Skin Hunter by Tania Hutley

Author:Tania Hutley [Hutley, Tania]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

16

I float through the rest of the day in a bubble of pure joy. I’m going to get my eye back! That night, sleep is impossible, but that’s okay. I’m happy staring at the ceiling.

I don’t even mind when my cybernetic eye starts aching in the early hours of the morning, like it always does when I’m tired. Ache all you want, eye. You’ll soon be gone. I won’t miss you, not a bit.

On my shoulder, in the same spot where my leopard was injured in the ring, I have a red mark on my skin that’s a little tender. Maybe the pod did something to me. I’ll have to remember to ask Doctor Gregory about it.

But in the morning, I’m too excited to think about anything but getting a new eye. The smell of breakfast turns my stomach and I pace the halls until a cab arrives for me. I’m terrified when I get into it, in case it’s going to demand payment and I’m going to be found out. But the director must have organized everything, because when I swipe my band against the control panel, it pulls away and drives me to the busy entrance of a hospital.

Inside the hospital, there are more scanners. As I touch my band to one of them, I’m convinced my luck’s going to run out and it’ll detect I’m wearing a stolen band. Then writing appears. Rayne Walker. Ophthalmology Room 3877. 11:35am.

A mechanical voice says, “Follow the green light” and a green marker lights in the floor at my feet. I follow it to a lift. It guides me to the right floor and leads me through a maze of corridors to a desk where a bored-looking woman hands me a tablet, and I have to swipe through pages of confusing small print and sign Rayne’s name at least a dozen times. Apparently I’m having an Optic Sample Extraction, whatever that is.

A technician in a white coat takes me to a room filled with machines, and scans my face, looking through the damaged tissue to see the nerves and sinews behind my cybernetic eye. Then I sit fidgeting in a waiting area until a nurse comes in and gives me a capsule that dissolves into a sweet-tasting liquid on my tongue.

“To calm you,” she says.

I sit in the waiting room for another couple of hours, but I don’t mind. It feels like something that was tight in my brain has unwound and is floating away from my head.

Everyone else waits only a short time before getting called for whatever procedure they’re having done, but still I sit, watching them come and go. One man must be here for a limb regrowth, because he has a bandaged stump where his finger used to be. Most don’t have anything obviously wrong with them, so I imagine they’re here for tweaking. It’s so common in New Triton that every person I see looks perfect.

Finally, a nurse calls my name, leads me to a small room, and tells me to lie on a padded bench.

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