Darrow 2

Over the next days, they feed me drugs to expedite the protein synthesis
and muscle regeneration. After my muscle tissue has recovered from the
initial trauma, they train me harder than before, even Mickey—though his
eyes are underlined with dark rings and his thin face is sallow, he does not
object. He has grown distant these last weeks, no longer telling me stories
—as though he fears what he has created, now that I'm taking fuller shape.
Harmony and I speak very little to one another, but there is a subtle shift
in our relationship, some sort of primal understanding that we are the same
sort of creature. But as my body grows stronger, Harmony can no longer
keep up even though she is a hardened woman of the mines. That is after
only two weeks. The distance between our capabilities continues to grow.
After another month, she is like a child to me. Graceful, but a child. Small.
Weak. Quick, still. Very quick. But that is all. Even then I do not plateau.
My body begins to change. I thicken. My muscles become strong and
corded in the concentraction machine, which I now supplement with weight
workouts in highGrav. At first it's like I'm being crushed by the new gravity
and I can hardly move the free weights from one side of the room to the
other. Gradually, strength builds. My shoulders grow broader, rounded; I
see tendons emerge in my forearms; a tense mass of hard muscles bind my
torso, like armor. Even my hands, which were always stronger than the rest
of me, grow more powerful in the concentraction machines. With a simple
squeeze, I can pulverize rock. Mickey jumped up and down when he saw
that. No one shakes my hand any longer.
I sleep in highGrav, so that when I move about on Mars, I feel fast, quick,
more agile than ever before. My fasttwitch fibers form. My hands move like
lightning, and when they hit the gymnasium's human-shaped punching bag,
it leaps like it's been struck by a scorcher. I can punch through it now. It is
difficult to exert myself, so fit do I become. Sometimes it takes thirty
minutes to sweat through my scarlet headband.
My body is becoming that of a Gold, one of the prime stock, not a Pixie,
not a Bronze. This is the body of the race that conquered the Solar System.
My hands are freaks. They are smooth, tanned, and dexterous, as any Gold's
should be. But there is a power in them out of proportion with the rest of
me. If I am a blade, they are my edge.