Jacq blinked.
Paper-masked faces in loose-fitting, monochrome outfits lifted her from one surface to another as her interface eased her back into her nerve endings. Her skin burned, and her abdomen felt heavy enough to push all the way through her spine.
She blinked.
She was staring at a bright, white rectangle in a sterile, white ceiling. Paper masks hovered over her lower half, wielding scalpels and needles which they lowered into the jagged hole just to the left of her bellybutton. The skin around it was covered in thin, red scratches that textured her entire abdomen. She gasped, lifting her arm to see it similarly covered in burning, itching red scratches.
"She's conscious, get that damn drip started."
One of the masks rushed away, returning to her side a moment later with some sort of tray on wheels behind them. They picked up a needled syringe, briefly holding it to their face before reaching for her forearm near the bend of her elbow. "You're going to be okay, just relax."
She shouted; The gloved hand burned on her skin.
He glanced at her before sticking the needle into her sore, sticky flesh. "Just a few more seconds, hold on." He pulled the syringe from the needle as he taped the latter to her forearm, adding to the pain as he connected a tube and a hanging bag.
Jacq squeezed her eyes shut, the handprint the doctor left behind stinging cold until she receded into her own head. She hadn't realized how much commotion she'd been hearing til it faded away in a sea of sleep-like nothingness.
She blinked.
The same sterile white light stared back at her as she pieced her mind back together. She attempted to sit up, but found herself held down by a strap across her chest. The strap went under her arms at least, leaving her free to rub at her blurry eyes -- her skin still burned, but it merely felt irritated now.
"You'll want to stay laying back for the time being." The voice was soft, deep, like a reporter but too authoritative to simply inform the listener of someone else's facts.
Jacq continued blinking the bleariness away until she could make out the man sitting in the far corner of the room. The black corners of his shoulders came into focus along with his short-cropped black hair, his square jaw and rectangular forehead boxing in small round eyes like a pillar holding the world aloft atop a black void.
He stood from the quantum-locked stool by the door and approached her. "Why did you flee Estermere?"
"What?"
"Your home." The man arrived at her side, eyes running from her face to the end of her bed, and back. "Why did you leave?"
"It wasn't my home." She met his eyes, grey like brushed steel.
"They fed you, clothed you, housed you-"
"Trained me -- and when I didn't obey, they took away the food and what little comfort I had." Her heart was sinking into the heavy pit that anchored her to the bed. "It wasn't home, it was a job I could never leave. Everything they did, they did in exchange for me doing what they wanted, as if I only existed at their will."
The man raised an eyebrow. "Linens with five digit thread counts, designer uniforms, meals prepared by chefs-"
"I was alone." She looked to her feet, slumped numbly under the covers. "Those weren't comforts, they were… coercion. 'Aren't things better when you just agree with us, do what we want you to do? Be who we want you to be?'." She met the man's gaze. "I didn't ask to be born, yet everyone there treated me as if I were a burden to them on purpose."
The man held her gaze, devoid of emotion, but she didn't look away. "You were a burden, on accident or on purpose-"
"But not one I put on anyone!" Jacq's head spun, forcing her to utter the next words with barely more than a whisper, "so why do people keep treating me like I owe them something?"
The man loomed over her as her head slowly cleared, but his emotionless face was empty, almost uncanny. Finally, he sighed, and turned to face the wall behind her. "I can't say I'm disappointed in your drive." He turned back to her, "But look at what it has cost you." He gestured to her legs, still numb from medication.
"It doesn't hurt that bad."
"It will never hurt again." She met his steely gaze with a glare.
Her expression softened as it beat against his unwavering eyes, turning to examine her legs once more. She ran her hand down her side -- she'd been slipped into a paper gown at some point, under which she could feel bandages beginning at her ribs. She continued down, continuing to feel her hand beneath the bandages until she was a few centimeters above her hips -- right where the weight pinning her to the mattress began. Her eyes widened, then shut tight. "No…"
"Were you anyone else, you'd be lucky to end up back at Estermere. Would you have said your little adventure was worth it?"
"No…" She spoke to herself more than the man -- she hadn't run in search of "adventure", she'd run just to… to be. She'd never threatened anyone. In a just society, the masked man should be the one paralyzed from the waist down.
The man placed a hand on her shoulder, firm and warm like a mechanical claw. "The most we can hope to do with failure is learn, and the only way we can learn from our failures is to admit to them…" She turned back to him to see his lips bent into the thinnest of smiles. "I… have my own failure to admit to."
He stepped over to the stool, pulling it through the air to the bedside. "I have a daughter named Aurora," he began, folding his hands on the bed as he sat. "Her mother left us when she was young, leaving me to raise her alone at a pivotal moment in my company's history. Since both she and the business required my full attention, the two ended up being raised together." He breathed out a laugh, "It's… significantly more complicated than that, but I can tell you more another time. The point is that by the time she was fully grown, we were more than just father and daughter -- we were partners."
He leaned forward on his hands, pressing them into the mattress as he stared into them, speaking into them as if they could hold his words in place. "They say never to mix business and family. She… disagreed with the direction I wanted to take the business in. I tried to explain that she simply was unable to see what my experience told me must happen, but she refused to listen. She began seizing power in the company -- trying to take our family heritage for herself."
His laced fingers fought against each other, popping his knuckles as he closed his eyes. He took a few deep breaths, slower and slower until he was almost meditative. His face relaxed, and he continued with his eyes still closed, "she broke me; she'd become such a part of my life that I couldn't continue without her, and yet I couldn't let her destroy generations of our family's efforts to build what we have today. So I had you… m-made." The last word seemed to stick in his mouth.
Jacq let that sink in. "Wait, 'made?'" Jacq leaned back in her bed, which was angled to keep her reclined but upright. "I'm… a clone?"
He continued to stare at his hands. "I acted quickly, rashly, intending to show Aurora…" He shook his head. "It wasn't until I held your infant form in my arms that I realized you weren't the same person, that I couldn't just replace the decades I had spent with her -- yet you were my responsibility. I researched what options a child had for growing up without parents, and Estermere not only had the highest quality facilities, but also the most impressive alumni, so I… abandoned you there." His head was angled too far for her to see his expression as he finished, a pillar wilted in shame.
Jacq reached out to him -- her father, Connor Dawn, owner of the largest corporation in the galaxy. Everywhere the Estermere crest appeared -- on plates, linens, even her uniform -- Radiant Dawn Intergalactic's acronym was nestled into the design. She'd felt like nothing, somehow rejected by even the dark vacuum they all lived within, but that entire time her father had been there. And now, he was here. She placed her hand on his, still folded at her side. "The most we can hope to do with failure is learn, right?"
He looked up at her, smiling beneath those hard, silver eyes. "You may not be Aurora, but you are indeed one of mine." He sat up straight, "Now to deal with the problem before us," He gestured at her legs. "It will take time, but luckily this facility specializes in prosthetics -- we'll have you walking in ten, twenty standards maximum, and that's only the beginning." He stood and stepped over to the wall. He placed his palm on the surface, and as he pulled it away the wall came with, revealing a drawer. He returned with a tube nearly three centimeters in diameter.
"You'll need to upgrade your interface -- and of course you'll need our proprietary firmware to connect to our prosthetics." He pulled the sheets down to her knees, then crumpled the paper gown up to expose her thigh, pale as the sterile walls. He unscrewed a metal cap off the tube, revealing a tribunal of short, thick needles arranged in a circle. "In this instance, your paralysis is actually a blessing," he said as he placed his free hand on her thigh. He spread her skin taught between his thumb and forefinger. "Nobody likes this part."
He jabbed the needles into her with a force that rippled to the nerves that still worked. Her interface flashed an alert -- it detected the nanites as soon as they'd entered her blood stream, though it offered no solutions.
"Ah, good." Dawn placed a hand on her chest, noticing her elevated breathing. "You may feel uncomfortable, but the adrenaline and your increased heart rate will only help move the nanites through you." He stepped away, opening another section of the wall and dropping the used tube into it. "I am needed elsewhere, but will return when the process is finished. I look forward to working with you." He smiled at her briefly, then left the room.
Jacq's head fell back against the pillow -- her interface had ceased flashing alerts as it's hardware began to vibrate at the base of her skull. Vibrations grew to buzzing, to clicking and popping that she felt through her bones as numbness shot through her remaining nerve endings like lights being switched rapidly off and on. The flickering traveled to her vision, flashing popups in her eyes that obscured her vision with the thought of color as the vibrations traveled into her mind.