Chapter 1: Murphy-Meilin
Vancouver/Indoc 4, North America Territory, October 2156
“Mom, this is embarrassing,” Sora urged under her breath, looking out the car window at the ever altering and expanding city of Vancouver. She could feel the creeping autumn cold pressing up against the windows. “You don’t have to escort me the whole way there.”
“Oh, yes I do.” Mom still tapped away on her workpad, a huge tablet generally issued to the chiefs of staff on Star Destroyers. She was writing a very long message to someone—probably Havilah, ERS Hydra’s ancient Head of Medical and Sora’s godmother, who was likely overseeing Mom’s experiments and scientific team back on the ship up in space. “I give you 70-30 odds of running off the moment I turn my back on you, and never making it to Indoc 4.”
Sora covered her eyes with one hand. “Admiral Bryce told Captain Dorian that I wouldn’t be allowed back on-ship until I completed this program, so I’m not gonna run away. Alright? You can go. Drop me off at the entrance and high tail it back to the Hydra. Kick Dad in the nuts on your way.”
Mom cracked a small smile. In her mid-fifties now, she was still a bombshell—maybe 165 centimeters, like Sora, with annoyingly perky tits and bright red hair that shone like a penny in the Vancouver sunshine, pulled back into an artfully messy bun. People said Sora looked like her mom. She hoped that she’d age like Heti, but Mom’s overall prettiness and the comments older navy men made about her mom often made Sora feel uncomfortable. Mom wasn’t wearing her shawl or anything momish these days, like she might back on the Hydra when it got cold. Her professional blouse was downright low-cut, like she was on the freaking prowl.
Sora rolled her eyes. Such a goddamn cougar.
“I have no plans to visit your father, thank you.” Mom sounded a little frosty. “I did want to let you know you’re invited to spend your holidays with me and my parents. They’re renting a place in Olympus City for a week to have a little more room. I’m hoping to get Eles a release, so she can come too. It would be nice to see her.”
Mom’s parents lived on Mars, in one of the domes. While Sora liked them, she didn’t want to deal with Eles, her certifiably crazy younger sister, in Martian close quarters. She had started looking forward to holidays with her maternal family… no Dad or her youngest sister Teli in the mix, who both made her crazy.
Running a hand over her face, Sora tried not to react too explosively to the suggestion—Mom wouldn’t take it well.
“Do we like… have to do that? She’s only been with the headshrinks for a few months. Last time I saw Eles, they had her so medicated she was drooling and talking to herself. I don’t even think she recognized me.”
“She’s being transferred to Tau Ceti soon,” Mom said distantly. “Might be our only chance to see her before she goes.”
“Her dream come true,” Sora muttered sardonically. Eles had always been obsessed with Cetians and psychic abilities and marrying a Cetian; Sora and their baby sister Teli liked to get Eles those human-written Cetian bodice-ripper romance novels as a joke, but Eles earnestly ate them up. Mom gave her a patented Look, and Sora relented a little. “I’m just saying. And besides, why exactly do we have to be so precious about her? Didn’t she help fish-fry a bunch of civilians and get Dad thrown out of his post? No one can call me a bleeding heart over the freaking Z, but war crimes are war crimes, Mom.”
Mom put down her tablet, blanking the screen as she did so. “Sora. I really wish you wouldn’t pretend not to care. One day, somebody is going to believe you. Teli already does.”
Sora chuffed and glared out the window again. She was loath to admit it out loud, but she knew she’d spent years in school somehow making Teli’s life a misery, and she hadn’t even really done it on purpose. She’d thought she was taking care of her. When she’d seen Teli recently out in the Skelow Trade Federation, now a big spiffy captain just like Dad once was, it was plain she and Sora had some issues to work through.
“Look. I’ll come to Mars when I get some R and R. Okay? Tell Gran and Gramps to throw another cocktail on the barby for me, or whatever. At least there’s no possibility of running into Dad there.”
Heti reached out and patted Sora’s forearm three times, in what passed as soothing from her. Mom wasn’t exactly bad at the whole “Mom” thing, but she also wasn’t great at it. There was always this weird feeling like they were all strangers to each other, and Sora guessed that wasn’t far from the reality, right? Things went bad when too many Kuromotos spent time together. She and Teli had spent a whole lot of serious time together, like actual years, and their relationship was a mag-lev train wreck. So was Mom and Dad’s.
“God, we’re such a fucking disaster,” Sora said under her breath. “Maybe all of us should be remanded to some experimental, mandatory in-patient counseling. Doesn’t seem fair that it’s just me, while the rest of you get to run around free, pretending you’re all fine and sane.”
“Ugh. Then I’d be stuck with your father for weeks.” Mom sounded thoroughly disgusted. “I wish you’d be more curious about this treatment. You’re treating it like a punishment.”
Sora shot her a scathing look. “Mom, I’m third officer on a Star Destroyer. An admiral just basically told me that I’ve got two choices: do this crazy experimental therapy for four weeks and get my ass certified, or they’ll bust me out as a nutcase. What’s that, if it’s not a punishment?”
Mom shrugged. “An opportunity?”
Sora groaned and looked back out the window. “You’re killing me here. You never go to your counseling sessions. You and Dad survived what, two months of weekly couples counseling? One hour every Wednesday, over vid call? And you’re lecturing me?”
“That’s our business,” Mom said distantly, picking up her tablet again, maybe as some kind of defense. Therapy onboard the Fenris had given Sora a lot of insights into that kind of crap—she just wished it had been enough to avoid the cyborg loony bin. “Your father’s nothing but secrets stashed under secrets—he can barely open his mouth without lying these days. I’m going to keep having my lawyer lash him until he gives me some answers about what happened to you when you died.”
“Don’t,” Sora said shortly. “Okay? That stuff’s best left alone. It’s in the past. I hate talking about it, even to you. Scares the shit out of me.”
They were on the other side of Vancouver now, driving through a blighted zone that was once an expansive suburb. It was all blackened rubble now, bombed back to the stone ages decades ago, and full of wild shrubbery and meadows. The foundations of homes and lonely brick fireplaces stuck out between bushy young trees and banks of fallen leaves. The early fall colors here, all yellows and golden orange, took Sora’s breath away.
“Well, get used to it—I guarantee they’re going to be asking about it in therapy.” Mom still tapped out her message as she spoke—or notes, or award-winning article, or whatever the fuck it was. “You should be excited. I’ve been reading about this program—Savin Kalgari and Corrine Wang have had incredible successes in their protocol with military cyborgs like yourself… even people with worse experiences, more extensive limb replacements, very traumatic deaths. I think you’re lucky to be chosen. You’re making history.”
Sora went a little cold. “Excited? Lucky? Mom… if you’d had your ass blown to pieces and someone was locking you up for four weeks to talk about it, you wouldn’t be fucking excited about it. Okay? You don’t know what you’re talking about. Go be excited about the fucking director’s papers all you want, but don’t tell me how to feel about it.”
Mom deployed her Scientist Voice. “You’re not even curious? Savin Kalgari is a world-renowned expert on cyborg psychology and combat PTSD, and he selected you for this program specifically. You could look at this more like an invitation, and less like an invasive punishment. If you wanted to.”
Sora’s jaw hurt, and she realized she was clenching her teeth.
“Look. I know I did something wrong and freaked people out, okay? I knew something like this was coming. Just don’t tell me it’s not a punishment.”
“Maybe you want to think it’s a punishment because you feel guilty?” Mom pointed this out neatly and maybe a little smugly. Sora rolled her eyes with a burst of cold rage, but she didn’t react.
“Maybe.” She watched the bombed-out empty suburb pass by, unable to avoid thinking about all the little lives that ended when this place evaporated in the fog of old war.
“You planning to tell me what you did?” Mom asked. “Something to do with that marine you were seeing maybe?”
“Please don’t do this.” Sora kept her voice blank. “I don’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t even talk to Hayden about it, and he’s my goddamn best friend.”
“Well… I’m your mom, and not serving on the same ship, and I’m not the XO of that ship. I don’t have a conflict of interest.”
Sora roiled, a little offended for Hayden. “Hey! He doesn’t have a conflict of interest. He left me alone about this shit, as much as he could.”
“And you’re sure he didn’t have anything to do with Captain Dorian releasing you to take part in this program?” Mom asked. “You don’t think he told her you weren’t doing well? That you needed therapy?”
Sora swallowed hot bile, so freaked out she could scream, until Mom lost the knowing look in her eye.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said at last. “I know this whole thing feels violating for you. Being locked up against your will.”
“Thank you,” Sora said coolly. “But don’t say ‘violating’, okay? I’m not a pansy.”
Mom kept going. “I can see why the situation makes you feel so angry. I’ve never been remanded to therapy, but I think I would feel violated as well.”
Sora sighed. “Mom… look. Please don’t use that word. I fucking hate it.”
“You can’t stand to hear you feel violated? Really?” Mom sounded disbelieving.
“Makes me sound like a pansy. I’m fine. Just want to get back to the Fenris.” Sora tightened her arms across her chest, feeling the hard metal of her cybernetics as she did so.
Mom laughed. “You’re the very opposite of a pansy. ‘Violated’ is the best word for the job. Do you have an alternative?”
“What do I look like, a thesaurus?” Sora asked, exasperated. “I hate talking about my goddamn feelings. I do it for hours on end with the ship’s counselor. By the end, I’m just like… mental jelly. It’s exhausting. And now I gotta do it for four weeks, and I don’t even have Hayden to drink with or Cass to bitch at when the sessions are over. I thought I was making all this progress, and then I get sent off to this goddamn cursed-awful wasteland, and for what? To be some guinea pig for a bunch of nerds in scrubs? No thanks.”
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Instead of uselessly and rhetorically asking me ‘why’, maybe you should actually ask why, and figure out the answer. Why do you think your therapist would lead you to believe you were making so much progress, and then have you remanded to group therapy for four weeks? What happened?”
Sora stared out the window silently. When Mom didn’t ask further questions or rescue her, she knew she had to speak.
“Fine. I stopped seeing that marine. Wyn Vakarian.”
Mom waited quietly, perhaps hoping Sora might go on. When Sora said nothing further, Mom spoke.
“I thought he was just a fling. Did you have feelings for him?”
Sora’s temper broke open some. “God—Mom. Why do you have to sound like some kind of goddamn vid series? Do I ever have feelings for the people I date? When have I ever come crying to you about some fuck buddy and all my goddamn feelings? Do I seem like someone who cries and jabbers about wedding rings and romance and all that shit?” She banged her head back against the car seat. “I’m fucking broken or something, I swear to god.”
“You don’t trust anyone,” Mom noted, sounding like Sora’s therapist for a second. “So what happened with Wyn? Get tired of him?”
“No.” Sora covered her eyes with her real hand. The other one, the metal one, was for smashing things. The cyber shit didn’t get to do things like touch people she cared about or come anywhere near her face, not if she could help it. She wasn’t sure if she trusted the damn thing. “I can’t talk about it. Okay? I’m sorry. I broke it off. He didn’t do anything wrong. Then I told my fucking therapist about it, and she let them drag me off to the therapy gulag for a month. Teach me to tell her the goddamn truth.”
Mom made a quiet thinking sound, a small hm. “I doubt she could stop it, not with Indoc 4 and Admiral Bryce insisting you attend, and no pushback from Captain Dorian. I doubt Dorian had much choice either, honestly. But she must have reported whatever happened up the chain, and I can tell something happened—not just some breakup. No admiral or CO would care about a breakup between an LT and a marine.”
“I don’t know anything. Okay?” Sora said semi-explosively. “Why don’t we talk about you, Mom? How’re divorce negotiations going? Dad asking to shoot New Daddy out of a cannon before he’ll let you keep all your pension credits?”
Mom gave her an even, very calm look. “We do not call Captain Brown ‘New Daddy’. Understand?” She looked down at her workpad again. “I’m having fun with him, nothing more. Your father’s making far too much hay out of it. If Soren had gotten cybernetics years ago, and if he weren’t blasted on painkillers and low doses of anti-hyperspace medications all the time, our sex life wouldn’t have dried up.”
Sora knew she should be offended hearing anything about her parents’ sex lives, but she’d never been precious about them either—especially not with the pair of them off on the Hydra most of her life, having a merry old time together. It made perfect sense to her that their married life only existed on a starship; once Dad was stuck in a gravity well, the marriage was effectively over. It had been staggering along on an ugly form of life support, ever since Dad had come back injured and traumatized from hyperspace at the end of 2150, and now it was finally declared dead. Just like the rest of their cursed-awful family relationships.
“He’s such a goddamn monster these days,” Sora muttered. “I’m kinda surprised you stayed married to him this long.”
Mom shrugged one shoulder uncomfortably. “That’s your perspective, which is perfectly understandable, given your history with him. If you read your sister’s letters to me, you’d see exactly why I’ve felt uncomfortable leaving Soren since he lost his command. As Teli’s fond of reminding me, he’s disabled, wheelchair-bound, in constant pain, miserable, addicted to painkillers, and in need of care. I’ve felt essentially handcuffed to him for years now.”
The mere thought of Teli emotionally manipulating and guilting their mom from two-hundred lightyears away made Sora outright snarl.
“Yeah, well, Teli can bite a dick. Or better yet, if she cares so much, she can get her self-righteous little ass back here and take care of him herself. You’ve done enough for him.”
Mom smiled a little, probably despite herself. “I’ve suggested to your sister that she should come home and govern your father, yes. Soren doesn’t let me take care of him, in any case. Teli has a way with him, an understanding. Your father feeds on that kind of constant sympathy, and I just can’t give it to him. I keep wanting to kick him, until he picks himself up off the floor and gets cybernetics. I can’t stand another year of his self-pity… I really can’t.”
Sora made a disgusted sound. She had the same exact instinct, incidentally. It was one thing to go through an acute period of misery, but to wallow in it like Dad did… she found it absolutely pathetic. Some predator cat that lived inside her soul just wanted to eviscerate him and eat his guts.
“There it is.” Sora watched the huge campus of Indoc Center 4 rise up out of the wasteland as they crested a hill. “I haven’t been here in forever, not since I finished physical therapy. Kinda hoping I’d never have to come back.”
“Murphy-Meilin is one of the premier cybernetics research institutes on the continent,” Mom said bracingly, referring to the part of Indoc 4 where Sora had woken up with her cybernetics, and where she was going now. Sora had been too messed up when she’d woken up there the first time to appreciate that it was fancy or anything; all she’d wanted to do was get out. “If this program is successful and expanded from Kalgari’s pilot, it could help an enormous number of veterans and resurrected survivors after traumatic injuries. Try to think of your time here as doing a service, helping to fight another sort of battle. You’re a good soldier—you can accept that, can’t you?”
“I can’t throat-punch it, and I can’t hit it with a phase missile,” Sora said dourly. “So no. But I’ll try. Not like I’ve got a choice, right? Not if I want to get back to the Fenris and salvage what’s left of my fucked-awful career.”
The final approach to the campus seemed to take forever. Indoc 4 was truly massive, a city unto itself, with spiraling glass towers full of trees and hydroponics, walks and gardens and arcades of steel, white concrete and blue glass. There were numerous educational and research institutes, enormous blocks of housing, and a general sense of being away from the overall pace of life, while it still felt like the center of its own considerable universe. Sora didn’t have a problem with Indoc 4—it was a lot like Indoc 3, and she’d gone to school there—so much as she dreaded the Murphy-Meilin Institute of Cybernetics ensconced within it.
Murphy-Meilin sported a labyrinthine campus, with a series of interior courtyards, atriums, and compounds, with a wall around the exterior. The wall was supposedly intended to protect the place’s patients, but Sora had always felt like Murphy-Meilin was more of a prison than a hospital. Probably 90% of the people who went through there got run-of-the-mill cybernetics, but there were just enough of them with trauma, combat training, and especially powerful weapons grafted onto their bodies to make advanced security precautions very necessary. Some of the “orderlies” had cybernetics themselves—in Sora’s memory, one of them had a tranq gun replacing his lost arm. The guy was probably 200 centimeters tall and scared the absolute shit out of her. If someone told her there were battle mechs, combat robots, and auto gun turrets installed inside the walls, Sora wouldn’t be surprised.
The self-directed ground car rental took them past the entrance of Indoc 4, RFID appointment monitoring allowing them through automatically, and the Center’s navigational network took over from there. The car’s interior panels flashed a pleasant teal green and began to speak in a soft, female voice.
“Hello, Lieutenant Sora Kuromoto of the Earth Republic Star Navy. Welcome to Indoctrination Center Four. We see you’ve brought your mother with you as your emotional support person. The staff at Murphy-Meilin Cybernetics Institute eagerly await your arrival and applaud your self-care choices.”
“Thank you, Indoc,” Mom said politely. She always minded her P’s and Q’s around the chatterbots. The Indoc Centers loved their network chatterbots for medical privacy and psychological check-ins. Sora had to admit they were preferable to a person for some interactions, since they never seemed like they were judging you. Usually when Republic systems wanted to give you a chance to ask questions or check in, they intentionally had a human do it.
“Thanks,” Sora said sardonically, looking out the window. At least she didn’t have to feel bad about being sarcastic or inattentive with a chatterbot, and she could just look around.
Most of Indoc 4’s ground space was dedicated to walking and buildings, so the little roads were small, efficient, and aggressively planned out to keep them out of the way. Indoc 4 sported a spoke-and-wheel design spiderwebbing across the entire Center campus, with main traffic driving around the edge on a highway circle, before turning inward near their destination. Currently the road led them around the wheel, and it would only turn when they came to the correct spoke. At the edges of the campus stood a great deal of hydroponics, experimental greenhouses, community gardens for enjoyment and heritage planting, and incredible, efficient concrete blocks of utilitarian housing, made more pleasant by creeping vines, lush trees, and rooftop oases with living grass and moss insulation.
The vehicle interior spoke again. “We see that your stay with us is scheduled for twenty-eight days with the Special Program for Extensive Cybernetics and Trauma Therapy at Murphy-Meilin Cybernetics Institute. Congratulations for being selected to take part in this experimental program. The Earth Republic thanks you for your service, Lieutenant Kuromoto. Do you have any questions before the commencement of your stay?”
“Yeah. Are there any other commissioned officers slated to attend this thing?” Sora’s voice came out sounding a little dead. She could maybe bear this therapy shit if there were a couple familiar faces from Academy. She could think of nothing worse than attending therapy with a bunch of stony, knuckle-dragging machinists and NCOs with chips on their shoulders, who thought she didn’t deserve a commission and didn’t understand hard work.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” the car said, “but that information is confidential. Upon intake at Murphy-Meilin and commencement of your time in SPECT Therapy, you will be stripped of your rank identifiers and called by your first name only. You are free to disclose your rank to others if you so choose, but the staff of Murphy-Meilin ask that you wait at least ten days before making such disclosures to your fellow patients.”
Sora leaned her head back, suppressing a sigh so Mom wouldn’t catch on. No rank. It would be a lot like her time undercover on Sirius Base… without the mafiosos, at least. She’d be nothing more than a pretty face, with everyone treating her however they wanted. They’d all have cybernetics, too, so it wasn’t like her arm would be much threat. An icy claw of fear began to take a firmer and firmer grip around her stomach.
The car turned onto Spoke 8, Vancouver Science Center Way, and started to wend along a path into the heart of Indoc 4. Kids played in huge roving groups, kicking a football into the car’s path constantly and causing it to stop, while they laughed uproariously, probably making a game out of it. Sora watched the little wolf packs enviously, wishing she could just go back to being ten and running around with Cassidy and Hayden all day. She hated being an adult. She had no idea why she’d been in such a rush to get to Academy and up into spaceships all the time—it was way better to be down here under a bunch of maple and birch trees with leaves changing color over your head, playing games with your friends on a cold, blue-sky day.
“I remember this road, coming to visit you after you woke up,” Mom said obliquely. Sora opened her mouth to speak, but the car had its mic open and spoke instead.
“Lieutenant Kuromoto was revived here at Murphy-Meilin in DATE REDACTED.” The pleasant voice downshifted suddenly when it hit the redaction protocol. “Lieutenant Kuromoto’s revival with cybernetics was granted, after expiration endured in service to the Earth Republic at LOCATION REDACTED, due to CAUSE REDACTED. The Earth Republic thanks you for your service, Lieutenant Kuromoto.”
Expiration. Sora choked on her own saliva, not sure if she was laughing or maybe a little horrified. Like cow’s milk or something. Hit my expiration date and got some boracic acid sprinkled on me, so I don’t smell like I’m rotting. That’s great. Love it.
She looked forward to telling Hayden she was considered “expired.” That’s how she was gonna sign off her letters to him and Cassidy when she got a chance to write, Sora vowed. Your Expired Buddy.
“Expiration,” Mom mused. “That’s a very polite term for what it conceals.”
“I prefer ‘exploded’, but the chatterbots never take it on.” Sora chuckled. “Or I dunno—how about ‘exsanguinated’? That’s a good one. I probably exsanguinated. At a certain point, you sorta lose track of the exact thing that killed you. I think somebody told me at some point, but I was definitely too out of it to remember.”
Mom blanched, but Sora just sat there, unflinching. She’d become pretty matter of fact about this stuff. If you got too precious about bleeding out after some bastard caught you with a bomb, you started to lose your goddamn mind. Having died once was kinda nice—you got a lot less scared about the idea of doing it again.
Murphy-Meilin’s tree-shielded compounds and its rusty reclaimed brick wall came into sight, and Sora realized her one real hand was tingly, a little sweaty and shaky. God, she made herself want to puke sometimes, getting all freaked out over a goddamn set of buildings. She wished there was some way she could’ve had her other best friend Cassidy, Hayden’s twin sister, come with her instead of Mom. Cass would know she was nervous, and would start talking right about now, launching into an old story from high school, or complaining about some commander on a station who’d been an incompetent dick. Anything but let Sora sit here and stew, feeling like a scared rabbit.
The car stopped at the gates of Murphy-Meilin, and the car interior spoke again.
“Welcome to Murphy-Meilin Cybernetics Institute. Please enjoy your stay. The trunk lock has been released so that you may retrieve your belongings.”
“Time to face the music.” Sora stared dolefully at the gates, as Mom opened the door and let them both out of the passenger compartment.
“You’ll be fine,” Mom soothed briskly, ushering her daughter ahead of her, as if Sora might try to make a break for it. Not the worst idea, if Sora didn’t worry some battle droid would be after her in five seconds. Crazy killer cyborg on the loose in Indoc 4, the news vids would stream.
Sora shouldered her canvas duffle and followed Mom into Main Intake, allowing them to scan the chip installed in her cybernetic arm, examining her identification wordlessly. She took in little details of the place, the way Intake acted as a chokepoint at the gates where even cars couldn’t follow… the lines of employees on one side in their scrubs, the patients allowed leave into the rest of the Indoc Center, everyone with chips in their hands…. How very Murphy-Meilin, making even their employees into cyborgs. Mom spoke to an intake tech, asked them where they were supposed to go, and they were pointed out of Intake to the lobby and a set of doors.
The main lobby beyond Intake had more plants now, since the last time Sora was here, and a little waterfall with real rocks. Kids there to visit parents played along the side of the pool, laughing and shouting. The sadness and sickness of the place felt so invisible down in the lobby with the visitors, even when Sora knew that the last stages of Recovery—PT and visitation zones and private patient rooms—were just upstairs.
“They said we’re to go to the Psych Wing, unsurprisingly.” Mom scanned a chit she’d been given at a kiosk, bringing up the institute’s map on her tablet. “Ever been there?”
“Psych came down and assessed me a few times in Recovery, but I never went there myself,” Sora said, subdued. The lobby felt cold. She had to resist the urge to enter the east bank of elevators set into a high wall of sandy marble, the ones that rode up to the rehab floors, where she’d spent a huge period of time getting used to her arm and spine. “You got it on your map?”
“All set.” Mom put away her tablet, leading the way. They passed the east bank of elevators and the main canteen where visitors and employees ate in large numbers. Here the ceiling lowered over a wide passageway lined with more marble, leading to a set of doors, before Sora and Mom walked out into one of the institute’s many courtyards. Advanced-recovery patients in comfortable clothing—not quite civvies, but not hospital gowns either—walked around out here on the emerald grass with rehabilitation coaches, or while visiting with family. Sora winced to see an arm a little like her own, the shoulder piece overtaking much of the collar bone and upper chest, on a woman who looked about thirty-five, with a couple kids staring at it with saucer eyes.
“God, this place is depressing,” she said in an undertone to Mom.
“I think it’s amazing.” Mom caught her by surprise. “Nearly every person who gets cybernetics here was dead just a short while ago. Some of these people weren’t revivable with any other method, not with full use of their bodies or minds. But here they are—like living miracles.”
Sora knew Mom was referring to her as well, but she winced again.
“I don’t feel like a miracle,” she confessed. “Are miracles supposed to feel shitty all the time?”
Mom gave her a genuine belly laugh. “Probably not. What kind of shitty?”
“I don’t know,” Sora said reflexively. “Guilty shitty? Worried shitty? Angry shitty? Sometimes just kinda… down shitty? Is that enough variety for a Shitty Superpack?”
Mom patted her fleshy shoulder, careful never to draw attention to Sora’s cybernetics by touching them, like she sensed it was a bad idea.
“Why do you feel guilty?” she asked softly, escorting Sora across the courtyard to another of the institute’s tall buildings of white concrete, which was probably Psych. Sora had never been into this one before; she could see screened verandas and terraces along its side on the higher floors, probably spots for crazy cyborgs to get some fresh air without a chance of escaping… or jumping. Great.
“Today? Mostly Wyn,” Sora said in a low voice, like someone might hear her. “Not really short on shit to feel guilty about.”
They entered Psych’s dark little lobby, after Sora had to scan her arm again at the front of the building for the doors to even open—that shit was ominous. Psych Intake had a lobby, much smaller and weirdly claustrophobic than the main lobby, like it was trying to be cozy. Sora found the place scarily quiet, if she was honest with herself. What was she expecting though? Muzak? People screaming in the distance? Chains rattling and doors slamming and children singing creepily, maybe?
Isn’t that the sort of place where I belong? Sora wondered idly, suspended between webs of slinking thoughts, as Mom spoke to the nurses and checked her in.
“Lieutenant Kuromoto?” one of them asked, getting her attention. He was an intake nurse in teal scrubs, directing her towards an automated door that unlocked at his command. “We’ll need you to come check in your possessions and change clothes, please. Your mother can accompany you, if you’d like, until you’re settled in your room.”
Sora almost told him that she didn’t need her mommy to help her change clothes, but the words died before they escaped; instead, she only nodded. Why were the walls off-white? Why was everything decorated with abstract watercolors that felt like the most boring gesture toward water and calming strokes? Why was it so goddamn quiet? She already felt weirdly defeated by this place.
Wordlessly, though, she proceeded in and did as she was ordered. Good soldier, right? Like usual.