/BE./

Prologue-Silence

It didn't matter how well he wore his skin graft over his endoskeleton. There was always rust where there wasn't supposed to be.

Rusting was like a disease. Oxidation was the sworn enemy of Kai during the humid summers in the city of Cephir. He frowned as he picked away at the rust that had taken up residence at his elbow. The folks at the lab had done a poor job of fitting his skin, as was to be expected. As with almost everyone, they weren't sure what to do with him, he was as much a puzzle to them as he was to himself. He may have been ten at the time, but it was the first time in two years that he had a body.

Kai hated the thought of being an android. He had grown used to the fact that his consciousness lived comfortably in a server room in a remote location somewhere, where he stayed for the past two years. Those two years had been uneventful, well spent analyzing miscellaneous information that he scrounged up and replaying his memories. He wasn't burdened with the need to eat. To drink. To breathe. He was awake twenty-six hours a day and nine days a week. His source of power had been almost infinite. Staying within the confines of his mind was a saving solace for him, now gone. The thought that he would have a body was unfathomable, something he thought to be impossible.

If he were to be honest with himself, it was still surreal. Curiously, he looked at his new hands in wonder. He never had hands. Nor legs, much less with feet attached to them, toes intact. When Kai was born, the hospital suffered from a blackout. Under the dim lights lit by the emergency generator, Kai was brought into the world in a blanket of darkness. And instead of returning to his mother's arms, he lay trembling in an incubator for weeks as lifeless eyes stared at him.

"Looks like we got another one."

"Cases like this are popping up everywhere, huh?"

"By the thousands, actually. It's a shame."

Kai was born with phocomelia. As in, he was born limbless, without appendages. He was merely a body, neck intact, with a head barely attached. He had craniofacial disorders galore, with a cleft lip, facial palsy, a missing left ear with the right one deformed and his left eye permanently half-closed. The doctors weren't sure what to do with him, along with the hundreds of similar cases that had occurred in recent years. Perhaps the reason they didn't do anything because Kai's parents weren't financially stable. Perhaps, and probably so, it was because Kai was Athian⁠—copper-skinned, blue-eyed and black-haired.

Throughout the universe, supremism was apparent. Planets were often conquered, galaxies obliterated to smithereens. Cephiro was no different. Hundreds of years ago, Palomans had come and colonized the then untamed planet, bringing its native species of Athians to their knees. Mass extinction, rape and slavery had of course ensued, and conflict between the two species had become a backdrop to their daily lives, even as of present.  Athians had always been perceived as a lesser race, worth less than the dirt on the ground. Palomans, with their olive skin, green eyes and brown hair, towered over Athians in all aspects of life. But Cephiro wasn't the only planet that had been taken, there were many others across the galaxy that shared a similar fate.

There was comfort in that thought. That Athians weren't alone in their suffering. But Kai was alone in his body, comprised of an amalgamation of wires, metal and hydraulics wearing an uncanny facade of a body. Not long after he was born, he was taken away to a lab. To 'cure' him of his ailments. The loneliness he experienced there was awful, and Kai had no words to express what he felt. Even if he did, he doubted any number of words could sufficiently describe the pain. He had never learned to speak in his ten years of existence, not with his own voice anyways. A voice box had done the talking for him in his years in the server. But in his new body, a voice box hadn't been installed yet, so he was still unable to converse with anyone except for himself in his mind. And he preferred it that way, too.

He was no cyborg either. How could he be considered one? His body was entirely comprised of biomechanical components. Cyborgs were a stubborn compromise between biology and technology. They seldom lived long, infections and easily curable diseases were fatal for them. But Kai, Kai could have lived forever if he wanted to. So long as his consciousness remained online within the servers, he was essentially immortal. But Kai, being only ten, didn't truly grasp immortality.

Not that it mattered. His only concern was getting rid of the rust on his elbow. Despite the fact that it didn't stand out against his copper skin tone, it irritated him, leaving him with a compulsive need to rid himself of it. The need to be perfect. His concerns were few and far between, he was a ten-year-old without so much a care in the world. Or so he told himself. There were many things he refused to come to terms with, many things that he had pushed away to the back of his mind, where Kai felt they belonged. In his mind, he felt safe. The real world, tangible in all its horror and cruelty was much too overwhelming for him. In his mind, he did not have to fear leering eyes snaking down his-

Deep in thought, he didn't notice that someone had knocked on the door of his room. It was Ira. Ira lent himself as an interesting character. His menacing appearance did not do him any favours-he towered over most with a scornful look of displeasure plastered across his unshaven face. His unruly chestnut hair and unsettling scarlet, along with the noticeable scar running across his lips unnerved even the most blase of people. One of Kai's favourite things to do now that he had hands (hands that came with fingers no less) was to trace along the tattoo that snaked Ira's right arm.

"What are you doing there, sweetpea?" Ira looked at Kai playfully, eyebrow raised as he pointed to Kai's elbow.

Sweetpea was Ira's nickname for Kai. Kai debated whether he liked it more than his other nickname, Moonchild, given to him by his mother. At that point, he faintly remembered the origin of that name. Quickly, Kai made a note so that he would remember to ask her about it later. His mother and father weren't around anymore. They'd gone abroad, Ira had told him. To work. A question that had stuck with Kai was why they hadn't stayed in Cephir. Certainly, there were jobs where they lived, that way, they didn't have to be so far away. They faithfully video called every week, always asking how they were, how things were going, how life was like in Cephir. It was nice knowing his parents still cared, even if they weren't physically there.

Kai shook his head in reply.

He adored Ira, really, he did. Ira did a good job of taking care of him while his parents were away. He always took extra measures to tuck Kai into bed, telling him stories and holding him tight in the darkness when reality became too much for Kai to bear. But Kai knew he couldn't have Ira to himself, he had siblings after all. They kept away from him for the most part. To them, he was a stranger. His presence was as missing as their parents for the past 10 years, and up until recently they only realized that their 'imaginary' older brother was real.

Ira walked up to Kai, taking a seat next to him on the ledge of the window seat in his room. He parted Kai's unruly hair and pecked his forehead. Picking up Kai's arm, he inspected his elbow thoughtfully.

"Rust again?"

Kai nodded.

"And what do you propose we do about that?" He pulled Kai into his arms, gingerly stroking Kai's unkempt head of hair.

Kai shook his head again. He let himself sink into Ira's embrace. He wished that his parents were at home, but he gladly took Ira as a substitute. There was something surreal about receiving affection, it was something that he felt he did not deserve. He searched through his database.

Affection. (Noun). A feeling of liking and caring for someone or something.

It was certainly something he doubted he deserved. If he had been built with tear ducts, he was sure that he would never stop crying. There was an emptiness that lingered in him that suffocated him. He wanted more than anything to tell Ira about the secrets that lay deep in his heart. In his mind, he still couldn't understand why the people at the lab had sent him back to the home he thought he'd never see again. Scratching away at the rust was a mere distraction.

A distraction from the things Kai could never forget.