Land Without Hope

Chapter 13 - First Job

Rozeree's screams filled the modder's clinic. Raw and unrestrained. Clawing at the white walls as if they could somehow tear through the agony. The clinic's sterile air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and antiseptic. Mingling with the harsh, synthetic glow of machines that buzzed and whirred above her. Strapped down to the surgical table, her bare skin marked with thick, dark lines for each incision, Rozeree lay helpless. Stripped down to her undergarments and trembling as every nerve screamed.

To her right, an array of tools lay ready, scalpels, clamps, and crystalline metics glinting under the harsh lights. All designed to tear her apart and piece her back together as something else entirely. The modder, Knuckles, his white coat marred with streaks of blood, shoved a steel bite bar between her teeth.

"Bite down and stay still!" he snarled, his hands already slick with her blood.

Without hesitation, he continued, the scalpel slicing through her skin and carving across every inch of her body. Blood pooled, trickling down, staining the table as her skin peeled back. Exposing muscle, sinew, and then the bones beneath. Her vision blurring as he worked.

Tearing. Cutting. Prying. He implanted cold metal and crystalline enhancements along her entire skeleton. Every bone—arms, legs, ribs, spine—was brutally fortified. Each implant fusing to her frame in a flash of searing heat. It felt as if her very bones were being reshaped from the inside out.

She gasped for air, her body convulsing against the restraints as he installed layer upon layer of metics. Drilling them into her joints, wiring enhancers into her tendons, sealing her spine in an armored cage. The pain was overwhelming. Her vision slipping in and out. But she fought to stay conscious. Forcing herself to stare at the cold ceiling. She recited her mantra over and over, the words becoming a drumbeat to drown out the agony: I will be the greatest. This is what it takes to be free, to be powerful.

Knuckles exposed her organs in glistening red and purple, replacing and reinforcing each one with metic counterparts. Her lungs, her heart, her very eyes were replaced with crystalline structures. With each piece, her humanity ebbed away, leaving only the brutal, unstoppable machine she would become. Endure. Endure. Endure. The thought pounded through her, matching the rhythm of Knuckles.

Slice. Clamp. Seal. Slice. Clamp. Seal. Every piece of her body, every bone, every inch of muscle and flesh, had been transformed. She could feel it. The weight of the metics pressing down on her, the alien strength coursing through her like an infection.

When Knuckles finally stepped back, Rozeree lay reborn. Her skin slick with blood, her face wet with countless tears, her body screaming from every fiber. But beneath the raw, throbbing pain, she felt it.

A vicious power coiled like a beast inside her, ready to be unleashed.

"I... I...did it...," she breathed, her voice raw and broken, thick with blood from where her teeth had bitten down. A cough rattled through her, flecks of red spraying from her lips as she struggled for air. Her gaze was still glued on the clinic's cold, unyielding ceiling. The stark tiles above seemed to sway, blurring as her vision wavered. For a brief, flickering moment, the sterile brightness softened, the relentless pain dulled, and her mind fell backward.

"How'd you get a metic foot?" Her voice had been small then, curious, as she traced a finger along the shining metal of her father's prosthetic. They had been sitting on the floor, just the two of them, in a rare moment of peace. Between them, a simple game of knucklebones lay scattered.

Koshu chuckled, low and warm, as he tossed a bone high into the air, snatching two up before it hit the ground. "I got hurt in the war," he explained, his voice soft. "It wasn't too bad at first, but infection set in and they had to amputate."