et­ly with­in. As far as he could tell, their ex­is­tence hadn't dam­aged any­thing in­side of him; that was good, be­cause it meant that he could con­tin­ue to in­crease the length of the thorn.

Slow­ly, care­ful­ly, and with more con­cern now about over­load­ing his spir­i­tu­al chan­nels, Sobon set the cir­cle spin­ning. The feel­ing of it burned his chan­nels, but it was a fa­mil­iar feel­ing; Sobon was in the cy­borg half of the Mixed Marines, not the fairy half, and his ex­per­i­ments with bi­o­log­i­cal­ly ma­nip­u­lat­ing Aether had al­ways felt like he was flex­ing un­der-de­vel­oped mus­cles. His aether aug­ments, of course, had al­ways worked fine, but... that had lit­tle to do with his bi­ol­o­gy. He had al­ways known that prac­tice could have led to uti­liz­ing his brain and heart's aether chan­nels, but he didn't see the point.

Most­ly, he didn't see the point of flesh, and be­ing im­pris­oned in the dis­gust­ing stuff again only re­mind­ed him why, in a thou­sand ways. His fine­ly honed men­tal fac­ul­ties helped him care­ful­ly cat­a­log not only his in­juries, but the var­i­ous puls­ing, squish­ing, and flow­ing bits with­in him. His stom­ach was shrunk­en from star­va­tion and his limbs too thin, his hair was falling out in places and his bones felt hol­low. His lungs, he was sure, were full of some kind of filth, and his si­nus­es were prob­a­bly the only part of him full of grease, from liv­ing in the warm shad­ows of kitchens but nev­er eat­ing the good food hid­den be­hind those walls. There were itch­es in the pits of his arms and knees, and bites all over his legs and feet, and... he was sure there were bits of flesh just miss­ing. Like they had been sev­ered, bit by bit, from odd places along his body, then the wounds were al­lowed to heal.

What­ev­er life this street urchin had be­fore, it was a sor­ry one.

[ Please don't blame me, ] the voice in his head re­turned, speak­ing a lit­tle more even­ly, now. He al­most didn't rec­og­nize it now that the body's pan­ic had passed; it was no longer quite so twist­ed by fear and pain, and no longer stood out in his head like... well, like any of the oth­er in­jured bits had stood out. It was still there, but less... sep­a­rate from him­self. [ The only one who was ever nice was the book­seller's daugh­ter, and her moth­er told her not to feed me. ]

Sobon didn't doubt that. If he'd seen a street urchin this screwed up, he def­i­nite­ly wouldn't want any young child to be ex­posed to what­ev­er dis­eases he might have. Deal­ing with a child like that was some­thing that should be left to adults, and ide­al­ly pro­fes­sion­als--but on the oth­er hand, it should have been done. To say noth­ing of butcher­ing chil­dren and leav­ing their corpses to rot in an al­ley­way, the Crestan civ­il ser­vice would not have left a child on the streets for years in the first place. There was too much use for a spare pair of hands, es­pe­cial­ly in wartime--but even with­out the pres­sure of in­va­sion, there were al­ways colonies some­where that could use the la­bor.

He forced his thoughts into or­der and replied, civil­ly, I don't blame you. None of this is your fault.

The boy in his thoughts trem­bled, and mem­o­ries spilled out, of things that he had done wrong--or things he thought, at the time, were hor­rid mis­takes. Sobon caught as many as he could, and re­viewed each briefly, but ul­ti­mate­ly found noth­ing there ex­cept the ig­no­rant and con­fused ac­tions of a child. [ I don't... I don't un­der­stand. It doesn't make sense. I'm sup­posed to be ashamed of who I am. ]

If that was help­ful, I would agree with you, Sobon an­swered grim­ly. But it isn't help­ful, so it's stu­pid.

The spir­it qui­et­ed for a mo­ment, and Sobon con­tin­ued press­ing out more thread. The cir­cu­lar dy­namo con­sumed less pow­er than it cre­at­ed, and the thread spike was just hold­ing the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed pow­er to­geth­er. Once he had enough thread, he could form it into an­oth­er dy­namo, but do­ing that with­out burn­ing up his chan­nels would take many hours, and leave him de­fense­less again un­til the two dy­namos to­geth­er could build more thread.

Not that a sin­gle hair­like thread of aether was much. The Rapi­er had twelve mid­size dy­namos for weapons and point de­fens­es, and the torus in each was as wide as this new child­ish body was tall. The main dy­namo, which pow­ered the en­gines, main de­fens­es, and a ma­jor­i­ty of the ship's mun­dane sys­tems, was three or­ders of mag­ni­tude more com­plex, made of mil­lions of small­er dy­namos linked in a six-di­men­sion­al hy­per­torus, with con­trol link­ages and en­er­gy ex­trac­tion con­duits run­ning all through­out it, to say noth­ing of its phys­i­cal size.

Sobon's at­ten­tion was pulled back to the room as he sensed that specter of death again, and the old man--a doc­tor, clear­ly, or at least pre­tend­ing to be one--ap­peared in the mid­dle of the room. He first stepped up to where the child was still cough­ing, reach­ing out with both hands, and there was a light glow again, so dim that Sobon could bare­ly see the col­or it cast on his skin. Af­ter a mo­ment, the cough­ing stopped, and a child mum­bled some­thing that Sobon couldn't hear.

The old man went up and down the row, only oc­ca­sion­al­ly of­fer­ing a touch of pow­er to help some­one, be­fore he fi­nal­ly end­ed up at Sobon's bed.

"You have qi," the doc­tor said qui­et­ly as he ap­peared, flick­ing into ex­is­tence at Sobon's side. "It would be bet­ter spent heal­ing your­self."

"I don't know how," Sobon ad­mit­ted, keep­ing his voice down. That wasn't the real prob­lem, ex­act­ly; if his in­stincts were right, he had at­tuned this dy­namo to a form of aether that was vi­o­lent­ly at odds with life, suit­able for at­tack­ing oth­ers rather than heal­ing. It was what he thought he need­ed at the time, though in ret­ro­spect... he would have done it dif­fer­ent­ly.

"For sim­ple things, sim­ply pro­vid­ing the body qi will cause it to heal it­self. In your case..." The old man frowned, and Sobon stud­ied his long, droop­ing gray mous­tache and beard. "There is some­thing odd about you, and about your qi."

Sobon was glad that the lo­cals at least un­der­stood that much. He poked the spir­it of his pre­de­ces­sor for a quick trans­la­tion, then asked, "If you know a heal­ing spell..."

The man scoffed, and his ex­pres­sion dark­ened. "If I knew prop­er spells I wouldn't be deal­ing with home­less brats in a wastrel's slum. If I knew prop­er spells I wouldn't..." He went silent. "No, child. Books of spells are too valu­able to waste on a bro­ken old sol­dier and the il­le­git­i­mate sons and daugh­ters of whores, drunk­ards, and gut­ter trash. If your great mas­ter dis­agrees, I will glad­ly take what­ev­er hand­outs he is will­ing to of­fer when he ar­rives, but..." he har­rumphed, his whiskers fluff­ing up with the breath, and spit­tle fly­ing. "I am sure he will agree that this old man is of no use to any­one."

Sobon flinched. He hadn't meant to im­ply that the old man would be re­ward­ed by a great mas­ter, when keep­ing his iden­ti­ty se­cret, but it was ob­vi­ous in hind­sight that it would be tak­en that way. He looked up at the old man, and the old man looked back, a look com­ing over him like a shad­ow. Per­haps he saw the guilty look on Sobon's face? He was wrestling with whether or not it was safe to ad­mit it when the man spoke again.

"No one is com­ing for you," he said, and leaned back as he saw Sobon's fea­tures change. "I see. Per­haps you were cast out, or per­haps you dis­cov­ered your qi by ac­ci­dent. Cain de­posit­ed you here, so you must have fright­ened him. That grotesque crea­ture would not aban­don his trade un­less he was con­vinced his death would fol­low your own." The old man chuck­led. "But you should know mere­ly by look­ing around that this old man is all too ac­cus­tomed to pa­tients who can nev­er re­pay their board­ing. There is no need to lie any fur­ther about that."

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"I'm sor­ry," Sobon said. "I wish I could help. If I was able to heal with my... qi..." the word felt un­com­fort­able in his mouth, but he was sure the lo­cals wouldn't un­der­stand or like the talk of Aether, and ad­mit­ting what he knew and how seemed like an aw­ful idea, even to this old man. "...I would pay it off that way."

The old man har­rumphed again. "You'll find no pa­tients here who can pay, and I don't like the feel of your qi. It lacks the nur­tur­ing as­pect that is nec­es­sary for heal­ing." He sud­den­ly straight­ened and half-turned, and in a flash, he was by an­oth­er pa­tient's bed­side, talk­ing with them qui­et­ly.

Sobon stud­ied his aether dy­namo in si­lence for a long mo­ment. Aether sci­ence was a wide field and far be­yond his un­der­stand­ing for the most part, but he knew be­yond ques­tion that aether ex­ist­ed in a set of fun­da­men­tal states; most­ly, they were bro­ken down into left- and right-hand­ed spins in var­i­ous planes, or sta­t­ic, spin­less aether that would break down quick­ly of its own ac­cord. His dy­namo was left-hand­ed, and could only pro­duce ba­sic left-hand­ed aether, which the old man seemed to agree was harm­ful. It could be con­vert­ed into sta­t­ic aether, and he could spin that the oth­er di­rec­tion, but... only once he had enough wire for an­oth­er cir­cle, which he wouldn't any­time soon.

It wasn't as sim­ple as hav­ing aether that spun in the oth­er di­rec­tion to cre­ate a heal­ing ef­fect, of course, but the aether spin ei­ther matched what bi­ol­o­gy used or it ran counter to it. Any aether that worked with the body would en­cour­age heal­ing, or at least good health, al­though it didn't fix things out­right. Get­ting ac­cess to that kind of aether might be as sim­ple as cre­at­ing an­oth­er ring dy­namo with a right-hand spin, or it may re­quire him to piece to­geth­er a dy­namo that spun in high­er di­men­sions; it was hard to know for sure with­out try­ing.

In any case, he had lit­tle he could do for now, so he fo­cused on keep­ing his dy­namo spin­ning, gen­er­at­ing aether in the spike as the hair slow­ly length­ened.

"You..." The old man was back, and his frown seemed dis­ap­prov­ing. "That is not a qi ab­sorp­tion tech­nique. What is this? Some form of de­mon­ic pow­er?"

Sobon looked up at him, ner­vous­ly, but man­aged to shake his head with­out the pain caus­ing his spir­it to col­lapse. "It is... a spe­cial tech­nique," he said, do­ing his best to spin it as neu­tral­ly as he could. "It gen­er­ates... a pure form of qi."

The old man, with a sort of del­i­cate vi­o­lence that Sobon could not un­der­stand, reached down and plucked the thread of aether out of his spike, hold­ing it up in front of his own face. Sobon watched, ner­vous; if he tried to in­te­grate the thread with his own qi, the two would re­act, per­haps vi­o­lent­ly.

"I know a man who would pay dear­ly to study any such tech­nique," the old man said, slow­ly, and the thread van­ished some­where into his spir­it. He looked down at Sobon, his face an un­read­able mask, though Sobon's spir­it--the boy who had once owned his body--dis­trust­ed it in­tense­ly. "He would pay for your heal­ing. Stay here."

Sobon felt a shiv­er of mis­trust, an an­i­mal in­stinct, as the old man van­ished once more into thin air. With his spike now re­duced to al­most noth­ing again, though, what could he do? He des­per­ate­ly want­ed to trust the old man; he had noth­ing else left. But his ra­tio­nal mind couldn't help agree­ing with the boy-spir­it; this world had been too cor­rupt, too prone to let­ting ma­li­cious, cru­el mon­sters have their way. An aether re­searcher might be a pleas­ant, well-mean­ing aca­d­e­m­ic... or he might be every bit the mon­ster that the butch­er had been, with a dif­fer­ent bent to his sadism.

So Sobon stead­ied his breath­ing, try­ing to ar­ti­fi­cial­ly gen­er­ate calm, again. In­stead of us­ing his dy­namo-pro­duced aether, he would do his best to gen­er­ate an­oth­er ring and spin it in the oth­er di­rec­tion. Now that he could sense aether, it should be eas­i­er... but it was near­ly im­pos­si­ble to find calm while wound­ed and para­noid, even if he was rest­ing in bed.

With re­gret, and dis­ap­point­ment, Sobon forced him­self to sit up, flinch­ing as too many mus­cles re­fused to re­spond at all, as they were ei­ther rest­ing or try­ing to re­build. He had to wres­tle with his body, twist­ing in odd ways to use the mus­cles that would an­swer him, but soon enough, he was sit­ting up and lean­ing against a wall, breath­ing heav­i­ly, and he felt a feel­ing like blood drip­ping down the side of his face from a puls­ing wound that he was too tired to pre­cise­ly lo­cate.

He ig­nored it all, and closed his eyes, try­ing to use the pain as a fo­cus with­out let­ting it cor­rupt his will.

There is a rea­son, he in­sist­ed, strug­gling against the an­i­mal na­ture of his body. A rea­son why we must use qi now. I know I feel safe, but I'm not.

The body's an­i­mal will backed it­self into a cor­ner, pre­pared to fight him. I would know if there were dan­ger, it seemed to say. I am wound­ed. If you are not on my side, you are an en­e­my. The in­tense wave of pain pro­duced by his move­ments rolled around his spir­it like a snarling dog. You can­not con­trol me. In­trud­er. Weak­ness. Foul tempter.

Sobon took deep breath af­ter deep breath. In some ways, it was eas­i­er, and in oth­er ways hard­er, than try­ing to tame a wild an­i­mal. Eas­i­er, be­cause in a very real way, the body was him, and not just his; he could force it to act, as he had be­fore. But the more he did that, the more it would force his spir­it into con­flict; his body and his spir­it would not trust him, and would not re­act prop­er­ly when he need­ed them to.

His in­struc­tors in the Mixed Ma­rine boot camps had made this very clear; when they told a re­cruit to stop strug­gling and ad­mit de­feat, it was an or­der. Forc­ing your­self and dam­ag­ing your spir­it could im­prove your pow­er in the mo­ment, but it could low­er your fu­ture aether sen­si­tiv­i­ty by a whole tier or more.

Sobon, of course, had nev­er been a boot­camp in­struc­tor, and he didn't know how they de­tect­ed that a re­cruit was reach­ing that dam­age thresh­old. Nor was he a field medic who could de­tect it when it oc­curred, al­though he'd re­viewed the study cours­es on first aid, as every­one did. But even though he didn't know what was too far, he could tell he this was ex­act­ly the sort of sit­u­a­tion the boot camp steered away from. This was a mo­ment where push­ing too hard would dam­age some­thing.

If only he was cer­tain that he had the time to wait.

Sobon stead­ied him­self and pushed his own per­son­al spir­it into his body, con­nect­ing with his or­gans, his mus­cles, his bones, his skin, and with his itch­es and his wounds as well. Sobon had only been al­lowed to ad­vance from a class VI to a class IX cy­borg when he demon­strat­ed that he would not lose his sen­si­tiv­i­ty by sac­ri­fic­ing his flesh--when he demon­strat­ed that the most sen­si­tive parts of his body were his heart and brain. Oth­ers re­lied on in­stincts buried in var­i­ous oth­er parts of his body, but Sobon's sen­si­tiv­i­ty was a part of his very be­ing.

What­ev­er had brought him into this body had pre­served that, per­haps ex­act­ly be­cause it was in­side of him all along.

Sobon's will clamped down over his flesh, but not with iron teeth. His nerves surged not only with pain, but pan­ic, and he let them, his own spir­it mix­ing with his new body's, ex­ud­ing a sense of peace and trust. He knew why his flesh was re­act­ing bad­ly, and he wasn't go­ing to pun­ish it, but it would lis­ten. It must.

The wave of pan­ic slowed, not quite enough to let him be per­fect­ly clear, but enough for him to gath­er the body's mud­dy qi into a ball. From that ball of en­er­gy, with great ef­fort, he ex­tract­ed the be­gin­nings of an­oth­er aether thread, a thread that he im­me­di­ate­ly wrapped into a loop. A throb of pain in his side dis­tract­ed him, and the loop failed to close; he dis­card­ed it, the sta­t­ic aether van­ish­ing as soon as he let it go, and he ex­tract­ed an­oth­er.

And an­oth­er, and an­oth­er, be­fore fi­nal­ly, the thread ends met, and he spun this new dy­namo in the oth­er di­rec­tion.

Sobon let out an ex­haust­ed, hiss­ing breath as he fi­nal­ly al­lowed him­self to re­lax once more. The sec­ond dy­namo took ef­fort to spin up, and keep spin­ning, but the spike it gen­er­at­ed felt warm and com­fort­ing, en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent to the cold and threat­en­ing left-hand­ed spike. The mo­ment he felt more than a speck of pow­er in that spike, he snapped it in half and fed one tiny bit into a wound­ed part of his spir­it, as a balm and re­ward for co­op­er­at­ing.

It was too lit­tle for his body to ap­pre­ci­ate what he had done, but the right-hand­ed spike was at least com­pat­i­ble with his qi. Sobon, with ef­fort, forced him­self back down onto his bed, ig­nor­ing the odd feel­ing as the blood on his head be­gan flow­ing in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, ig­nor­ing the puls­ing through­out his en­tire body as his or­gans threat­ened re­bel­lion over every move, every in­signif­i­cant change in his pos­ture and po­si­tion. He ig­nored every­thing and just lay back down on the hard sur­face, repo­si­tion­ing his blan­ket to keep him just a bit warmer, and then ig­nored all else and just fo­cused on spin­ning his two dy­namos and gath­er­ing the re­sul­tant en­er­gy in their spikes.

He had no idea when the old man would be back, but he would do every­thing pos­si­ble to be ready in case he had to flee once more.