Arden Kole's Arc

Chapter 1 of 8

Arden Kole peeled back the shroud and knew the smell before she saw it. Her brother's face had sunk. The skin had gone gray-green and loose. She had waited three years and dug through half the graveyards in Palegorge to reach this table, and the body she loved was too far gone to save. "No, no, no," she said, fast, tugging her tools from the rattling bag. "You just need better parts. That's all. That's all it ever is." She worked in the almshouse ward where the dead came faster than the diggers could bury them. Bodies lined the stone floor under narrow windows. The warden let her stay because she carried out the ones nobody claimed. He did not ask what she did with them first. Tonight she cut a strip of skin from her brother's arm and watched it slough off in her fingers. Rotten. Every graft would rot. Any revival would wake, then fall apart before it drew a breath. She needed fresh tissue. Living tissue. The corpses on the floor were days old, no better than her brother. She pressed her hands to her eyes and breathed. Then the far door opened on its own. Something stepped through. It walked on two legs, but its body was a patchwork of many. Mismatched flesh, blue and yellow and brown, held together with black thread in crooked rows. Its head was smooth and blank, no eyes, no mouth, just a single amber point where a face should be. It stopped in the middle of the ward and turned toward her, slow, like it knew her. Arden's breath caught. "I didn't make you," she whispered. But she recognized the stitching. It was hers. The tight loops, the double knots she always tied. She had sewn parts of this thing years ago, into other bodies, bodies that had walked off and never come back. Somehow they had found each other. Somehow they still lived. That was it. The answer stood right in front of her. The wanderer did not rot. Its flesh held, stitched and strange but whole. Living tissue that lasted. If she could take from it, she could rebuild her brother with parts that would not fail. She raised her scalpel and stepped forward. "Just a little," she said. "I'll be quick. I've always been quick." The wanderer tilted its blank head. Then it lunged. They hit the stone floor together. Arden slashed. The blade sank into its shoulder, and the thing did not bleed the way flesh should. It gripped her wrist. She twisted free, cut again, and a strip of its arm came loose in her hand, warm and firm and alive. She scrambled back, clutching the piece to her chest. The wanderer rose. It did not chase. It stood between her and the door, waiting, and she understood it would not let her take more without a fight. But she had her sample now. Fresh tissue that would not rot. Enough to begin.