Flight of the Broken

A heart-shaped patch of healthy flesh stood out against the burn scars that dotted my upper body. It was where the locket had protected me from the explosion. It was also one of the few parts of my body that was still human. The rest of me consisted of mismatched prosthetics that gave me a hideous limp and hands and arms that only worked half the time. But my wings… my wings always worked.

I soared above the charred remnants of our society and let my mind paint a picture of what it had once been—a land of green fields, majestic trees, and rivers that sparkled like the diamonds in the face of my old locket. A little smile turned my lips as I darted to and fro, spinning in circles and teasing a crotchety eagle who flew nearby.

I stopped when I saw the stranger walking toward our settlement. We seldom received visitors, and when we did, they usually came in the form of packs of raiders who stole our supplies, snatched our children, and burned our ramshackle buildings just for fun. But this person was not a raider, as far as I could tell. He carried only a dagger as a weapon, and he wore no substantive armor. It was like he didn’t know the world was broken.

As if he sensed my gaze, he turned his head upward and smiled. I waved. I hesitated before I fluttered downward, but his cheeky grin had something magnetic about it. Something sweet. I couldn’t not go to him. My human hip almost buckled when I alighted. I had to work on my landing skills.

“Hello,” the stranger said. His face reminded me of my imagination—what I imagined the view had once been from the sky. “You’re magnificent. Your wings…wow.”

I shrugged as if my wings weren’t the second-most precious thing I owned. “My mother was one of the Angel Warriors. My surgeon took them from her body and attached them to me since we were compatible. The rest of me is from the junkyard.” I gave my wings a good flutter to show off their shiny iridescent metal feathers and flawless aerodynamics.

His smile broadened. “You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

I frowned. “You’ve been looking for a cyborg teenage girl with pretty eyes and a great sense of humor?”

He laughed. “The sense of humor is a bonus. My name is Jaxon.” He extended a hand.

I moved to accept the handshake, but my cranky old prosthetic moved about two inches away from my hip before it locked up. “Sorry. That’s my older arm. I call him Bock.”

“Bock. Nice to meet you. Uh… what’s your name?”

“Aira. You know it’s not safe to go walking around by yourself, right?”

“I know, but I had to come. For you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “For me?”

“I work for a doctor in a settlement north of here. He’s done it.” Jaxon’s eyes lit up. “Aira, he has done it. He’s looking for more volunteers. I was his first one. Look.” He pulled up his sleeve to reveal his arm. A nice arm, sure—it came complete with dark hair and blue veins. “He regrew my arm. Two months ago, I had a mean old prosthetic. I called him Jim. The doctor wants to perfect his technique. Will you come see him?”

I stepped back. “You think I’m going to believe that? He would probably rip off my wings and sell them.” I raised my wings to take to the sky again. I would warn the others at my settlement about him. Maybe he would be dead before sunset. Too bad. He was kind of handsome.

“Wait. Aira. Please. You could be…you again.”

Sure, it would be nice to have arms and legs again. It would be nice not to have to clean the rust off my own body, and it would be nice to pull my locket out of the mechanism where my doctor had lodged it as a makeshift repair. My locket… that was the thing that tugged at me. I could live with being a cyborg, but my locket… I missed it. I missed what was inside of it.

But this guy seemed too good to be true.

My heart thudded. My breath came shorter. Indecision swirled around me in a storm. “I…”

“I promise you won’t regret it.”

I was about ninety percent sure I would regret it. That didn’t stop me from saying what I said next. “I… I want my doctor to talk to him about it. Then I’ll decide.”

“Sure. Let’s go fetch him.”

“Okay. I guess… let’s go. But my new arms won’t look like yours, right? You’re kind of hairy.”

Jaxon’s laughter echoed across the wasteland. I dared to let myself hope.

*

I fidgeted as much as possible—not that much fidgeting was possible. Bock and my other limbs stared at me from the table where they had been side aside. I sat as a partial torso attached to a head while The Doc finished putting together his concoction. I sucked in a deep breath.

“Can I change my mind?” I asked.

“That would be a mistake,” The Doc Said.

“You’ll be fine.” Jaxon grinned and squeezed my shoulder. I wasn’t physically capable of hugging him, but I would have if I could have. I missed hugs. At least, I thought I did. The memories were vague.

The Doc lifted a syringe filled with a vibrant orange liquid. I gave him the tiniest nod before he plunged it into one of my arm stumps without so much as an attempt at bedside manner.

I’m going to die, I thought.

The sensation that ripped through me reminded me of the fire, the one that had left me as a half-human carcass. It blinded me, turned my heart into a knot, and sent my intestines into a frenzy. I could not breathe, could not think, could not… could not anything.

I just let The Doc murder me.

*

Six Months Later

My locket dangled from my fingers—my tender fleshy fingers that were too new to have calluses or scars. My locket, on the other hand, had seen better days. It had become warped during the explosion that almost killed me—back when the world broke—and it had incurred a few big dents during its tenure as a makeshift part for my prosthetic leg. But it had survived. Just like I had survived.

I caught Jaxon’s gaze. He smiled at me from across the laboratory, where we had both accepted jobs as assistants to the doctor who had regrown our limbs.

“I’m dying to know,” he said.

I offered him a little smile. “What if I told you it’s one of my mother’s fingernails? You think The Doc could regrow an entire human?”

“Uh…”

I chuckled and tossed the locket at him. “Open it. You can look.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I would have let you see sooner if you had asked.”

“Right. I guess asking would have helped.” He struggled with the broken clasp for a few minutes before he got it open. I knew exactly what he was looking at. On one side, a picture of my mother on the day her wings had been implanted—just a year or so before the world broke. And on the other side, a single sentence that I had written to her when I was a little girl.

Fly high, mommy, but always come back down to me.

Jaxon smiled as he soaked in the remnants of my past. Then, instead of tossing the locket back to me like I had done to him, he stood, walked to me, dropped it into my open palm, and bent down to kiss my cheek. “Fly high, my Aira, but always come back down to me.”

My wings hummed as if he had been talking to them instead of to me. I grinned and wrapped my hand in his hair so I could hold him for a longer kiss. Then I stood and began walking toward the door. I could walk—and both of my legs were the same length. Funny how that had happened. “I’ll bring you back a piece of the sky.”

I winked at him before I stepped outside and rocketed into the greatness above.