The augment shop was 75 floors up, taking Nadia as many minutes to get there, and another 15 once she had arrived at the floor. Miraculously, an appointment had opened in just 20 minutes, and Nadia spent them saying a bevy of silent prayers. Nadia's newfound skill in speed praying left her with 15 minutes to browse the augments and implants for sale.

  The posters around the shop showed sleek augments, brushed metal laid over bluish flesh. The majority were for simpler things like smart spinal disks that would tilt to better handle stresses, allowing for greater mobility, but there were a number of baser augments that Nadia figured had no set price beyond what surgeons thought the customer could pay. Penile enlargements, breast enlargements, vitality grafts—for both the penis and the breasts, whatever the latter entailed. Overall, Nadia found the selection acceptable, even if she had no plans on buying anything that wouldn’t buttress her dainty arms and legs.

  A smartly dressed woman with a tight black chignon came from behind the desk. “Ms. Verbrannter,” she said, using Nadia’s new surname, “Dr. Albright will see you now.”

  The receptionist led Nadia to an operating room, the walls and floors a sterile, shiny white. A woman with soft eyes and a tight blonde braid sat a desk in the corner of the room, smiling as Nadia entered. She tapped her laptop a few times before standing and directing Nadia to sit across from her. “Ms. Verbrannter, how nice to meet you. I am Dr. Peggy Albright, certified augment surgeon for twenty years in a row. I see that you want to attempt the Krieger trials. A very lofty goal, but one that my augmentatory had some experience with. Two cycles back, one of our patients passed through the first stage, I believe one of the first thousand to make it.”

  “934th,” the receptionist corrected under her breath.

  “934th,” Peggy said, less like she was saying them and more like she was breathing the words into existence like morning dew. “With a little luck and Ironclad willing, you’ll be the first!” She spun her laptop to Nadia, a number of diagrams arranged in orderly rows. “Here is what I have in mind.”

  Peggy led Nadia through the planned augments, tapping the screen every time Nadia’s eyes drifted. “We have a slot open today if you’d like to proceed. Just sign the paper and we can have you asleep in an hour.”

  Nadia looked between Peggy and the screen. “I was thinking I might see what other augmentatories—”

  Peggy shook her head. “I wouldn’t waste your time. These augments that I’ve showed you, last of a special run we had done in Kn?chelstadt. You can’t get the AMD or SRT in these anywhere else, not without chopping off an arm and a leg.”

  AMD, SRT; added muscle density and synapse response time, the two primary metrics for assessing combat augmentations. “How much better?”

  “25 percent for AMD,” Peggy explained, “and a whole ten milliseconds for SRT. The tendon braiding is pure artistry.” She placed her hand over Nadia’s. “Its worth it.”

  Nadia held Peggy’s gaze for a moment, and when the surgeon’s eyes did not falter, she nodded. “Then I suppose today will do.”

  Peggy smiled and stood gesturing toward the operating bed. “I’ll close the door while you strip and get comfortable. The anesthesiologist will be here in half an hour.”

  Once Peggy had left, Nadia stripped, laying on the bed. The floors and walls blended together, pressing at her eyelids. She registered a cold needle scraping her neck, lulling her from her haze before all went dark.

  ~*~

  Nadia blinked awake, cold like she had been filled with frigid water, heavy like it had started to freeze. “You’re awake,” Peggy said, easing Nadia onto her arms.

  Nadia rubbed her sore arms, larger than she remembered. Larger than Tobias, she lamented. The skin shifted under her fingers, like her entire body had been moved to one side but her skin hadn’t gotten the memo. “I feel large and at the same time like I am wearing too-big clothes.”

  Peggy rubbed Nadia’s shoulder, smile not budging an inch. It might not have budged during the surgery, and only now did Nadia realize she didn’t know how long she’d been out. “That is normal to experience immediately following augmentation,” she explained. She tapped at a tablet in her lap. “I would recommend a follow up consultation a week from now to ensure that the augments took properly. How does Foursday work for you?”

  Foursday worked very well for Nadia, recently unemployed. Appointment set, Nadia shuffled out of the clinic, and her augments shuffled the opposite direction every time she took a step. On the tram, she quickly gave up trying to find a comfortable position, her flesh-inflated buttocks squirming under her. When she stood, her toes twitched, like they were trying to get out of her shoes and run to augmentatory to be fixed.

  She didn’t eat at the hotel, not trusting her new gut to hold down food. She showered and the drops of water seemed to race off her body faster than they had the night prior, like they knew what she was an wanted no part of it. She dried what was left and threw on a pair of loose sweats, and her quads burned as if the fabric was choking them. She stripped again—maybe for the second time that day—content to sleep with only the blanket.

  That too was the wrong choice, each of the blanket’s fibers scraping her new skin and twisting around her new synthetic hairs. She cast it off with a kick, tearing cresting over her eyelids as it drifted from ceiling to floor. She had sinned, yes, but was she now meant to feel each transgression against the Ironclad with every move she made?

  Morning came, but not before Nadia’s gut woke her twice, sloshing around inside her. She heaved into the toilet, the slag her gut conjured burning at her throat as it scrawled up her. After the second bout of vomit, she did not return to her bed. When she woke again, she was pleased to not have a third bout, but equally displeased that the cold and heavy feeling inside her had not subsided.

  She shuffled to her dex and called Peggy’s clinic. She was put in hold by the receptionist, and in the wait, a third bout rocked Nadia like a haymaker to the gut. She lost her spot in the queue. “No,” Nadia snarled minutes later when she spoke to the receptionist again, “do not put me on hold again. I was just in the queue and had to vomit from the augments you—”

  “Ma’am, if you are going to be aggressive, I will have to end this call.”

  Nadia gasped, and the chuckle knocked pieces from her lungs like ash from a burnt log. “Aggressive? This is your—”

  The line clicked off and Nadia gripped her dex tight. Her legs fell out from under her and she slumped against her bed, dex falling from her hand. “I’ll show you aggressive,” she sobbed.

  When her tears were cold against her cheek, she reached for her dex again, dropping it before she could type a single word. What was the point? She had gone to a good clinic, doubly certified. She had prided herself on her list of friends, but none of them were augmented or could recommend a place to go. And I am dead, she thought, coaxing another tear from her eye. When her tears ran out altogether, she wiped the last dregs away and climbed back into bed. She clutched her pillow tight to her stomach, letting her shuddering shoulders rock her to sleep.

  Even without the blanket, her body was a furnace trying to burn through its stores of energy. She woke to strip out of her dress, managing to raise her arms over her head before before her gut lurched inside her. She made it to the bathroom, but not the toilet. The vomit tasted like meatloaf that been smashed back into ground beef, stripped of its seasoning, and heated to 400. It crawled up her throat, and Nadia was sure it was dragging her guts with it. She called room service to clean her room, shambling into her dress to greet them before stumbling back her pillow. Her eyelids were heavy as industrially cast steel slabs, but she did not let them fall until she was alone again.

  Her gut woke her again, and her weak steps burned the bottom of her feet like she was walking over her coals. She was sure that she was twice as large as she had been the day prior, that she was boiling over inside herself and all the sharp pinches were just growing pains. “Growing pains,” she muttered, opening Tobias’ laptop to search for remedies through such a period.

  The screen stabbed at her eyes, too bright to make out the keys below. Her eyelids fell like hammers, and she fell back onto the bed and let darkness take her.

  She woke again, her ass feeling like it had been strapped to a hose and forgotten. She braced herself against the bed, then the walls, then the toilet itself. Her refuse was half liquid, half solid globs of refuse held together by her own bluish blood. She managed to relieve the swelling, though she was not sure how the toilet managed to stay intact. At least I am still awake, she told herself.

  She looked at her dex, finding she had through the night and most of morning. A cold sensation swept over her shoulders like frigid buran, but still she managed to stay awake. She rose, hands braced against the toilet then vanity, and washed her hands before calling the augmentatory again. “Hello,” she said a minute later, silently thanking Fried for allowing her a quic response, “I am calling to ask if I might be able to get some painkillers prescribed for the surgery the other day.”

  “Unfortunately,” the person in the other end said, “we cannot do prescriptions over a dex call. You would have to come in for an evaluation. If you are unable to make the journey, we could send a driver to your location.”

  The cold returned, slicing through Nadia like a fallen icicle. What if Markus saw me at the augmentatory and had been looking to get me away from here? “I do not feel comfortable even leaving my room,” she said, “an I do not think I would take well to being carried.”

  “I am sorry to hear that, but we still cannot prescribe and deliver such medications. Will that be all?”

  Nadia hung up, falling back onto her bed. The itching roused her quickly and she figured a shower was in order.

  Nadia woke up cold and naked, surrounded by the jaundiced linoleum of the shower. A lukewarm spurt hit her cheek, an the water tasted of iron. She scowled at the shower head, earning another spurt to the face as if it was winking. A tear rolled from her eye, but she stifled the next, standing and drying herself.

  She didn’t pass out on the return trip to her bed, her legs feeling as light as she remembered them being. When another fifteen minutes didn’t usher her into darkness, she dressed into a pair of casual clothes. She had sold opium and knew what a dealer looked like. They have to have something for this, she thought, shrugging in a bulky coat and setting out into the night.

  She didn’t have to wander far, reckoning she’d find a dealer behind the nearest stahlmarkt, the Reichstag funded grocery stores. Charity was not a virtue, but if it was, the millions of stahlmarkt stores would be their knightly order. She found a dealer, schooling her face into flag neutrality when he turned and she saw the muscles poking at the sleeves of his jacket. He definitely has what I am looking for. “I had augment surgery a day ago,” she sai, rubbing her shoulder, “and the doctor’s shit isn’t working.”

  The dealer nodded. “I have a few jars of MH”—an abbreviation for for MassHypno, which Nadia knew to be a real drug—“but I need it. Won’t get more for two weeks. You make it worth it?”

  Nadia produced a number of kaisermark bills. “Will this get me a week?”

  “Half,” the dealer mumbled.

  Nadia knew that she had given him enough, a little more than enough, all things considered. She looked over his face—a veiny testicle with eyes and a mouth—and knew he wouldn’t budge. She lifted her foot to leave, only for its sibling to send ripples through her skin like it was a harp. “Very well,” she said through her teeth, forking over the rest of the cash.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The dealer coughed over the jars and a reusable syringe. Nadia was thankful for the latter—noble ladies do powder, not needles, you see—but did not voice her thanks. The money was small compared to the rest of her savings, but having the bills back could not paper over her torn pride or lift the shame from her shoulders, heavy and wet like a block of ice. I did not do anything wrong, sh thought, excusing the possession of a banned substance. Was she to suffer so that the law might be upheld? No, Fried forges those who make the first strike, she told herself, Blessed first is the hammer, second the flux, third the iron, and fourth the steel, yes, just as boron drives away oxygen, so too do I drive away this rusting pain.

  She returned to her room, drew the MH into the syringe and injected it into her arm. As if swept by away by a summer wind, her twitching skin ceased its protests, and a gentle warmth blossomed around her heart. She fell back into her bed, finding darkness already there like an old lover.

  For a lover, darkness liked to thrash about, elbowing Nadia in the gut and jolting her from her sleep. Her internal organs sloshed over each other, like their membranes had been dissolved and they were all fighting over the residue. She managed the toilet before her vomit erupted out of her, nearly identical to the half liquid, half solid mass she had expelled earlier. She checked her dex, shoulders falling when she saw she had only been asleep for four hours. It should have lasted at least twelve, she reasoned, remembering what she had heard of MassHypno from her more adventurous clients.

  Her skin tingled, and Nadia reckoned it would not like sleeping for at least a few hours. She grabbed Tobias’ laptop, blinking away the spears of light it sent at her before starting a search on MassHypno. According to the forums, it lasted half a day for grown men far more augmented than she was. The augments themselves then, she thought, searching through a list of other nearby augmentatories. Time to get a second opinion.

  “Hello,” she said once she had connected with another augmentatory. “I am still having pains from another augmentatory and cannot move up my consultation. Do you take walk-ins?” Nadia had never had to ask for a walk-in before, always making appointments, but the shifting lump of organs inside her had other plans.

  “We do!” the receptionist exclaimed. “And we offer free scans of other augmentatories. You don’t pay if we don’t cut!”

  “Thank you,” Nadia breathed out. “I will be right there.”

  Nadia’s toes were good piggies as she ran to the tram, stood on its dirty floor, and again as she ran to the new emporium. The receptionist—short, blonde, wearing scrubs that Nadia thought hugged her buttocks too firmly— entered her information and led her to an operating room, dull grey instead of dull white.

  Hanging along the walls were posters depicting the services and products offered. One poster depicted a brain with synthetic weave replacing some folds—with built-in integration to common data-book softwares!—while another showcased complete metallic or plastic limb replacements. This emporium embraced a liberal view of augmentation, apparently, featuring posters with a person possessing four arms and another with a tail, available in three varieties. That was three too many for Nadia. Have some decency, people! Tails are not even allowed in most workplaces. Are you just going to live in a club all your life?

  After a few lonely minutes, the receptionist returned with a cloudy drink that looked sugary, and Nadia’s throat had never felt so dry. “Flexsleep tea,” the receptionist said, placing cup gently in Nadia’s hands, “for the pain.”

  Nadia sipped the tea, and the shifting, rapidly-firing synapses inside her stopped as if swept away in a cold wind. Nadia gulped the solution down, smiling up at the receptionist, who smiled back. “I have more of that, but I need you to stand up now for a body scan,” she said, gesturing to another room where a mechanical arm hung from the ceiling.

  The floor shook, and all the organs inside her shook like she was a punching bag facing a prizefighter. A giant lumbered through the halls, shaking the ground with each step. He wore only a small tank top and gym shorts, leaving all of his enhanced musculature on display, from his legs that looked like they had been stuffed with watermelons, to his arms which also looked stuffed with watermelons. Extra veins ran across his body like tree roots, protruding a finger’s width from his skin; thrash-tendons, Nadia now knew them to be called, capable of supplementing conventional musculature and providing force to via previously untapped vectors. Simply put, his biceps could put up 225 on the bench press while he was napping on his side. Not that much, Nadia thought to herself.

  Once the giant passed, the receptionist led Nadia over to the mechanical arms, and Nadia’s twitching subsided long enough for her to stay still during the scan. True to her word, the receptionist gave Nadia a second glass of the flexsleep solution, larger than the previous one.

  Nadia drank the solution and played a game on her dex until the surgeon came, and her stomach dropped an inch. He had a greasy blond rat-tail and arms littered with track marks, the most she had ever seen on a person. This is exactly the kind of person I did not want Jan or Konrad to become. Luckily for her, they never would. That ponytail is not doing him any favors and he should cover his damn arms, but it looks clean enough, Nadia thought before stepping one toe over the111 door. When she didn’t immediately contact some disease, Nadia stepped the rest of her body over the door.

  “Zou must be madam Luftreiniger,” the man said with a thick Vichy accent as he offered Nadia his hand. “I am Manfred,” Manfred said, stretching the ed in his name for a mile.

  This was a mistake, Nadia thought as she shook his hand. “Nadia.”

  “Bad news”—he took a seat and pointed for Nadia to sit opposite him—“you got scammed. Good news, you only got scammed.” He flipped his laptop Nadia, slender finger already resting on an image. “Zese are implant nodes”—he tapped a black cylindrical protrusion extending a micron from blue flesh—“and zis is a shoulder. You should have six according to the ze model, zey gave you four, ze minimum. Zey should have given you six.”

  Nadia swallowed. “And the other two?” she asked, hoping she didn’t know the answer.

  Manfred shrugged. “Pocketed, put in someone else.”

  “But”—Nadia sniffled, feeling very small and dumb—“they said it was a special runs.”

  Manfred nodded. “Tagline,” he whispered. “Special runs are like bespoke clothes; you have to request them.” He tapped the image again. “Zese stabilize ze surrounding flesh; more means better stability, but more risk of damage. With only four, your muscles are ripping to keep all of you together. Zat’s why you feel so horrible.”

  Nadia looked away from Manfred and the images. “But I paid good money,” she said, as if it would make the augments realize that she had in fact paid good money for their to-date piss poor performance.

  Manfred nodded again. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You are a pretty lady, who looks like she has money. Zey thought ze minimum would work, but zey were wrong.”

  “Can you fix it?” Nadia asked, hoping such an operation wouldn’t be too much. The last one had taken a large hit to her savings.

  Manfred shook his head, rubbing his hands up and down his palms. “Not easily. I’ll have to take ze nodes out and cut away zen damaged tendons, zen lay new flesh on top. If zat’s all you want, I give you 50% rate. I know what it’s like to have a bad graft, believe me. I would also be taking ze nodes, refurbishing zem, selling elsewhere.”

  “They have caused me nothing but pain,” Nadia said. “Have them.”

  Manfred stared at her. “Zing is, woman like you does not get augments like zese for nothing. You will still want that strength, no?”

  Nadia nodded meekly, hoping it wouldn’t inconvenience the man with nice explanations and nice tea too much. “I would, yes,” she muttered.

  Manfred grinned, fingers steepling like he was devil looking over a winning hand of cards. “Splendid! What can I do for you, ze current you, before you become ze new you?”

  “Can you tone it down, please?” Nadia asked, not sure how much Vichy-ness she could take. They were western Atlasians—Fried’s children—but that did not mean Nadia had to like them or their pompous accents.

  Manfred sighed deeply. “Better?” Nadia nodded. “So, Nadia, what can I get for you?”

  “That guy who just walked out—”

  “Bennett? Hard to miss.”

  “I want that, but less”—Nadia rolled her hand—“I want that but still able to wear a dress afterwards, I suppose is what I am getting at“

  Manfred grabbed a pen and paper, some light returning to his eyes. “I got you. Bennett needs all the muscle he can get working security at a club on 44. You”—he pointed his pen at Nadia—“you want something subtle, yet striking, subdued, but can subdue, no? What do zou know about ze Gianni line of augments?”

  Am I supposed to know what that is? Nadia resisted the urge to kick herself for not reading the latest Augment Weekly. “Nooothing.”

  Manfred threw his head back as if hit. “Ahh!” he exclaimed before retrieving a nearby laptop. Manfred pointed at pictures, fingers never lingering for more than ten seconds. “Mistress Gianni, out of Naples Station down south, is a seamstress with augments. Zey pack a lot of bite in a small space, like a fucking purse dog,” Manfred said with a growl. “Did a summer under her, throws hell of a party, let me tell you—”

  “Manfred, please tone it down.”

  Manfred collected himself. “As I was saying, Mistress Gianni’s augments use a tighter tendon-braiding in their grafts; more tendons in a tiny space, more force when you fire zem off. And zey are not pure hydroxyatlasite, zouped up with iron for strength and calcium for energy She is like liquor, and you are like beer, follow?”

  Nadia nodded. “I think so,” she said nervously.

  Manfred placed a hand on each of Nadia’s shoulders before widening the distance between them. “Zere is also skeletal extenders. more base equals more force. You get ze idea, now?”

  Nadia nodded again. “How much would my shoulders be widened?”

  Manfred shrugged. “As much as ze lady wants. Zou still want to wear a dress and look sexy, no? Although”—Manfred giggled—“some people are into big muscly women.”

  “Manfred, again, tone it down, please.”

  “Right. I just get carried away when I start talking augments. Let’s talk something less interesting, zen, shall we? Money.” Manfred sighed. “How much are you willing to spend?”

  “Two million marks.” It was one of her kid’s college and investment funds and a little from her own retirement account. After that and the previous surgery, she’d be left with one child’s funds and whatever savings she still had to house herself for six months and train to enter the trials. What does that get me?”

  Manfred blinked several times. “For 1 million you can get whatever ze fuck you want. You could put a kid through college twenty floors up and still have money to spend.”

  Nadia knew that much, having planned to do so, three times. “What does that get me from the Gianni line?”

  “For half, zou could get ze Gianni Reinforced Ligament and Bone Supplement, ultra fine edition, known in ze industry as ze Girl Boss. It is ze lead in lean augments in the country, pre-packed with as many organoid attachment points as ze lady desires.”

  Organoids took on the strain of muscular enhancement, feeding off the toxic byproducts so the hosts didn’t have to. Unsightly parasites with no place on a proper lady, but cold iron never liked the heat or the hammer, did it? “And the other half?”

  Manfred grinned, threatening to cut his face in half. “I have a few ideas. Madam, what exactly are you getting zese augments for? Not every day zat someone drops zis much money in my lap.”

  “Krieger trials.”

  “Really? To have a knight of ze Krieger Orders pass ze trials, with my augs, oh!” Manfred grabbed a nearby notebook and scrawled furiously into it. “Business would go through ze fucking roof, madam!”

  Nadia sighed. He does not know how to tone it down, does he? “What can you add that would help an aspiring knight?”

  “I have just ze zing for you,” Manfred said before he scurried to retrieve something from a nearby drawer. Manfred handed Nadia a hair-thin, translucent black film that felt every bit like Nadia’s glassy skin, if a touch slicker. “SkinShield, deflects most civilian calibers and comes in your color, pink, black, anything.”

  Markus has bulletproof skin. She shuddered, the idea of discarding her skin as casually as bundling for a winter stroll cutting through her like a frigid knife. “Does it really work?”

  Manfred sighed. “Do I need to pull ze gun out of my pants and show you? Zat will cost extra.”

  Nadia shook her head. “Is it like the skin knights use?”

  Manfred shook his head. “Ze kriegers have a layer of nanotubes threaded between ze tendons and zen zey have steam pumped through zem from a pocket dimension stored in a small cannister near ze tailbone. Tons of it, stored in a little bubble where zey fold reality in on itself,” Manfred explained, rolling his left hand into his flat right hand. “Just as a bullet hits, steam is pumped into ze area, against ze pressure.”

  “Like a submarine?”

  “Precisely! zer skin does zis all on its own. Very pricey, floor 200 type shit, higher even.”

  “And what you would put on me? Can I trust it?”

  “Graphene fibers sheets, laid one over ze other”—Manfred stacked his hands—“zousands of times, disperses ze energy great.”

  “If it breaks? Do I have to come back to you?” Nadia didn’t like the idea of her enhanced skin breaking on her and leaving her with shrapnel.

  “Bah!” Manfred exclaimed with a dismissive wave. “Takes carbon and other elements from ze atmosphere, but”—Manfred raised a finger—“if it is completely destroyed, zou are shit out of luck, as zey say. Zen zou would have to come to me”—Manfred must have seen something in Nadia’s eyes—“but I do replacements for free, or else my name is not Manfred!”

  Nadia raised an eyebrow. “Is your name even Manfred?”

  Manfred’s shoulders slumped. “It is,” he whined. “I don’t like it, but I love my mother too much to change it,” he said before puffing out his chest. “Enough about me and my problems, let us get back to zou! I guarantee that zou will be a knight, no!” He clenched his hand into a fist mere inches from his face. “A saint! with my augs. I am certain of it.” He thrust his hand across the table. “Will you, Nadia, be my champion? My beautiful bride of battle and death?”

  “As much as you can make me so, I will be your champion,” Nadia said as she shook the hand, making Manfred smile widely. I have brought you battle—"

  “And I will bring you victory,” Manfred finished the saying, his grin cutting his face like a scythe. “Let us start zen!” he exclaimed as he pivoted to start preparing the operating bed. “Full replacement surgery will take two whole days, and I’ll be rotating with my assistant. It will upset some, but shit happens, and I can make space in ze schedule for you. I am ze boss after all.” Manfred turned back to Nadia, hands still guiding instruments into place like puppets. “Zis will destroy your skin, I assume you want your new skin to be ze same color, no?” Nadia nodded. “Hair too? Same color and cut for ze synth hair?”

  “Black, in a short bob.” A way to mourn, I suppose.

  Manfred smiled. “Lovely. I suggest zou get your affairs in order now. We start in an hour, and we don’t stop until we are done.”