Chapter 15: A Long Way HomeHow far have I made it? What, twenty feet?He turned back, his eyes resting on the steel door he had just crawled out of.

  …

  Seven feet?Joy.He wryly let out a weak ugh, but abruptly stopped.

  That might kill me.He left a faint, glowing trail of fluid behind him. Somewhere in the distance, a delivery drone passed. It was a heavy buzz that came and went like a crescendo.

  Down the block, he heard casual footsteps approaching. A man in a neon orange worker's vest, a bag over one shoulder, and a cup of overpriced coffee in his other hand.

  Xu watched him nearby.

  At least I didn’t suffer for nothing.

  The man gnced down as he approached. His eyes traced the glow, the trail, and the general situation of Xu id out on the asphalt.

  Xu felt mild anticipation.

  He raised an eyebrow, stepped over him without breaking stride, and continued down the block, humming to himself like he had seen this a million times before.

  Xu stared at the space where he'd been.

  Hm.

  “This is what progress looks like when you stop lying to yourself.” Dr. Drive’s words echoed in the empty cavern of his skull.

  Xu narrowed his eyes.

  “Pain isn’t telling me to stop, it’s telling me what to fix.”

  THAT’S NOT EVEN THAT DEEP MY WHOLE BODY HURTS LIKE HELL. OF COURSE I NEED TO FIX IT.

  He gritted his teeth.

  “Like greasing the wheels on a wheelchair would make it better than walking.” I am out of a wheelchair. I am ALSO out of a leg.

  I feel like they had a pretty damn good point.

  Draaaaaag.He used his only remaining arm to pull himself forward.Somewhere, a ventition unit rattled. Xu rested what was left of his cheek on the cold asphalt.

  Getting home this way just isn’t—

  No way.

  His eyes snagged on a silhouette down the road. His head popped up, pebbles unstuck from his face, and he fell to the asphalt below.

  A wheelchair sat outside a narrow entryway under a flickering porch light. I shouldn’t.Draaaag.

  It wouldn’t be cool.

  Draaaaaaaag.You are better than this.Draaaaaaaaaaag.Clink—Creak.But it IS comfortable, and who knows? Maybe they left it out to return it.Eh… I’ll bring it back it ter—Fsh.Oh, great, thanks, now I get to steal a wheelchair AND feel bad about it. For fucks sake. “We having a sale on guilt today?” he managed to say sardonically.

  Squeak.

  No.He rolled forward once more, extremely slowly.

  Squuuuueeeeaaaaak.His lips pursed. His eyes slowly closed in defeat as his ride announced his existence to the entire block.

  Xu squeaked along in his new wheelchair.

  This is karma.

  He had invented a one-arm technique about a block ago. It worked by pushing the right wheel aggressively down. This curved the wheelchair until it squeaked to a stop, then, kicking with his remaining leg, until it turned the left wheel enough to straighten himself back out.

  He felt like the fastest man alive.

  Squeak. Squeak.

  He turned.

  Squeak. Squeak.

  He turned.

  He passed a closed noodle cart. There was a small handwritten sign taped to the window that said BE BACK SOON in three nguages and had probably been there for six years.

  Hey, Taylor loves that pce, at least she used to.

  He passed a puddle.

  He caught his reflection in it.

  I really hope this is fixable.

  Squeak.

  People began to gradually hit the street, likely heading to work for early morning shifts.

  A kid, maybe six, walked past holding her father's hand. She gnced over. He looked back at her. She smiled and skipped.

  Hmmm.

  He rounded the corner.

  Three modded teenagers stepped out of a branched alley. They had masseter mods and suspiciously low-quality optical impnts.

  They saw a man rolling along in a wheelchair in the distance, in other words, they saw an easy mark—and a surprisingly bright one.

  "Look at this," the leader sneered. His voice was heavily synthesized. It buzzed with static. "Looks like someone should have bought more hardware."

  The kid on the left snapped a baton open. It crackled, blue arcs crawling along its length with the dry hiss of angry electricity.

  "Strip him," the leader said. "Take his optics. Leave the rest of the meat."

  “Who installs LEDs in their skin?” the third muttered.

  “Weird dude.”

  “Just get the fucking hardware.”

  Xu’s ride stopped squeaking. He looked up.

  He didn't feel fear. He felt profoundly inconvenienced, wildly inconvenienced, and deeply inconvenienced—all at the same time.

  I do not have the bandwidth for this.

  He was managing a crisis. A mugging felt like an insult. The teenagers stepped into the warm light of his flesh. They saw the golden light bleeding through his pores. They saw his heart. It was hammering. Xu’s face was deadpan.

  Then, the smell hit them. Burnt coins. Scorched Fat. Putrid cheese.

  Baton boy froze. The electricity died with a soft click. "Bro. What the fuck is wrong with him?"

  Xu tried to speak. His vocal cords felt like dry ash.

  "I am..." Xu rasped. The sound was loose and fbby. "...busy—”Fsh.“Headed home to sleep.”

  His eyes trembled, and his focus slipped, the world softening at the edges. A small, defeated frown pulled at his mouth, the kind you make when you realize that yes. That really did just happen.

  His eyes drifted shut, not in peace, but in surrender.

  Squeak.He rolled past them.

  "Did he just give us a thumbs up?" the third kid whispered.

  Xu’s wheelchair halted instantaneously. And slowly wheeled around.

  OH. OH. OH. I’M GONNA—NO—I.Phantom jazz echoed in the depths of his mind.His face was doing all sorts of weird things.

  I don't have it in me…

  "I think he's radioactive…”

  They didn't rob him. They gnced at each other and then scrambled over each other. They backed frantically into the alley. They looked terrified that whatever did this to him might be contagious.

  Finally, some reasonable people.

  Squeak.

  The sky had begun to lighten. The deep blue of night faded into a sickly gray dawn that was just beginning to break.

  The translucency of his skin became more obvious.

  I need to get somewhere I can hide.

  A mental image of his desk lying outside his window appeared in his mind.

  That does not fit lying low.He rolled up the sector where Taylor's apartment was and stopped outside the door.

  I don’t think I should use the front door. If I knock, someone could look over or see me. If someone sees me, I could spend the next ten hours of my life on a very expensive dissection table.Xu sighed.

  Squeak.

  He arrived in front of a cracked window.

  I’ve never been so grateful that she’s poor.

  He had a pn.

  It was a good pn. He would ease himself over the ledge, find the counter with his palm, lower himself to the floor, and be down before anything else in the apartment knew he was there.

  He had built this pn over the st half-block. It was the best one currently avaible to him. He only had a hand of 4 to work with. A “one functional arm” of spades, the “memory of her floor pn” of diamonds, a “fairly vague understanding of the do’s and don’ts of his new shape” of clubs, and his ace in the hole: the “will to live” of hearts.

  He wedged his good arm inside. He heaved himself in.

  Xu’s head poked in first, and before anything else happened, he recognized the smell.

  Noodles.

  They used to eat them together when they had first been pulled off the street. And underneath it, he could just faintly smell the same cheap soap brand they all used because they were all poor and knew it.

  He had been running on fumes and sheer stubbornness for the better part of four hours.

  He felt his body rex without warning.

  Oh no.

  His palm missed the edge of the counter.

  A perfect fold.

  He began to—The pn did not account for faucet knobs.

  Squeak.Wshhhhh.THUD.

  His torso followed suit, folding awkwardly over the edge. His head smmed into the sink with the force of a pnet, his organs jolted forward into his ribcage with a heavy, wet thud. It sounded like a bag of wet undry hit the floor.

  He twisted.

  Clunk.

  His Nanosword had jammed between the corner of the sink and the bottom of the windowsill.

  He y there, folded in half, his face pressed against the metal drain. He couldn't move his head.

  A refrigerator hummed nearby.

  A small gurgled groan came from the sink as darkness overtook his vision.

  He was home.

  Something was humming.

  Xu had decided, at some point, that the humming was important. He had been thinking about it for a while now. It had a rhythm, it was consistent, and it was the most reliable thing in his immediate universe, and he found that comforting.

  The drain smelled like eggs and grey water.

  He knew this because his nose was still in it.

  He had developed a theory, based on what he had calcuted to be somewhere in the range of forty minutes to four years.

  He was quite confident about this.

  That if he simply did not move, nothing bad could happen to him. This theory had held up remarkably well so far.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  “Good faucet.”

  “Reliable faucet.”

  He and the faucet had formed a co-dependent retionship. He just hadn’t informed it yet.

  The sink suddenly lit up as if the sun was being reflected around it, charging up to enlighten him.

  I’m ready.“Share your wisdom,” He very—very lucidly, whispered into the sink.

  Footsteps.

  A messenger?

  They stopped.

  No, come back.Squeak.

  The faucet had abandoned him.

  Xu froze mid-breath. His chest contracted. A tiny scream trapped somewhere between disbelief, fear, and fury cwed its way up his throat.

  Xu found this unacceptable.

  His only source of comfort had been stolen. He began to breathe faster and faster, until eventually. Another squeak sounded out, and the calming drip had resumed.

  Footsteps moved away. Came back. Something soft nded against the side of his face.

  So soft.

  He decided it was also reliable.

  Click.The shine of sink enlightenment had vanished.

  Something scraped against something else.

  Then nothing.

  He slept.

  He awoke to a signal from the sink, it had more knowledge to share.

  He stared into It’s ethereal light. Harder. Harder. Harder still. Shapes began to popute his vision.

  Xu banished this enlightenment with his eyelids.

  Shapes began to emerge in the glow. Whispering dots. Shadows flitting behind his eyelids. He ignored them, studied them, and became them. His mind drank in the forbidden knowledge contained in their depths.

  "Yo….ust l..ve him… e sink, T…or."

  “Mmmm.” He felt nice.

  "I le..t hm… a to..el."

  The sound was cozy, like being submerged in warm water.

  A pause.

  "...y….ay."

  Xu became aware that he was being looked at. He couldn't anyone looking—the edges of everything were soft and slightly behind where they were supposed to be, like the entire sink had a natural glow.

  "Xu." A voice, close. "... a…ke."

  "You…. glow…." a voice said. "You …. color when… ….conscious."

  How kind. Xu smiled in bliss.

  "Grea..t," a voice said. "Super. ……eally reassuring."Xu suddenly flew through the world.

  Lethal_Resonance