Week Seven

When he woke up, the first thing he felt was heavy. The second was cold. His left shoulder felt oddly tight, so he rubbed at it, and his fingers grazed metal. Instinctively, he flinched, before realizing that it was his own arm—or it was supposed to be, anyway. He was acutely aware of how the thing was now infused with the muscles and tendons of his shoulder, and he couldn't stop shivering—though he convinced himself that was merely a side effect of the anesthesia.

With effort, he lifted his new arm to the light, turning it over, examining the metal joints. It was heavy, and it was cold, and it was inhuman. He let it fall back down to the bed and covered his face with his real hand. It looked just like his dad's.


He was given two days of recovery time, and then they began physical therapy sessions to work on his strength and dexterity. After all, as an Enforcer, he would now have to operate as the muscle behind the team and operate on the front lines of the action. For that, he would need full use of his arm, which conveniently looked a hell of a lot more like a weapon than anything else. He thought it would suit his new job very well, even while it made things like sleeping more uncomfortable. For that reason, he'd quickly developed a habit of wrapping it in a blanket to keep the cool metal from touching his skin at night.

During therapy, first and foremost, he found the thing put him off-balance. It took effort to stand upright without leaning slightly to the left. Of course, it didn't help that he'd barely eaten anything since being admitted to the isolation ward, and he could feel his already weakened muscles straining against his new arm all along the left side of his back and chest. It made him frustrated with his own body, and he embraced that frustration. He channeled all of the dredges of his energy through it and began to feel a little bit more like himself again.

Beyond the daily physical therapy sessions, he would exercise in his room in any way he could—usually, this meant push-ups. If nothing else, it gave him a sense of purpose. Focused his attention. He had never understood why Ko had spent so much time on his physical training, but now he was beginning to—each thought became synched with every beat of his pulse, honed to the essentials, and every muscle movement became an orchestrated part of the whole system. For once, he felt in control.

Day by day, he got a little bit stronger. He could see what he was working toward a little more clearly. The haze in his mind began to evaporate, replaced by an almost startling determination. He would not sit in silence and wonder, or be consumed by grief or obsession—he was a detective, with people to protect and a team waiting for him on the other side. He would not lose sight of that, not for a moment. Though he now understood them better than he ever had, he was still not Kogami and he was still not his father.

Every time he pushed himself up off the floor, he convinced himself of this fact. And every time, he wouldn't break eye contact with the three-digit number on his door. He watched it without blinking, between every puff of breath, as it flickered between 152 and 138 before it finally, resolutely settled on 140.

Good enough, he thought.