Connor regains consciousness with nothing but hazy confusion where his thoughts ought to be. His face aches, and he can see out of only one eye. He feels pressure over his other eye.
He's in a white room. There's a window through which he can see daylight. This is unquestionably a hospital room, and that pressure over his eye must be a bandage. He tries to lift his right arm but there's an ache in his shoulder, so he decides it's not worth the effort just yet.
Only now does he begin to piece together the events that landed him here. He was about to be unwound. There was an explosion. There was a revolt. Then Lev was standing over him. That's all he can remember.
A nurse comes into the room. "So you're finally awake! How are you feeling?"
"Good," he says, his voice little more than a croak. He clears his throat. "How long?"
"You've been in a medically induced coma for a little over two weeks," says the nurse.
Two weeks? With a life that has been lived day to day for so long, two weeks sounds like an eternity. And Risa . . . what about Risa? "There was a girl," he says. "She was on the roof of the Chop—of the harvest clinic. Does anyone know what happened to her?"
The nurse's expression doesn't give anything away. "That can all be sorted out later."
"But—"
"No buts. Right now you need time to heal—and I have to say, you're doing better than anyone expected, Mr. Mullard."
His first thought is that he hasn't heard her right. He shifts uncomfortably. "Excuse me?"
She fluffs his pillows. "Just relax now, Mr. Mullard. Let us handle everything."
His second thought is that he's been unwound after all. He's been unwound, and somehow, someone got his entire brain. He's inside someone else now. But as he thinks about it, he knows that can't be it. His voice still sounds like his voice. When he rubs his tongue against his teeth, those teeth are still the ones he remembers.
"My name is Connor," he tells her. "Connor Lassiter."
The nurse studies him with an expression that's kind, but calculated—almost disturbingly so. "Well," she says, "as it so happens, an ID with the picture charred off was found in the wreckage. It belonged to a nineteen-year-old guard by the name of Elvis Mullard. With all the confusion after the blast there really was no telling who was who, and many of us agreed that it would be a shame to let that ID go to waste, don't you agree?" She reaches over and adjusts the angle of Connor's bed until he's sitting up more comfortably. "Now tell me," she asks, "What was your name again?"
Connor gets it. He closes his eye, takes a deep breath, and opens it again. "Do I have a middle name?"
The nurse checks the chart. "Robert."
"Then my name is E. Robert Mullard."
The nurse smiles and holds out her hand to shake his. "A pleasure to meet you, Robert."
As a reflex, Connor reaches out his right hand toward hers, and gets that dull ache in his shoulder again.
"Sorry," says the nurse. "My fault." She shakes his left hand instead. "Your shoulder will feel a bit sore until the graft is completely healed."
"What did you just say?"
The nurse sighs. "Me and my big mouth. The doctors always want to be the ones to tell you, but the cat's out of the bag now, isn't it? Well, the bad news is that we weren't able to save your arm, or your right eye. The good news is that, as E. Robert Mullard, you qualified for emergency transplants. I've seen the eye—don't worry, it's a decent match. As for the arm, well, the new one is a little more muscular than your left one, but some good physical therapy can even that out in no time."
Connor lets it sink in, playing it over in his mind. Eye. Arm. Physical therapy.
"I know it's a lot to get used to," says the nurse.
For the first time Connor looks at his new hand. There are bandages padding his shoulder, and his arm is in a sling. He flexes the fingers. They flex. He twists his wrist. It twists. The fingernails need clipping, and the knuckles are thicker than his own. He runs his thumb across the pads of his fingertips. The sense of touch is just as it ever was. Then he rotates his wrist a bit farther, and stops. He feels a wave of panic surge through him, one that resolves into a knot deep in his gut.
The nurse grins as she looks at the arm. "Parts often come with their own personalities," she says. "Nothing to worry about. You must be hungry. I'll get you some lunch."
"Yeah," says Connor. "Lunch. That's good."
She leaves him alone with the arm. His arm. An arm that bears the unmistakable tattoo of a tiger shark.
67 Risa