Warden

there when reality winked out.

2
Rhea awakened to the fleeting scent of either burnt flesh, or burnt circuitry—she couldn’t be certain, as they smelled the same to her. Probably the latter, given what she was, or had become.
The bright lamps shone into her eyes overhead, and she squinted, turning her head to the side. She was still on the table. Just like the last time she had awakened, the light levels dimmed, and she was able to look directly at the lamps once more.
Text had appeared on her HUD in the lower left of her display. It caught her eye, but before she could finish reading it, the text vanished. She saw these words:
Intense luminescence detected. Act—
Had the lights truly dimmed? Or had they only seemed to, courtesy of some internal mechanism in her cyborg eyes, one that decreased the amount of light reaching her visual cortex?
On a whim she concentrated upon the lamps, willing them to brighten. Nothing happened.
Her whole body had tensed up while she had concentrated, but she relaxed then. That was when she noticed sensation in her extremities: she had arms and legs again. But when she attempted to move her limbs, she felt cold metal pressing into her wrists and ankles.
Lifting her head to look down at herself, she saw that metal clamps indeed restrained her arms and legs, in addition to the strap at her torso.
“Don’t mind the clamps,” Will said. “They’re for your protection, until we can confirm your systems are at a hundred percent. Wouldn’t do to have your arms and legs taking on a life of their own. Believe you me, when a cyborg knocks himself out cold by repeatedly punching himself in the face, it isn’t pretty.”
She studied her new arms. They were metallic beige, with clefts encircling the joint regions that gave the impression the parts between the articulations were removable and interchangeable. A small blue glow emanated from the joints of the elbows and wrists. The left arm was darker in color, a shade of bronze, while the right was reddish. The surface of the right also seemed more mottled, as if covered with millions of micro abrasions, while the left was smooth. Her legs were similarly mismatched.
“Why are they different colors and textures?” Rhea asked. “Also, the right arm’s shorter. As is the right leg.”
“That’s because they’re taken from different android models,” Will said. “You know how rare it is to come across intact body frames in this line of work? I used the best pieces from our salvage inventory, the finest specimens scavenged from the rubble over the past few weeks. Just be happy your parts match-up as well as they do and aren’t a complete mishmash. You’re actually quite lucky you know… you could have robotic tails for arms, and claws for hands. Besides, the legs are only slightly different lengths. We’re talking centimeters. You’ll hardly notice.”
She frowned and lay her head back. “So you say. When are you going to unbind me?”
“Soon,” Will said. “We already ran a basic set of tests while Gizmo was still interfaced with your mind, but we need to run them again, this time with you in control. First…” He glanced at the drone.
Gizmo came forward and slowly hovered across Rhea’s four limbs. A small blue beam slid across her skin, no doubt some form of invasive scan.
“Everything seems to be operating normally,” Will said. “I need you to wiggle the toes of your right foot one at a time, starting with the big toe.”
As she proceeded down the line, she noticed there seemed to be a slight delay between her intent to wiggle a given toe, and when that actual toe finally moved.
“Is there any lag between your intention and the actual movement?” Will asked.
“About a half second,” she replied.
“Give your mind-machine interface a moment to compensate,” Will said. “If it doesn’t go away, we’ll get Gizmo to interface with you again to make some tweaks.”
Rhea started over with the big toe and proceeded down the line once more. “I think it’s gone away.”
“You think?” Will pressed. “Or it has?”
She tried again. “It has.”
Will nodded.
She proceeded to wiggle the toes of her other foot, and then the fingers of each hand in turn.
“Any lag?” Will said.
She gazed down at her fingers. “No, but… I feel weird. Like my arms and legs aren’t where they’re supposed to be. And my fingers… they feel sluggish. Almost heavy.”
“That’s to be expected,” Will told her. “The muscle memory you retained after the mind wipe is for a body built to entirely different proportions. Also, your strength will be off. It will take a bit to get used to the feel of your new parts. The reorientation period shouldn’t be too long, though, given your cyborg nature: in fact, your mind-machine interface should adapt very quickly.”
Will walked her through a series of knee and arm motions, and she bent her limbs as far as the restraints would allow. She flexed her ankles, rotated her wrists, and shrugged her shoulders.
Will gave Horatio the go-ahead to release the binds and Rhea was finally able to sit up. She surveyed her surroundings for a moment: she resided inside a chamber of some kind. It was a little cramped—the table took up a good half of it.
“So how do you feel now?” Will asked.
She lifted a hand and opened and closed the fingers. “Still a bit weird.”
As she continued to flex her fingers, they began to feel more natural: the sluggishness and weightiness dissipated, along with the sensation they weren’t her own.
“That’s better,” she said.
“See, I told you it wouldn’t take long to adapt,” Will said.
She lifted her opposite hand and similarly flexed the fingers until they too felt like they belonged to her.
She touched her legs and felt the metal beneath her fingertips. It wasn’t cold, but not quite warm, either. She brushed her fingers upward, along her torso, until she reached the artificial epidermis that sheathed her upper chest. The skin felt soft and supple,