Yuri was a saint.

This was an ironic descriptor for the person arranging for my spine to get ripped out of me. It was still true, though!

No one of lesser standing would have been able to put up with Amelia's badgering requests about our cybernetic improvements, let alone fulfill them all within the confines of his originally promised timeframe.

Honestly, I was kinda sorta wishing he wasn't so impressive. Especially when, a mere twenty minutes after getting notified that we should 'get to the garage as soon as possible', I found myself standing inside an empty, sterile clinic.

The space was pervaded by a sharp, unpleasant scent I'd always associated with rippers. The tiles under my feet were pristine. The cheerful posters, promoting all sorts of cybernetics and improvement surgeries, were practically stabbing into my brain with their colors amidst the sea of white and chrome that was the rest of the clinic.

None of it was helping me overcome the ball of anxiety churning away in my guts.

Amelia, on the other hand, had no such trouble.

"Hm hm, this looks promising. So far. Slightly suspicious that they have a low enough number of patients that they can just book out the entire place for us, though. Not sure what kind of favors my uncle called in or if he straight up paid them off — which I will find a way to pay him back for, regardless — but at least there's minimal risk of people finding out things they shouldn't. Security on and tracking us?"

"Surprisingly, no. Either they turned it all off, as requested, or they've got a very impressive stealth system," I mumbled, trying to ping off the cameras as we passed them and failing.

Typically, that indicated the little spying devices were off. Still, I wouldn't put it past a runner somewhere to figure out a way to stealth them. It was practically impossible, due to how much all modern devices relied on the net for everything, but still.

"Good! In that case, the operating theatre should be just through… here!"

Amelia happily pinged open a set of doors that hissed with the release of the seal keeping them shut. A colder, even more sterile gust of air washed over us, but she just grinned, like the clinic had passed some sort of test.

I shivered. It felt like some massive beast had unhinged its jaws and invited me to step closer.

Like an absolute idiot, I did just that.

I was very thankful that I could still lean on my Stalker instincts willingly if I tried. They had begun to wane ever so slowly, leaving me somewhat capable of jittering if I wasn't careful. Nothing like I used to do before all the incidents, of course. It was just minor twitching in my fingers. Still, I didn't appreciate the tell.

"Oh wow, scratch what I said before. You may color me genuinely impressed!" Amelia gushed. Her expression bordered on lascivious. The fact that this response had been elicited by an operating table was mildly concerning. "This is almost as good as the baby my father had me work with! Yep, this installation is going to be easy peasy. 'Sides, look at it! Ain't she a beaut?"

I'd caught sight of 'it', briefly, from the corner of my eye. However, with Amelia actively drawing my attention to it, I could no longer ignore the desk placed right up against the operating table.

The desk which contained most of a skeleton, just made up of far tougher stuff than simple bone.

The arms were missing, obviously. I didn't need those. The rest of the skeleton, though? It was right there.

Well, fine. It was a lie to say it was an entire skeleton. Some parts of it were full-on bone replacement, while others were made out of high-quality bone lace. I couldn't actually get every last bit of my skeleton replaced, not unless I wanted to be forced to rely on blood alternatives that were both costly and annoying to maintain.

Still, with very few exceptions, most of the 'major' support bones in my body were getting replaced. Starting decisively with my spine.

With its pitch black color, the artificial skeleton wasn't even pretending to be something it wasn't. And the various… things that ran through the spine made me shudder and want to take a step back.

Like, I realize I had an eldritch creature in my head, okay? I still didn't feel great about the idea of having a weird cross between organic and cybernetic wires coming out of the clanker spine inside me.

Deep breaths. Deep, deep breaths. This is just Amelia. Her father may have lopped your arms off, but… Great, now I'm thinking about that. Aaaaaand there goes the panic…

Great fucking timing to find out I apparently had some minor trauma concerning cybernetics. I mean, beyond the issues I was dealing with already. As the fear of getting butchered open and waking up as less of myself mounted, it was all I could do not to bolt for the door.

Then I felt arms gently wrap around me from behind. A tiny part of me immediately unclenched.

I couldn't resent Amelia's influence over me, but a part of me wanted to.

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"Hey, hey… what's up? What's wrong? And don't tell me it's nothing. I can literally see you shaking right now, and your claws are peeking out of your fingers.

"I'm not shaking, you're shaking!" I fired back intelligently and automatically. Which to be fair, did get her to giggle. I liked it when she giggled.

It didn't take her long to sober up, though. "No trying to avoid answering, now. Seriously. Just tell me."

"I… I don't know how to explain it. I know it's not the same. I know you're not your father. I even know we're on a fucking schedule here! I can't be doing this crap. But…"

I told her. Well, I didn't so much tell her as it all came spilling out of me in one massive wave. But the words passed through my lips, okay?

All the insecurities. All the fear. Poured out in a short few minutes.

It left me breathless and lightheaded, but I also felt… better. More like myself. More prepared.

Amelia, meanwhile, was suspiciously quiet. Her arms clutched onto me in a death grip.

"Amelia…? Is everything okay?" I couldn't shake off the schadenfreude I felt asking her that question so quickly after she'd turned a similar one my way, but any feelings of bitter amusement fled when she shook her head into my back.

I shifted, breaking her hold on me ever so briefly so I could turn around and return the hug I'd been getting. She still refused to look at me, though, burying her face into my chest instead.

"Look at me, please? Then tell me what's wrong? Remember, use your words. We're not a call right now." I was aiming for a tone of voice I'd describe as lightly teasing, but I was worried I'd missed by a mile when she did finally look up and I spotted the tears glistening in her eyes. "Amelia? Seriously, what's wrong?"

"I-I pushed you into this, didn't I? I was there, talking to Yuri, and I just… I made the request. Without even thinking about how you might feel about it. I-I'm really as bad as my father in so many ways, aren't I?"

The laugh that left her was not a happy sound. At all.

It also made a surprising amount of resentment towards her father bubble up in my chest, far beyond even what he'd inspired with his treatment of me.

"You didn't," I said.

She gave me a look of pure doubt.

"Honest." I cleared my throat. "I could have said something when you brought it up. I could have chosen to put a stop to your plans. I didn't. And I also chose not to say anything when I realized I might have… issues… with cybernetics."

I winced at that last admission. Through everything I had learned, one truth reigned supreme: if I wanted more personal strength, I needed cybernetics. Even learning about Essence and all the eldritch nonsense didn't change that.

If anything, it just reinforced the impression.

Essence opened up avenues for growth without the risk of losing your mind, something that the latest military and corpo restricted cybernetics took full advantage of. What could a full borg do, decked out in the best cybernetics that money and connections could secure? Especially one that had a large reservoir of Essence? I didn't know, but I shuddered to imagine it.

So, to lock myself out of cybernetics just because I had a few hang-ups was unacceptable.

Plus, I absolutely hated the teary look in Amelia's eyes.

She opened her mouth to protest, but I decided to quickly cut that off with a kiss. The flush this left on her cheeks was a much nicer alternative to tears.

"I still… should have thought about, erm, how this could affect you."

"You're not a psychic. Are you? Just checking!" I laughed at the cross look that briefly passed over her face. "So, really, you can't know anything about me if I don't volunteer the information. I promise we'll talk more, properly, later. For now… how about we just do what we need to do, before the time Yuri's rented this clinic for runs out and they throw us out with half my spine hanging out?"

The teasing did its work. She was soon helping me strip out of my clothing and then pushing me into a quick decontamination shower. My comment that I had never experienced one before, not even before having my eyes installed, horrified her.

Meanwhile, I was just amused with how much more confident we'd gotten being naked around each other.

That done, she gave the operating table one final inspection and scrubbed it down quickly with some kind of spray. Then she asked me to lie down, face-first. A hole opened up on the table automatically, and sinfully soft cushions held my head in place very comfortably. Even if I did have to hold back a brief surge of panic when robotic arms descended from the underside of the bed and started messing with my face.

I still must have jerked or something, because Amelia had the gall to giggle at me.

"Sorry, sorry, should have warned you. They're just attaching the mask, be still!" Her voice was mostly amused, but I felt the undercurrents of the previous worry and anguish.

No matter. I'd just do my best to take her mind off things later.

That was my last conscious thought as a transparent mask was attached to my face. Said mask was swiftly fogged up by whatever inhalants were being pumped into my lungs through it.

—

I was dreaming. I knew for a fact that I was dreaming, because I was stuck between a ranting shadow and a pair of ghostly arms. The shadow was quite insistent on kicking the life out of said arms, its voice rising and falling in never ending complaints.

Still, the arms were surprisingly adept at dodging the eldritch creature. And ever so rarely, the air around them… shimmered. It was just for the shortest of instants, but the figure of something was revealed to me every time that happened. And when the deadly claws on the tips of the disembodied arms' tried to take a swipe at the shadow, I realized their dislike of each other was mutual.

And I was stuck, suspended between them, bits of my body simply gone.

Neither of the two parties seemed to notice me much. They ignored me, focusing instead on their constant argument.

Then something coiled around me, gripped me tight, and yanked me through a small eternity.

—

"W-Wuh… Wah… What happened?"

My lips were gummy and awfully dry. I felt like I'd gone fifty rounds with a borg as an unenhanced human. Just about every nerve ending I had was so unpleasantly sensitive, it felt like the air was grating across my skin.

Then I tried to move. To stand up. To function.

And I couldn't.

The panic was as overwhelming as it was instantaneous. Pure, mindless terror coursed through me. My limbs twitched uselessly, only enhancing my discomfort.

Then a pair of hands made me hiss in a startled, painful breath when they landed on my shoulders, keeping me down.

"Relax! Adrian, it's me. Please relax. You won't hurt yourself or anything, but… it's not good for you to move this much! Just please, listen to me?"

I fully admit that I failed to process a thing for the first few seconds. But then my brain finally registered Amelia as the speaker, and I went still.

"Amelia? Wait… I was preparing for the surgery, and then…"

"You conked out, woke up, and panicked. Pretty typical, I have to say. Didn't really expect it from you, but I get it from my patients often. Now, are you ready for me to help you sit up on your side? We do kind of need to get lost soon."

"I — yeah."

I let Amelia close her arms around me and help me shift my position on the bed. No, the gurney.

I looked up, intending to ask a question or even open up my status to confirm things, but my breath caught in my throat at the sight of Amelia's eyes.

Her happily crinkled, cybernetic eyes.

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