Fluorescent light burned through Caleb's eyelids.
He woke on a stiff cot with industrial bleach coating the back of his throat and a thin hospital gown stuck to his skin. The custom ballistic weave was gone. So was the torn Break-Tab harness.
For one confused second, his body moved too easily.
His right arm obeyed without the grind of bone or torn muscle. His bare fingers found his lower ribs and stopped on thick raised ridges mapped in a rough spiral over the flesh. The hole in his left side was sealed.
Then he noticed his stomach.
It was quiet. No bite under the ribs. No heat. None of the desperate pull toward food that had been running his life since the first repair.
Caleb's hand tightened around the blanket.
That was wrong.
A plastic chair creaked in the corner.
