Fledge Read Online Free Page B

before answering. "We gotta map you again. I took some images while you were under, but it was hard to see everything. This way we'll have a good baseline at what we're looking at."
    "What are we looking at?" I ask.
    She stops this time and gives me her full attention. "Sorry, Junco – I forgot that you haven't seen it yet." My heart thumps as I wait for the reveal. "I've never seen anything like it before, but–"
    "But?"
    "You've got a lot of technology inside you. Like everywhere. In fact," she's just warming up, I can tell, "your entire nervous system is controlled by circuits that reside outside of your brain and peripherals. Like in your hands – there's a whole pad of circuits in the palms of your hands. And that SEAR dock?" She stops to shake her head. "I have no idea what that is."
    I let out a grunt. "That's awesome."
    She ignores me and goes back to the machine. Thirty minutes later I'm naked and standing behind the transparent shield that will allow Layla to see inside me.
    She describes the process, how it will feel, and how long it will take but my mind is on Ashur. I feel the need to set this right for some reason. He was the only person Tier allowed in the room with us right before they stuck me in morph and he was the person who shielded me from the battle that happened in my driveway. I don't have to trust him, but I don't have to make him hate me either. And some small part of me secretly wants him to leak out more information about Tier. I wonder if Tier even knows I'm out of morph?
    I stand as still as I can as the lights begin to pass over my body. When it's over I get dressed and flop back on the bed to wait for the confirmation that I am a freak. When she resurfaces and calls me over to her I can sense her hesitation.
    "See this?" she says, pointing to a large white splotch superimposed at the base of my spine in the full-scale image of my body.
    I nod.
    "That's your endocrine biog."
    "OK, that's not so weird, is it? I mean, Tier said my biog protocols were on that cube."
    "Right. No, you're right. The biog isn't weird, hell, I have one too. But…" She stops and looks at me. "Junco, this thing controls your whole body. Your glands don't make the hormones, this thing does."
    I shrug, not seeing the big deal. "Anything else?"
    "Well, actually yes. See these?" She points to more white blotches on the image, one at each joint of my bones, and more throughout my body.
    "Yeah, and?"
    "Most of these are in the same place as your lymph nodes, or where the lymph nodes would be."
    "Layla, get to the point, OK. I'm not an anatomy expert and I don't feel like digging down to find the memories from school."
    "OK, well, you don't process your blood in the same way as most people. It gets shunted through these other things, and then these" – she points to the many white lines running up and down my legs, arms, and trunk area – "take it to the muscles," she points, "the lungs," more pointing, "and then finally back to the heart where it interacts with this" – she screws up her face and raises her eyebrows – "master circuit."
    I just stare at her blankly.
    "Junco, you're half machine."
    I grunt. Of course I am. And why wouldn't I be? My body was altered since I was a toddler, I should have seen this one coming. "You're fucking crazy," I say instead.
    She shrugs and snaps the image off the viewer and takes it back into the lab. I follow and watch as she rolls it up and stuffs it into a tube.
    "What are you doing?"
    She scowls at me. "I have to take this to Lucan right away. Braun will stay with you until I come back."
    And before I can protest or demand to know what that will mean to me, she's gone and a guard enters to take her place.
    He's tall, like Tier and Ashur, but not as dark and more muscular. Both his wings and his hair are more brown than black and I recognize him as the smiler from yesterday's hallway showdown with Lucan. He looks thrilled to be invited in, so I try not to make an enemy.
    "Wanna