![]() With a yank of the last wire, her foot clattered to the concrete. She couldn’t feel them through the gloves, but her retina display helpfully informed her with blinking red text that she was losing connection to the limb. One by one, she disconnected the wires that still linked her foot and ankle, each spurting a tiny spark. After digging through the jumbled mess of screwdrivers and wrenches, she emerged with the fuse puller that had been long buried at the bottom. Sighing, Cinder bent over the toolbox beneath the worktable. She spotted plenty of stocky white androids in the din, but none of them Iko. She stretched her fingers wide, working out the cramp that had formed at the fleshy base of her thumb from clenching the screwdriver, and squinted again into the city square. She covered her steel hand first, and though her right palm began to sweat immediately inside the thick material, she felt more comfortable with the gloves on, hiding the plating of her left hand. With a spine- popping stretch, she pulled her dirty fingers through her hair, combing it up into a messy tail, then grabbed her blackened work gloves. “It’s not like wires are contagious,” Cinder muttered to her empty booth. The remaining children fled into the crowd, taking their bright laughter with them. Cinder wrinkled her nose at the baker’s retreating back. The boy whined, dragging his feet as Sacha ordered him to stay closer to their booth. ![]() “Sunto, come here! I told you not to play so close to-” Sacha met Cinder’s gaze, knotted her lips, then grabbed her son by the arm and spun away. She spotted Chang Sacha, the baker, pushing through the crowd in her flour- coated apron. “Sunto! Sunto!” Cinder’s amusement wilted. The inconvenience of having to swarm around the writhing bodies stirred grumbles from the shoppers, and Cinder adored the children for it. But she did love the glares from passersby as the giggling children fell over in their paths. Not so much at the nursery rhyme, a phantom song about pestilence and death that had regained popularity in the past de cade. A ring of children were standing just outside her booth, trilling-”Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”- and then laughing hysterically as they collapsed to the pavement. Cinder’s auditory interface dulled the noise into a static thrumming, but today one melody lingered above the rest that she couldn’t drown out. The netscreens that covered every building and filled the air with the chatter of advertisements, news reports, gossip. The hum of ID scanners and monotone voice receipts as money changed accounts. The bellows of men as they bargained with robotic shop keepers, trying to talk the computers down from their desired profit t margins. The square was filled with shoppers and hawkers, children and noise. A stained tablecloth divided Cinder from browsers as they shuffled past. Cinder knew they really just didn’t like being next to her. It was squeezed into a shady cove between a used netscreen dealer and a silk merchant, both of whom frequently complained about the tangy smell of metal and grease that came from Cinder’s booth, even though it was usually disguised by the aroma of honey buns from the bakery across the square. ![]() Without a sign, her booth hinted at her trade only by the shelves of stock android parts that crowded the walls. Cinder was the only full- service mechanic at New Beijing’s weekly market. She just hoped Iko would be back soon with its replacement. Having loathed the too- small foot for four years, she swore to never put the piece of junk back on again. A sense of release hovered at the end of those wires- freedom. A spark singed her fingertips and she jerked away, leaving the foot to dangle from a tangle of red and yellow wires. Tossing the screwdriver onto the table, Cinder gripped her heel and yanked the foot from its socket. By the time it was extracted far enough for her to wrench free with her prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean. Her knuckles ached from forcing the screwdriver into the joint as she struggled to loosen the screw one gritting twist after another. The screw through cinder’s ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle. You can also listen to Chapter One of the audiobook on YouTube.
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