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canyouhearthelight · 3 months

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Machine is Perfect, but Flesh is Free Act Three

Here we are, the final act of our dancer's performance. As ever, I cannot thank @baelpenrose enough for his work beta-reading a story with so much going on that he didn't initially understand, and for helping me through the stickier bits.

Also, thank you to everyone who has read this story... I promise to get the page links done by the end of the week, and the master post links will be finished after this chapter. So much has been going on, and I need to get caught up, if we are being honest.

This story started out as my rendition of The Princess with Silver Hands, and then promptly got away from me. But I like it, quite a lot. I hope you do, too.

I dedicate this to the survivors.

The morning of the performance dawned with nothing short of complete and total chaotic confusion. Even the sudden bright lights and lack of blankets had barely woken me before I found myself unceremoniously lowered into a bath. Sputtering as I pulled myself from below the surface of the water - only decade long habits kept me from pushing with the recently earned strength in my legs - I shouted in alarm with my first breath.

“What is going on!?” I begged in confusion, looking around for a way to page a guard.

Urus’s voice came gruffly from just beyond the screen. “Performance day preparations.”

“Perform - “ I tried to wrap my mind around what he had just said. “Today!?”

“Apparently.”

It was completely out of character - Master Arik’s household had always been run with a precision that would have made a hive queen envious. “When was this announced? Why did M.Russo not tell me?” For the second time in less than a year, my entire world view was being broken apart and rearranged.

“Imagine the news is being delivered now, with his coffee and toast.”

Coffee. I wasn’t permitted anything with caffeine, but the scent was always tantalizing. “May I have some coffee today?”

A rough laughter echoed off of what felt like every corner of my rooms. “Absolutely no deviation from your performance day schedule.”

I scowled as my hair was washed, irritated by the joy Urus seemed to be taking in rejecting my request.

Once I was scrubbed, buffed, and stuffed into my warm-up clothes, Urus himself took the handles of my chair to usher me to the studio. We were greeted by a bleary and somewhat unkempt M. Russo, who grumbled as guards took up posts in corners of the space - again, in completely contrast to what typically occurred. “It is only for the fact that we have been rehearsing for far too long that I am not demanding to see that Master Arik is sane with my own eyes,” he muttered as my nerve blocks were administered.

Painstakingly, we went through each stretch and position as thoroughly as possible. Gene hacks meant no need to be concerned for sweat ruining my hair, which was lacquered into immobility regardless. Instead, M. Russo checked my temperature every half hour, barking to the guards to have ice water and cold packs brought as needed to keep me from overheating. A final costume fitting had to be done in between stretching sessions, much to the chagrin of the utterly terrified seamstress. I thought she would die of heart failure on the spot when she presented my new shoes for the performance, only to have M. Russo throw them across the studio.

“Unlace your shoes,” he commanded me. Once I obediently handed them over, he tossed them at the poor woman’s feet. “Recover these.”

“Sir, these are nearly dead - “

“They only need to last fifteen minutes,” he barked in his most stern tone, one I knew brooked no argument. “We do not have time for them to break in a new pair. These are already broken in, they are just ugly. Recover them.”

“I do not have - “

M. Russo leaned to stare into her eyes. “If we give them new shoes, and even one blister appears after the performance, Master will whip you or worse. For your own sake, ask the guards to send for whatever you need, but recover these shoes.”

That was all it took. While she sent for materials, removed ribbons, and measured the shoes, M. Russo had me stretch and flex every joint in my body from the floor. It was only as my headpiece was being sewn into my hair that the seamstress walked up to Urus. She set the newly covered shoes on the ground, wrapped in her own apron. “I need you to step on these please.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but M. Russo cut him off. “The new glue is too stiff, and we do not have time to hammer and break it. You are the largest person here, Urus. Step on them please, until they no longer crack.”

For the first time in my life, I realized that M. Russo was higher in the household than Urus, as the head of my security detail closed his mouth angrily and started crushing the toe boxes with a loud, satisfying crunch. While he took care of that, I was stripped and sponged off while the seamstress applied one last spray of starch to my costume. Before I knew it, I was tucked into a robe and in my chair, to be whisked to the performance hall, for the first time with M. Russo following closely.

Where the journey to backstage was normally a blur, I made a point to pay attention to my surroundings: servants darting around with arms full of linens, vases of flowers, or trays of food. The last part, I paid the most attention to, as Master Arik’s keep did not contain livestock or edible gardens. I knew the path between the studio and the stage by heart, so I made a note of what artwork was near the doors I saw servants emerging from with full arms, curious where they led.

I did not get to wonder for long, as we were soon at the part where I was being sewn into my costume, pointe shoes tied on as securely as possible. My familiar, worn shoes felt far heavier than recovering should have accounted for, and I rolled my feet around to adjust.

M. Russo nodded approvingly. “She thickened the platform on the outside so that they do not die while you are performing.”

Once I was standing, I rolled onto pointe several times, taking tiny steps and checking the weight with an arabesque before nodding. “They will do.”

“They will have to,” Urus grumbled mockingly.

I could tell M. Russo wanted to argue, but was cut off as the orchestra’s warm-up ended. I took my mark, a circle laid into the floor - one I knew would rise into an incredibly narrow platform. I had been told it was to demonstrate the precision and balance of the turns I would be doing, but strongly suspected an ulterior motive. Namely, that if there was any chance of another person trying to shoot me, they would have a more isolated target. The insurance on a stagehand - staff - was fairly small and paid to the family. Insurance on me - property - was far more and paid directly to Master Arik. I wasn’t terribly intelligent, but even I had figured that much out.

The music started properly, curtain parting to bring my focus to the present. The piece was a very long, original composition, tailored to the limit of my endurance - fifteen minutes, according to M. Russo. Any longer, and I started to show symptoms of heat exhaustion. For Mme. Boulvais’ sake, I was far more worried about my shoes.

The platform started to rise at number thirty-two, and gasps of awe echoed at fifty once people realized what was happening. By the time I was halfway through my second set of left-handed turns - eighty seven, eighty eight - the platform had stopped and I estimated I was two full stories above the stage, pivoting on a pillar barely wider than one of my feet was long.

And bored. I was so bored of spinning. The music meandered, cresting and falling, as I mentally counted off turns. Yes, this would look impressive from the outside. Yes, it would increase my stock and hopefully bring my parents out of poverty finally. But the reality was that, between pain inhibiting nerve blocks and the mostly-mechanical nature of my legs, the only thing that was straining were my shoulders and neck. Two hundred and four, two hundred and five…

If I never had to do another turn - not even a pirouette or chaine - after this, I could die happily.

Murmurs reached my ears, even past the orchestra in front of the stage. It turned into thunderous applause as the tempo of the music increased - as did my spinning. Even though I could not see beyond the lights that were close to eye level and could not become dizzy besides, I made sure to spot in the exact same place each time - directly toward Master Arik, as always. A simpering show of ‘gratitude’, as pointless as it was empty. When a loud crack sounded, I pushed through just as M. Russo had insisted should anything disrupt this performance. The applause turned into unseemly cheering.

After the second crack, angry shouts began and the music ground to a discordant halt. I realized that I hadn’t been hearing any cheers at all - they were screams.

Shoving down my panic even as I cursed myself, I continued my now-morbid performance in silence. What else could I do, two stories above the stage, knowing I would be even easier to shoot if I were still?

The third crack caused the platform to shake, and then sway from the force of my turns. It began to tip, forcing me to come to a stop. At the last moment, I realized it was collapsing and I would fall to the stage either way. In a moment of sheer terror, with all the audacity I had, I jumped, choosing to let my enhanced and reinforced legs to take the brunt of the plummet.

Even with the nerve blocks, I could feel something shift horribly in my feet before the force of my fall caused me to roll forward involuntarily. When I came to a stop, I glanced into the crowd in hopes they had caught the shooter. My eyes came to rest on a man pointing an object at me, a guard behind him with a gun to his head, and my heart shattered. Disgust and anger were the only things I found in the features of the shooter, like I was an abomination, a sin against humanity. And then the guard fired, leaving the body to drop to the ground. I screamed as the last anchor of my steady, predictable world was erased, familiar cane still in one strict and strong hand of the now-headless body, improvised gun not far from the other.

Someone grabbed my shoulders and shook me, breaking me out of my emotions. “Did you know?” a harsh voice demanded.

I snapped my head around, yanking my arm free of Urus’ grip. “You’re hurting me,” I threatened.

He pulled the arm he still held, navigating me off stage and toward my chair. “Did you know anything about Russo’s plan?”

I stormed ahead of him, forcing him to let go. “You are asking if I knew that the only person other than you in my entire life here who was trusted to be left alone with me wanted to kill me?” I stopped in front of my chair, turned, and stared at him blankly as my costume was cut from my body unceremoniously.

He scowled and pulled out the counteragent to my nerve block. I held up one hand, knowing I couldn’t stop him if I tried and beyond caring at this point. “Please let them remove the hairpiece first.”

The seamstress, Mme Boulvais, was less polite. “It is sewn into their hair, and then glued. Removing it will hurt very badly and cause bleeding if they are not still. It is better if they cannot feel it.”

The nerve block did nothing for my body above the waist, but only I and the doctor knew that. I certainly wasn’t telling Urus such information while I stood on what was likely a badly sprained or dislocated foot. And as long as I stood, my shoes could not be removed, concealing it. Instead, Mme Boulvais stood on a box to dissolve the glue and carefully cut away the threads with a deft hand, ignoring the runners constantly updating Urus along with the two guards who glanced about furtively, fingers on triggers.

The headpiece was finally free, and she stepped down and bent to start unlacing my shoes. Urus, again, stepped forward with the injectors, and I refused to watch, instead staring down at my shoes. They survived, I thought numbly. My practically-dead pointe shoes had survived intact, and tears came to my eyes as I realized I had made a decision I didn’t even realize I was contemplating.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered hoarsely. Mme Boulvais whipped her head up to hear me better, and as my leg cracked into her chest and throat, forcing her to the ground to gasp for air, I realized it may have saved her life.

Judging by the sound I heard when I caught Urus in the jaw with my damaged foot, and how he fell so limply, he may not have been so lucky. “A kick like that could kill a man,” Arik had said. The remaining guards stared dumbly, not knowing what to do when they had been trained to protect me and avoid harming me at all costs.

I ran. Damaged foot, one pointe shoe still on, and mostly naked, I ran through the hallways until I reached the first door I recognized as one I had seen servants coming from with armfuls of clean laundry. As I ran inside, I startled a young woman, causing her to drop the contents of her arms.

She swiftly squatted to gather them again. “You scared me, running in here like demons were chasing you!” She glanced up with a sparkle in her eye, but it faded as she took in my appearance. Pure panic at being found out was hammering all the way to my fingertips as she shook her head and stood, dropping the laundry again. “Damned two-legged demons, more like it,” she spat angrily. “Pretty thing like you, running in here, bare as the day you were born.”

To my shock, she started rifling through stacks on the shelves, pulling out a shirt after a moment. “Sa bit big, but warm. Breeches or skirts?”

“What?” I asked dumbly.

“To cover up. Do you want breeches like a man, or skirts like a woman?”

“I’ve never been asked what I wanted to wear…”

She muttered something about wool socks before turning and giving me a look that reminded me of Mme Boulvais. “Pretty as you are, whoever you’re running from will know you in a skirt, sure as the dawn. Better be breeches…. Cook has a lanky one, where are - ah!” She seemed triumphant at the folded square the found, and handed the entire stack to me. “Here. Undershirt, shirt, jacket, breeches, socks. Better to look like a kitchen boy, no one pays them any attention.” With that, she turned her back to me.

“What?”

“Get dressed, and I’ll take you to the kitchens.”

“Oh.” I felt like an idiot, but a grateful one. When I had run away, I hadn’t had a plan, and here was this woman handing one to me. “I think I’ve got everything on right,” I said finally.

As soon as she turned, she heaved a breath. “Never worn breeches, I see. Lacing goes in the front, like a boy. Ladies lace clothes in the back.”

Finally, we were sorted out, and I was following her like a baby duck, a stack of what she swore were towels in my arms. I felt rather than saw as we entered the kitchens, the immediate and overwhelming warmth reminding me of a bath. “Marie-Jeanne!” a robust voice called out. “I thought you were carrying sheets now!”

“Hush, Therese,” my escort scolded lightly, as though she didn’t mean it. “I missed you and brought you towels and gossip. Lots going on upstairs! And I found Jean-Rene, I know you were looking for him.”

Alarmingly quickly, the towels were removed from my arms, and a pair of warm, callused hands gently grabbed my chin. An older woman, stout and red-faced from the heat, looked at me. Carefully, she spoke. “Yes, Jean-Rene has been ill and wandered off in his fever. Thank you for finding him. Let me get you both some soup, and you can tell me the gossip while I make sure he eats.” She flicked a towel near me, carefully not touching me with it. “Silly child, wandering around this keep like that when you’ve been sick.”

Without another word, she steered us into a room with bags upon bags of dried things, pointing one finger firmly at a large sack while staring me down. “Marie-Jeanne, you will tell me exactly what is going on when I come back.” The woman - Therese, apparently - did not even leave the room, just opened the door to retrieve a tray that she seemed to know would be there. My eyes widened at the sight of thick, buttered bread next to two bowls. Actual food, not just porridge.

I ate as fast as the steaming stew would let me while Marie-Jeanne explained how we had encountered each other. It turned out that she thought I was an escaped and abused courtesan, and even at that would have brought me here without question. When she was finished, Therese looked at me in pity.

Holding out my bowl, I forced myself to speak. “I don’t think I can stay here. I think I killed a man.”

Two sets of eyes widened in my direction. “My nephew, Jean-Rene, helps with the deliveries when farmers bring tithe. You could leave with them, if you can be still. Can you do that?”

I thought about the neuro blocks in my legs, and how they would eventually wear off. “I can sit still better than anything, if I can have help getting there. I’m on painkillers, and they’ll wear off eventually. I can still walk,” I rushed to explain. “I’ve worked really hard on that. But not very far.”

“Nasty fuckers,” Therese spat, looking meaningfully at Marie-Jeanne. “Keep people enslaved with drugs.”

If you only knew. I thought about all the expensive medical science in my legs, all to make me a pretty paper doll who could only function with my master’s permission. “Once the painkillers wear off, I only hurt if I move. So I can be very still.”

Therese and Marie-Jeanne stood, as though that settled the matter. Marie-Jeanne spoke this time. “I’ll send someone in here to lay down some beans and rice for you to lay on. Jean-Rene is a lazy boy, so no one will blink if you’re laying down out of the way. Our next delivery is in a week, may be longer if Master Arik starts searching everything after what I heard about upstairs.” Therese elbowed her and she rolled her eyes. “That fancy dance instructor started shooting people, and the ballerine is missing. Shame, really. I hear the performances are incredible.”

Therese’s eyes flicked to me before turning away to grab a jar of beans. “Mmm. I would rather be down here cooking and chattering, being left alone as long as everyone is fed. Even golden cages hold lonely birds, I think. Might be he shot the ballerine and Master Arik is covering it up.”

Marie-Jeanne snorted. “Better for the ballerine, I think.”

#original fiction #science fiction #original writing #original science fiction #traumatized characters #writeblr #original sci fi #machine flesh #cyberpunk #dystopian fiction #biohacking #my writing

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