Coil

by Ren Warom

  The monitors start to blare and Nia leaps up, looking for the nurses, but Bone grabs her. “Toilet. Please,” he gasps out, vomit dribbling from his nose as he fights frighteningly strong heaves, his eyes blank with panic.

  She whips off the monitor hooks, flips the blanket into a neat heap at the end of the bed, and supports his weight as he stumbles to the bathroom. He collapses in a heap in front of the toilet and throws up, wringing with sweat. He’s bringing up nothing but blackish, bile-coloured liquid and coughing so hard his wounds, mostly healed, begin to weep blood. It scares her half to death.

  She hears the door of his room slam open and calls out to them, “He’s in here. I’ve got him. He’s sick.”

  Daina runs in. She’s taken off the cap and cardigan she was wearing when Nia arrived, revealing hair like spun glass and a see-through implant all the way down her neck to her cleavage of swirling, hypnotic shapes, filled with greenish liquid. Bioluminescence. For some reason, seeing the normality of the woman eases Nia’s distress, and she steps back to watch as Daina kneels down behind Bone and rubs his back. Eventually, breath hissing in and out in wheezing gasps, he manages to stop heaving and coughing, and falls back, one arm on the toilet seat, the other braced on the floor. His hair’s flopped down over his forehead, lank and lifeless, his mouth’s pale blue and his skin’s see-through, a ghastly shade of waxy greyish-white.

  Nia’s mind is wrung out with shock, her lips tingling. “What was that?” she demands of Daina.

  “He came out of the tube badly. It’s going to be a little rough for him for a while,” Daina replies, brushing Bone’s hair off his forehead. “I’m Daina, Bone. We’re going to get you back to bed, okay?” She smiles at Nia. “Give me a hand, hon?”

  Daina and Nia carry him out of the small bathroom, to his bed. He’s too thin. It’s been five days since the sewer, and even with the nutrient feed from the unit, he’s dropped weight. He didn’t have enough to begin with. Now he feels so fragile, Nia’s scared she’ll break him, scared she already broke something in him dragging him to the bathroom like that. They settle him on the edge of the bed and Daina lifts some blue hospital-issue pyjamas from Nia’s chair.

  “How’s about some clothes now, hmmm? I’m all for staring at naked men, especially pretty ones, but we do like our patients to have a little dignity.”

  Bone throws Nia a pleading look that breaks her heart, and she says, “I think he needs more time.” She strives to talk calmly, one professional to another, but manages only to sound as emotionally wrecked as she feels.

  Daina sighs. “Fine. But it can’t go on indefinitely.” She helps him sit, piling pillows at his back, and throws a light, clean blanket over his lower body. “You just keep this on. I don’t need any of my girls falling over, trying to cop an eyeful.”

  Bone sinks into the pillows as if he’s not even heard her. His gaze falls to his hands, staring, and the look of absolute terror in his eyes makes Nia’s skin contract. Daina’s wrong; it’s not just waking badly from the unit he’s got to recover from. She wonders what it is he’s thinking, looking at his hands like that, and aches for him so hard, she has to hold herself in, both arms wrapped tight about her waist. All her edges are cracked and weeping, she’s leaking out of herself, and has no means to stop. Later, when she leaves, she takes a moment to watch him as he fitfully sleeps, and tries to secure that image in her mind. To make a solid picture of him she can hold onto. Something real. Anything. But even as she leaves, it slips away, curling into memories of his flesh flared open, his innards exposed, and she understands that this cannot be undone, this knowing. He is not Bone. Whatever happens from now on, they will just have to live with that.

  Chapter 48

  Wednesday is the last day before Daina’s weekend, and for once, she’s getting to leave only a little past her shift, close on for midnight. Mid-week usually gets crazy busy, and she’s stunned to be leaving this soon, it’s usually closer to 2:00 a.m. Her shoes crunch into a thick layer of fresh snow. It soaks past both trousers and socks to freeze her legs to the calf, making her shiver uncontrollably despite the thick, woollen warmth of her coat. It’s the same every year, heavy snows from mid-August all the way through to January. She could move somewhere warmer, go home perhaps, but she likes it here. Her only qualm when moving had been that the job she’d found was based in a gang-run hospital, but it’s proven to be one of the best jobs she’s ever had.

  The Spires is an unusual city, larger than some and more complicated than any. It has a tangled, somewhat evasive history––guards its borders fiercely. When Daina revealed her plans to move here, her friends and family shared all manner of colourful warning stories about the city, the dangers of living here, but everything she was told pales in comparison to the reality. This city is vast and uncontainable. Unhinged and exotic. Brim-full of terrors and marvels alike. It’s a clamourous, extraordinary place, and though she’s often scared, she’d never leave. There are many reasons for that, but first and foremost is the attitude to mods and modification in general, it’s one of the first things she loved about the Spires. Where she came from, mods are just a requirement, as much as a job, a house, or a car. Other cities in the City States Union insist that citizenship rely upon having specific mods. By that simple requirement, whether the mod itself is artistic, surgical, or gen, they’re rendered pedestrian, all sense of individuality and autonomy stripped away.

  Here, with the riotous insanity of the Zone, mods are more anarchic than obligatory, a declaration of independence instead of compliance to accepted norms, and that attitude prevails even on the streets. Spires citizens actively reject bureaucratic interference in their self-expression, and that’s directly connected to the presence of the gangs. To someone from another City State, accustomed to a stifling expectation of compliance, it’s liberating. Daina breathes the cold air, smiling. The car park for hospital staff is sunk into the mountains. There’s no path out here and most staff use the pods beneath the hospital to get to their cars, but she’s got her own light and enjoys the walk through the trees. She’s always longing for a bit of fresh air by the day’s end anyway, having grown up in a city near the coast with suburbs about as rural as you can get in the CSU. It’s ridiculously cold, but it wakes her up enough to ensure she’ll have energy to drive home, reheat and eat the dinner her husband will have made.

  He’s gang. If anyone had told her she’d marry into gang, she’d have laughed, but Hale, though he looks plain vicious with all his implants and scrawling gang tattoos, is the most genuine, decent man she’s ever met. A snowy owl drifts overhead, it’s wings shimmering moon-bright against the dark sky, and she stops to watch it. They live higher up in the mountains, away from the city, just as most animals have learned to do, and she rarely sees them. As it floats out of sight, pale as an apparition, she hears footfalls crunching in the snow behind her and turns with a smile, expecting to see one of the six groundsmen. Instead it’s a stranger. Tall, and as thin as one of her current patients, Bone Adams. So much so, she thinks it might be him.

  “Bone? You should be in bed. It’s freezing out here.”

  He’s spent the week since he almost drowned in his sus unit throwing up everything he eats. It’ll take a while for the sus unit sickness to pass, but she’s worried there’s more going on. The man is in a state, and seems terrified of his own body. She insisted on psychiatric intervention because she can’t see him recovering without it, but it doesn’t seem to be helping, and she’s at a loss, which frustrates her to no end. In response to her voice, the tall man stops some distance away, silhouetted in the trees.

  “Hello?” she calls out. “Bone?”

  He doesn’t respond, but he no longer looks like Bone. He looks like a stranger, and she begins to experience low levels of unease. She’s got a gun, Hale insists upon it, what with the troubles coming in from the Outskirts, the Gulley, and the Wharf, but she dislikes using it and invariably ends up leaving it in her car. She wishes now she were closer to the
car park, at least then she could run for her car, if need be, and get to her gun.

  “Do you need assistance?” she asks, making sure to keep her voice loud and friendly. “Hospital’s behind you, it’s not a long walk.”

  “I don’t want the hospital, Daina Uri.”

  Her heart starts to pick up an erratic quality to its beat. His voice is freakish. Melodic and yet dry. Too husky, as though it’s hardly ever used.

  “How do you know my name?” she asks, still speaking loudly and backing away as surreptitiously as possible. Hale’s persistent drilling of how to respond to threat rolls out in her mind step by step, and she makes ready to run.

  “Your husband’s advice cannot help you here, Daina Uri.”

  The words are spoken as if they’re somehow delicious, and Daina’s unease kicks up to full blown panic. Throwing aside caution, she turns and sprints for it, fast as her legs can go in the thick snow, heading straight for the car park. She expects to be chased, but hears no foot falls behind. Perhaps she’s been wrong, perhaps he’s gang and something’s happened to Hale. Daina slides to a halt, thinking of her husband injured, perhaps dead, and then something hits––a mental blow that knocks her from her feet, stealing the breath from her body, the function from limbs and thought.

  Hitting the snow hurts more than she expects. A sharp pain cuts through her nose, the crunch of bone loud in her ears, and warm blood spreads out across her cheeks, cooling almost immediately. She shrieks, struggling to breathe as cold flakes fill her mouth. Then a gentle pressure touches her shoulder and turns her over. The stranger looms above her as she coughs up snow, and she finally sees his face, lit by her own bioluminescence. He’s an angel. Golden hair down to his shoulders, skin so white it glows in the darkness like an owl’s wing, drawn over bones so perfect he could be an IM model. His eyes are a clear blue like fine porcelain, and there’s nothing in them whatsoever, nothing in that beautiful face at all. It’s blank as a doll’s. Empty.

  He stares down at her, unblinking. “I’m going to ask you a few questions about a patient of yours,” he says to her in that melodic husk of a voice. “You won’t be able to scream, so don’t try. You will answer every question I ask, or there will be pain. If you behave, I will allow you to end yourself quickly. Nod if you understand.”

  Something takes her head in a vice-like grip and lifts it up and down, as though she’s nodding agreement. But she doesn’t agree, she doesn’t give permission, and when he begins to ask her questions, it becomes clear that there will be pain no matter what she does because he enjoys inflicting it. Though he never once touches her, there’s more pain than she can bear, and yet he forces her to bear every last excruciating second as she answers all of his questions, though she fights hard as she can to prevent herself from speaking. When he’s done, he offers her nothing of that swift end, watching her with those blank, beautiful eyes as she squeezes the life from her own heart and slumps into the snow.

  Chapter 49

  Cold. Pain in the skull, so bad, the bones shifting around, loose and broken. Endless darkness. He’s moaning into the darkness, aware of only pain, dark and cold, when a figure walks forwards, swimming into focus. Skinless, its body is a fluid shape formed of sticky, red flesh. Piercing green eyes float in the midst of it all. So bright. And the white of teeth. Of all of it, the white of teeth frightens him most. The figure lifts something from the floor. Heavy. Dripping. It pulls this weight onto its sticky flesh, smoothing it until it slips into place, fits snug along long limbs, over the red dome of its head. It turns, leans towards him, and he sees his own face. It’s wearing his face. And it’s smiling. Smiling down at him. The white of teeth gleaming in the darkness.

  Bone wakes screaming, drenched in sweat so cold, he’s shivering with it and panting hard, unable to catch a breath. He coughs, trying not to retch, to control the urge, but it defeats him and he throws back the blankets, scrambling for the bathroom just in time to throw up whatever’s left of his dinner. This is the third time he’s seen this memory, and try as he might, he can’t recall the face, though he knows that it was his. It’s a torture of the mind, and too frightening because he’s not sure he wants to know. He’s scared he won’t survive it. The nurses don’t know how to help him, nor even the psych team. All this recollection is utterly beyond control. It has no limits, no end. There’s so much of that other self in there, too much to restrain.

  He pushes back from the bowl, feeling vulnerable, trapped inside his head and entirely at its mercy. He’s exhausted, and yet filled with horrendous tension, the potential for absolute ruin. Another violent urge to throw up takes over his body. He breathes through it, his head hanging. He’s thrown up so much, his throat feels like raw, tenderised steak. If he throws up any more, he’ll see bits of torn stomach lining floating in the bowl. He’s been there, done that, has no desire to visit it again, and he leaves the bathroom on shaking limbs, flushing to be rid of the stench. The surface of his skin blazes with heat and crawls, it never stops. Feels alive, a separate entity. He doesn’t trust it. At any moment, it will begin to peel away again, like it did in the sewer. He keeps touching his forehead, making sure there’s no seam, no split, but the relief of smooth skin is only ever temporary. Uncertainty always returns, the fear that he can’t hold himself together, that he’s not under his control.

  Those grey lights hover at his peripheries. Beyond them is fear and darkness and pain, a raging current of memory crashing against the thin walls of his resistance. He’s under siege and cracking apart. Too frightened to sleep, Bone staggers to the window and shoves it open, allowing in blasts of frigid air. He’s already frozen, but he lifts his head and bathes in bitter cold, wishing this could wash away the transmog, the memories. He leans out of the frame, wincing as his wounds pull, but he can’t relax. Everything that defined him has gone, he’s nothing left to hold onto. Agitated to the marrow, brim full of hurt and desperate for distraction, he looks out at the view, and catches his breath.

  Laid out before him, below the edge of the mountains, is his home, the Spires. Spreading ever outwards across seemingly endless distance, it’s an ocean of lights and pinnacles, glistening in the darkness. It looks like a living being, a sleeping behemoth. Out on the cusp, where the city meets the horizon, a thin line of grey dusk bleeds soft ink into the last smouldering embers of sunlight, and above it all, the night is a veil of black, alive with dazzling radiance. Crystalline pinpoints of blue, red, and white float upon the darkness, weightless and luminant, an array of such beauty he’s reduced to mere sensation. Trapped in the moment, he’s caught like a fly in amber between the earth and infinity until soft footfalls behind him break the spell. He turns too fast. The movement makes him dizzy and he slips off his elbows, begins to fall. A vice-like grip on his arm prevents it. Spaz. Looking so savage that, for a moment, Bone’s convinced he’s here to kill him. But he pulls Bone up and helps him over to the bed, where Ebony’s stood, shoving the few things Nia’s brought to the hospital for him into a small, black bag.

  “Why are you here?” he asks as Spaz lowers him down, and without speaking, begins to shove Bone’s legs into trousers.

  “You’re coming to the Zone,” Ebony says, not looking at him, her bottom lip caught beneath her teeth. But she’s not embarrassed by his nudity, that’s not her style. Something’s scared her. Badly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Spaz yanks Bone’s trousers up, his eyes glinting dangerously, tucking him in and zipping him up with the sort of offhand ease that makes such intimacy almost comfortable. “You don’t have to understand,” he says. “You just have to do as you’re told.”

  Bone frowns. “Why should I?”

  “You’re not safe here,” Spaz replies softly, handing him a shirt. “Rope was only the beginning.”

  Bone’s unable to restrain a half-hysterical note of laughter, considering Rope ended so much of him, and damn near killed him, to boot. “You’re kidding.”

  Ebony replies this time
, focused on his bag, her movements sharp and harried. “Please, hon, believe him.”

  Belief is not the issue here. “I do. I just don’t understand.” He struggles into his shirt, fumbling the buttons closed and trying not to panic at his skin’s reaction to the press of fabric, the suffocation of enclosure. He’s still not up to this, but argument is apparently not in the cards.

  “We don’t want you hurt,” Spaz says rigidly, standing up and turning away. Closing Bone out.

  “Why? Who am I to you?”

  The private hospital treatment, and now this removal from danger, are something more than solicitude, more than obligation. He’s done nothing to earn this. Maybe it’s because of who he was. If so, why can’t they simply come out and say so? There’s so much going on here. Too much. A game in play that he is unwittingly, unwillingly part of, and it all seems to revolve around a life he can’t remember. He wants answers, needs to understand why this has to happen. More than anything, though, he wants someone to be honest with him, no matter what it might do to the patches in his head. There’s no stopping what’s happening to him here. One way or another, he’s going to know, but he’d rather have answers before he loses his damn mind.

  “You’re someone we care about,” Ebony says, and that’s that. She doesn’t say anything else, and Spaz remains turned away, closed off, a peculiar tension riding his back. Ebony presses shoes onto Bone’s feet, her hands gentle, though she still won’t look at him. “He’s ready to go,” she tells Spaz.

  They take him out of the hospital in a private elevator. There’s a car waiting that looks a little like Stark’s. Nia mentioned something about Stark losing his badge. He doesn’t deserve that. If it weren’t for Stark, he’d be dead. At least, he thinks so. Nia says there’s so much more to it than that, but she refuses to elaborate in case it provokes traumatic flashbacks. She’s scared of losing him, even though she knows he’s not him. How strange. Bone slumps in the corner of the seat, weary to the marrow. He breathes out through his nose, the breath boiling hot on his lips. It seems the world at large feels free to take from him whatever it wants: his autonomy, his truth, his memories, and it’s all down to this skin. He’s had enough of being at its mercy.