The soft, almost raspy digitized voice speaks up from the black, head-sized, oblong object wrapped in my arms.

“Red.”

“Yeah?” I softly ask, sounding like my dad when I would wake him up after I had a nightmare as a kid.

“He’ll be there within fifteen minutes.”

Without saying anything else, I slowly rise from the hotel bed, placing the “head” onto it. I change out of the loose shirt and shorts I’ve been wearing into something more form-fitting that can’t be so easily grabbed onto. Still a shirt and shorts.

“D?”

“What is it?”

“The guy who’s controlling them. Have you seen him? Do you know what he looks like?”

“No. They don’t let me see anyone’s face.”

I nod, carefully slipping the legs of my shorts over the parts of my legs that are thicker than the rest. The rings that attach them to what’s left of my originals.

“The same as with me, then.”

For a while, neither of us say anything. With how I had put her down, facing the foot of the bed, I don’t know if she can see me off to the side. It feels like she can, though.

“D.”

“What?”

“Would you be able to call Eli with how they have you?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“You would, wouldn’t you?” I hold back from clicking my teeth, keep myself from starting to yell. Again, she doesn’t answer. “She’s worried about you, that you just ran off like that.”

“I didn’t want to get her involved in this.”

It takes everything in me not to scream at her, to tell her that she had already involved her from the start.

I drop the subject and begin to loosen my body up, hardening the rubbery materials that the prosthetic arms and legs that had been put on me are made of as I let out some jabs and kicks.

“He’s at the intersection.”

I get up and head out into the parking lot, lit an orange-ish color by the street lights. Sure enough, I can see his company car approaching. A matte black luxury kind. Not at all subtle.

He turns in, parks, and gets out. Just like always, he has the same kind of black trench coat over his body. Seems like it’s a woman’s this time. Or maybe a slim man’s. Hard to tell with the helmet.

Just like always, he’s the first to speak.

“You’re looking worse for wear, Matty. Getting tired of our little game? You might as well just let us take you back at this point. After all, we just need our property back.”

I don’t answer. It won’t do me any good, and I’m sure my expression is doing all the talking for me.

“Aw, are you frustrated? Believe me, I’m frustrated, too. You see, I have a job — you know what those are, right? — and I need to get it done, otherwise my bosses will continue to be on my ass about not being able to do my job. So, just be a good girl and come along so we can get this over with already, alright?”

I clench my fists and grit my teeth. If my current hands had fingernails, they’d be digging into my palms. It’s all I can do to keep myself from letting anything out before I need to.

Seeing that I’m not moving from my spot, he sighs. “Guess we’re gonna have to do this the hard way, huh?”

Just like always, he drops his trench coat to reveal where the bright red prosthetics on his current body are. The arms this time. They’re longer than normal, almost down to the body’s ankles. With how lanky they are, I don’t think he’d be able to move them that well.

He approaches and, like with every other body he’s used that has the arms, goes for a right hook. It’s slower this time.

With the first punch thrown, I avoid his hook and close the distance further.

I’m immediately hit in the gut with a punch that sends me reeling back and makes me cough up what little I had eaten earlier. How? How did he hit me that quickly at such a close range with arms that long?

I look up to see his right arm shortening, getting thicker to match the size that his left somehow became.

“I haven’t used one of these on you yet, have I? We’ve had them for a while now. Really, we’ve had them the whole time, but my bosses finally let me use one. You see, these arms use the same principle as the others. They become denser wherever they need to. Bones and the like. However, unlike the others, these can become denser all the way through, hence why they shortened. Not as dense as the bones, of course. That would lead to them being too rigid to-“

“Can you shut up?” I manage to catch my breath and stand back upright. “Not everyone likes to hear your voice as much as you do.”

He gives out a short, wry laugh. “Well, then let’s make it so you can’t hear it.”

I keep my distance at first. I still haven’t recovered completely from that punch. It’ll probably bruise, and I’ll have to keep wearing stuff that covers my stomach.

He keeps trying to jab at me, but I’m able to get out of his reach each time.

Once my breathing is back to normal, I make my way back in, close enough for him to still jab at me, but not enough for a hook. I throw out a kick with my left aimed at his body’s head, which he blocks and pushes away. I twist my body as I land back on that foot to kick with my right. Another block. I twist again. A feint to get in closer. He throws a hook; dodge into punch to the head.

With that, his body seizes up and I’m able to quickly pull the helmet off. Whoever this body is drops to the ground instantly.

“God damn it!” Just like always, he screams like a kid as soon as I’ve gotten him. “The signal got cut out for a second! Put it back on and fight me!”

I throw the helmet to the ground and stomp on it, breaking it into shards of plastic and silicon.

Again, I stop to catch my breath, crouching down over the person whose body he’d been using. I pull off the thin cloth mask that they always put on them, getting a good look at their face. Shaved head, morena, slightly crooked teeth, young-looking. Maybe early twenties. Maybe a kid from the colonias who wanted to help her family out, possibly a college kid in debt. I take the ID they gave her to throw out later and leave her there to head back into my room.

“You beat him.”

“Yeah.”

I put the phone D had given me into the bag that has some of my clothes in it, then pick both her and it up. I call the police on the room phone and tell them there’s someone lying out in the parking lot of the inn out near 10th, that I don’t know if they’re dead or unconscious or what. I leave, wander off to some other part of the city.

I wander around Valley City’s center downtown, the nightclubs’ signs buzzing down at me, just like the fluorescent one in that small, blank room I’d been kept in for a year. The sounds of music and chatter from club-goers drown it out enough for it to be bearable, but I still walk faster to avoid it all.

“Hey!”

I don’t know why, but I stop in my tracks. For some reason, it feels like whoever called out is calling me, so I turn around to look for the source.

Immediately, I see a tall, bearded man with one fully-tattooed arm and one prosthetic in a shiny chrome frame staring right at me.

“Come here real quick,” he says, smiling.

Getting closer, I can see his hairline under his hair, combed to the side and covering part of his forehead. He’s balding.

I don’t say anything once I’m in front of him, just let him say what he has to say.

“You look kind of lonely. You wanna come in with me and my friends?”

I look at the other people who seem to be with him. Also guys. One is nervous-looking, short, and has short, probably-brown hair. It’s a bit hard to tell in this lighting. Another has long, dark hair. A bit wavy. Wispy facial hair. He looks like a character from those old high school movies, the kind who only ever listens to metal. He looks like he doesn’t want to be here. The third, looking at me from the corner of his eye, gives me a bad vibe. Maybe it’s my own experience telling me something, but he looks like he has a lot of pent-up anger that he might let out at any moment. His head is shaved, and he doesn’t have facial hair. He’s the only one aside from the beard guy who has a visible prosthetic, but it’s just on one of his thumbs and it doesn’t have a shell. He probably actually needs his, unlike beard guy.

I size them up. I don’t know if I could take them as a group, but I probably could individually. “You paying?” I ask, the bruise on my stomach radiating small amounts of pain with each word.

“Sure,” the beard guy says, still smiling. He motions to me to move between him and his friends.

I bring D up and whisper to her. “If you’re listening, tell me if any of them tries anything funny.” I walk to where he indicated and wait for the line to move up. I can feel the eyes of the others on me.

The beard guy and his friends talk among themselves while we wait. What about, I’m not really sure. I don’t bother listening, just stare straight forward, my mind far from the blaring of the speakers.

“You like it?”

I’m snapped out of a trance I didn’t know I was in, looking up from beard guy’s chrome arm. “What?”

“I noticed you staring at it. You into prosthetics?”

I shake my head. “I’d rather not have them if I don’t need them.”

“Oh, I thought since you were pretty much showing off those fancy rubber shell ones that you’d be more into them.”

‘Showing off’. I just answer with “No.”

He just stares at me for a second before going back to talking to the guys he came with.

That pause of his gives me a bad vibe, too. I wonder if he’s regretting inviting me to join him. Whatever, that’s on him.

Eventually, we’re let in. My bag is searched for anything illegal. Nothing, just clothes and a toothbrush. I follow beard guy and his friends, keeping each of them in my sight. From what I can see of the club, it’s mostly just lit in two places: the bar and the stage, on which a local band is loudly playing. The rest is very dimly lit.

The music seems to be some kind weird mix of rock and jazz, a couple brass instruments blaring out between the guitar’s long roars. It’s hard to make out the vocals over the sound of them, but I think they’re in Spanish.

They walk to and stand at the bar, so I stand at the end of their group, placing the helmet that D talks through between them and me, making it so that she can see anything they do. I end up to the right of the nervous-looking guy, prosthetic finger being at his left, and beardy at his left, with metalhead at the other end of the group. Beardy leans forward and asks what I want to drink.

“Whatever’s fine,” I tell him. I rarely drink, so I don’t know what’s good, anyway. I just want to dull the pain of that punch. I rest my chin on top of the helmet so I can better be able to hear D if she says anything. Beardy orders me a margarita. I’ve never had one.

I begin to think about Eli. As angry as I was when she kicked me out, I understand why she did it. Telling her that it was D’s own fault that she went missing when we still had no idea where she went was the worst thing I could’ve done. It felt like I just puked those words out from the stress and frustration of not being listened to. I had tried to explain that D sent me out to get something, but she wasn’t having any of it. After all, it was pretty much my only job to stay with D while she was out. Somehow, though, D was able to convince me to go get what she said she needed from the store, almost staring a hole through me with that one good eye of hers.

I hope Eli’s doing alright.

Eventually, my drink reaches me. As subtly as I can, I whisper into D’s “ear”.

“Anything?”

With my chin on her “head”, I hear her voice a bit more clearly than I would otherwise. “It was above the counter the whole time,” she says.

I nod and take a sip. It’s a bit sour, but not bad.

“Oh, by the way,” beard guy says. “My name’s Rudy.” He points to metalhead, “This is Oscar,” then prosthetic thumb, “Hector,” then nervous guy, “and Isaac.”

I look at each of them, then simply say “Matt.”

“Really?” Rudy asks, his surprise coming off more as a formality to me rather than actual shock. “You look more like a Madeline to me.”

“I got Michael vibes,” Oscar says.

“Really? Wait, actually, are you a guy or a girl?”

I stare at Rudy, thinking about why he asked. Is there a reason besides just simple curiosity?

“Either way,” Isaac says, his voice slightly wavering. “You look good. Or, I think so, at least. Like, in my opinion.”

“Oh, for sure,” Rudy says. “I’m just kind of curious.”

A familiar feeling comes up, one I haven’t felt since high school. They have a second motive.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to push down that feeling. “One of the two.”

Hector scoffs and Oscar chuckles.

After a second, Rudy chuckles as well. It feels to me like there’s something else behind it, though. Like maybe he’s getting mad that I didn’t answer.

“Alright,” he says. “Well, when you’re feeling ready to tell me, you can let me know.”

“Yeah,” I reply, knowing full well that I have no intention of telling him.

Even as I’m trying to keep an eye on the guys who brought me here, my attention keeps getting pulled to the live band. I’ve never been to a concert, or anything like that, so being able to watch a band perform live is interesting. I can feel the percussion through my chest and the I can feel the vibration of the brass instruments. My focus now almost completely shifted to the music, I’m more able to make out the lyrics. They definitely are in Spanish, though, so I can barely understand them. Something about “mi corazon arrancado de mi pecho,” all sung just below a scream.

Again, my attention is pulled back to the guys as one of them, Oscar, begins to talk to me.

“So, Matt, you’re a fan of Los Corazones Azules?”

“Never heard of ‘em,” I tell him.

“Well, you like what you heard so far?”

I just shrug. None of them need to know my opinions. It’s not like I’m gonna let them get any closer to me than just buying me drinks anyway. They’ll be out of memory by tomorrow.

I notice Hector glaring at me and stare back.

“What?” I ask.

“We’re paying for your drinks, least you can do is talk.”

“Yeah,” I hear Isaac quietly say.

I click my teeth at them. “You’re the ones who said you’d pay.”

“Still,” Rudy says. “We thought you wanted to hang out with us. Maybe even more.”

“Fine,” I say, my annoyance at them boiling over at ‘even more’. I start to vomit out words again, unable to stop myself from provoking them. “I’ll talk. Yo, balding beardy, how much you pay to get your arm chopped off and replaced with a hunk of metal you gotta keep working? Too much to be worth it? Or are you a rich kid who can afford to hire someone to do all the maintenance for it?”

I don’t let him answer, just walk away from the bar with D held to my chest and my bag on my back.

My heart is beating hard in my chest, or maybe it’s the drums playing too loud. I shouldn’t have done that. I can’t handle a second fight right now, not after that punch to the gut. I walk out of the club and into the nearest alleyway. I can hear my blood rushing.

Suddenly, I’m on the ground, curled into a ball, trying my hardest to keep D from getting hit at the expense of getting hit myself. Mostly it’s my back getting hit, but they get a couple hits in on my face, too.

Eventually, they start heading off. I turn to try to look at them. Beardy and thumb walking away, metalhead and shy guy standing at the entrance. Of course.

For a while, I just lay there in pain. It’s not like I haven’t felt this before. I’ve been in plenty of fights. I’ve been jumped in high school before. I guess this is just the first time it’s been two grown men beating me up.

A voice calls from the entrance of the alleyway. “Hey, are you alright?”

I start to stand back up, but don’t answer. My legs almost give out from under me and I stumble towards the nearest wall, using it to hold myself up. I can feel the music inside pulsing through it, or maybe that’s my own pulse.

I hear his footsteps approaching.

“Hear, come on, I’ll help you out.”

“I’m fine,” I tell him. I don’t know why I don’t want him to help. Maybe pride.

“No, here, hold onto- Wait, are you…?”

He goes quiet. From the corner of my eye, I can see him trying to get a better look at my face, so I look up at his.

“Matthew?”

“Aurelio…”