Jo Anderton - Debris

My tongue slipped in and out of control. "What…?" Had I dribbled? I couldn't feel wetness, but something in my slurring mouth convinced me that I had. "What… doing?"

The blue eyes sharpened, stared at me, and skin bunched around them. A frown.

"She's too awake." There was a woman behind the silver mask. It moved as she spoke, rippling into mesmerizing waves.

"Give her another shot." I knew the monotone of the puppet men.

"No," Devich said, from somewhere that made his voice sound like he was wedged inside a can. Tinny and muffled. "Too much and we will dampen the nerve-networks. She's strong. That's all."

The blue-eyed woman watched me for a moment more, indecisive, before retreating from view. Then a whirl beside me, mechanical parts and crackling pionpower. A hooked finger of thick metal, of pumping fluids and sizzling energy, rose from beneath the table to arch over me. The tip came to rest against my wrist. It was heavy and solid; I could feel its pressure.

"Don't let it frighten you, Tanyana," Devich murmured. "It's strange, I know. But this will give you your suit. You won't feel it."

Maybe I should have closed my eyes? But within the finger hidden parts whirled, lights flashed, then tubes opened to merge fluids into startlingly beautiful pinks and blues, and I couldn't look away.

I felt it when it entered my skin. Not with pain, not the sharp of cutting or the excruciation of foreign bodies, but dull pressure and unemotional awareness. Needles plunged from the fingertip into my wrist, injecting things that wriggled up my arm like parasitic worms.

Blood slicked from my skin to darken the chrome table. It flowed slowly, like mud.

Then my shoulder twitched. I saw it from the corner of my eye. Steady, in rhythmic succession the muscles spasmed, starting behind my shoulder blade to end near the base of my neck. Then the top of my arm did the same thing, then near my elbow, and finally down, partially obscured by the finger, close to my wrist.

"That is good," a puppet said, without emotion.

"But we've only just planted the network." Devich sounded concerned.

"Continue."

"Not if it is too strong. I will suit her, but I won't hurt her!"

"Continue."

Over and over my arm twitched, as the wriggling below my skin intensified. Then, suddenly, the finger clicked loud and echoing, and everything stopped.

I blinked down at my wrist as the finger lifted. All I got for my trouble was a hazy image of blood and wire.

The finger withdrew. Another rose in its place. Wide, with a thick hinge at each knuckle, and brazenly golden amidst so much chrome and white light. This one also hovered above the mess of my wrist and I winced as it lowered, though I felt nothing, and loosened more saliva.

"Shhh," Devich murmured. "Don't be afraid."

The fingertip opened like an insect's jaws and clamped over my wrist.

"Be a good girl, keep still. Just a moment."

The pressure on my wrist – all around it – grew until I was certain it had to break. Then the finger clicked like its thinner brother had done, folded in on itself, and withdrew.

There was something on my wrist when I lifted an uneasy head to peer at it. Something that glowed. Not with the lamplight, but with its own power. Colder, artificial. If I could have shuddered, I would have. A good, long one that touched every hair, that eased out every creep.

Not only did the thing on my wrist glow, but it moved too, spinning in a slow, encircling rotation.

"This is your suit," Devich explained.

Suit? It was some strange bracelet, more like jewellery than a suit. Then I remembered the photographs on the walls, the adorned wrists, the ankles. The waist.

The waist? What about the neck, what I had assumed was a necklace? Would they stick needles into my throat, pierce my blood and breath and plant something that wriggled, that crawled, that glowed and spun?

My body remained numb, heavy and limp, and I couldn't struggle.

The first finger whirred into existence again, this time down at my right foot. I couldn't see it properly, but I knew it would be hovering, pumping its fluids and charging its pion-power. Anticipation of its weight, its pressure, its penetration ran unfelt tremors through me.

If my legs twitched the same as my shoulder, I didn't see it. The fingers repeated their ministrations on both of my ankles, then over on my left wrist. Strangely, it felt no different on the stitched-up skin there. I almost threw up when two fingers, larger than the ones that had destroyed my wrists and ankles, latched onto my waist and pushed down hard.

I stayed awake until three new fingers rose around my head, thin and tentacle-like. They arched above me, and clamped themselves over my throat so hard darkness spotted my vision. Then there were needles. And crawling things. And pumping fluids. I felt it all in that numb way, the way that assures you there will be pain, oh, there will be pain, but not now. Not just now.

Devich whispered from his distant can as two of the fingers withdrew, and ejected the empty glass tubes that had held their colourful fluids. "Let it go. You've done so well, Other knows, better than I thought you could. So let it go, let them finish, and sleep. Can you sleep for me, my girl?"

As I closed my eyes I saw Devich's face, the cheekiness in his slightly upturned mouth. Not, Other help me, the metallic arch of the fingers. Not the new canisters that slid in to replace the empty ones they had ejected. Not the things that filled them, fibrous, soft and wiggling in the glass, as they lowered themselves past my face and into my throat.

• • • •

I was still on the table when I woke, but I was covered by a grey blanket of roughly woven wool, and the lamps were dimmed.

Devich stood beside me, holding my hand in his.

"Why did you do that to me?" Something pressed against my throat as I whispered. Small twinges of pain told me the numbness was wearing off. "I'm sick of this. People keep doing things."

"Oh, Tanyana." He pressed his forehead to the back of my hand. I could only see him from the corner of my eye; my neck was stiff with a strange combination of deadness and blossoming ache. "You have been suited, my girl."

Your girl? I wanted to explain in no uncertain terms why, exactly, I was nobody's girl, and certainly not his, but heavy eyelids and the threat of more drool stopped me.

"Hurts," I managed instead. "Pions hurt, now this hurts. Had enough. No more."

"The pions?" Devich's head jerked up, expression alarmed.

"Pushed me. No one will listen. But they did."

"Pushed you?" He hesitated, as though searching for the right words. "I- The suit, it will hurt for a while. So will the stitches. Until the networks stabilize. Until your skin heals."

Stitches and scars and suit, what did they look like? Was I still me?

"Can you forgive me?"

I couldn't quite move my mouth to answer him.

Devich sighed and stood slowly, joints creaking and back stooped, tired like an old man. "They will take you home now." He squeezed my hand. "You need to rest and to heal and then, then, I would like to see you again." He leaned close. "If you'll forgive me."

As he called to the puppets, as he held onto my hand, I knew I already had. If not for his self-deprecating laugh, if not for his soft touch, then at least for the water he had given me, when no one else would.

I learned to cover the suit if I wanted to sleep.

Any resemblance to jewellery ended with the silver. The fixtures were large and ungainly, as wide as the length of my middle finger. They were thick too, half an inch at least, so I couldn't pull sleeves down to cover them if the jacket was too tight, and most of the boots I owned were now unwearable.