first—that is how a Widow hunts. She is mocking them with their own senses, because she is Shenya the Widow, and she is as unstoppable as destiny.
—TRANSFER INTERRUPTED—
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[Subject continues to resist memory transfer. Please stand by while Memory Vault adjusts parameters…]
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Her father is reaching for her, and he is shouting so loudly his voice hurts her ears. His giant hand hurts her where it holds her arm, and she shouts at him too. She is being dragged away from the forest now and that makes her angry because the bugs are that way and now look she’s dropped her jar and her other bugs are going to get away. She’s released, suddenly, and she stumbles toward her jar just as a bug comes out and raises its wings to fly. She reaches for it but it’s too late, it takes off, and a cry begins welling up inside her chest. She turns to her mother to show her this terrible thing, but her mother is shouting too now, and then there’s another noise that she’s never heard before…and now nobody’s shouting anymore. Her parents have fallen down. She toddles toward them. Her mother reaches for her, slowly, and then she stops and chokes and stares and doesn’t move anymore.
She smiles, just a little, to see if this is a joke. Sometimes her mother pretends not to see her. But her father is doing it too, and he’s never done that before. She is beginning to think that something might be wrong. And now she can smell something that makes her afraid. She can hear something too, a sort of clacking sound. Something is here, something she’s never seen before, something dark and sharp and angry and—
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[Error. Vital signs have fallen below minimum threshold. Shutting down process…done. Erasing remaining memories, as per current security protocols…done.]
[This Memory Vault suggests that you seek medical attention.]
Riptide does not have a hospital. It does not have a clinic. It does not have so much as a dedicated bed for a convalescent. What it does have is this: one, a giant pressure suit with a full medical suite; two, a massive bundle of muscle, teeth, and parenting instincts; and three, an android with a thing for tinkering. Fortunately, this turns out to be the exact combination of things necessary to get Sarya the Daughter where she is today: alive and sitting in her quarters with one arm wrapped in a mess of black synthetics.
“Stunning,” says Roche, touching—almost caressing—the machinery that now frames her forearm. “Phil says this is my best work this lifetime.”
“Phil?” asks Sarya. She weaves on the bunk, burning an embarrassing amount of effort to remain upright.
“My helper intelligence,” says Roche, tapping his chest with his remaining hand. “He’s better at being objective than I am.”
“Ah.” She can feel an unfamiliar weight where her forearm lies on her leg. Her hand is closed, her flesh almost invisible under its layers of black metal and synthetics, but not for long. She concentrates. She pictures that hand open, imagines the fingers spreading like a Widow’s blades—and after a moment the pistons contract with a hiss. Her fingers open like a blossom, and there’s her skin, her sweating palm warm and organic amidst the gleaming artificiality of its frame. But opening the hand is easy; she still has those tendons. Now comes the hard part. She focuses. She imagines her hand closed, imagines grasping, imagines strangling—and then, for the first time since she burned out half her forearm and shoved a Widow into her brain, her fingers curl on their own.
“I did it,” she breathes.
“I’m afraid you didn’t,” says Roche. He taps his chest. “I did.”
“Oh,” says Sarya softly. She watches, resigned, as her fingers do a little dance on their own. Great.
“I am about to turn control over to you,” Roche says. “You are fortunate, because it is a good hand. It will learn to respond to you…eventually. But please remember one thing: you are only borrowing it. I will know if it is abused.” He pats the mass of hardware on her lap. “We’ve been through much together, haven’t we?” he says tenderly.
Sarya watches her hand twitch, unsure if she’s watching a fond goodbye or something stranger.
“Yes, we have,” Roche answers himself in a singsong, scratching the hand below its row of black pistons. “Yes we have indeed.”
“Um,” says Sarya, watching her own hand gently squeeze her leg. Definitely something stranger.
And so begins day two, counting since