Page 168 of Bonds of Starfall

Two words, and Kit’s faltering strength left him. He sagged against the hard table he lay on. His body was too mangled to fight against it. Death would be welcome from the pain inside him. All he knew was pain.

His mother stepped back, replaced by his father’s stern features. His father wore a white coat, just as his mother did. His mother’s profile blurred as she turned to speak with someone else, a passing doctor. The room was buzzing with activity, scrambling nurses and doctors. Snapping latex gloves and preparing surgical equipment.

It was meaningless to Kit.

"What did you do?" Kit asked his father. The words were a brief bit of strength, gone in a flash as he breathed raggedly on the table.

"What we had to," his father said. He snapped his fingers, and a doctor appeared, beginning to cut Kit’s ruined, blood-soaked uniform off him. The fabric stuck to his skin, and he gasped in agony as it caught on the ruins of his arm.

"…amputate?"

Sounds went in and out.

His reflection blurred as he stared at the ceiling. He watched through the distorted reflection as the doctors removed his clothing. His nude body was a mass of cuts and bruises and weeping gouges, bone sticking out. His chest was cracked, caved in near his shoulder. He tried to make his fingers twitch, but it only lit up agony inside him.

He gasped. Everything went dark.

Voices tugged him from blissful unawareness.

"Oxygen…"

"Permanent damage..."

"What do you want us to do?" Those words came in clear.

It was his mother’s cold, unfeeling voice that answered:

"Save him. No matter the cost."

He felt as though he were a specter, watching the whole thing, hovering in the air.

Like his Soul detached from his body. Life was too cruel for such mercy, though.

An oxygen mask was fitted over his face, nearly too much for his damaged brain. His thoughts tripped over themselves.

He couldn’t think.

He opened his mouth to speak, and only got a sweet-scented lungful of air. He wheezed.

Hands stilled him.

His mother’s face came back into view. She wore a surgical mask and gloves, a headlamp fixed to her temples.

"Don’t try to speak. The oxygen loss permanently damaged your brain." The sweet-scented oxygen made him dizzy. He tried to hang onto her words, but they slipped through his grasp. "When you wake up, everything will be different."

Sabine Blackfall pressedthe bone saw to her son’s mangled arm.

A white sheet was draped over his lower half, dark straps keeping him buckled to the bed as she worked.

The team of doctors and surgeons eyed her warily as she removed the limb. As if her cold precision was something to be alarmed by.

The arm was lifted with steel forceps, placed in a sealed box. They would need it later to make the prosthetic, to model it after his size and shape.

This all had to happen. Sabine was only slightly apologetic; it was so gruesome. He was still her son, even if she’d had countless children across lifetimes.

A part of her softened to him, saw him as more than a means to an end.

It was why she wanted to save him. Instead of killing him completely, she would repurpose him.