Chapter 9

The term Node in regard to cybernetics refers to a contact point of some form. The mounting apparatus that connects a what remains of an organic limb to a cybernetic replacement is an example of a node. A therra-node is called so because it connects the user to the wider network. Some cybernetics have mounting nodes installed for easy attachment of additional devices or modules. There are certain forms of advanced combat suits that require integrated body nodes to allow them to monitor the user’s body, and even intuitively respond with the body to enhance agility or strength.

After the final rite, Master Navor and I rode the elevator up together, and she escorted me back to the dorms under the pretense of after-hours practice as punishment. On the trip back, she explained that I had the majority of the next day to myself and would meet her outside the Foundry at 5 PM on the dot as she would oversee my cybernetic enhancements. When I asked her what kind of modifications I would be receiving, she told me I would have to wait and see. She said that if I knew, I would only worry about the procedure and get no sleep. Just by saying that, she had me worried that it would be something drastic.

I couldn’t help but imagine having my body chopped up and replaced with metal, circuits, and servos. Would they replace my lungs? Or my heart? How many of my limbs would I lose to this procedure? I spent most of the night in sleepless worry.

My alarm startled me awake. As the buzzer went off, I leaped from the bed, naked, in a combat-ready stance as my heart raced and my breath heaved. When I was sure I wasn’t about to have to deal with Thallos with a flamethrower again, I calmed down. And yes, that had happened before. I checked the clock on my therra to find the time to be six in the morning. I stared at the hateful number with a snarl for a long moment as I debated crawling back under the covers. I hated mornings. Personally, I’ve always been more of a night owl, and waking up early was either drudgingly hard or resulted in what I had just done. A combat-ready response, and that was solely thanks to Thallos’s brutal training.

I straightened upright, looking from the time to the bed and back. I gave up on the hope of sleep with a heavy sigh and moved to my locker to pull out the case of my medication. As I had done almost every day since I had been diagnosed. I couldn’t tell you what life was like for other people compared to me when it came to mental disabilities and illnesses. I was just me, and that was all I knew. Dr. Brooksheen and I had spoken several times over my break to go through and modify my diagnosis and tweak my medication to optimal standards.

My current diagnosis at the time was a combination of Depression, severe General Anxiety, Bipolar disorder, Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, and a heavy dose of Autism. I also temporarily developed Sizchoaffective disorder after I used Eldritch Myst. This had been my life for as long as I could remember, but I never knew just how broken I was until I was given a diagnosis. For your sake and any reading my story, I try to glaze over some of the symptoms, like my difficulty maintaining eye contact, my struggle to stay focused on things that didn’t interest me, or my active loathing for myself and my failings. I also doubt anyone wants to see my emotional breakdowns over stupid things, like misplacing my favorite screwdriver. But some are evident just in how I interact with the world. Like my jumpiness, paranoia, lack of self-confidence, and I’m sure you’ll notice my total lack of a social filter and social grace, and the ever-spontaneous emotional outbursts.

I set the medication case on my workbench, brushed my B.I.C over the scanner, flipped the lid, and prepped the hypo-jector. After checking the fluid levels of the vial slotted, I slipped off the needle cap. I aimed the device over the meat of my thigh as I took a deep breath through the nose. As I jabbed myself and depressed on the trigger, I blew out my breath, hard and sharp. I felt the opalescent fluid push into my body and reach for my bloodstream. Moments later, the world faded, and my mind slowed. The panic attack from the alarm faded into memory, and part of me hated it.

Once I had taken my anti-crazy juice, I dressed in my uniform for the day. My chest still ached from the night prior, even if the bleeding had stopped. Once I was fit to leave my room, I dragged myself to the mess hall. I fell into my seat at our usual table, Nel and Ferris already there and starting in on their meals. With the mug clutched in one hand, I sipped what they claimed was coffee. This so-called coffee was thick, pitch black, and bitter, even after two creams and three sugars. The jolt of awake I felt was three-fold. The tongue-scalding temperature was the first thing to shock me from my haze. Next came the bitterness. It tasted like I had just drank burnt coffee flavored with earwax. It was only after that trauma that the caffeine kicked in and gave my body a low buzzing sensation.

“Dude, are you okay?” Ferris asked around a mouthful of cereal.

“You look like you just got sapped by an Essence Wraith.” Nel said in concern as she pointed at me with a fork dressed in what might have been scrambled eggs with hot sauce.

“Oh, shut it, you two. I had to sneak from Aegis Hall to the dorms after curfew, then back to the Hall for my damned actual rite. During that horror show, I had to carve myself up like a sweet ham in front of a pack of bloodthirsty masters and students. Then I got chewed out by Navor and told I was going to have invasive cybernetic surgery today. That last bit kept me up for most of the night worrying about limb and organ replacement. Yeah, I know I look like a cadaver. But please don’t rub it in.”

“Invasive?” Nel asked with obvious skepticism.

“Wait.” Ferris spoke up with a curious look on his face. “Why did you sneak to the dorms and then back out? Why not just hide out at the Hall till your rite?”

I turned to Nennel with a pleading look for a long moment. When she shrugged and went back to her food, I took it as a good sign. “I Had to help Nel with some internal tweaking. Apparently, something was loose after the boob installment.” I answered Ferris before moving to address Nennel with her question. “All that Navor said was that I was due to have some form of invasive cybernetic surgery today at five. She wouldn’t say more because she claimed it would keep me up with worry. Well, I worried anyway. So here I am.” I said this last line with no small amount of venom.

Nennel shot me a knowing look as she bit into a sausage. “What Ives’? Are you expecting to wind up like me?”

I cringed at her words before giving her an embarrassed shrug and a look that said, ‘yeah, kinda’. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

“Iver, brother dearest, it’s honestly not that bad.” She spoke in a patient and soothing tone. “I doubt you’ll wind up looking like me. Besides, I woulda’ thought a gearhead like you would be jumping at the chance to gain some chrome. I know plenty of people like you say this weird motto. ‘The flesh is weak. Metal endures’.”

I took a bite of my cereal to try to wash out the taste of what they called coffee. It didn’t help. The starch flakes were flavorless and just plain sad. “Don’t get me wrong, Nel. I’ve thought about getting chromed up for years, and I’ve always had three serious worries.”

“And those are?” Nel pressed, pointing at me with her fork. “Spill your fearful beans, boy.”

I pinched my lips at her tone and gave her an annoyed look before I spoke. “First, I’ve always worried about the pain. I can’t even imagine what it’s like getting my arm chopped out, or having my ribcage torn open and having my lungs ripped out.”

Ferris’s eyes went wide with panic at the thought of my comment, but Nel just rolled her eyes before she spoke. “Don’t be stupid, brother. There is no ripping or tearing being done. These are expert Cy-docs. They work with precision tools. And about the pain. They’ll sedate you, Iver. You’ll go under in a dreamless sleep and wake up a little sore, but nothing more. What’s your next fear?”

I worried at my lip for a few seconds before I said, “What if something goes wrong during the operation? What if I don’t wake up?”

This time, Nennel gave me a flat look that said I was being stupid. “What did I just say? Expert Cy-docs.” she gave her last two words heavy effuses. 

“Do you really think that even a standard Cy-doc would let that happen? Even the lowest Cy-docs have to go through years of intense training and practice. And let’s not forget that the Academy wouldn’t just pick up some chop-doc off the street. These men and women have been tested in dragon’s fire and under the hammer of giants. They have been trained to handle any possible medical emergency that can occur on their table.” She gestured to herself with both hands. “Look at me as an example. I was put under the laser and scalpel on the brink of death, with almost nothing in my body functioning. Do you really think that some half-assed doctor could pull me back to the land of the living from that state?”

“No.” I said meekly as I lowered my gaze to my lap in shame.

“Now, what’s this third fear of yours?”

Now, I just felt stupid for my fears. I didn’t want to tell them the last fear, but I had no choice. “I’m worried I’ll turn into an Augged Lunatic.” I muttered my answer into my lap. There was no response for a long few moments. When I looked up, I found both Nel and Ferris both looking at me like I had grown a second head. “What? What is it?”

Ferris was the first to speak up this time. “Do you know how Augged Lunatics come about?”

I looked from Ferris to Nennel several times before I said, “They are addicted to cybernetic augmentation. They take on too much artificial anatomy, and they go crazy.”

Nel snapped an accusing finger at me like a whip as she said, “That is completely correct. While I can see you becoming a chrome-head, I could even see you taking on the flesh is weak motto because of what your craptastic uncle did, I highly doubt you’ll take it to dangerous levels.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because, Iver, while you can be thick-headed at times, you’re not stupid. The fact that you even have that worry shows that you will remain aware of the threat.”

I metaphorically chewed over what she said as I literally chewed on mouthful after mouthful of my sad cereal. It was on my fifth mouthful that I had an idea. My hand stopped mid-path to my mouth before slowly lowering back to the bowl as the idea shaped into a plan. I shot to my feet, knocking my chair back with the force of the motion. “Sorry, guys. I need to talk to Brooksheen.”

Before either Nel or Ferris could reply, I was gone. I hurried from the dining hall to the medical center. I stepped up to the front desk and hurriedly requested an appointment with Dr. Brooksheen to the quiet Mouse breed Primal working the desk. I made sure to have the receptionist tell the doctor that it was me and that it was a consultation on a pending operation that had me worried.

I was lucky. I hadn’t even made it to a seat in the waiting room when a nurse stepped out to call me into an examination room. The tall Human nurse led me to a door exactly as an Orc boy stepped from the room, his arm in a cast. As he passed me, the boy gave me a hostile sneer. I did my best to ignore it as I stepped into the room he had just left.

The room was formed from gray walls, each with a mint-green stipe near the top of the walls. To my right was an examination table, complete with long, multi-jointed metal arms, each ending in a tool of some form. Against the back wall was a holo-display cycling through varying layers of the anatomy of varying Sophic Species. To my left was a long desk integrated into the wall, with cabinets sitting above. On the desk was a holo-screen for doctors and nurses to pull up information from a database that was not accessible to the therra-nodes. Sitting at the desk, atop a wheeled stool, was an aged Wood Elf. Her hair was a light brunette and worn in a tight bob-cut. Her eyes were made of leaf-green irises set into the oak-brown sclera. Set before her eyes was a pair of half-moon spectacles with a beaded cord attached to the end of either arm of the glasses. That day, she was dressed in an open lab coat over a striped aqua blue and jade green long-sleeve shirt, a pair of clean but well-worn jeans, and a pair of sandals that clearly had seen better days.

Dr. Brooksheen was one of the kindest people I had met in my life. She acted more like a wise grandmother than a stuffy doctor who was there just to do a job. Her eyes shone with an inner joy and glittered with innocent mirth whenever I asked a question that she enjoyed answering.

As I stepped into the room, Dr. Brooksheen looked up from a digital notepad in her hands. She gave me a kind yet knowing smile as I took a seat atop the table examination table without being prompted. “So I hear you’re about to have a cybernetic operation done. Am I right?” She asked as she set down her notepad and wheeled over to me.

“Yes, ma’am. It’s required for my sect. But I don’t know what is being done. I was wondering if you had any insight or advice?”

She tapped a finger against her lips as she thought with a drawn-out hum of “Hmmmm.” Then she said, “Well, I honestly don’t know much about that sect of yours. From what I hear, the augmentations done to the students in your position are decided by their master.” She rolled over to an interface mounted on the table I sat on and began typing. “I’m assuming your master told you nothing of what to expect, didn’t she?”

“Yeah.” I said with a nervous chuckle.

“Well, Terra is a gruff woman, and she isn’t exactly known for being soft or coddling her students. But she knows what she’s doing. Mz. Navor has had more field experience than most instructors in her position. But to put your thoughts at ease, how about I do a quick scan? Please lean back.”

I did as I was told, and seconds later, two curved scanner faces swung around to latch together over me. The scanner hummed to life as its face began to emit a blue glow that shifted and shimmered like light dancing over a body of water. The device tracked up to the top of my head and moved down, then back up and down again. As the scanner shut down, detached, and slipped back behind the table, I sat up.

I waited patiently as the doctor looked over the readings. I quickly became worried when I saw her brow crinkle in confusion and only deepen with each line she read.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to hide my panic.

“Well, young man, you are quite the oddity. I’m sure you remember last year when we discussed how you display traits of all four breeds of Darkling. That already raised questions for me, but looking at these scans…”

I could feel my eyes bulge as she trailed off, and my panic rose. “What? What is it? Do I have some deformity? Or a curse of some kind?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” She waved away my concern. “It’s your Affinity Ratios. They are normally in a student’s records to check before cybernetic augmentation, but yours were locked to me, so I made my own scan to get some answers. You see, you have a score of Zero for every single Lumia element. I have never seen this before. The lowest score anyone should have in any element is One. With no Light affinity, I don’t know if you can receive any form of blessing, but that’s just the start and least concerning. With a Fate score of zero, I don’t think you can be tracked by standard scrying magic. I don’t even know what to expect with an Arcane score of zero. But most worrying is the Life affinity score of zero. That shouldn’t be possible for anyone living. By all accounts, that should mean that you're some form of Blightling, a sapient undead. But you have a body temp above room temperature. Your heart is functioning above standard performance. Your nerve response time is within the normal range, but it looks like you have extra nerve endings. And your synaptic response time and neural connect count are well above average.”

“Oh.” was all I said, my worry dying out.

The doctor looked from the readings to stare at me. “You seem completely unphased by this news.”

“Yeah. Sorry, doc. I got most of this news last year when the Zenwel twins tested me. They saw the readings and were nose-deep in research for weeks after. They did verify that I can’t be blessed, and that I can’t be scried. I honestly forgot about it after the Eldritch detonation that was Thallos’s betrayal.”

She nodded slowly at my response, her chin lightly cupped in the crook of her finger and thumb. “I can see how that could happen. But I am surprised that the information is redacted on my database.”

It was then that I had a thought. “What does this mean for my cybernetic operation? Will my Affinity Ratios cause any issues?”

Brooksheen looked from me to the readings and back with her lower lip lightly bit between her teeth. “Possibly. Some cybernetics use Life Myst as a magical connection between their system and the user’s body. I’ll bring this up with your master. When is your operation?”

“This afternoon.” I answered.

“Then I’ll need to hurry.” She stood and made her way for the door. “I trust you can see yourself out.”

Before I could even respond, she was gone. In the empty room, I quirked an amused smirk. That had gone better than I had hoped. I had seen that my Affinity Ratios were redacted at the end of last year. I even asked the Mysteriarch about it before I left with Thrasher for his manor. She claimed it was something that could cause me quite a bit of trouble if it became common knowledge. It could be used as an easy excuse for people to call a witch hunt on a freak like me. I was already a Halfling, a half-blood, which plenty of people saw as lesser. My infernal or demonic blood only threw fuel on that fire. Couple that with my strange skin pattern and unsettling eyes, and I was a prime target for anyone looking for an excuse to look for a villain in the crowd.

I figured the doctor hadn’t seen my readings, and it would give her cause for concern. I knew that Master Navor was already aware of my ratios and likely planned accordingly. But, the information would get the doctor out of the room in a panic and give me easy access to the medical database.

I hopped off the table, moved to the holo display, and began tinkering with the interface. It required a username and password, as I had expected, but I had a digital skeleton key. It had taken days of preparation during my time at Thrasher’s manor, but I had taken a few classes on rudimentary hacking and designed what I called my Sniffer.

The Sniffer was a simple program that crossed a worm virus format with that of a trogorn virus. I knew I was going to need to crack some security systems when I came back to the Academy, and I uploaded my little bug to the network the moment I was within range. Before Thrasher’s AV even landed on day zero, in fact.

I keyed to the program with a simple click of a button on my hud that looked like a link to start a small game. I activated the Sniffer and set it to hunting down a master administrator login. Twenty seconds later, I had what I wanted and keyed it into the display. With full access to the medical records of every student, I pulled up the records, notes, and images of four individuals in particular. Mallrimor and his gang were who I was after. This info would tell me what modifications they had undergone and any weaknesses they had. It also would give me a rough idea of what to expect that afternoon.

As it turned out, they all had the exact same modifications. They had plated their skeletons with surgical steel for durability and density, and all of their joints had micro servo enhancement motors installed. That explained everything. That was how they all hit harder and faster and why it was much more difficult for me to crack Feather-face’s jaw.

So, I dug deeper into the process they underwent. I watched the operation videos and was horrified by what I saw. Yes, they were sedated beforehand, but the horror of what came after disturbed me. Every single surface of their body was sliced open. Blood was everywhere. Bits of them were removed to make room for what was being added. By the gods above and below, I was not ready for any of that to happen to me.

I checked over all their notes and watched one video before I closed everything and left the room. As I passed into the waiting room, the Mouse girl working reception stood and asked, “What took you so long? Dr. Brooksheen said you would leave shortly after she left the room.”

I gave her a bashful smile and rubbed the back of my head as I said, “Yeah, sorry. I needed some time alone to ready myself for my procedure later today. I’m kinda scared.”

She sat back down with a look of annoyance and worry. “Well, next time, tell someone what you’re doing so you don’t get into trouble.” I gave her a single nod of agreement before I left the medical center.

To keep myself busy and distracted, I went back to my room and worked on a new project till it was time to meet the Master. I got to the meeting spot a whole fifteen minutes early, and she was still already there waiting for me. She leaned her back against the wall of the Foundry, arms folded over her chest, one leg out straight, the other foot pressed against the base of the wall she leaned on.

“Good, you’re early.” Was how she greeted me. “Let's get inside and get ready.”

Wordlessly, I followed her into the building. As we climbed the center staircase, she spoke over her shoulder to me. “I’m guessing that operation video you watched shook you up good.”

“What? I-” I started in denial when she cut me off.

“Don’t give me that, kid. When you cracked those files, every instructor in charge of information management got an alert. You’re lucky I calmed them down before you got tackled the moment you left the building and locked up.”

“What?” was all I managed to get out in the strangle of my embarrassed shock.

“Your work was sloppy, and slipshod. Any two-bit Plug-&-Player could have used what you did. Cyber security picked up on your little toy the moment it touched the local system. I had to convince them to not quarantine it under the lie that it was a training project.” By this point, we had reached the seventh floor. Navor ushered me into Cauldron 48 with a repeated circling wave of her hand and a rushed “In now, shew, shew.”

I hurried in to find this cake-slice-shaped room not too different from the room in which I had installed Nennel’s new chest. Rows of small cubical rooms with an operating chair at the center of each. The walls of each space were lined with surgical hand tools and common cybernetic components. Each space had tables at each wall, ready for use, some still covered in drying blood. Each of the operating chairs had multi-jointed limbs stretching out from the back to circle around and hang tooled ends above the seat. The room was totally empty save for me and the Master. I turned around to ask the lady where I was supposed to go from there.

Navor gestured to the room at large with a sweep of her hand. “Pick a space, any space, and we can start.”

I eyed each of the spaces nervously, unsure as to which I should choose. When I saw that she was getting impatient, I picked the first space that I found with no blood. As I stepped into the space, Master Navor told me to strip naked. I eyed her for a long moment to make sure she wasn’t joking before doing as I was told. After I stripped off my boxer briefs, I covered my man bits with both hands, trying not to shiver in the cold room.

“Oh, calm yourself, kid. You have nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Yeah, b-but you're a woman.” I stammered.

Navor rolled her eyes before she turned away and stepped out of my line of sight. “Calm yourself. I’m not a cougar. Now, hop into the seat while I gather the gear.”

I slid into the reclined surgical seat, the cushions frigid against my bare skin. When the Master returned, she was carrying a metal case that she set atop the table. She flipped the lid and turned to me with a small disk the size of a large coin in her right hand. When she stepped up beside me, I noticed that the underside of the gunmetal silver disk was lined with small latching teeth.

“You’re gonna sedate me. Right?” I asked in a nervous tone.

“Nope.” Navor said in a deadpan tone. “But thank you for reminding me to set up a noise barrier. We don’t need to alert the whole campus what’s going on.”

“WHAT?!” I hissed in panic.

She didn’t even bother to respond to me. Instead, she pulled a hexagonal coin marked with runes held by a cord of black silk from her pocket. Navor turned away from me and waved the coin back and forth. Seconds later, a translucent box of purple shifting energy manifested around us. I recognized it as the spell Quiet Space. That only escalated my panic.

I moved to leave the chair, but without looking at me, Navor reached out a hand toward me, and a massive pressure pressed me back into the seat. “Don’t chicken out now, Iver.” She said in a chiding voice. “You’re not going to die. You’ve been through plenty of pain before, thanks to your uncle. Think of this along the same lines.”

I tried to respond to her, but the weight made it difficult to breathe. All that I got out was a tight “Why?”

It was then that she looked back at me with pity in her eyes. “I’m not doing this out of cruelty or enjoyment. But you need to experience the process in order to be able to fully exploit the use of this new equipment. Now, do you promise not to run?”

I thought about it for a long few seconds before I gave her a single nod of confirmation. When the pressure vanished, I inhaled a massive breath before readjusting to get comfortable for the trail ahead. “What is the new equipment, and what does it do?”

Master Navor held up the coin-sized device for me to see, turning front and back. With a clear look at the back, I saw it had a circular row of curved teeth around a starburst of razor-sharp blades with a round multi-limbed aperture at the center of it all. “This is an ANFEN. Short for Anatomy Nano Filament Enhancement Node. These little guys are going to attach to key points on your body, where they will release microscopic fibers to interweave into your muscle mass, tenons, and bone structure. You need to experience the process so you can feel how it alters your body. After you adapt to the new state, you will be stronger, faster, and more resilient than almost anyone your age. That includes most with cybernetics of standard legal quality.”

“Really?” I asked with a note of hope. “Stronger than even…” I was about to ask her if I would be stronger than Mallrimor and his thugs, but held back at the last moment. I wasn’t sure if I should ask her that, but she seemed to know what I was thinking because she answered my unfinished question.

“Yes. You will be stronger than Mr. Featherfall and his hangers-on.” She said this with a knowing smirk.

I resisted the urge to lick my lips in anticipation. Mallrimor had given me endless trouble since I joined the Academy. For a long time, he and his had kicked my ass up and down the campus more times than I dared count the year before. I had only just managed to get to regularly beating them back by the end of last year, thanks to Thallos’s horrific training regimen. When they upped their game with body-augs, I dreaded that things would back-slide to me getting my teeth kicked in on the regular. But this fresh development would put me back on top. What was more pain if it meant that I could improve my physical skill enough to put Mallrimor’s face in the dirt with little effort?

“Fine. Let’s start.” I said with a tone of confidence.

Without any preamble, she said, “Very well,” and moved in. The first node she pressed against my sternum. There was a light clicking noise before I felt a sharp pain as the teeth bit into my flesh and latched on. At this discomfort, I took in a tight hiss. Then things got worse. I felt as the blades dig into my skin, shift, and rotate to sheer off my flesh. I was in the midst of a grunt of pain at that sensation when the fibers of the device entered my body. I screamed in agony, my body thrashing as I felt the molecule-wide threads pass into my body and interweave into my flesh and bones. It was over in moments, but it felt like a lifetime.

As the pain faded to intense throbbed in time with my heart, I gasped for breath. My aching chest heaved as I looked down at the new implant to find a small river of blood leaking out from beneath it. The vision in my left eye tinted over with a cloud of a red-pink hue. I must’ve burst a blood vessel in that eye. I tried to blink the cloud away, but nothing worked.

“Don’t Worry. That was the worst one. That’s why I started with that location.” the Master consoled me even as she picked up the next node from the case.

I took a deep breath and blew it out long and slow before I looked to her and asked, “Where’s the next one going?”

“You choose. Shoulder or hip.”

“Shoulder.” I said without skipping a beat.

And so on it went for another hour that felt like an epoch. By the end, I had nodes at my chest, shoulders, just above both elbows, on both hips, both knees and at both the base and top of my spine. Eleven in total. When I finally stood from the surgical seat, I was doused in blood.

As it turned out, Master Navor was actually rather considerate, even if she came across as abrasive. She helped me from the seat and gave me her shoulder for support as she walked me to the back of the room, where there was a pair of medical showers. She walked me into the shower in the right corner of the room and started the water from a control screen on the outside of the space. Mist sprayed across my body from three heads on each wall. The temperature was pleasant. Almost too hot to stand, but not quite there. Just the way I liked it. I spent longer than I really needed in the space, my hands braced against the back wall.

My body felt strange, hypersensitive. I had a hard time controlling my limbs. It seemed like the slightest muscle spasm caused the whole limb to flex. When I stepped from the shower, Master Navor helped me dry off and even helped me dress. Once I was dressed and resting on another operating chair that I had been augmented on, she called Nennel and Ferris to help me back to my room. She claimed it would be less suspect for students to help a wounded friend back to their room rather than an instructor. When Nel and Ferris arrived, she explained everything to them. She then told me that I had the next week off for recovery and recuperation. She then told Nel and Ferris to bring me my food for the next couple of days. Lastly, before we left, Navor gave me an exercise regimen to begin after three days of rest. The regimen was to help my body get accustomed to the modifications in a way that wouldn’t cause injury. This new body augmentation was going to take some getting used to.