Cold metal bit his spine.
Straps cut into his wrists.
The slab hummed under him, the lights staring like a verdict.
Antiseptic burned his nose.
It reminded him of burned wiring.
Of failed rigs in the yard.
Those mistakes had been his.
This one belonged to the corps.
"Begin primary incision," a surgeon said.
The voice sounded bored.
Tools whined to life.
Jax clenched his jaw.
He tried to keep his chest still.
The cough still lurked there.
He refused to let it show.
Weakness fed their ledgers.
Metal fingers pressed his neck.
Cold gel smeared his skin.
He shivered once.
Shame slid through him.
He had walked into this room.
He had signed the lease.
He had sold his own body.
For more breaths.
The first cut sliced along the old port.
Heat flared.
He smelled his own flesh.
Chemical tang coated his tongue.
His stomach turned.
He wanted to jerk away.
The straps dug deeper.
He had no room to move.
"Pulse steady," another voice said.
"Asset tolerates integration."
Asset.
The word crawled under his skin.
It felt worse than the blade.
He stared harder at the ceiling.
He saw a rusted hauler door and rain leaking through it.
Sora yelling from the stairs.
"You'll drown in fumes, idiot."
Warmth sat right behind his ribs.
Pain spiked at his neck.
The memory snapped.
The module touched the open port.
It felt like ice shoved into bone.
A low hum followed.
It crawled down his spine.
His fingers twitched against the restraints.
Fear pulled at his breath.
He forced it slow.
You chose this, he told himself.
You chose not to choke in that bay.
Shame answered back.
Chosen from a list of cages.
"Flux at six percent," one surgeon said.
"Ramp to ten," another replied.
The hum rose.
It met his own heartbeat.
Each beat hit the metal.
Each beat came back louder.
Debt glyphs flickered on the walls.
Red numbers climbed beside his name.
JAX RIVENWELD.
LEASE VALUE: UPDATED.
Integration costs added to the chain.
They already owned his hours.
Now they owned his nerves.
A scalpel slid across his left forearm.
He hissed.
The sound escaped before he could stop it.
"Local response intact," the surgeon said.
Clinical.
Satisfied.
Not kind.
He watched chrome ports go into the cut.
They clicked against bone.
He wanted to vomit.
He swallowed it down.
Weakness feeds them, he thought.
They count every tremor and every flinch.
The slab vibrated as another module engaged.
A different hum joined the first.
He imagined trains full of leased bodies.
All humming the same note.
The thought made him cold.
"Initiate neural sync," someone said.
The words were a knife.
He felt it before the tool touched him.
Cold metal kissed the base of his skull.
Gel soaked his hair.
He smelled mint and ozone.
Then the spike drove in.
White pain exploded behind his eyes.
His body tried to arch.
The straps held him flat.
Light shattered into jagged pieces.
The med-bay vanished.
The yard came back in brutal clarity.
He stood under a dead crane.
Grease ran black along his arms.
He breathed deep.
No cough.
No pain.
Just oil and wet steel.
Sora laughed from the stairs.
"You love this junk more than people," she said.
Warmth settled in his chest.
Then the vision glitched.
Rain froze in the air.
Sora's mouth kept moving.
No sound came.
Lines of code cut across her face.
LEASE DEFAULT RISK.
The yard fractured into red shards.
"Sync stable," the surgeon said.
The med-bay slammed back into place.
The lights seared his eyes.
The straps cut his skin.
His chest hurt like he had run for miles.
He blinked hard.
The memory fragments broke apart.
Pieces fell where he could not reach them.
Panic spiked.
He grabbed it fast.
Turned it into anger.
They reached inside my head.
They took that, he thought.
They took a piece of the only place that was mine.
The hum inside his skull steadied.
Not his doing.
Their doing.
"Neural interface online," a voice said.
"Lease protocol engaged."
Jax swallowed.
His throat tasted of metal.
"Voice check," the surgeon said.
"I'm not your radio," Jax rasped.
"Good. Radios don't bleed."
"Say your name," the nearest surgeon ordered.
He wanted to keep his mouth shut.
Silence would feel like a win.
The hum climbed in his skull.
Pressure built behind his eyes.
His tongue moved.
"Jax Rivenweld."
The words scraped out.
He hated the obedient sound.
"Confirm lease," the surgeon said.
"Confirm nothing," he whispered.
The hum spiked.
Fire shot down his spine.
His muscles locked.
His teeth banged together.
"Confirm," the voice repeated.
Fear and anger collided in his chest.
He tasted blood where he bit his tongue.
"Lease confirmed," he forced out.
Relief flooded in with the pain's retreat.
Not his relief.
The machine's.
The hum eased.
His fingers unclenched a fraction.
Shame burned under his skin.
They make you speak their truth, he thought.
His truth sat quiet behind the words.
Not yours.
Never yours.
Something beeped near his head.
"Cognitive response acceptable," someone said.
"Asset compliant."
He wanted to spit.
His mouth was too dry.
Steel slid along his ribs now.
New ports opened.
New chrome slipped in.
On the wall, the hologram of his body turned.
Ports lit up in sequence.
A lattice of control.
Each light another hand on his spine.
He stared at it.
At the sketch of himself rendered as a product.
Sadness rose like slow water.
All the fights in the scrap pits.
All the nights working double shifts.
He had tried to stay human in a machine city.
On this slab he looked exactly like what they wanted.
A shell.
A carrier.
He felt grief for the man who used to swear at bolts.
For the one who prayed over engines when they coughed.
The thought hurt.
It still felt better than emptiness.
"Integration at eighty percent," a surgeon said.
"Proceed with vascular link."
Another tool slid under his skin.
Just below the heart.
The sensation was wrong.
Like cold fingers closing around a warm engine.
His pulse stuttered.
He heard it in his ears.
He heard it in the room.
The monitor echoed each beat.
The new hum shifted to match.
For a second they were not his heartbeats.
They belonged to the ledger on the wall.
He felt stripped.
Naked under clothes he could not remove.
"Breathe," the surgeon said.
Clinical again.
No comfort.
Orders.
He obeyed.
Air poured into damaged lungs.
They burned.
The lungs reminded him why he was here.
He hated them for that.
You dragged me onto this slab, he thought.
Rotting things.
The corps only finished the job.
He pulled another breath anyway.
I will use what they give.
Then I will tear it away.
"Oxygen saturation rising," someone noted.
"Good. Asset remains viable."
Words like stamps.
Pressed into his skin.
The slab hummed louder.
He heard the distant arcology as an answer.
Mag-levs groaned.
Soft walls shifted.
Debt chants rose from mid-level vigils.
All of it folded into the sound under his back.
Obey.
Pay.
Obey.
His anger burned hotter.
He let it.
He needed something that was his alone.
"Begin final seal," the lead surgeon said.
A hiss of spray sealed his neck port.
Cold foam crawled over his skin.
He could feel the metal beneath it.
Burning.
Settling.
Claiming space.
His body screamed that something foreign was inside.
His mind screamed back that it had invited this in.
The two screams tangled.
Became a knot that sat heavy under his sternum.
He hated the knot.
He also clung to it.
Pain means I am still here, he thought.
Not just their circuits.
Not just their numbers.
"Integration complete," someone said.
The lights softened by a fraction.
Monitors slowed their chatter.
The holographic body turned to face him.
A single word pulsed over his chest.
ASSET.
LEASE ACTIVE.
He stared at it.
He let the word burn itself into his memory.
That would be his starting point.
Not his ending.
A hand reached down.
Unbuckled the straps at his wrists.
His arms dropped limp to his sides.
They shook with leftover current.
He flexed his fingers.
They obeyed.
That felt like a small victory.
He rolled one wrist.
Pain lanced from the new port.
His jaw tightened.
"Recovery protocol engaged," the surgeon said.
"Transport to training queue."
The slab pitched.
Motors whined beneath him.
It rose a few centimeters.
Then tilted toward the door.
The room slid past.
Walls of chrome and white.
Debt numbers still pulsing red.
He caught his reflection in a polished panel.
Ports along his neck.
Chrome studs in his forearms.
Bruised eyes.
He barely knew that man.
He still knew the set of the jaw.
Stubborn as ever.
"You look like scrap dressed for parade," he muttered.
His voice shook.
He hated that.
He tried again.
"You're still you."
The words steadied.
He chose to believe them.
The hum in his skull reacted.
A tiny spike.
Like the system had heard the challenge.
"Good," he whispered.
"Listen."
The spike faded.
The vow stayed.
For a breath, faint text ghosted at the edge of his sight.
[UNREGISTERED KERNEL: LISTENING]
He blinked.
Empty ceiling.
No prompt.
Just the hum.
You can count my breaths.
You can price my bones.
You don't own what I do with them.
The slab rolled through the med-bay door.
Cool air washed over his face.
He smelled metal and distant sweat.
The arcology's veins waited.
So did their wars.
His neck throbbed with every beat.
Each pulse carried the weight of fresh chains.
He let them settle.
He let himself feel every link.
Because he would need to know each one.
To break it.
"This chain breaks on my terms," he whispered.
"One link at a time."