Arden Kole's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

The gray dust of the drained wanderer still lay on the floor when Arden knelt to scoop it up. Nothing solid remained. She had traded her only material to save her brother, and now her hands held ash. Then she remembered the rushed weeks before all this. She had traded old stitchwork to buyers all through the ward to fund her cultures. One creation had never been picked up. She had left it half-finished in a store room and forgotten it. If it still moved, it might still be viable. She grabbed her tool bag and ran. The corridor lights buzzed cold and white. She checked every door, calling low so she would not wake the almshouse. In the third room she found scuff marks on the dust. Something had walked here on its own. "You're chasing shadows again." Edna Norsk stood in the doorway. The old woman ran this sealed ward, and she never let Arden forget it. Her frost-stiff coat crackled when she moved. Goggles sat pushed up in her wild gray hair. "That thing's been loose four days. It broke my sample locks. I want it caught or gone." "It's mine," Arden said. "I made it." "Then leash it." Edna tapped the wall. "It went toward the cutting room. Muttering. Yes, muttering." She counted on her fingers, a habit that never stopped. "Six locks broken. Three trays spilled. You owe me bodies for the mess." Arden pushed past her. The cutting room door hung open. Inside, under the surgical light, the creature stood over the steel table. Mismatched flesh. A smooth faceless head. Stitches ran across every seam. One yellow eye caught the light and turned to her. It did not run. It reached toward the straps on the table, as if it remembered being built here. Its flesh looked firm. No rot. No gray cracks. Living tissue. Everything she needed. "Easy," Arden whispered. She set down her bag and drew the strongest sedative she owned. "You're the last one. You just don't know it yet." The creature tilted its head. It let her come close. Arden slid the needle into the stitched shoulder and pressed the plunger. The limbs sagged. She caught its weight and lowered it onto the table. Its chest still rose and fell. Warm. Whole. Edna watched from the door. "So there is your body," she said. "After all that." Arden strapped the wrists down with shaking hands. Her brother could live now. She had flesh that would not fail. She looked at the faceless head, at the single eye now closed, and felt no triumph. "It found its way back to where I sewed it," she said quietly. "It came home." She picked up her scalpel. To build her brother, she had to take this one apart alive.