The long night passed, and around the time the lighting in the quarters brightened a little, hesitant footsteps sounded outside the heavy door.
The captain opened it quietly so as not to wake Luca. Kai stood there, with none of his usual clowning about him. In his hands, instead of yesterday’s menacing black case, was a small white box.
“...Captain, how’s Luca doing?”
Kai asked in a voice that crawled into itself. The captain glanced back at Luca, still fast asleep on the sofa, and let Kai inside.
Kai crept over to the sofa on tiptoe and looked at him. His color apparently wasn’t as bad as expected, because Kai let out a big sigh of relief.
“Whew, thank goodness... he must have calmed down, being with you.”
The captain huffed a laugh.
“Even Obel hasn’t come to check on him yet. I didn’t expect you to get here first.”
“Ah... the thing is, I brought this.”
He set the box he’d been holding down on the floor, then opened the lid to show what was inside.
It was a prosthetic. One shaped nothing like the black chrome they’d failed to bond to Luca’s body yesterday.
“This... it’s a new sample I ran overnight. Unlike the old one, I used silver chrome that’s easy to shape, so I could work it thinner.”
As he said, the new prosthetic was close to the length and thickness of Luca’s own arm. The legs, too, were shaped so they’d connect to his body without looking out of place.
“I dropped the Eternos output to the minimum and coated the surface in bio-silicone. It can match human skin temperature exactly, and more than anything... the feel of it is close to real flesh.”
Kai laid the slender prosthetic down beside Luca’s left hand. In place of the cold intimidation of the black metal from the medical bay, it had a soft exterior with a faint skin tone to it.
“Watching Luca scream yesterday... I swear I thought my heart stopped. I was only thinking about him walking again, looking great, and I never guessed what kind of terror it would be for him. I felt so awful I couldn’t sleep.”
At the sincere apology the captain’s gaze softened a little. Just then, hearing their voices, Luca slowly opened his eyes.
He spotted Kai crouched at the head of the sofa and instinctively shrank back. But then he saw the prosthetic Kai had taken out, and the flinch unwound.
“...What’s this?”
No longer needing to keep his voice down, Kai shouted with his whole heart.
“Luca, I’m sorry! I was only thinking about what I wanted! This isn’t a weapon. It’s just... real arms and legs, so you can walk again and touch the roses you like. Look, feel it, it isn’t cold at all!”
He carefully drew Luca’s left hand over and set it on the prosthetic’s silicone skin. Luca started to refuse, then his eyes went wide at the soft, warm texture under his fingertips. Not yesterday’s burning energy, but a still, quiet warmth.
“...It isn’t a machine?”
“It’s a machine, sure, but it’s a machine that puts your feelings first. If you hate it, I’ll never bring it here again. But... you said you wanted to do martial arts. I want to help.”
At that clumsily expressed sincerity, Luca’s eyes reddened again. Watching the two of them, the captain quietly put an arm around Luca’s shoulders.
“The choice is yours. No one on this ship will force pain on you.”
For a long while Luca ran his hand over the sample. Fear still remained, but he didn’t want to throw away the hearts of a captain and an engineer who refused to give up on him.
I want to stand on my own two legs too.
He decided to stop doubting the captain as well. What remained, then, was to put his whole effort into being able to care for his own body.
At last, Luca nodded.
“Okay... I’ll try.”
The captain and Kai smiled more brightly than ever. No one welcomed the decision more, that Luca had chosen to face it again instead of fleeing in fear.
“It’s a sample, but wearing it’s no problem at all. Want to try connecting it? I’ll fine-tune the functions every time something feels uncomfortable.”
“All right.”
Brightened considerably by the response, Kai called out.
“Captain! I’ll do a simple connection right here, is that all right?”
The captain nodded.
“If Luca’s willing, I’ve no reason to object.”
“Great, then let’s get to it!”
The lighting in the quarters stayed low. It was the captain’s consideration, meant to erase the memory of being carved up under the medical bay’s steel-blue glare. With trembling hands, Kai took the rest of the bio-silicone-coated prosthetics out of the box.
“Whew. I dropped the Eternos output to one percent this time, so we can connect it fine without Obel. It’ll just... feel like your nerves saying hello. If it hurts I’ll cut the connection right away. I promise.”
Kai’s voice was serious enough that not a trace of his usual mischief could be found in it. Leaning deep into the captain’s chest, Luca stared at his ‘new parts’ lying on the sofa.
The fact of connecting machinery was still horrific, but the body heat of a captain who’d kept watch all night, and the redness of Kai’s bloodshot eyes, shaved that resistance down bit by bit.
“...If it hurts like yesterday, I’m taking it off immediately.”
“Yes, yes! Of course! Just hurl it at the wall and smash it!”
Kai shouted it bravely, but when it came to bringing the prosthetic up to the port in Luca’s right shoulder, he was careful. The captain held Luca’s left hand tight and soothed him.
“Starting the nerve junction connection. Luca, this’ll tickle a bit.”
Click.
Instead of yesterday’s sharp metallic sound, there was a very faint, soft noise of machinery locking into place. Luca instinctively stiffened, bracing to scream.
But the pain he’d known yesterday didn’t come. Instead, a tingling, warm vibration like waking from a very deep sleep traveled up his shoulder and seeped into his mind.
“...Huh?”
A short sound of wonder burst from his lips.
“Luca, can you feel it? The synchronization signal’s flowing really stably right now.”
It was just as Kai described. The fine nano neural networks extending from the port in Luca’s shoulder began binding to the artificial nerves inside the prosthetic.
Hot artificial blood circulated along slender tubes and filled it with warmth, and a pleasant tingling rose across the cold stump of Luca’s shoulder.
Luca sucked in a breath. The unfamiliar sensation of a tiny electrical signal from his brain, bend your fingers, not scattering into the air but traveling along a smooth channel all the way to his fingertips. It wasn’t a mechanical command. It was closer to a lost part of himself coming back to life, miraculously.
“...Amazing.”
He murmured it and curled his fingers. Under the silicone skin, artificial muscle contracted with the elasticity of a real person’s and made fine creases. Instead of cold metal sounds, there was only the soft friction of flesh meeting flesh, quiet.
Luca lifted his right hand and laid it against the captain’s cheek. The high-sensitivity tactile sensors set into the palm transmitted the grain of his skin, the feel of the fine hairs, and even the pulse beneath them, to Luca’s brain in real time. It was data read by a machine, but what spread through his head was the warmth of a living person itself.
That wasn’t the function of a destructive weapon. It was the sensation of salvation, of being able to touch and connect with another person as a person again.
“Kai... thank you.”
At the quiet thanks, Kai finally wiped away the tears he’d been holding and sniffled.
“Aww, seriously... Luca, you’re the best! Now let’s connect the legs. Then you’ll be able to walk about three steps in this room today!”
The captain wiped the sweat beading on Luca’s forehead and drew him in deeper. As though yesterday’s despair had been a lie, a flushed eagerness began welling up in his face.
By the time both legs Kai had spent the night painstakingly tuning were connected, Luca’s lower body was covered in unfamiliar silicone skin.
“All done!”
Kai crowed with pride.
“Want to get up and try standing? Tell me if the nerve response feels off!”
The captain offered his shoulder first.
“Here, Luca. Take hold of my shoulder. Slowly. Feel your weight settling onto the soles of your feet.”
Tension written all over him, Luca gripped that solid shoulder hard. As carefully as an infant learning to walk.
Tap.
The instant his sole met the thick carpet, Luca’s brow creased slightly. The sensation reaching his brain was foreign. It wasn’t the same as real skin, but the servomotors were reading the softness of the carpet pile and sending vibration signals in real time.
“It’s like the floor’s pushing me away.”
“That’s because you don’t trust the floor yet. Luca, you remember the breathing we did in here? Gather your strength at the base of your spine.”
Luca swallowed and closed his eyes. In the captain’s hold he focused on nothing but breathing. In, and out. He imagined the air going deep into his lungs, passing through his core, reaching all the way to toes that didn’t exist.
In that moment, Luca quietly let go of the captain’s hand.
“Luca!”
Kai called his name like a scream, but Luca didn’t fall. Far from it. He was standing balanced in a strange and elegant posture.
Knees bent just slightly, one foot drawn back at an angle, upper body straight. It was the horse stance, the most basic form of the traditional martial arts he’d learned at the Academy.
