Simular Beings

Identities Stolen

Val crashed in through the back door.

"Lass? That you?"

On the bed, there was Bread, looking bewildered as always. Or was it shock? His expressions were so hard to read without any skin on him.

"Tada!" She pulled out the veil for him to see. While she was running over, she tweaked the presets a little so that it was quicker on the implementation. The facial features were perfect. It was exactly what she'd been looking for. "A new face for a new member of our team!"

"Whoa!" Bread exclaimed. It was the excited reaction she'd been looking for.

"Lass?" Coach barged in from the other side. He ran over and snatched the veil from her hands. It softly molded around his fingers, drooping down as if it couldn't withstand the gravity. "Nano-Fibrogen?! Val, tell me right now where you got this from!"

She rolled her eye. "I got it fair and square." If she stole it before it arrived at Greg's, then it clearly wasn't Greg's.

"How?"

She shrugged. "I'm just smart."

"This isn't a matter of smart—"

"Just drop it! Please."

Coach shook his head. "All actions have a price. That's the one thing you should've learned as someone who's lived down under."

It was always these lectures. Why was he breathing down her back? Why couldn't Coach just trust her for once? She finally had what she'd wanted. She was finally given another chance to redeem her wrongdoings of the past, but things always got in her way—Coach, Greg, money...

It always came back to the money.

The rich could wipe their asses with sheets of gold while people like her were struggling to get by. They kidnapped druggies and commoners like choosing produce from a local food market—experimented on them, tortured them, sold them off while she could barely manage to save a single kid. If she'd had that kind of money, Beady wouldn't have been...

She choked back the tears.

As she watched Bread curiously staring at the veil, she could feel that invigorating feeling she'd felt before come surging back. She still had this. She could still turn everything around.

Bread reached out and touched the edges of the veil; it slid across his fingers, sticking ever so slightly. The substance looked viscous like the grease on her pizza she'd had yesterday.

"Stop!" Coach slapped his hands away. "You'll get to use it soon enough. Don't touch it now." He turned his attention back to her. "Dinner's on the table. At least get some food. We can talk about all this later."

She waved off his offer. "Gotta go. Still got things to do." She grabbed her gym bag and started packing a different set of tools from the desk.

"Go where? You just got back."

"We're running low on funds. You know that."

"You fallin' back into your old ways, lass? Let me help—"

"No, stay with Bread. You're the only one who can fix him."

"What am I now? Just some stay-at-home repairman?" He shook his head. "I thought you quit bein' a thief."

"Well, it's not like there's a better way." She guided Bread to the bed. "C'mon! Let's try the new stuff out first."

"C'mon, my ass." Coach motioned to Bread. "Lie down."

Bread giddily slid up the mattress.

Coach carried over the gelatinous material and placed it carefully on top of the boy's face. It slid down his forehead and neck. The liquidy substance started to mold around the edges of his artificial bone structure, crawling down his eyes and nose, digging deep into the crevices...