BioSynth | ONC 2021 WINNER | MM Romance | Sci-Fi | Complete

Twelve: Monday

⚠ WARNING: ⚠ if you're reading both novellas, read SynTracker first this week.

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Quentin came to with a start, struggling to free himself from his restraints, terror gnawing at his insides. Something tore as he fell to the ground, leaning on a hand that was strong but not there. Just a metal skeleton, all the way up to his elbow. Inhuman.

Connors had branded him in a way he'd never be rid of. He wondered whether he'd ever hold a camera in a way that fit after this.

A camera?

Laughter burst forth from his lips, his go-to reaction when the world's absurdity reached its peak point. He'd be given a pickaxe, not a camera. Not if this was the mines. He pressed on his grief, forcing it down; this wasn't the time to deal with it, not yet. Figuring out where he was and what to do took precedence.

A blanket. That had been what he'd mistaken for restraints. A blanket on a bed. His internal clock told him it was Monday night. He'd lost an entire day. And now here he was, in a windowless room. To... To what? To be processed?

Why would they let him charge unrestrained or bothered to cover him? He still wore the torn uniform he'd have used for the raid; his feet were bare. And something else had been done to him. He didn't know what — couldn't tell, even with a full system diagnostic. Everything was in working order, except for the damage he'd sustained at Connors's hands, and even that caused no further pain. His system had recognised it, catalogued it, registered that the damage was too permanent to require a warning.

Had Ian brought him here?

Quentin got up, studying his surroundings. Not the mines. A motel room, smaller, bleaker than the ones he'd rented in his recent past. Just another version of their garage, then. Wherever the mines were, Ian was turning him in personally. They were on a road trip. And Ian had left Quentin here convinced he wouldn't turn himself on and had left to... His imagination failed him there.

Maybe Ian didn't want to share space with a BioSynth unless he absolutely had to.

But how had Quentin turned himself back on? It shouldn't have been possible for any model. The switch interrupted the current to all three chips at once — memory, emotions, tracking — so that only the organs kept working. A physical thing, so BioSynths couldn't bypass it.

There were no answers to be found here, but the outside posed a challenge that could affect his very survival. He needed to think. If his assumptions were wrong, if this wasn't a motel room but an elaborate processing room, the way he'd come to eliminated any possibility of pretending he was still turned off; information-gathering was the only course of action.

Not needing to turn the light on to see was more curse than blessing, he realised as he stepped foot in the bathroom.

The man in the mirror was straight out of a horror vid. The damage to his face started just next to his eye, the acid having eaten a considerable portion of his cheek. Blood splatter, decorated by the random patterns Connors had traced on his skin, completed the ensemble. And his left hand would cause nightmares in any child.

Even if he hid the arm, he'd never pass for human again.

Quentin couldn't stand the idea of his flesh showing proof Connors had touched him, a feeling of wrongness so deep it suffocated him. He scrubbed his face hard in the sink, a process made more difficult for the lack of a real left hand, his processing speed doing overtime.

Gone, gone, he needed all of it gone. He replayed the memory of Connors dissolving under the acid as he washed what was left of his cheek, finding a measure of comfort in that one moment. The man would never touch another BioSynth again as he had him. As he had Clementine.