cinder || dnf

chapter one

The screw through Dream's ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle. His knuckles ached from forcing the screwdriver into the joint as he struggled to loosen the screw, one gritting twist after another. By the time it was extracted far enough for him to wrench it free with his prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean.

Tossing the screwdriver onto the table, Dream gripped his heel and yanked the foot from its socket. A spark singed his fingertips and he jerked away, leaving the foot to dangle from a tangle of red and yellow wires.

He slumped back with a relieved groan. A sense of release hovered at the end of those wires- freedom. Having loathed the too small foot for years, he swore to never put the piece of junk back on again. He just hoped Patches would be back soon with its replacement.

Dream was the only full-service mechanic at New Beijing's weekly market. Without a sign, his booth hinted at his trade only by the shelves of stock android parts that crowded the walls. It was squeezed into a shady cove between a used netscreen dealer and a silk merchant, both of whom frequently complained about the tangy smell of metal and grease that came from Dream's booth, even though it was usually disguised by the aroma of honey buns from the bakery across the square. Dream knew they really just didn't like being next to him.

A stained tablecloth divided Dream from browsers as they shuffled past. The square was filled with shoppers and hawkers, children and noise. The bellows of men as they bargained with robotic shopkeepers, trying to talk the computers down from their desired profit margins. The hum of ID scanners and monotone voice receipts as money changed accounts. The netscreens that covered every building and filled the air with the chatters of advertisements, news reports, gossip.

Dream's auditory interface dulled the noise into a static thrumming, but today one melody lingered above the rest that he couldn't drown out. A ring of children were standing just outside his booth, trilling- "Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!"- and then laughing hysterically as they collapsed to the pavement.

A smile tugged at Dream's lips. Not so much at the nursery rhyme, a phantom song about pestilence and death that had regained popularity in the past decade. The song itself made him squeamish. But he did love the glares from passerby as the giggling children fell over in their paths. The inconvenience of having to swarm around the writhing bodies stirred grumbles from the shoppers, and Dream adored the children for it.

"Tommy! Tommy!"

Dream's amusement wilted. He spotted Chang Sacha, the baker, pushing through the crowd in her flour-coated apron. "Tommy, come here! I told you not to play so close to-"

Sacha met Dream's gaze, knotted her lips, then grabbed her son by the arm and spun away. The boy whined, dragging his feet as Sacha ordered him to stay closer to their booth. Dream wrinkled his nose at the baker's retreating back. The remaining children fled into the crowd, taking their bright laughter with them.

"It's not like wires are contagious," Dream muttered to his empty booth.

With a spine-popping stretch, he pulled his dirty fingers through his hair, combing it up into a messy ponytail, then grabbed his blackened work gloves. He covered his steel hand first, and though his right palm began to sweat immediately inside the thick material, he felt more comfortable with the gloves on, hiding the plating of his left hand. He stretched his fingers wide, working out the cramp that had formed at the base of his thumb from clenching the screwdriver, and squinted again into the city square. He spotted plenty of stocky white androids in the din, but none of them Patches.

Sighing, Dream bent over the toolbox beneath the worktable. After digging through the jumbled mess of screwdrivers and wrenches, he emerged with the fuse puller that had been long buried at the bottom. One by one, he disconnected the wires that still linked his foot and ankle, each spurting a tiny spark. He couldn't feel them through the gloves, but his retina display helpfully informed him with blinking red text that he was losing connection to the limb.