Free Graft by Matt Hill

eyes dull with a doctor’s seen-it-all glaze. He was actually making notes on the development of her frame. Live-tweaking his drill routine.
    Y wore a black vest, black shorts, and the pendant. Her feet were bare. The driller stood her to attention and they set off through the cradle suites, out through an impressive corridor whose walkway shivered with uncanny radiance. On the way, they passed bustling kitchens, a bowling green, engineering workshops, a cavernous shooting range. Guard squads marched around in single file, so close to each other their movements looked mechanized. The floors were cold and bitty. To Y these rooms beyond her cradle suite felt permanently askew.
    Intrigued, Y looked into the last area for a second or two – enough to recognize the shapes stretched across a target board. A moment more and the truth hit her: the boards weren’t static at all. At the far end of the range, whimpering on a leash, was an enormous bovine creature with fabric pinned to its flanks. Printed on the fabric was the outline of a man.
    â€œNo rubbernecking,” the driller said. He took her shoulder and hurried her along. “We’d never waste someone like you on senseless violence like that.”
    He watched me. He said he was my father.
    As they continued, Y heard a barrage of shots. The sounds – high-pitched, rattling – made her jump. When the noise was over, she couldn’t hear the creature whining.
    Now they reached the cavernous atrium, marble-walled and gilded. Her footsteps carried in here – echoed upwards to a vaulted ceiling. Y listened to the liquid sounds of water fountains that caught light and sent resonant wave paintings cascading up the walls. Ripples of colour and texture, no two the same. Behind them, a red staircase led away into the mansion’s upper tiers. Its bannister appeared to be made of bone.
    The driller took her through the double front door and into the grounds.
    Outside, a realm away from Y’s cradle cooling systems, it was early but already sweltering. Over the hot season, the lawns turned a crisped heather colour, and the milking animals rallied themselves against the perimeter fence for a few feet of shade. The colours beyond this perimeter ran from gold to bronze, striking next to the purple sky. The driller often said it was the best view in the world.
    He sniffed the air. “Smashing day for it!” he said, as if to suggest every day wasn’t exactly the same.
    Y started down the steep steps to the lawn. She knew what “it” meant. Together they crossed a slim natural bridge over a pond, the prickle of dry grass under her feet. In the water, slender metal snakes spiralled and snapped at each other, and her ankles pulsed in response.
    She should be used to this by now. The exertion, the sun, the sweat. She’d done it for a long time, after all. But every session felt like a fresh trial. And despite the searing heat, the ragged blisters on her hands and feet, she was drilled again and again – heavy muscle stretches, body weight exercises, toning, free weights, contortions, circuits. It went on for two hours before she was allowed to rest.
    â€œOne, two, I’ll break you!” the driller screamed in Y’s face, keeping up his relentless pace. “Three, four, you’re good for more!”
    A hundred pressups, a hundred more. Lunges, squats, burpees – until it seemed it wasn’t sweat but a certain future dripping out of her. Her body bristled beneath the blazing sun, and the pendant sat boiling against her skin. Nothing but reps and sets, and her driller’s lust for more. Y hated that sun. Every second, minute and hour she was in it. The tingling afterwards. Her stinging lips, cracked and sore. Her shaking arms and cramping legs.
    As the session went on, several other pairs – brothers and sisters with their own personal drillers – filtered from the mansion into spaces on the lawn around