NANITE

Sneaking past his still-sleeping mother, Ray made his way through the damp, pre-dawn streets to Julia's clinic. The early morning air was thick with the city's metallic breath, and each footstep echoed louder than it should in the relentless noise and motion of a city that never sleeps. A faint LED buzz from a flickering streetlamp painted the sidewalk an ethereal blue as he reached the modest building, tucked like a forgotten secret between an abandoned shop and a data courier hub.

The clinic's interior was a stark contrast—sterile but worn, the white light glaring from overhead panels illuminating scratched tiles and the low hum of diligently working machines. At the center stood the modding chair: a massive, steel-framed contraption wrapped in a Medusa's tangle of cables, hydraulic arms, and mounted scanners. It looked less like a tool for healing and more like a throne built for dissection.

"Hey, Julia," he said, forcing a tone of calm that didn't quite mask the nervous tremor in his voice.

Julia turned. An old family friend, she had patched Ray up more times than he could count. Her platinum hair was cropped close to her scalp, a stark frame for eyes that were sharp and calculating behind smart lenses, data streaming almost invisibly across her irises. Despite decades navigating the treacherous currents of the med scene, she looked no older than thirty—her agelessness a testament to surgical precision, not the gentle hand of time.

She studied him, her gaze missing nothing, immediate concern etching fine lines around her eyes. "I'm fine, but you look like hell. What's going on?"

Ray hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. "I got shot... trying to deliver a package."

Her brow furrowed. "You don't look like you've been shot."

"I know. I know how it sounds." His voice was tight. "But I swear—I was bleeding out, Julia. I was dying. Then this injector—this weird thing—just dropped next to me. I barely had the strength to use it, but I did. The second it hit my system, it was like electricity tearing me apart. I blacked out... and when I woke up, I was completely fine." He turned, lifting his hair from the base of his skull. "And my ports? They're gone."

Julia stepped forward, her professional curiosity overriding her initial shock. Her fingers, cool and practiced, brushed along the back of his neck. She frowned, her touch lingering. "Strange. It's like the port was never installed. The tissue is flawless. No scar tissue, no residue."

"There's more," Ray added quickly, the words tumbling out. "My clothes—they're stuck to me. Like, fused. I can't take them off. It's like they've become part of me."

Julia's expression tightened, her clinical focus sharpening. "Go sit in the chair. We need to run full diagnostics."

Ray nodded, a knot of dread coiling in his stomach, and climbed into the modding chair. Its mechanical arms adjusted with soft, precise clicks, sensors activating around him like curious mechanical insects. Julia initiated the scan protocols, her face a mask of concentration.

She tried to draw blood first. The needle pressed into his skin with a soft crunch, but there was no pain—only a faint, unsettling resistance, like puncturing hardened rubber. The needle bent, a clear sign of something profoundly wrong.

"What the hell..." Julia muttered, her voice low.

She switched to a reinforced syringe, the kind designed for armored targets. It punctured his skin, a dull thud rather than a prick. But when she tried to draw blood, nothing came out. The vial remained stubbornly empty. When she removed the syringe, the needle itself was gone, seemingly absorbed. Julia frowned, a flicker of disbelief in her eyes, but didn't say more.

Next, she placed a biometric disc over his chest. It pulsed blue, then an angry red, then blinked out, lifeless.

Her frown deepened. She reached out, pressing her fingers to his wrist, then to his neck, searching for a pulse manually. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. She found nothing. No rhythmic beat. Just an unnerving, absolute stillness beneath his skin.

Julia turned the monitor toward him. His entire body glowed a uniform, solid white.

Ray leaned forward, his voice taut, a tremor running through it. "That's... not good, right? What am I looking at?"

Julia shook her head slowly, her gaze fixed on the impossible image. "This scan should show organs, bones, blood flow. Instead, it's a whiteout—like your body's either blocking the imaging completely or... or it's filled with something uniform and dense. I've never seen anything like it."

Ray's stomach twisted. His thoughts spiraled into a dizzying vortex of fear and unreality. "Julia, I need you to be straight with me. What happened to me? Am I—am I still even me?"

"I don't know," she said, and for the first time since he'd known her, her voice lost its usual steady, clinical confidence. It was laced with an unnerving thread of bewilderment. "Do you feel hungry? Thirsty?"

"No. I haven't eaten or drunk anything since yesterday. And I don't feel tired either." Each word felt like an admission of his own alien nature.

"Do you need to use the bathroom?"

He shook his head, jaw tight.

Julia sighed, a heavy sound in the sterile room, and pulled out her datapad, tapping the screen. A nude, flawless woman appeared—posed to provoke a reaction.

Ray blinked. "What... is this?"

"A test," she said, her voice flat. "Do you feel anything looking at her?"

He stared for a moment, trying to summon a familiar response. "I mean... I can tell she's attractive, objectively, but... nothing. No... spark." A beat of silence. Then, a fresh wave of panic, colder and sharper this time. "Oh fuck. Am I impotent now?"

Julia took a step back, crossing her arms, her expression a mixture of scientific fascination and deep concern. "You're not reacting to anything—physically or hormonally. Ray, you're not processing stimuli like a human anymore. Your skin is like subdermal armor, you have no heartbeat and no pulse. You don't get hungry, tired, or aroused."

Ray sat frozen in the chair, Julia's words rattling through him like shrapnel. No heartbeat. The phrase echoed in the sudden, terrifying silence of his own chest.

"You're sure?" His voice was barely a whisper. "I mean... we're not missing something, right? Could this be a glitch, or maybe the scanner's bugged?" Hope, fragile and desperate, flickered within him.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Julia's face softened, just a little, a touch of the old warmth breaking through her clinical facade. "Ray... I've seen thousands of modded people—from illegal street hacks to full-body military-grade biomods—but nothing like this. I don't know what I'm looking at."

Ray looked at his hands. They still felt like his hands, but every second, they felt a little less and less like his own.

"If you want, I can try to penetrate deeper. I have the tools for that," Julia offered, her gaze flicking towards a tray where a mini drill and a laser cutter lay gleaming ominously.

Ray's eyes darted to the reinforced syringe, still lying on a nearby tray—needleless, a testament to his body's bizarre new defenses.

"But I don't think that's a good idea," she admitted, her voice lower now, tinged with an uncharacteristic uncertainty.

Julia left the room for a moment and returned with two steaming cups of hot chocolate. The rich, sweet, familiar smell hit Ray first, a ghost of normalcy in the sterile, alien environment.

"Take some sips. It'll help you relax," she said gently, handing him one.

Ray took the cup with both hands. The warmth soaked through his fused gloves, a tangible sensation that grounded him, if only for a moment. He blew on it and took a careful sip.

"Hot chocolate with milk," he murmured, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "Even when synth-chocolate usually tastes like hot vomit... you always knew how to make it right." He managed a weak smile, a feeble attempt to lift the heavy mood. "At least now we know I'm waterproof."

Julia let out a dry laugh, more out of sympathy than amusement. They sat in silence for a few minutes, the hum of old machinery and the occasional beep of dormant scanners filling the space around them. The heat from the cup was steady in Ray's hands, but the warmth didn't reach his core. Something deep inside him felt cold, disconnected, as if a vital wire had been severed. He stared into the swirling brown surface of the drink as if it held answers. But there were none. Just more questions, more silence, more the chilling certainty of his own transformation.

Eventually, Ray stood to leave, the unspoken truths heavy in the air between them. He turned, but before he could walk out, Julia reached out and gently grabbed his arm. Her grip was firm, grounding.

"Take care of yourself, Ray," she said, her voice softer than before, imbued with a concern that transcended the clinical. "And if you need a shoulder to lean on... you know where to find me."

Ray swallowed hard, nodding, the words meaning more than he could express. He left the clinic, stepping into the street. The sky was turning a bruised gray-blue with the hesitant arrival of early dawn, casting the alleyways in ghostly, uncertain light.

He paused, standing still on the empty sidewalk. Slowly, he raised his hands in front of him. They felt the same.

Still mine, he thought, a flicker of defiance against the encroaching strangeness. He lowered them with a small, almost inaudible exhale, clenched his jaw, and walked forward. The weight of his new reality pressed heavily on his shoulders, a burden he couldn't yet name, but one he knew, with chilling certainty, he would carry alone.

He was so lost in thought, his changed body, a constant distraction, that he didn't notice someone shouting his name until the sound cut sharply through his haze.

"Hey, Ray! How are you?" a man called out.

Ray looked up, his senses instantly on alert, and saw them—Red and his two ever-present bootlickers.

Red's look was impossible to miss, a flamboyant declaration of defiance. His hair wasn't natural—it was modded, a living display. Neon-bright strands pulsed faintly even in the dim daylight, glowing with an eerie, inner light. The filaments, woven deep into his scalp, shimmered like molten wire, shifting from deep crimson to electric orange with every slight movement. It wasn't just style—it was a warning. Ray had seen it a dozen times, but it still made his stomach twist with a primal unease. That glow—bright, shifting, almost alive—wasn't just flashy. It was a threat dressed in flair. Paired with his angular, sharp-edged face and the cold metallic glint of his ocular implants, Red looked less like a man and more like something pulled from a neon-soaked fever dream.

The two thugs behind him didn't say a word. One cracked his knuckles, a sharp, percussive sound in the damp air; the other just watched Ray with a predatory stillness, a look like he was measuring a coffin.

People didn't forget Red. That was the point.

Despite his wiry appearance, Ray knew better than to underestimate him. Beneath that lean frame, Red was packed with mods—reinforced tendons, shock-joints, and muscle stimulators. Strong enough to snap a neck without breaking a sweat, and fast enough to make sure you didn't even realize it until your head hit the ground.

"I'm good, Red. You?" Ray replied, forcing a smile that felt brittle, barely hiding the tension coiled tight under his skin.

"I'm doing pretty good, but didn't Johnny send you to make a delivery?"

Red's words hit Ray like a punch to the gut. His stomach twisted, the memory of the lost package, the ambush, flashing in his mind. His jaw clenched instinctively, but he tried to keep his tone even, noncommittal. "I just got back. I was on my way to report to him," Ray offered, hoping Red wouldn't press.

Red moved closer, slinging an arm around Ray's neck, the gesture just a bit too tight—like a python testing its prey. "Oh, you can come with us then. We're headed there now anyway," Red said with a smug, knowing grin. His breath smelled faintly of mint and cheap whiskey. "By the way, have you been working out? You feel a lot sturdier than last time."

Ray just nodded, his mind racing, trying to play along while every instinct screamed caution.

The city passed Ray by in a miasma of LED signs and towering structures. It wasn't long before he found himself inside the office face-to-face with Johnny Rivers, the boss.

Johnny was a massive man, built like a bear, his presence as heavy and unyielding as a steel door. His right arm—a thick, matte-black cybernetic—hissed quietly as it moved, its surface bearing faded rune engravings and subtly pulsing power veins. A tactical vest reinforced with synth-mesh covered his formidable frame, layered over a dark reactive shirt. One eye, the left one, was cold chrome, feeding silent data into a retinal HUD, while the other still burned human and brown, a window to the man beneath the machine. His thick black beard framed a jaw that could've been chiseled from carbon alloy. His mere presence filled the cramped space with an undeniable weight.

Taking a deep breath, Ray stepped forward. His voice wavered slightly as he spoke, but he kept his eyes locked on Johnny, trying to project a confidence he didn't feel. He hesitated for just a second before speaking, the lie he was about to tell gnawing at the edges of his thoughts.

"I got jumped on my route. I tried to run, but one of them tackled me and hit me in the head. When I came to, the package was gone," he said, the words tasting sour in his mouth.

Johnny sighed, a deep, weary sound, and massaged the bridge of his nose with his organic hand. His voice, when he spoke, was steady but tinged with an exhaustion that went bone-deep. "And that's why you couldn't answer my call. The blow must have damaged your interface," Johnny said, more a statement than a question.

Ray offered a nod, grateful for the out.

"What's important is that you're here now." He paused, then looked Ray in the eye, his gaze intense. "How's Lina?"

Ray felt his chest tighten, a familiar ache. That name—Lina. It was how Johnny always referred to his mom, Joselina. The casual intimacy of it, a reminder of a shared history, scraped against raw nerves. "She's... good," Ray answered, though his voice dropped almost to a whisper and his eyes shifted involuntarily to the floor.

Johnny's expression softened, the intimidating weight of the boss seeming to lift just a little. "She's getting worse, isn't she?"

Ray nodded slowly, the movement subtle but heavy with unspoken grief. His eyes burned, but he blinked the moisture away before it could fall.

"It's okay, Ray. It's not your fault. Don't sell yourself short," Johnny said, his voice low but firm, a surprising gentleness in its depths. "You've got a good head on your shoulders, and most importantly, you always try your best. That counts for more than you think." Then his expression darkened, his right fist clenching almost imperceptibly. "Besides, it's not your fucking fault the medicine is so expensive."

The rage in Johnny's voice wasn't directed at Ray. It was for the broken world they all lived in—the cruel price of survival, the callous economics that turned medicine into a luxury, a privilege. Ray felt the knot in his chest loosen just a little, the shared anger a strange sort of solace. He nodded again, this time with a little more weight behind it. The room felt less suffocating.