Chapter Text
She awoke to a boxcar full of corpses,
which was damn lucky, because it meant she now had a one-way train ticket to exactly where she wanted to go. All that was left to do was pass the time.
The student took inventory of her body. It was the first thing she knew to do in case of catastrophic injury, but the ritual of it was almost meditative now. Start at the bottom, work your way up.
Feet: Sore from walking. The leathery sheathe of mutagenic skin that ran up to her shins was largely unfeeling scar tissue at this point. They looked and functioned like a pair of high-topped hiking boots, except permanent and a part of her body. They were a rough custom job, designed for traversing the pools of acid that dotted the necrotic swamps common to her homeland. Home. Not much left of home now. She was getting sidetracked.
Legs: Also sore from walking, but less so. The musculature was hers, but the skeleton was reinforced with carbon-steel after a fall when she was little. Shock absorbing hydraulic femurs were nice for someone who did as much walking as she did. Skin was necrotizing again. Gotta get that replaced. Maybe one of the corpses is fresh enough to provide a graft.
Pelvis: Mercifully unfeeling. The surveyor had grabbed her by the hips. Skeleton was completely replaced a long time ago, but she could feel a hitch in the joint of her left leg whenever she moved it just so. An easy fix but time consuming, and not the sort of work to be done on a moving train. No necrotization here, at this point it was all synthetic. Uterus was completely original, not that it meant much. The little bundle of braided tubes that assisted her endocrine system remained stapled to her skin. The jangling was annoying, kept getting stuck on her hatchet, thus, staples. Fluids were looking a little dark, she must be dehydrated.
Torso: Felt fine, aside from the strain on her spine from carrying her things. Even with the augments, spines in general were just poorly constructed. Flesh was scarred, lots of burns, but mostly original. Both clavicles were removed and replaced with cargo sockets. She rolled her shoulders, it seemed like everything was working well. Breasts and sternum had been removed too, replaced with subdermal bulletproofing. She had spent extra for the good stuff there. One solid hand-ground piece of sloped armor. Getting shot in the lung was a lesson you only needed to learn once. Heart was completely mechanical. She even had a backup in her bag just in case. She traded the old lung and the breast tissue for that.
Right Arm: She rolled back the sleeve of her heavy coat and stretched her arm, watching the little electric motors dance. It was strong and dexterous, with half a dozen small tools built into the length of her forearm. No need for skin. In a pinch she could perform everything from network intrusion to basic surgery. Most of it was covered by the sleeve of her heavy coat. The amputation was above the elbow. She had leased her original arm for the current mechanical one when she was working on the pit crew for for an order of knights. She ended up keeping the arm.
Left Arm: She liked her left arm. She was proud of it. The trademark of a sythetimancer. It was pretty. Biological and mechanical features blending seamlessly together. Coils of veins and circuitry making intricate braids up her arm terminating in perfect Fibonacci spirals. Softly bioluminescent blood, filaments formed from calcified nerve tissue, synapse clusters under crystal clear de-pigmented bulbs of alpha-keratin. She concentrated for a moment, allowing the whirls on her palm to twist and readjust themselves with a tingling sensation. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, all recombining into butane. She snapped her fingers, igniting a tiny flame, letting it dance along her fingers for a few moments burning and repairing the flesh as she went, spirals parting and coalescing like leaves navigating the twain of a gentle river. They looked like the little shell fossils she found at the white desert when she was little. Memories. Loss.
The spirals in her hand began to twist and pulse, little corkscrews of bone began to form, growing outwards against the thin layer of biosynthetic skin. It hurt. She winced, and regained control a moment later. Careless. She shook her arm, and the flame on her finger went out.
Head: Still a bit hazy from the pain. Where to start with the head? Neck. Parched. Currently being warmed by a scarf with a length of handmade maille hidden in the folds. Rebreather was working well because it was made well. It was made well because she made it. She made it because it used to be her job. Like everyone of her strain, she had no teeth, only two solid ridges of tough bone, largely blunt and made for gnashing but gradually coalescing into a single triangular point, evolved for ripping flesh. She clacked her jaws together experimentally. Clack. Clack.
Eyes were tired and dry. There was a short mechanical hiss and a snap as she the shields over her eyes retracted back into their sockets in her cheekbones. The only light was from a pair of grates in the ceiling, but the glare nearly blinded her. She snapped the shields back into place, and the heads up display came slowly back into focus.
Originally her skin was the sort of rust color common to her strain. By now it was a deep weather-worn red, except for the parts that were charred black and rotting. Gotta replace that. If she could grow hair, she had done a damn good job of making sure it was thoroughly singed off. It occurred to her that it might be fun to have hair one day. Maybe she could make it herself. Would it grow in spirals? She looked down to open the bag of genebending tools at her waist, and her heart jumped into her goddamn throat.
Staring up at her from the pile of corpses was a pair of bright red eyes on an unnaturally pale face with no nose or lips. Which would not be terribly upsetting or surprising, had it not just said “well met” in an oddly pleasant female voice, attempt to sit up, fail, and then ask politely if its new acquaintance would stop sitting on it.