Defiant

He stood, nearly falling, and caught himself with one hand. Warning indicators blinked at the edges of his field of vision. “Right. Forgot. I’ve been slacking on the maintenance. Embarrassing.”

He shifted his weight carefully onto one leg, then experimentally moved the other. There was no strength in the movement. Fully extended, it was steady. Bent, there was minimal support.

He straightened, then ran his hands down the length of his upper body. The divides between the flesh he’d been born with and the synthetic flesh were seamless, almost indistinguishable. Except the way his flesh generated sweat differed from the beading of moisture on the synthetic skin. This, in turn, reflected the light in a different manner.


Teneral e.3