CHAPTER NINE

THE SOUTHERN AIR TEMPLE, PART 1

Tanya jerked when she awoke. She screwed up her face, when she breathed in her first waking gasp, because it tasted gritty. The sensation clogged her taste buds, but she couldn't spit it out.

Red and orange sports obscured her vision.

Paper matting unstuck from the side of her face, where her own drool left a wet spot.

Pipes stuck up her nose. Something tickled behind her throat, making her on the verge of gagging. She ripped out the pipes and the tickling disappeared.

Weight pressed her down. It started at the back of her neck, followed between her scapulae, and ended at the base of her spine. Warm metal. Cords. A device was fixed to her so deep, it connected to her vertebrae and integrated her nerve endings. The operation put a device in her she couldn't see, except by the stroke of her fingertips.

She kneaded it as if its texture gave away all the information she needed. She fingered its wires, made of copper, coiling ever downwards. Energy ran through them with the humming of an active machine. At the very lowest vertebra, they were bundled to form one thick thread connected to a car battery.

She recognized the logo on her energy source, because she designed them to power her company's vehicles. She snatched the wires where they were attached to the battery's positive and negative ends. She propped herself on her other elbow while the gravity of her scenario settled in.

She was plugged in. The surgery literally plugged her into an energy source. It turned her into a living engine that moved at its whim. It operated her. She moved because of it. She lived because of it. It owned her, in a manner of speaking, which made her little better than an Industry car.

The battery sat on a wooden table with criss-crossed legs, along with spare tools for a surgery, a bowl and spoon crusted with oatmeal, and a dirty rag. She shoved everything else off with a clattering noise to drag her battery closer, but a voice stunned her.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." The woman sounded mechanical in her warning, layered with the caution of someone who had to express the same things over and over. Worn but wary.

Tanya caught their reflection in a cracked mirror. Though grit stubbled its outline, the visual was enough to identify with whom she was working.

They were spidery and pale, made of skin and bone and little else. They wore underwear which used to be cotton-white, a sign to how long they must have been here and the status in which they were kept. Cream covered their legs while they shaved with a penny-store plastic razor. What they had shaved so far gleamed ivory in the light of an oil lamp.

A couple other light sources emitted enough to see the rest of their surroundings. Of all the shabby furniture with benches cracked down the lengths, paper mats for bedding on the floor, and workbenches best suited for a T.V. dinner tray instead, what stood out the most was an iron door with knots the size of her fist.

It was seven meters tall and just as wide. A gap like a mail slot was made where people could slide it open and spy on her.

On them.

Tanya wore the same black underwear and pants as she had on her flight, where the raid snatched her out of mid-air. Her shirt was missing, though. Her jacket, too. And her drink.

Hunger and thirst came to her in an instant. Her hollow insides ached. Her throat was dry with parched earth. She clung to herself with both arms as she inched into a sitting position. The slate floor was shabby when she first put her toes down. She looked half of the woman she used to be. She hunched forward and starved and grimaced. Echoes of her surgery went through her arms and legs. Soreness and stiffness and shame.

The stranger finished shaving after a while, a process that smoothed their legs to appear almost polished. They wiped and washed themself clean, tugged a dark sleeveless tunic over their head for an outfit, and got a cup of lukewarm water for Tanya who drank it without protest.

She did not look them in the eyes when she asked in a ghost of her usual voice, "What did you do to me?"

They offered her a tunic of sand-colored cloth, which they helped to put in. The fabric scratched her skin, especially her armpits.

"What I did? What I did is save your life."

The tunic smelled like it hadn't been washed since its last owner, and moreover like it had been worn for days and days over without changing.

"Your spinal cord was fractured. What I did was restore it. I brought back your mobility. You can walk, again."

The door's slot chinked when it opened.

"Say hi." They waved politely at whomever was on the other side.

Their eyes were the only things visible but too dimly lit to discern any details.

"That's right. They can look at us whenever they want." They moved to a worktable where manilla folders sat in a pile. They sorted through them, until they found the one they wanted, and opened it to show Tanya its contents.

The slot closed, presumably because their guard had duties elsewhere.

The prisoners sat side by side with a diagram displayed.

It was done in graphite on yellow paper. It showed Tanya's spine, or at any rate, the previous condition of her spine. One vertebra had crunched to oblivion. The fiber that was supposed to connect it as a whole system was frayed because of the impact. It was an injury that paralyzed her. For the rest of her years, that damage would've put her in a wheelchair, pushed to every setting by whomever was kind enough to do so. Her brain would never be able to interact with the rest of her body even to her fingers and toes.

The notes scribbled here and there laid out Tanya's condition in surgical detail.

It steeled her expression with a mixture of humiliation and self-loathing. She covered her mouth behind her hand and squeezed what little life she had left. She had nothing left to give except thanks for her head and her heart. Her still-beating muscle was anxious to keep going. But in her circumstances, it didn't feel worth it. Her grip shook with weakness, even after she clutched the edge of her bedding.

"What's your name?" she asked them, who returned the folder with their back turned to her.

"My name is Yeng-jue. No need to ask you yours."

"Thanks."

Yeng-jue gulped when she folded on the foot of Tanya's bedding. They curled their legs like a nest beneath them where they wrung their hands together. They fidgeted while they talked: roaming their fingers between each other, studying their nails, picking at the wrinkled linen. Nerves made them uncertain. Perhaps as wary as they had always been. "We met once, at a conference in Ba Sing Se. It must have been five or six years ago. You wore a New Solstice hat that looked so dorky over your eyes."

"I don't remember."

"You wouldn't. If I had been that drunk, I wouldn't have been able to stand, much less lead a panel about neural integrated prosthetics. Somehow, you steered the discussion onto the benefits of robotics in bondage and sexual discipline."

A crowd of muffled voices cut them off midway.

The door's slot opened. Somebody from the crowd barked for their attention.

"Stand up." They jumped to their feet.

Tanya was slower going, because her legs wanted to give out when she tested her weight.

Yeng-jue sweated. "Stand up!" They aided Tanya with their own weight, that way they leaned on each other the same way a crone leans on their next generation.

Tanya's tail of wires tugged between her and the car battery, so she clutched it to her free side.

A deadbolt unlatched with a metallic thud. A few beeps of a keypad later, another lock was undone, before the prison door swung towards them. Its hinges groaned with mass in a noise that filled the chamber.