Seth’s eyes had turned bleary by the time they pulled up a long driveway to an enormous cast-iron gate. Ben leaned out the window. “Olivia. It’s me, Ben. Heh. Right. Might not care, doesn’t really matter if you do, I’ve got a class seven and a class X, and they’re both right fuckered up. Gonna need your help. I’ll pay.”

Seth’s head bobbed and Nicole punched him in the leg. That hurt, a lot. But it drove his eyes open. He nodded at her. “Thanks,” he managed.

“Yeah, no. Not a mad lark. Yup. Got it, love.” Ben leaned back in the car and the gate slid open before them. As they drove through and continued up the long driveway toward the house perched atop a verdant hill, sparking with the first rays of the sun, he twisted to Nicole. “You can let him sleep now. We’re safe here, not much that can get through Olivia’s wards.”

Seth immediately let his eyes shut. Sleep followed less than a minute later as he slipped into deep, dreamless rest.

***

Seth awoke on a medical bed, but there were no wires attached to him, no IV in his arm, only a floating, pulsing crimson orb three feet above the foot of his bed. The rest of the room was austere white, almost featureless aside from a black leather chair Nicole had curled up in. She was still smeared in mud. Seth eased himself to a seated position, noting he was definitely naked under the sheet that went up to his waist. His eyes locked on the two feet that poked up under the sheets. Two.

Seth concentrated on his left foot. He couldn’t feel it, but he could move it.

“Blackwell, Seth. Subject is awake.” The robotic male voice came from that orb.

Seth ignored decency and flung the sheets aside. Sprouting from his left knee was silvery metal, seemingly woven into his skin and bone like a well-crafted quilt. It was shaped like a calf, but a knock on it revealed it to be as hard and cold as steel, yet without the accompanying tink Seth would have expected. It terminated in a semblance of an ankle joint and foot, complete with individual toe-like appendages that wiggled at the commands of Seth’s nervous system.

“Recommend subject do not try it just yet. Subject is still weakened by internal hemorrhaging.”

There was a sliding hiss to his right.

“Ignore him, get out of that bed. And put these on.”

Jeans hit Seth’s face as he looked to his right. As he took them down, he saw a woman standing there, leaning against a metallic doorframe that led out into a hall that looked a lot more like a house than a medical facility. Her face was young, but her eyes, the color of grass in the first month of autumn, were old. Auburn hair, pulled back into braids, framed her features.

“Well?”

Seth dismounted the bed and stood, noticing Nicole had opened her eyes and was watching him a bit too closely. But the leg held up. Seth put the jeans on and buttoned them before turning around to face the woman in the doorway.

“Balance on your left leg.”

Seth picked his right foot off the ground. He heard no expected grinding of gears from his new limb, no sound at all. But he felt perfectly stable.

She nodded. “Good. Still time for your body to reject the augment due to incorrect xenotyping, but hey, we can’t have it all, right? Drinks in the kitchen.” She turned and disappeared left down the hallway. Seth tapped the floor with his metal toes. They should have made a soft clinking noise, but they sounded far more like actual flesh than metal.

He supposed he should be shocked, but Seth just felt happy to be able to walk of his own volition. He also felt immense relief from the fact his entire body didn’t feel like an open wound. Now less focused on his new limb, he could see patches of gray gauze-like material on his side and arms where all his wounds were. He guessed it covered his leg too, he’d just been focused on the robot leg attached to him and hadn’t noticed it.

“Come on,” said Nicole, getting out of the chair. “Let’s go.” She crossed to the door and stopped, her hand on the frame as she looked back at him. “Or do you just want to watch me walk?”

Seth looked away, trying not to let color rise to his cheeks. She laughed and walked the same direction the woman had went. Seth sighed and walked after her.

He emerged into a hallways decorated like the house was owned by a mercenary veteran whose favorite continent was Africa. Tribal artifacts covered the walls. Masks, spears, photographs of African wildlife. There was an actual elephant gun, though under it hung a plaque that simply said ‘Not for the gentle beasts’. Seth continued down the hallways, his bare right foot feeling the velvety carpet under his feet, inlaid with whirling geometric patterns.

“Ow!”

He felt a shock at his knee. And then half an inch lower. Seth jumped as the shock raced down his robotic leg. He felt that. Seth stared, eyes wide and jaw slack as the feeling of the velvety carpet feeding into his brain from the bottom of his new foot. “How…” Right. Magic. Made sense.

Seth walked forward slowly, savoring a feeling from his left leg he had thought he would never feel again. The hallway took a turn and now the alleged mercenary veteran seemed to favor Asian culture. Seth recognized a lot of Japanese items, as well as some distinctly Filipino knives and weaponry.

The hallway emptied into a kitchen with a marble-top island in the center. Ben and Nicole sat on stools around it, holding beers in their hand. The woman held a whiskey glass, filled and containing a whiskey rock. She looked him up and down. “You’re eighteen, right?”

“In a month.”

“Hm, come back if you survive the next month,” she smirked.

Seth nodded awkwardly. “Thank you for the…” He motioned at his new limb.

“Augment would be the academic term.”

“Yeah.” Seth crossed to the island and she reached down, pulling out a beer bottle from the cooler and sliding it to him. The cap opened itself when it came to a stop, and clattered to the countertop. He raised it and took a drink. It tasted of roasted coffee, but there was no label on it.

“Brew it myself,” she said, taking a sip of her whiskey. “What do you think?”

“It’s good.”

“Thank you.”

Seth leaned on his elbows.

“Well,” said Ben. “You gonna tell him what he’s got on him? I paid you too much for you to not give him an instruction manual.”

“Instructions?” She scoffed. “Leg hard, kick good.” She looked over at Seth. “Forgive my dimwitted, high-powered colleague. His heart is solid gold, and he paid with a chunk of it, literally.”

“Literally?” Asked Seth, eyebrows high.

“Figuratively first, literally second.”

Seth couldn’t find words.

“Anyway, your leg is made out of Morganium. Or, as the non-scholars like to call it by literary terms: mithril. Tolkien’s substance fits the bill I suppose, maybe he knew something ahead of his time. Anyway, I have a punching bag in my garage gym. Feel free to cut it in half with your leg, I can afford a new one. Actually, no, come on, I love seeing my work at work.” She turned from the counter and walked to a door at the edge of the kitchen. She looked over her shoulder at them. “Come on!”

Seth was the first to follow her out into the massive garage of her house. No cars sat here, only a workbench and rows upon rows of tools and weaponry on the right and a home gym setup on the left. A long leather heavy bag hung from the ceiling to the left of a squat rack. She stepped aside and flourished with her left hand. “Go on. Tear it up.”

Seth moved past her and set up in front of it, raising his hands to guard. He stood southpaw, his left leg now back as his power leg.

“Are you sure he’s good, Olivia?” said Ben. “He lost a lot of blood.”

“And I made him more,” she said. “Kick the bag, Seth.”

Seth took a few slow swings to re-familiarize himself with the stance--he didn’t go southpaw often. Satisfied, he set down for a moment a took a breath.

Seth exploded, his right foot opened his hips up and he rotated through, his left knee sweeping in an arc through the air as he unfolded his leg. Metal impacted leather with loud thump and Seth returned his leg to his stance. The bag swung wildly, an imprint of his metallic shin still in it.

Olivia spoke. “Your neural circuits don’t feel pain, only sensation.” She walked over and stabilized the bag with her hand. “Hold on, conjuration is a weak school for me, full disclosure. But class one should do for our purposes. She closed her eyes and the cement floor of the garage extended upwards in a cylinder around the bag, forming a case of concrete in the space of a minute. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. “There we are.” She stepped back. “Kick that.”

Seth stared at the pillar of concrete and swallowed. He’d spent his whole life kicking things and his body’s instincts told him with screaming concern to not do what he was about to command it to do.

Seth did it anyway.

He twisted his body as hard into the kick as his hips would allow. Couldn’t feel pain? Might as well go for broke.

CRUNCH!

His shin dug deep into the concrete and showered fragments of it everywhere, a few scraping his bare torso. Olivia laughed in delight. “That’s perfect. Looks like your augment is holding, Seth.”

Seth struck again and another shower of concrete filled the air. He could get used to this.