“You wonder why I never want to give it a try.”


    I tried to open my eyes to the soft female voice. I was laying down and something held my body still.


    I heard a dolphin click. “You know we can program tolerance into your mind so your body can handle it like mine.”


    I groaned. My stomach and throat burned. I was cold and stark naked, laying down on metal. A metallic smell tied to burnt wiring lurked in the air.


    “Ope, here we go. You gonna stay, Naoma?”


    “Why not? You’ve got me booked for the rest of the day. Might be more interesting than another recording.”


    “We’ll get to that.”


    Blurred images of varying color under an encompassing blue light formed into clear figures. Violet glowing straps held each of my appendages down as well as my chest. I was in a room lit with poor artificial light and lined with metal walls. Large screens facing away from us hung from the wall to my right with floating light-cast control panels below.


    I turned to look to my right. Boyband groaned as he joined me in a dazed consciousness.


    “There we go!” Dolphin clicks and a voice I recognized. Anton Jackson.


    Another dolphin clicked with him, then spoke in a deeper artificial voice. “How much did you dose them with, Anton?”


    “Checked the puffs after. They both had only about ten concentrated micrograms each. Light-weight shacs.”


    “Petya?” Boyband asked. I turned and locked eyes with him. He looked just as much the terrified child I imagined him to be. His clothes had been stolen as well.


    “That''s one''s Petya,” said Jackson. “You ever get the other one’s name? He called himself Leon.”


    “No.” the other Finian said. “He wasn''t a part of the raid.”


    “Wha–” I coughed, still trying to reach consciousness as my head spun and pulsed. “What is happening?” I thought about burning some of my Bite reserve to reach mental clarity but had enough somberness to recognize that I would rather be bound and dazed than bound and voracious.


    “Did you read his space?” Jackson asked.


    “I couldn’t. The firewall is beyond anything I’ve seen.”


    “Do you think another tech party sent them? Maybe they don’t want to get rid of all tech but just want to dominate the market.”


    “Doesn’t everyone?”


    I leaned my head up and looked past the two Finians at Naoma, who shot a small orb of violet light from her fingernail, watching it float around until it went into the light lines on her chest. She no longer wore the skin-tight performance exosuit to create holos, but a jacket and pants similar to the ones we had purchased. They were white with stripes and designs of violet light.


    I sighed as I let my head rest.


    “Are you going to have them talk now, Bank?” she asked and turned her bitter smirk on me. If I didn’t hate the false god that she was to every fan, I did now.


    “Give them a minute or so longer to wake up,” the other Finian called Bank said.


    Jackson clicked. “Now you see why Reef won’t let you touch puffs.”


    “Or fixes,” Naoma sighed. “Still sounds like a waste to me. Who needs to fix their mind when you have all the light you can get?”


    Cocky. Condescending. Naoma was pure violet.


    “How ‘bout the little one?” Anton slapped Boyband with his pale hand. “You with us yet?”


    “The zeg do you want?” he barked back. “Pet–Davor, what’s going on?”


    “You can lose the act, kid. Anton, sit ‘em up.”


    I almost lost consciousness again as blackness clouded my vision for a moment. We sat up, still bound to the metallic beds, and faced the Finians’ glare with Naoma toying with her light again.


    “Yah with me?” Jackson said. He nodded and turned to Bank. “Yup, I think yah are.”


    Bank folded his arms and a neon centipede the size of my forearm crawled up his bulky shoulders. He had a matching set of dark-skinned arms that met a metallic torso at the shoulders, though the chestpiece was like that of a common android: human-shaped with a carbon fiber case. I couldn’t see his legs. The base of his head was similar to Jackson’s but had a metal plate on one cheek and three deep red scars on the other side. Scar repair was already an aged modification. The only reason people had them was to make a statement.


    He spoke as Jackson did, no words syncing with the movement of his mouth. “You took out the Firstlight branch, now what do you want?”


    I didn’t know how to respond. Had Deleon led us into a trap? No, but whoever told him to pursue Reef Records and Anton Jackson must have. Who is manipulating you, Deleon?


    “What do you mean?”


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Jackson smacked Boyband and Naoma laughed.


    “Please don’t,” I said, realizing that it would only incentivize them to continue.


    The neon centipede crawled towards Bank’s hand.


    “What is that?” I shouted. “You gonna try and eat the data from my space? We–” I stopped speaking as I felt something already digging through my neurospace, but still unable to pass the firewall. “What are you doing?”


    Bank tapped the back of his head.


    I shook mine and felt what he was talking about. Something connected the back of my head to the table. I turned to look at Boyband, feeling the restriction of the cord as I did so. “Look away!”


    He turned away from me. A black box connected to a woven rope of cords held his–and my–head to the table.


    “Wired hacking still holds its value. Humans are too quick to dismiss physical matter. Perhaps that is why you found it so easy to neglect the ocean. Do the damage, pay the price now with us.”


    I scoffed. “Quit it with the environmentalism. You know as much as I do that I had nothing to do with any of that. It was before my time.”


    “But it''s still happening today.”


    “Like I said, I don’t have anything to do with that. Is that what this is about?”


    “Nah,” Jackson said. “Didn’t you hear us? Firstlight. We’ve followed you since.”


    Followed who? An alias created by Deleon? The Osteolyte front, or what he was hiding beneath it? I didn''t even know what that was. I was worried about our current predicament but not as much about them mining for my internal data. Sure, they could exploit us with the Bites , but I doubted they could uncover even that. Deleon had assigned Ralia to encrypt all of us after he modded her bite. X-rays, circuit sweeps, any form of detection would show that no one had ever tampered with our hypothalami. If that held true, blocking even the most efficient infiltrators, perhaps the Bite’s held supernatural technology as Deleon had suggested.


    “Even if the kid wasn’t there,” said Bank. “We know he’s a part of the system.”


    I tapped into my neurospace to inform Deleon of what was happening.


    COMMUNICATION DENIED


    Zeg. I tried a multiplicity of ways to work around the cyberblock and was met with the same message.


    Bank laughed. “Keep pressing and you’ll only get more error messages. You are stuck here until you help us.”


    “Then what do you want?” Boyband asked.


    My heart raced. The kid had a burning hunger and no need to serve Deleon. My loyalty was too conditional for a true alliance, but even I knew that I couldn’t turn on my master. I had to keep the kid calm.


    “What do you want?” Jackson asked. “You hit Firstlight and now you’re climbing up to hit the next wire to the brain.”


    I was too dull to come up with a solution. Let the kid talk. What did he know beyond what they had accused us of?


    Boyband shook his head. His bowl-cut hair was almost completely gray. “We’re just servants to the guy who wants to be the next big thing. If you work for Firstlight, isn’t that what you want? Haven Health down? Liu out of office?”


    Jackson laughed, but Bank shook his head as he spoke. “Zeg, kid, you really don’t have anything do you?” He looked at me. “New recruit, huh? Well then, what do you have to share with us?”


    I stared at him with eyes as dead as I would be if we didn’t find a solution. As the neon centipede hissed and pointed its frontmost legs in my direction, I let out the only words that could come to my mouth. “He’s right. We’re just working for some guy who wants Haven out so he can step in.”


    “I wouldn’t put assassinations and corporate destruction past a politician, but the Republic is a lot more complex than that. No one wants the presidency just for the sake of it. Your boss must want something.”


    “Exactly. Something. Once he has the presidency, he is beyond my concern.”


    “What''s his name, then?” asked Bank.


    I stared at him.


    “Company name? Organization?” Jackson slapped my exposed leg. “Come on now!”


    I sucked in through clenched teeth and shook my leg. “Where are my zegging clothes?”


    Jackson clicked. “We’ve got friends that will pay good lumens for some appendages like yours.”


    “Why don’t they just buy their own?”


    Bank scowled. “It''s harder to find good body parts today. Do you know why?”


    “Not as many junkies and ‘beyond-redemption’ sick people for you to harvest them from?”


    He shook his head. “Come on, you know we’re past that. Almost all of the appendages we use come from consensual agreements. People here in the Violet district decide they would rather have a cybernetic arm than the one they were born with, we offer a discount on the tech if they hand us over the dead flesh. The problem is that with Techbone and the associated propaganda behind Haven Health’s focus on it, fewer people choose cybernetic replacements each day. If neurospaces weren’t mandatory, I know plenty of people would avoid even that much technology.”


    “So,” Jackson stepped forward. “You’ll give us what we want, or we''ll get to harvest something from you. We ran physiological scans on your bodies and both of you have taken exceedingly good care of your flesh.”


    I hadn’t, but I knew that the Bite had compensated. “I’ve already told you everything we have! If we asked you two the same questions about your superiors, would you have any answers to give?”


    Their dead stares left me wondering.


    Jackson whistled. “Bank, give the ‘pede a try before we take anything.”


    “What is that?” Naoma asked.


    Bank raised his arm with the neon centipede. “We ran the physiological checks, but this thing will run the final cyber checks. If we take any appendages, we have to make sure their flesh isn’t ridden with malware. If we give an arm to a Finian with undetected malware, their boss might be able to hack the host and—”


    She waved him away. “Yeah, I got it.”


    The centipede rose on Bank’s arm like a cobra. He smiled with malice. “Which one first?”


    I looked at Boyband. His lips were quivering and tears ran down his cheeks.


    I have to do it, don’t I? “Not him.”


    “Big brother speakin’ up!” Jackson folded his arms and leaned back against the wall by Naoma. Her head looked up and her mouth was slightly open. Her eyes flashed with the wonderment of a neurospace distraction.


    If she couldn’t bear to watch it, how would I survive whatever it was? I kept my mind on a track towards her, not relenting to quiver in fear of the centipede.


    She seemed an automated product of theirs, part of me wondering if she was actually an AI creation. So called AI “art” was still looked down upon by most of society, but I wouldn’t put it past these Finians who had made their derision of humans known. I would have settled upon this conclusion, until Naoma showed this sliver of humanity. What if she had a human heart beyond her produced personality? It was wishful thinking for a violet elite. But what was there for me to gain if she had a soft core?


    My eyes turned from her and at the centipede as it used its pincers and front legs to pry my mouth open. Despite my jaw’s Bite-enhanced clench, the centipede flattened and split itself between my teeth, working its way further into my mouth. It reconstituted and naturally opened my jaw with its fist-sized cylindrical body. Its legs opened my mouth as wide as it could go. The corners of my lips burned as if ready to tear.