“You know,” Bealtiel shouted back from the pilot’s compartment, “when you said you had something in mind for us, this isn’t what I expected.”

Zihan lounged on the red velvet cushions of the luxury shuttle they’d rented for the shift, his head on Bealtiel’s lap. The thorny tattoos on Bealtiel’s wrists writhed as she stroked his hair and watched the lights of Aarrppaa station moving beyond the window like a shifting starscape.

“That pill cost me a fortune.” He replied, eyes still closed despite the sight outside the shuttle’s window.

“That pill filled most of my unused capacity.” Kalemal replied. “Would’ve been nice to know it wasn’t for something useless.”

“If we were on Mubra, that pill would have given you a new class.”

“And we’re not on Mubra are we? I’ve never even been to system space! And what am I supposed to do with a pilot class anyways?”

Zihan laughed without opening his eyes. “Pilot the shuttle.” He replied.

Kalemal grumbled to herself in the cockpit while the false starscape slid past beyond the channel of open space cleared through the center of the tangled fragments of a shattered planet.

“You weren’t using your free space anyways.” Zihan remarked.

“I was saving it for my next upgrade. A real one. Not this, side-class crap.”

Yi Cao sat across from the Young Master in the opulent passenger compartment with one brass hand held before him.

Cogs whirled as he fought to move the fingers through force of will alone. It was hard, much too hard, requiring all of his concentration just to shift the index finger out from the balled fist against the spring loaded tension that pulled them in again when they weren’t actively controlled.

When the index finger was fully extended, he focused on holding it extended while extending the middle finger to join it, then the ring finger.

Three days. He’d spent three days recovering from his “breakthrough”, patching up his foundation with Ki from the broken whirlpool source and redrawing the key scripture on his chest, where he wouldn’t need to use his hands to align the source when he needed to draw from it.

Yi Cao’s metal hand trembled from the effort of holding all three fingers extended, then something in his eyes buzzed and his eyes lost focus. All three fingers snapped back into his fist with a click.

Yi Cao dropped his hands onto his lap and waited for Bo Bo to finish dialing his new eyes through their entire cycle.

Kalemal appeared in the doorway to the pilot’s compartment and threw herself onto the cushions next to Yi Cao with a huff. “I thought you were going to get me something fun.” She pouted and ran a finger lightly across Yi Cao’s new forearm while his eyes still fought to dial in.

“The last man that got me an upgrade got me a Pharma Implant.”

Zihan opened one eye to look at her. “Shouldn’t you be piloting the shuttle?” He asked.

The whore turned pilot rolled her eyes. “There’s an AI in this thing.” She said. “It can do it practically all on automatic.”

“That is not the point of this exercise.” Zihan told her. “We rented this thing so you could test yourself.”

Kalemal kicked her feet and studied the intricate machinery of Yi Cao’s new forearm through the gaps in its external plating. “It’s boring.” She replied. She turned from Yi Cao’s arm and winked in Zihan’s direction. “Wouldn’t you rather find out what a Pharma Implant can do?”

“Go up there and pilot this ship.” Zihan pointed, voice brittle with ice.

Kal seemed to shrink as he glared at her.

Bealtiel’s hand stopped moving through Zihan’s hair. He closed his eyes and leaned back into her lap. “Or I can throw you off this ship.” He added. He pulled Bealtiel’s fingers back to the spot they’d been combing a moment before. After a brief hesitation, she started combing through his hair again.

Kalemal’s ponytail twitched as she rose stiffly from her seat. She disappeared into the pilot’s cabin without a sound. This time the door closed behind her.

Yi Cao’s eyes finished adjusting and Yi Cao looked at his hands. They sat curled into loose fists on his lap without the spirit in his pistol helping him run them.

Bealtiel turned to look back out the window.

After a moment Zihan interrupted the silence. “Pharma Implant.”

“Drugs.” Bealtield replied. She looked down when he said nothing. “She can deliver drugs through her body fluids. Hadn’t you noticed?”

Zihan grunted. “What would I notice?” He asked.

Bealtiel raised an eyebrow. “That she’s high, all the time.” She ran a finger down his nose and bopped him on the forehead. “That she’s getting you high when she kisses you.”

Zihan raised an eyebrow. “No.” He replied. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Bealtiel shrugged and looked out the window again. “Probably playing pretty light then.”

“Doesn’t sound like something that would be effective on me.”

“It’s subtle.” Bealtiel replied. “You haven’t left us yet, have you.”

Zihan smiled his half smile.

In the silence Yi Cao contemplated which hand he would fight with next.

“You wouldn’t really throw her out, would you?” Bealtiel asked.

“I thought I was being drugged.” Zihan replied.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Bealtiel looked down at him.

Zihan pushed himself off of her lap and turned to lounge against the wall of the compartment, one arm running along the back of the seat so he could watch the passing technomancer ships moving through the void. “Go and check that she’s turned off the autopilot.” He told her.

A curtain of dark hair fell across Bealtiel’s face to obscure one eye as she tilted her head to regard Zihan evenly. “And I if I refuse, will you throw me out into space?”

Zihan gave her the same icy look Kalemal shrank from.

Bealtiel just raised one brow.

He snorted and looked away. “We aren’t out here to play.” He told her.

“What are we out here for?” Bealtiel asked him.

He glared at her. “Just do as I say.” He looked away.

Bealtiel seemed to consider, then she shrugged and stood. She trailed one tattooed hand across his shoulders as she passed and tossed hair out of her eyes to lean down and kiss behind his ear. “As the young master wishes.”

The door hissed open at her touch. Then slid shut, leaving them alone with the shifting view of false stars.

Yi Cao’s newly artificial lungs wheezed quietly in time with the rise and fall of his ribs in the silence.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to wonder why I wanted to come out here in the first place.” Zihan said.

Yi Cao’s wrist whined as he forced it in a slow turn. Technomantic energy fields generated through some process of medical to technical conversion way beyond Yi Cao flickered between gaps in the artificial limb’s plating, making its innards spark with light. He managed to rotate the wrist a quarter of an inch then glanced up at Zihan.

“What are we doing out here?” He asked.

Zihan smirked and stared out the window at the passing station. “Testing out the girls of course. Testing their special new augments, or trying.”

Yi Cao looked back to his wrist as springs pulled it back into its resting configuration.

“For someone who succeeded in opening their first circle, you aren’t what I’d call buckets of fun.” Zihan told him.

Yi Cao scowled. He fought with his mechanical hand until it had a single finger extended, then showed it to Zihan.

Zihan barked a laugh when he glanced at Yi Cao then turned back to his view of the void.

Yi Cao returned his hand to his lap as the finger curled back in on itself then struggled upwards again under his mental pressure. Sweat itched around the edges of his false eyes.

“Snow will be falling back home soon.”

Zihan hummed noncommittally.

Yi Cao forced another finger upwards only to watch his middle finger start to curl back down before he’d fully extended its pair. He gave up with a sigh. “Take over Bo Bo.”

The tech spirit beeped in his ear and Yi Cao wrung out metal hands that were incapable of feeling pain except as a sort of phantom delivered back to his mind like a dream. Both hands moved as supple and effortless under the spirit’s control as if they were his actual hands.

He glanced out the window then turned glass eyes towards Zihan. They buzzed, adjusting his field of focus as he turned. “This is supposed to be the test, isn’t it. For the real thing.”

Zihan didn’t reply right away. He’d put a hand over his mouth as he reclined in the seat as though in thought, but now he removed it and looked up at the ceiling. “Kal, if you can hear me, I’d like you to take us closer to that silver ship off to the right. I’d like to study my reflection in it.”

He turned back to the window and they both watched as the silver ship, shaped like a spear head at the end of a long flame, fell away behind their little shuttle, its nose bubbling with sensors that seemed half submerged in liquid.

Zihan turned to Yi Cao as it disappeared and studied him.

“Yes,” he said simply, “and other things.”

“A row boat is not a ship.” Yi Cao pointed out.

“No.” Zihan agreed. He turned his attention back to the window as a multi-armed rig powered across the open channel of traffic over their heads. “This is as good as we’re going to get though, for a test. The pills I got them were more than just instructions for piloting ships through the void or between dimensions.”

He tapped his head. “There’s a sprite tucked away in their architecture. Takes over the extra brain space they’ve been working on for new augments and blocks it off, then when it’s plugged into a new augment it helps to integrate it. I don’t know how it all works, but apparently, the ones I got are a bit more aggressive. Merchant called it a one time hacker package. Has some extra oomph.”

He leaned his head back in the frame of the window. “Get them plugged in, physically, to the ship, and it will help them takeover… hostile… augments. In case the captain leaves any safeguards behind before I’m done with him.”

Yi Cao watched the rig disappear over their heads only to reappear half a mile behind them, still moving perpendicular to the typical flow of traffic.

“I don’t like that your plan calls for us to kill the captain of this ship in cold blood.”

“Me.” Zihan corrected. “It calls for me to kill in cold blood, if the thing out there has any blood anymore, and if it’s cold once I’ve begun.” He smirked. “You’ll simply be the delivery mechanism for whichever of the girls I choose to take over once I’m done.”

Yi Cao turned mechanical eyes towards Zihan. “Have you?” He asked. “Chosen?”

Zihan frowned and flipped a hand dismissively. “I will.” He replied. He turned to study Yi Cao. “But I didn’t send them up front to talk about them.” He said.

Yi Cao looked down at his mechanical hands.

“Stop it.”

Yi Cao frowned and looked up at Zihan only to find the Young Master scowling.

“It’s not your fault.” He said.

Yi Cao’s frown deepened. “Not my fault?” He asked. “Not my fault? I know it’s not my fault!”

He found himself standing in the cramped compartment. He turned to pace, but was stopped by the rear wall so he collapsed back into his seat instead, facing away from the Young Master while he held his replacement hands in his lap, palms open under Bo Bo’s power.

His eyes buzzed, but there were no tears. There would never be tears. Not anymore.

“You manifested your Ki.” Zihan said. “When you finished the first circle. I felt it through the walls.”

Yi Cao sniffed. He stared at his hands and wished he could close his eyes. “I know what happened.” He said.

“Of course.” Zihan replied. “I knew you were close. I… should’ve known… what could happen.”

They fell silent.

“When I, manifested my Ki for the first time, I burnt down our whole house.” Zihan told him.

Yi Cao turned his attention out the window, felt his eyes buzz as the whole world went out of focus before his eyes dialed in the stones floating in the distance. “Fuck you.” He muttered.

“Would you stop it?” Zihan snapped. “I’m trying to apologize.”

Yi Cao turned back to him. He couldn’t glare, but he still tried, leaned forward to point his lenses at Zihan like daggers. He held up his hands and shook them in Zihan’s direction. “I don’t care about your house!” He shouted. “Look at me! I lost, parts of me! I’m a monster now!”

“It could be a lot worse.” The Young Master snarled.

Yi Cao jerked away to look out the window again.

“If it makes any difference to you, I thought your aspect would be something a lot less… dangerous, during your breakthrough. Like light, or heat, or movement. The way the source acted.” Zihan said. “If we’d been in the sect, they’d have set a special spot aside for you to finish your first circle. I didn’t think you’d need that. Didn’t think, your aspect, was going to shoot you out into the void.”

Yi Cao put his hands over his eyes. Darkness, for a moment, so that he could pretend he’d closed his eyes, until something clicked in the lenses and the world was suddenly revealed to him in frames and transparent planes. He dropped his hands in defeat and stared at a ceiling veined by hidden cabling and constructs bolted onto the roof.

“When I… burnt down my mother’s house,” Zihan said, “I got an insight into fire, my aspect of it, anyways.”

A ship passed close by overhead and Yi Cao watched the beating mechanisms of its heart through walls transparent to whatever function his eyes had activated. Watched the skeleton crew, as skeletons, sitting at the controls or pacing the cargo hold in vacuum suits only opaque around the engines strapped to their back.

“You must have had the same.”

The weird vision switched off, and Yi Cao found himself staring at the red velvet of the ceiling once again.

Yi Cao hesitated. “Space.” He said eventually, in Urdul, evoking images of more than just the empty void, but of fabric, and stars, and a vast sea of empty, undulating waves. “Worlds.” He said in Imperial, the eight worlds, the gates, the rippling intangibility that separated Aarrppaa station from Elleppu, but also, in some way he only understood after his breakthrough, also separated the homeworld from the station caught in its orbit. He looked away. “Space.” He said again. “My aspect is space.”

Zihan nodded. “Tell me what happened.”

So he did.