"One male, about twenty. One female, about seventeen. Male has a torn left forearm and broken ribs on the right."
The guards had Hayes on a stretcher. After the commander got the report they took him to a medical tent. A man in white waited inside, long coat still on.
"Is he going to be all right?" Lilith asked.
"Not down here," the medic said. "We don't have what he needs. He goes to the fleet. Now."
A shuttle sat outside the tent. Inside: a hospital bed bolted to the deck, seats for the rest. The pilot did not look up from his board.
"Strap in. You don't want to be loose when we kick."
The guards helped lock Hayes down—strap across the chest, straps across the legs.
The shuttle left the outpost in a hard white burn. Square hull, jets on both sides, the climb shoving Lilith into her seat.
"Here it comes," a young guard said.
Then the pressure dropped out of the world. She weighed nothing.
"Atmosphere's gone. You can unfasten."
The crew pushed off and drifted. Lilith watched them float and forgot, for a few seconds, how to close her mouth. A shutter opened behind her. Black, then not black—color spilled through the dark. The white specks grew. Shapes. Hundreds of them. Ships of every size packed into a drifting city.
The fleet.
The view put her father somewhere far enough away that she could breathe.
They aimed for a heavy vessel at the cluster's center, locked onto its underside with a magnetic clamp.
"Stand back."
Air dumped from the seal. The hatch opened on a docking bay built like a warehouse—berths for shuttles, three corridors branching off. They unlocked Hayes's bed and took the left hall. The sign over the mouth of it read MEDICAL WING. White floor. White clothes. White everything.
"Medical wears white," the young guard told her, because she was staring.
An operating room. The medic put a portable screen in the guard's hands.
"Waiting room. She fills this out."
High in the same vessel, an office full of living green. A wide desk. An old man with grey hair and dark eyes turning something over in his fingers.
A junior stepped in.
"Two more from Earth. Man and woman. Thomas Hayes, eighteen, bad arm injury, in surgery now. Lilith Bazzel, sixteen, unhurt, shaken."
The old man did not look up at once.
"Hayes. I know that name. Find their specialties. Everybody earns a place."
When the junior left, he lifted a picture frame and held it longer than the report had lasted.
Hayes opened his eyes on a small white room. A girl with bright brown hair was half in the chair, half on the mattress.
He reached for her with his left hand.
Pain. Then the worse thing under the pain.
Nothing.
The arm ended.
"WHERE IS MY ARM?"
Lilith jerked awake. The medic was already in the door.
"Thomas, you need to stay calm. We had to amput—"
"You took my arm?"
The monitor started shouting. The room tipped. He went under on the last word.
"WHERE'S MY ARM—"
A man stepped in while Hayes was still out.
"Lilith Bazzel?"
"Yes."
"Aptitude testing. It decides your place. Everyone contributes. Understood?"
"Yes."
She followed him out.
"Four main tracks," he said in the corridor. "Military. Engineer. Guard. Medical. Each has splits under it. Today we find your main."
Four hours later she came back and fell into the chair like someone had pulled a plug. The test had wrung her out.
Hayes woke to her slumped over the bed again. She had not left. That was the fact he used to sit up inside his own head. He looked at the empty place where the arm had been and made himself hold still.
The shuttle medic returned.
"Calmer?"
Hayes nodded, jaw tight.
"Two options. Cybernetic replacement, or we leave it."
Hayes looked at the stump. He looked at Lilith sleeping.
"Give me the arm."
The medic had him initial a screen.
"Done."
A team came for the bed. Lilith snapped up.
"Where are you taking him?"
Hayes found a grin that cost him.
"I'm fine. Sleep. I'll be back."
They rolled him down the white hall.
Double doors. A man waiting in the center of a larger room.
"Thomas Hayes. Cybernetic arm. You should know the standard graft sits at seventy percent response. Brain-to-muscle lag."
The shuttle medic leaned close.
"I can put you at a hundred. Interested?"
Hayes looked at him.
"I stay for the surgery. When they ask about pain, you say none. Clear?"
The surgeon's voice cut across them.
"Mr. Hayes. Pain so far?"
"No pain."
They opened him.
Tools turned inside the stump. Cold metal. Pull. Prod.
"AH—"
He bit it off.
"Mr. Hayes. Pain?"
"No p-pain."
Hours. Every nerve seated into the new limb.
"Halfway. Tell us when you feel the fingers."
Through the fire he felt a hand that was not there, then was. Forearm. Ghost made solid.
"Pain?"
He locked his teeth.
"No pain."
They finished when the last nerve had a home.
Dr. K—that was the medic's name, spoken on the way out—bent to his ear again.
"The painkiller they like to use deadens nerves in the graft. Those don't come back. No drug means the brain maps the arm clean. Stimulation does the rest."
Hayes could barely keep his eyes open.
"When you can walk, find me. I've got something else if you want it."
Dr. K peeled off into the white halls.
Lilith was awake when they brought him back. Color gone from his face. Dark under the eyes.
"Surgery went. He needs sleep," the medic said, and left them.
She hugged him. He hugged her back with both arms.
She felt it, pulled away, and took the left wrist in her hands. It looked like his arm. Nothing about it advertised the lie.
"Does it hurt?"
"Not at all."
The smile was work. He had nothing left after it. His head found the pillow and the dark took him clean.