The potatoes were burning. Adrian could smell them before he saw the smoke. His mother stood at the stove with her back to him, calmly stirring something in a pan while a thin grey cloud gathered beneath the ceiling.
“Mom.”
She didn't turn around.
“The potatoes.”
“I know.”
Of course she knew. She was standing right there. Adrian took a step toward her.
“Then why aren't you—”
“Pay attention.”
That wasn't his mother's voice. His father sat at the kitchen table. He was wearing his old service uniform. Adrian frowned. His father hadn't worn that uniform in years.
“Dad?”
“Pay attention.”
Something cold touched Adrian's chest. The kitchen disappeared.
* * *
White. White light. White ceiling. White shapes moving above him. Adrian blinked. His eyelids barely obeyed. For several seconds, he couldn't remember where he was.
Hospital.
The thought arrived automatically. Something had happened. An accident, maybe. He'd—
Work.
He remembered leaving work. The station. Jonas. Pizza. A woman. His phone hitting the pavement. The van. A hand around his body.
Not a hand.
Magic.
You're exactly what we need.
Adrian tried to sit up. Nothing happened. His body moved perhaps a centimeter before something stopped him. His wrists were restrained. So were his forearms. Something crossed his chest. Another restraint held his waist. His thighs. His ankles. Even his head.
The fog in Adrian's mind vanished.
Not a hospital.
His heart began to hammer.
“Pupillary response normal.”
A woman's voice. Close.
“Consciousness returning.”
“Already?”
“Apparently.”
Someone leaned over him. A man in pale grey clothing. Thirty, perhaps. There was something medical about him, but Adrian couldn't make sense of the transparent plate hanging over his left eye. Pale green lines moved across it. The man watched them. Not Adrian.
“Heart rate increasing.”
Adrian pulled at his right wrist. The restraint didn't give. His left. Nothing. His legs. Nothing.
Pay attention.
His father's voice. Not really. Just a memory dragged up from somewhere old and familiar. His father had said it constantly when Adrian was young. Crossing a road. Holding a tool. Learning to drive. Listening to one of the lectures Adrian had considered unbearably important to ignore at seventeen.
Pay attention to what's around you. Then decide what you're going to do.
Adrian had rolled his eyes at it often enough. He would have given almost anything to hear the real thing now.
He swallowed. His mouth felt like it had been packed with cotton.
“Where am I?”
The words came out barely above a whisper. Nobody answered.
Another person entered his limited field of vision. A woman, perhaps fifty, dark hair streaked with grey and tied tightly behind her head. She wore a white coat. She looked at the display beside him. Not at him.
“Responsive?”
“Yes.”
“Coherent?”
“Likely.”
“Begin verification.”
A low vibration passed through the surface beneath Adrian. He felt it through his spine. Light swept over his body.
“Identity confirmed. Adrian Voss. Human. Male. Thirty-eight years.”
“Genetic match?”
“Confirmed.”
“Contamination?”
“None detected.”
“Prior modification?”
“None.”
“Arcane profile.”
A pause.
“Capacity negligible. No measurable primary affinity. No secondary expression.”
“Physical?”
“Standard human range.”
“Any deviation from records?”
“No.”
The woman nodded.
“Baseline confirmed.”
Adrian stopped pulling against the restraints.
Baseline.
He had heard that before. The service road. The man beside the van looking at his device.
Profile?
Matches.
Baseline.
They hadn't grabbed the wrong person. Some small, irrational part of Adrian had apparently still been hoping they had.
“What's baseline?”
Neither of them acknowledged the question.
“Prepare for transfer.”
The surface beneath Adrian shifted. His stomach tightened. The table rolled backward. A door opened behind his head, and the ceiling began moving above him.
Adrian pulled against the restraints once more. Nothing. He stopped wasting the strength.
Pay attention.
They pushed him into a corridor. Grey ceiling. Recessed lights. Smooth walls.
First door. Second. A symbol above the third that Adrian didn't recognize.
Three.
Another light.
Four.
He couldn't see much without moving his head, so he listened instead. The soft hum of the table. Footsteps. Two people with him. Maybe three.
Five doors.
Turn left.
A dark dome in the ceiling.
Camera.
Six.
His heart was still beating too fast. He concentrated on the numbers.
Seven.
If he knew the route, maybe—
Maybe what?
He couldn't move. He didn't know where the building was. He didn't even know how long he'd been unconscious.
Still.
Pay attention.
Eight.
A door on his right stood open. Adrian saw the room for perhaps two seconds. A metal table. A person crouched beside it, cleaning the floor. Something dark covered the tiles. For an instant Adrian's mind refused to identify it. Then it did.
Blood.
Far too much blood.
Someone else stood beside another table. A long black transport bag lay on top of it. Human-sized. The zipper hadn't been completely closed. A hand hung over the edge.
Grey skin.
Not pale.
Grey.
Four fingers.
Thick dark nails.
Adrian stared. Something moved beneath the skin. A ripple travelled from the wrist toward the knuckles.
Then the hand twitched.
Adrian forgot the doors. Someone inside the room looked up. Their eyes met. The door slid shut.
Adrian stared at the blank wall passing beside him.
The hand had moved.
No.
Maybe it hadn't.
Drugs.
He was drugged.
The hand had moved.
His stomach turned. Whatever small hope he'd been constructing collapsed. This wasn't ransom. It wasn't his job. It wasn't someone trying to frighten him.
Baseline.
Adrian suddenly understood one thing about the word. Not what it meant. Why they needed one.
His breathing accelerated.
“Heart rate one-forty.”
“Adjust sedation.”
Adrian's head moved as far toward the voice as the restraint allowed.
“No.”
Something hissed beside his neck. Cold spread into his shoulder.
Not again.
He tried to hold on to the ceiling.
Nine.
That was nine doors.
Or eight.
Had he counted the open room?
Eight.
Nine.
Fuck.
Pay attention.
I am.
The corridor stretched. The lights smeared into white lines. The last thing Adrian saw was another door opening ahead.
* * *
“Adrian.”
Mara sat across from him. She was ten again. Maybe eleven. Her hair was shorter than he remembered.
“You forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“Sunday.”
“It's not Sunday.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No.”
“You're late.”
“For what?”
Mara smiled. Something was wrong with her teeth. Adrian tried to look away. He couldn't.
“You're late.”
The pain arrived before he woke. It tore through his left arm and drove every other thought out of his head.
Adrian's eyes opened. His body strained against the restraints on instinct. A scream escaped him before he understood that it was his.
Something burned inside his arm. Not on the skin. Inside. It moved upward. Slowly. Vein by vein.
“Motor response elevated.”
“He's restrained.”
“Increase suppression.”
Different voices. Different room.
Adrian forced his eyes open.
Blue light.
Metal structures curved over the table on both sides of him. Transparent lines disappeared beneath patches attached to his chest, arms and thighs. A clear tube entered the inside of his elbow. Something silver moved through it.
Adrian stared. It looked like liquid until the light caught it. Then something shimmered inside.
The burning followed it. Up his arm. Toward his shoulder.
“Carrier saturation thirty-two percent.”
“Response?”
“Stable.”
“Continue.”
Adrian shut his eyes.
This isn't happening.
A useless thought.
It was happening. He could feel every centimeter of it.
A woman with short blond hair stood behind a transparent partition, watching several displays suspended in the air around her.
“Baseline remains clean.”
“Arcane response?”
“Minimal.”
“Expected.”
A male voice answered from somewhere Adrian couldn't see.
“Begin field exposure.”
The room changed. There was no sound. No flash. Adrian simply felt something press against him. Everywhere. His skin prickled.
He opened his eyes. Thin lines of light had appeared along the metal structures surrounding him. Symbols illuminated one after another. Dozens. Hundreds.
Adrian had lived around magic his entire life. Street signs. Heating systems. Transit gates. Delivery boards. His mother's kitchen tricks. His sister healing a cut without thinking much of it.
Magic was ordinary.
Magic was boring.
Until it was inside him.
Adrian stopped breathing.
The pressure pushed against every part of his body at once.
Searching.
That was the only word his mind could find.
Something was searching for a way in.
Then it found the silver substance in his veins.
Pain exploded through him.
Adrian screamed.
The symbols around the table flared.
“Connection established.”
“Output?”
“Four percent.”
“Maintain.”
His body shook against the restraints. Something pressed inward around his chest.
His heart.
No.
Not his heart.
Around it.
The sensation travelled down his spine, into his jaw, behind his eyes. His teeth began to ache.
Why the fuck did his teeth hurt?
“Six percent.”
“Response remains within parameters.”
“Raise to eight.”
Adrian tried to say stop. He wasn't sure anything came out. The pressure intensified. His right hand cramped. His fingers curled.
For a moment, something about them looked wrong.
Adrian blinked.
Normal.
Probably.
The drugs.
It had to be the drugs.
“Eight percent.”
“Integration?”
Silence.
Then:
“Beginning.”
The people around him stopped moving. Adrian noticed that. It frightened him more than the pain.
“Confirm.”
“Integration markers detected.”
“How many?”
“Seven.”
“Check again.”
“I already did.”
A pause.
“Cellular rejection?”
“None.”
“None?”
“None.”
Someone moved quickly behind Adrian.
“That's farther than seventeen.”
“Seventeen rejected at five markers.”
“I'm aware.”
Seventeen.
Grey skin.
Four fingers.
The hand.
Adrian's stomach clenched.
That was seventeen.
He couldn't know that.
His mind decided it anyway.
The hand had moved.
Maybe seventeen had still been alive.
Maybe that was worse.
“Continue.”
Adrian closed his eyes. He didn't try to speak again.
* * *
Time became unreliable.
There was pain.
Darkness.
Voices.
Pain again.
Sometimes Adrian woke on the table. Sometimes somewhere else.
Once he woke submerged to his neck in warm fluid, a transparent cover inches above his face.
He panicked.
Hands appeared beyond the glass.
Then darkness.
Another time he woke and couldn't feel his legs. He spent what might have been seconds or minutes trying to move his toes.
Nothing.
They're gone.
The thought became absolute certainty.
His legs were gone.
Then sensation returned all at once.
He wished it hadn't.
Darkness.
Needles.
Light.
Hands.
Magic.
Machines.
“Twenty-one percent.”
Darkness.
“Structural adaptation progressing.”
Darkness.
“Again.”
Pain.
“Hold the field.”
Pain.
“Don't let it drop.”
Pain.
His mother stood in his apartment. She looked disappointed.
“You never called.”
“I was working.”
“You always say that.”
“Mom.”
“Sunday. One o'clock.”
“I know.”
“You'll be late.”
“I know.”
“You're always late.”
Adrian opened his eyes. The blond woman stood above him. For a moment he thought she was Mara. Then his vision cleared.
“How long?”
His voice was barely audible.
The woman adjusted the line at his arm. No reaction.
Adrian watched her hands.
“How long have I been here?”
Nothing.
She checked the line and turned away.
“Prepare the next sequence.”
Adrian closed his eyes again.
Questions implied that these people considered him part of the conversation.
They didn't.
His apartment appeared immediately.
Not a dream this time.
A memory.
The sofa.
The mug he'd left beside the sink that morning.
Laundry he hadn't folded.
The game waiting on his computer.
Four hours and seventeen minutes.
Jonas would message him Friday.
Something stupid first.
Then another message when Adrian didn't answer.
Mara would notice.
Maybe not immediately.
Sunday at the latest.
His mother would call.
Mara would call.
Jonas would call.
Work would call.
Someone would eventually realize he was missing.
The thought should have helped.
It didn't.
Because none of them knew where he was.
Adrian didn't know where he was.
How were they supposed to find him?
His throat tightened.
He wanted his apartment.
His bed.
His stupid frozen pizza.
He wanted to complain about work.
He wanted Jonas to make fun of his back.
He wanted Sunday lunch.
He wanted his father to tell the same story he'd already heard twelve times.
He wanted ordinary problems.
Something touched his arm.
Adrian opened his eyes.
The silver line again.
Carrier.
He knew that word now.
Carrier.
Integration.
Markers.
Field.
Rejection.
Remember them.
If he got out—
Adrian stopped.
When.
When he got out.
He would remember.
Carrier.
Integration.
Markers.
Field.
Rejection.
“Carrier ready.”
“Field ready.”
Cold entered his vein.
Adrian shifted his hand against the restraint.
Something felt wrong.
He looked down.
His wrist was narrower.
There was space beneath the restraint where there hadn't been before.
Adrian stared at it.
No.
The restraint could have loosened.
Maybe someone had adjusted it.
He flexed his fingers.
His hand looked wrong too.
Not dramatically.
Just enough.
Smaller, perhaps.
The proportions subtly different.
Adrian stared at the familiar scar across his index knuckle.
Same scar.
Different hand.
His eyes travelled down the length of his body. His arms looked thinner. His frame seemed smaller somehow. Even his chest had changed enough that he couldn't blame all of it on the sensors and swelling.
Adrian looked away.
No.
Drugs.
Fluid.
The angle.
Anything.
He found the reflective surface beyond the equipment. His face was still there. Pale. Sweating. Exhausted.
But something about it was wrong.
The jaw, perhaps.
The cheekbones.
He couldn't tell.
Every time he tried to focus on one difference, another seemed to appear.
Adrian ran his tongue across his teeth.
They hurt.
All of them.
His gums ached too.
So did his scalp.
And his ears.
His ears?
He swallowed.
His joints hurt. His back. His hips. His shoulders. Places that made sense and places that didn't.
Maybe everything hurt.
Maybe that was all it was.
He looked at the reflection again.
Smaller wrist.
Different proportions.
A face that no longer looked quite the way he remembered it.
These weren't side effects.
Adrian knew that now.
They were changing him.
Into what?
He stared at his reflection.
Still me.
For now.
The field activated.
White light swallowed his face.
* * *
When Adrian woke again, people were arguing.
That was new.
“No. Run it again.”
“I have.”
“Then recalibrate.”
“It isn't calibration.”
Adrian kept his eyes closed. His body hurt differently now.
Deeper.
Not skin.
Not muscle.
Bone.
A dull pressure seemed to exist inside his skeleton.
“How many?”
“Thirty-eight.”
Silence.
“That's all of them?”
“All active markers.”
“And rejection?”
“Still none.”
Nobody spoke for several seconds. Adrian listened. He had become good at that.
“Stage two?”
“Complete.”
“Stable?”
“For now.”
Adrian opened his eyes.
Five people.
Maybe six.
The older woman from the first room stood behind the transparent partition. The blond woman was beside her.
Neither looked at him.
“What happens now?”
“Full conversion.”
Adrian's stomach tightened.
He didn't know exactly what that meant.
He understood enough.
The changes he'd already seen weren't the result.
They were the beginning.
“Prepare final carrier.”
Someone approached his arm.
Adrian didn't pull away.
There was nowhere to go.
A new line was connected beside the first.
The substance inside this one was almost black.
Threads of pale blue light moved through it.
Adrian watched them drift slowly toward him.
“Sedation first.”
Cold entered his arm.
His eyelids became heavy almost immediately.
“Dosage?”
“Standard.”
“Duration?”
A pause.
“Seventy-two hours.”
Three days.
Adrian tried to make sense of that.
Three days unconscious.
The black substance began moving through the line.
“Final carrier started.”
“Field?”
“Ready.”
“Conversion sequence?”
“Ready.”
Conversion.
The word found somewhere to settle.
Not testing.
Not treatment.
Not even modification.
Conversion.
His pulse accelerated.
“Heart rate rising.”
“Ignore it.”
The black fluid reached the needle.
Pay attention.
The thought came automatically now.
Adrian tried.
The ceiling lights doubled.
Then tripled.
Carrier.
Integration.
Markers.
Field.
Rejection.
Remember.
His reflection came back to him.
The smaller hand.
The space beneath the restraint.
The unfamiliar proportions.
The face that was still his and somehow wasn't quite.
Still me.
The warmth reached his shoulder.
For how much longer?
His eyes closed.
“Integration?”
“Holding.”
“Proceed.”
The last thing Adrian heard was the older woman's voice.
“Let's see if this one survives.”