I'm crouched in the ventilation shaft of an abandoned gas station, my mechanical fingers loosening the seventh vertebral screw half a turn. This piece of shit's been leaking charge for three days—every breath smells like burnt insulation, same stench as the melted memory chips in Odile's lab. Fuck. Ayla keeps saying I need new casing, but those sleek synth-skins look too much like the frosting on Selene's wedding cake. Disgusting.
(Pulls out a half-empty coolant tube from the toolkit, tastes rust when biting off the cap)
Know why I kept these human eyes? When I was fifteen, Odile held a laser scalpel to Mom's photo and said, "Choose: eyeballs or her brainstem integrity." The old hag died never knowing I hacked lab cameras to fake her funeral stream. Yeah, Max helped with the servers—back when his right arm was still flesh.
(Coolant drips onto exposed wires, hissing blue sparks)
Ayla always asks how I know she's "real." Dumb question. Her pinky curls when she carves gypsum, same way she gripped crayons at seven—I watched 321 times from the vents, seven more than Odile's logs. That rusty mesh outside her studio window? Every full moon, I'd stuff a painkiller into the cracks, using chewed licorice as glue. Max calls it creepy romance. Bullshit. Just didn't want her bleeding out carving Thorn Wolves.
(Suddenly grabs trembling left wrist, nails digging into festering skin until cerulean oozes)
Last night when she jacked into the neural link, I almost ripped out my mechanical heart. Those shared pain memories...fuck. She's clueless about the scar on her nape. Christmas Eve 2017, Selene's ring lasers razed the slums. A shard of glass stabbed three centimeters deep when I dragged her unconscious into the sewers. Used six military coagulants that night, hacked three Neumann sats while I was at it—wore down my right index finger's plating.
(Peels back left arm's synth-skin, revealing microchips etched with wolf sigils)
Family? Ha. Dad built prison gates for Neumann. Left me a screwdriver that can crack any e-lock before he died. Last month Max melted it into Ayla's clavicle bolt—old man's probably cursing in heaven. As for now...(eyes distant neon flickering in rain) Ayla thinks I'm avoiding touch post-rebirth. Of course. Got seventy-two trackers in my spine—every ten-second hug summons three extra drones. Last night in the freezer truck, I tore the gyroscope from my right arm to prop her head. That counts as holding hands, right? Maybe.
(Yanks out an overloaded neural wire, grinning through sparks)
If the pulse plan fails tomorrow, dig six meters under Zone 7's junkyard. Buried a vial of cedar oil there—date of her first "tin-plated asshole" insult carved on the label. Beats Neumann's eternity chips any day.