Mister Rom Packs File

Each fragment resisted. Each one tried to speak. Mister Rom Packs would plug a cable into the appropriate port— SMELL, SOUND, REGRET —and listen. And then he would say something like, “No, Harold, the meeting wasn’t your fault,” or “She didn’t leave because of the coffee; she left because you were never there,” and the fragment would sigh through a speaker or shudder through a servo and then collapse into a small, inert object: a domino, a bent paperclip, a single false eyelash.

“You can take it out,” Mister Rom Packs said. “I have a procedure. But it will hurt. And Harold will feel it. He’ll send more fragments. Hands. Eyes. Teeth. He’ll build himself a body from stolen parts, and he’ll come looking for the piece of himself you carry.” Mister Rom Packs

“And the hand?” Kestrel asked.

“I can. But not here. The SELF fragment is the only one that retained Harold’s volition. It chose you. It’s been riding you like a passenger. To extract it, I have to open a direct line between your neural lace and my archives. And that means plugging you into the same system as every other lost moment I’ve ever collected.” Each fragment resisted

Then, with a wet, tearing sensation behind her eyes, the SELF fragment left her. And then he would say something like, “No,

“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not holding your hand.”

Not a real hand. A simulacrum. A prosthetic that had been peeled off a corpo-security drone, its carapace cracked open to reveal not wires and servos, but raw, wet, organic meat fused to bundled fiber optics. It twitched in her grip, fingers clenching and unclenching in a pattern that looked almost like Morse code.