Chapter Twenty
Shame
The man who once was Commander Up sat in a bath,
looking at his hands.
The water was as hot as he could stand it, the skin on the
left side of his body searing and reddening in protest, but it
took his mind off the dull, constant ache throughout him
where flesh met metal, a relentless reminder of what he had
become. He held his hands in front of him, fingers spread,
and turned them over. The right hand was still slower to
respond. It had taken days of practice just to be able to
twitch one of its alien fingers.
The hands looked the same, but they weren’t. One was
muscle and bone, creased, timeworn skin, scars and
memory, and the other -
With immense effort, he closed the robot hand into a fist.
Silicone and nanotechnology, a clever facsimile - for a
piece of human technology it was fucking unreal.
But it wasn’t his.
Mirrors surrounded the hot tub area of the physio centre,
and he often wondered if this was meant to be some kind of
twisted motivation, a sick punishment for its patrons.
Everywhere he looked he was forced to face his shadowed
reflection. His hair was growing back, but his face was still
as bare as a baby’s bottom – he hadn’t needed to shave once
in the six weeks since they’d woken him in his new body,
his new life. The loss of his moustache made him feel
strangely vulnerable. He looked younger without it - but