Bold Proposition

No longer... human?

The mewing of the seagulls elevated into the dawn air. The beady little orbs embedded in their heads acted as mirrors to the endless curtain of blue that was cast outside the window.

"This island is your home now. Outside here, you don't exist. You're not permitted to see anyone you knew before. Not your family or your friends."

Anya's somewhat comforting words of disobedience had fallen into silence. An invisible zip had snapped her mouth closed. But I could tell it was taking everything she had to keep that silence.

Minamoto finally approached the foot of the bed, casting a tall shadow as she stood between me and the morning sun.

"So unless you plan to stay here on this island, for the rest of your days, nothing more than an expensive flesh machine, then I suggest you do something about it."

I bit my lip, so much that I started to taste the red, iron-imbued liquid I failed to consider my own blood. Minamoto's stance was unflinching, and she crossed her arms, her hazel eyes filling with an otherworldly glow of tenacity.

"Your stay here isn't some all-expenses-paid holiday to a Japanese island. Every RepliCor implantee on Port Tatsumi isn't united by the fact we share a common origin, but by the fact that we're all part of the Anahata."

"No relation to my name, I promise. Wasn't my idea." Anya chirped in. I could sense that an ill-suited joke was the best she could manage right now.

"In short, Beryl, I'd like you to join us. In fact, I'd say it's the only option you really have."

Anya's face became despondent. Her lips wrestled with the words she was trying to create.

"We could reintegrate her. As long as we keep everything that has happened private-"

Minamoto takes a step forward, the tap of her shoe echoing across the room. She leans down into Anya.

"And how long until somebody finds out? Not only would it put RepliCor technology in jeopardy, but I'd also hate to think how people would treat her if they found out. Face it, to the world outside of this island, Beryl McNeal died yesterday in a fatal accident."

"Captain Minamoto, I-"

I raised myself up on the bed, arms shaking and straining to support my body. I announced what minuscule presence I could muster to the room.

"So this... this counts as a job?"

Minamoto and Anya's faces dropped.

"Yes. This is your life now."

"Job? Well, it's more like-"

"It's okay, Anya. She's right. Besides, I didn't have much of a life anyway."

I laughed but lacked the breath to back it up.

I didn't deserve to be saved. Actually, at that moment, I embraced the fact I was about to die. Because it spared me from the suffering of having to choose what I might do with my life.

"But now, there's something that only I can do. I was given a second chance. I can't just move on as if nothing has happened, not after watching someone sacrifice their life for me. I want to be someone worthy of what they did. 

So if having this artificial heart means that I'm stuck here, never able to return to society, then so be it. I won't waste this new life that I've been given, even if it costs me my humanity."

Despite my words, I shielded my eyes from Anya and Minamoto, welling up with tears. Behind my eyelids, fractured memories of the person that saved me appeared.

Minamoto formed a grin, in what I could at the time imagine as a sign of recognition, and tugged on the brim of her cap.

"You heard the girl. She's made up her mind."

"As if she had much of a choice..."

"We don't have that luxury, Anya."

"I know. It doesn't make me any less displeased by the fact."

"I'll introduce Beryl to the others once she's fully recovered. While she's here, take her through Pulses."

Anya sighs and nods.

"Whatever you say, komandirsha."

Minamoto tosses her hand up and exits the room, the door sliding at closer to its normal volume this time.

"Oh, and Beryl. I'll have a gift waiting for you once you're ready."

And with the last word now hers, Minamoto exited into the unknown outside the hospital room.

---

Having marginally recovered enough to see and hear clearly, I seemed more healthy on the outside, but inside, my mind was at odds with my body. Every heartbeat reminded me of my synthetic core.

"Doctor Anya... what did she mean by 'Pulses'?"

She froze, attempting to distract herself.

"Just 'Anya' is still fine, lapachka."

Dead air lingered until Anya had no choice but to answer.

"Well... RepliCors are more than just artificial hearts, to tell you the truth."

She mumbled a word that sounded like "Blin..." under her breath.

"I hate to inform you Beryl, but RepliCors, as well as being used to save lives in extreme circumstances as an experimental treatment, are also..."

Anya's voice trailed off, and she gazed despondently out the window.

"RepliCors are installed with small devices known as 'Engines'. We discovered in the first-ever successful implant process that, with the right technology and the right trigger, the synchronisation process of a RepliCor with a body's natural biological processes results in..."

Standing up again, Anya shook her head in discontent.

"It'll be easier to show you."

With her arm outstretched, Anya took one last breath before closing her eyes. In the same moment, translucent, gelatinous green tentacles grew from across her arms. No holes or rips appeared in her coat, and neither did the still-lengthening tendrils stretch the material. It was similar to a projection, and yet... they looked real. After reaching about the same length as her arm, she shifted her arm out to the side, and the tendrils moved of their own accord. They transformed into a variety of shapes: one became a ball, another flattened into a panel at its tip, and one became spiked.

She manoeuvred one to the table and tapped it against the laminated surface. It made an audible knock. Despite appearances, it was solid, or at least acted that way.

"This is what RepliCors are capable of with Engines installed inside them. We call these abilities 'Pulses'. They don't all look like this. This just happens to be mine."

"This is from... synchronisation?"

One of the odd limbs floated over to me and released a thin orange tracking beam that scanned across my chest. I gawked at it, unable to deny the awe it was inspiring. But that awe soon gave way to dread as I realised the implications of the words accompanying Anya's demonstration.

This thing isn't just a replacement heart. It influences my entire body.

"Actually, I'd say it's more accurate to call what the RepliCor does to the circulatory system a type of 'assimilation'. This sounds a bit threatening, but it's necessary in order for the body to adapt to having an artificial primary organ. We believe it's this 'assimilation' that allows Pulses to be emissive from theoretically anywhere on the body so long as blood is present."

I traced my finger over my chest and along my arms, suppressing my want to press my fingertip to my skin, because the more Anya explained, the more my body started to become alien to me. While this information was hard for me to swallow, it shouldn't have been. I knew that a biological heart is central to the human body. So why would an artificial heart be any different? It was the type of consideration that you only have when something so harmonious and vital to life changes so abruptly.

"The patient of the first implantation awakened to the simplest Pulse, one that allowed him to manipulate the flow of his own blood. So far, it's the sole case where a Pulse has been present without an Engine installed. Engines are needed for other Pulses to exist because the type of Pulse that develops in someone's RepliCor is typically connected to its compatibility rate with their body. Without the Engine inside containing the relevant material trigger, nothing will manifest."

I twisted my fingers back and forth as if my hand were a tool, wondering what it would be like to control my own blood flow, or how that would even feel.

"Don't be fooled by all of my terminologies, though. RepliCors alone are still experimental. So you can imagine just how little we really know about Pulses. And when it comes to the practical study of new technology, 'unknown' translates very quickly into 'dangerous'."

Anya's expression switched from informative to empathetic. Turning to me, she made eye contact for the first time since Minamoto left the room. With my vision now clear enough, I could see the sedulous emerald shine of her eyes, which was briskly masked by her glasses. Her blonde hair was brushed neatly aside and long tresses of it rested on her chest, tied together in an elfin manner at the tail.

"Sorry, you probably don't want a lecture so soon after waking up. I didn't want to make it all business so soon. Usually, I'd slip right into the explanations if you were wearing the uniform, but..."

She returned to her files but didn't seem to be doing anything with them in particular. Eventually, even her aimless tidying ceased.

"Beryl, you can still change your mind, you know."

Tipping the remainder of the soup into my mouth, I set the empty bowl aside.

"Based on what I've been told, I'm not sure I can believe that. I've spent enough time having options and being too afraid to choose them. Maybe this is what I need. An option I can't run away or hide from."

I spoke half to Anya, and half to myself.

"Hah... I've heard that one before. Just make sure you don't regret it, okay?"

I didn't reply. I didn't know how to.

"Let me know when you're ready to move around. No doubt komandirsha will leap at the chance to talk to, ahem, *at* you again if she finds out before me. You can do that by pressing the button on the side of your bed."

She holds the side of the bed and motions to the button on the side of my bed underneath me. When she raises herself back up, there's a forlorn melancholy drawn on her lips, but as soon as she realises my own face starting to reflect it, she wipes it away with a gentle smile.

"See you again, Beryl."

Slipping her hands into her pockets, she breezed out of the room, and the door left behind a suspicious silence once it closed. Using my time alone in the hospital room, it was unavoidable that my thoughts started to gnaw away at me.

It felt cliche to call the person that saved me my 'hero'. The way they came in, without even knowing who I was, and offered their life to save mine, reminded me of one though, sickeningly so. But I didn't want to use the word. Maybe it was because we had something in common, and I couldn't use that label on anyone that reminded me even faintly of myself.

I was dumbfounded at their selflessness. It made no sense to me. Maybe there was some other profit involved in saving my life.

They had a RepliCor as well. No, in fact, it was the same RepliCor as the one in my own chest. That means I can also use whatever ability it was that Anya called a 'Pulse'. The Pulse the person that saved me had is the one that I can also use?

I squeezed my brain trying to remember anything that might clue me into how their Pulse might function, recalling that Anya had said that not every Pulse was like hers. But my memories wriggled and writhed, preventing me from analysing through the pain.

I'd have to find out on my own.

How do you use it anyway? Is it like ESP? Do I have to read out an incantation? Do a special dance?

All I had to fall back on was how these types of things worked in novels and manga. The idea of it happening to me was so outlandish that I could only think of it in those contexts. And the only person I had ever seen, however momentary or faint it was, use an ability resembling the one that I would have is...

A flash of that cascading red entered my brain again. Their outstretched hand, their scream.

No, I couldn't do it.

I didn't choose to be special.