Bogdan gasped in shock, then resumed his rage. You can’t do this! What gives you the right?

I made this, Kade told the man. That gives me the right.

This Changes Everything

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

One Week Later

The eye stared at Kade, unblinking, lying in its cooling bath. That black pupil in the green iris. The white egg-shaped sphere of it, with a bundle of freshly grown optic nerve trailing off behind it, looking like so much wet data cable.

My eye, Kade thought, cloned from my cells, to replace the one I lost in Bangkok.

He blinked the one eye in his head, lying back on the clinic bed as the doctors did their final prep. Late afternoon light filtered in through curtains drawn over the windows. His regrowing stump of a hand ached down deep in its fragile bones. He could feel the anesthetic starting to flow through his veins now. If all went well, in a few weeks he’d be seeing out of two eyes again, maybe even using two working hands.

Kade.

A mind touched his. Ling’s mind. Su-Yong Shu’s daughter. Alien. Young. A whirlwind of swirling thoughts. The data flowing all around him came alive in his mind – the flow of information through the medical monitors in the room, the power cables running through the wall, the wireless data channels permeating even this remote Cambodian clinic. He could see and feel them all, an intricate web of information and electrons all around him, as he could any time she touched his mind.

Kade smiled.

Hi, Ling.

He could feel her smile in return. Such a strange child, so unlike any other mind he’d ever touched. But he was starting to understand her, to see how her thoughts worked, to see the world the way she saw it.

Feng and I won’t let them hurt you while you’re asleep, Ling sent him.

Kade almost laughed.

It’s OK, Ling, he sent her. I trust them.

They’re humans, Ling sent back.

So am I, Kade replied.

Oh no, Kade, Ling sent him. You’re not human any more. You’re like me now. Me and my mother.

Kade reached for a reply, but all he found was the anesthesia, sucking him down into a warm sleepy place.

They buried my mother today, Kade, Ling sent him.

Visions came to Kade – Su-Yong Shu in that remote Thai monastery, the spot of blood blooming at her throat, the sudden sting in Kade’s hand as a dart struck him, Su-Yong’s skin going gray as the neurotoxin pumped through her, Feng lifting up the cleaver to amputate Kade’s hand…

She’s not dead, Ling was saying. I’m going to find her. I’m going to get my mommy back.

Ling… Kade started. Be careful, he wanted to tell her. But the drugs pulled him under first.