What's left (残り物)

4.with the lights out...

"what do you mean by that?" I ask the question confused as he still doesn't meet my gaze. He quickly responds with a nervous tone "well you already got to ask two questions now. Looks like its my turn!"
My eye widens. I find that he's in a way hiding something from me. His expression turns to an improvised smile cracked by his very internal nervousness. He opens his white maw with its ivory white canine teeth and responds to me with widened eyes "we should probably get moving, after all there's this one place Ive heard that can possibly help you get back on your feet thats our next stop!" His widened jade green eye stares at me unblinking with his teeth in his wide smile shining against the light of the sun almost eery in a sense. "Alright then let's go I suppose." I tell him this even though it's not what has caught my attention. I find his attempt at hiding his answer from me a weak attempt as I see through it. Should I be worried? Should I be mad? Should I feel betrayed from a refusal of answering such a strange question? I won't pester him about it, it's a bit uncomfortable asking about things people don't want to talk about. I myself would have to understand considering the earlier events.

I stand up from the concrete ground of the alleyway dusting off my camouflage pants suddenly realizing I'm not wearing my grey short sleeved shirt. I must have not even realized it was off because of my fur. Staring at my chest the vanilla white fur looks like a dusty version of Boris' fur. A few splotches of blood pattern through the thoracic portion of my chest fur. "Don't worry those bits of metal I found in your chest barely went through your fur. They were almost just lodged in your skin." Boris says this in his strange happy voice "You could call yourself lucky they didn't go further, or maybe just being a fluffy mutant has its perks." Him calling me a mutant is a strange thing to react to. Your average human calling any hybrid a "mutant" has been used as somewhat of a insult in it's usage. Other times the word would be used by humans as some playful jest at our genetic modifications. If I were to relate the word to a humans vocabulary it would somewhat be like calling someone "dummy". People say it to people knowing it won't be taken seriously but not in all cases. Some people can put hate into the word when they say it ruining it's humorous undertone. Yes, I think the words are similar. Boris hands me my gray short sleeved shirt with the word "ARMY" in black emblazoned across the back. Looking at the shirt I see my left hand wrapped in a bandage. The bandage has bloody drops peeking through the surface. My hand seems to function perfectly fine with only a light singe of pain as I clench my fist. My black claws at the end of my fingers shine like pointy onyxs. I slip the shirt on pushing my snout through the head hole first. Boris continues to stare at me with a smile this time a smile without his pointed teeth showing but just a smile with his black lips. "Are you ready now?" He asks. I think for a second to make sure I'm not missing any of the few things I have. "Yes." I answer.  He smiles with his teeth again, closing his eyes. "Good!" He then begins to pick up a few things on the side of the dumpster. He drags a sheathed machete out holding it with two hands as he brings it to me. "Here you're probably going to need this." He hands out the long sheath with a strap on it suitable to wear on the back. I slip the strap onto my back feeling the flat sheathed metal against my back. He picks up a small satchel and puts the strap around his left shoulder. "Alright let's go!"

He walks out into the sunlight and I follow him out. I get blinded by the light of the piercing sun when I step outside the alleys coat of darkness. I look left seeing the dead quiet town in it's peaceful stillness. The soft wind feels around my fur cooling my skin. I close my eye and breath, letting in the calm surroundings. My eye slants open and I breath out looking to my right. I see Boris standing idle with his long white tail wagging and his warming smile. He advises me "we should get going we could get there in the morning if we keep a brisk pace. Your legs work don't they?" I remember the immense amount of strenuous sprinting before he found me "yes, they definitely do." I follow behind him as he leads the way down the pavement then walking in the middle of the road. "Want to see something I made a bit ago?" Boris asks me. I respond with my usual answer to his questions at this point "sure." From under his dark green cloak he pulls out a wooden crossbow. The weapon looks smooth and a little shorter than a rifle with no barrel. "I lost all my bolts on my way here buuuut I can make some later if you'd like to help me  with that." He smiles at me and I smile back giving an answer without words. We continue walking down the street further into the town with its silence surrounding us. I examine Boris further. His legs look like the average human but pure white with his fur. I look lower and see he isn't wearing any shoes but instead foot wraps that look similar to my bandages. I look back up his body. His dark blue hair must be the result of hair dye or a cosmetic genetic alteration to change how the hair reflects light.

I remembered learning about how genetic modding was slowly becoming an addition to the freeform pods. Freeform pods are strange machines to me, interesting, attracting, but nonetheless strange. Funny I should even be thinking that anyway considering how I myself was developed in one. Humans advance so much with technology, finding solutions to even trivial task like getting toast to a perfect crisp. The pods would work by having a person go inside and put on a respirator that connects a tube to an air supply that constantly recycles oxygen to the person to be modified. The clear glass entrance to the pod would then shut. The pod then begins to fill with a greenish liquid that as soon as it touches the person's feet it would put them under anesthetics. The person would usually fall asleep at that moment as the vat fills up with the translucent green liquid. Sometimes the liquid was yellow but I heard that they added the green coloring because of its preservative quality. The green liquid was green because of chlorophyll apparently. The liquid contained a lot of different substances from plants to stem cells to preservatives and proteins to coagulants to even a greasy fat like liquid that would all combine into the solution that is the green liquid in the freeform pods. Anyway, after the liquid fills the vat the person would float in it with their eyes closed passed out from the anesthesia. They would float in the center of the vat because of the pods computer system that monitors buoyancy as well as the person's biometric data such as heartbeat, weight, blood type, brain activity, sex, caloric energy, body temperature, and just about any physical properties of a person. All patients had to be naked in the vats or the liquid and machinery would face complications in it's procedures. Additionally the machine has a bio-recycling feature that recycles excess body matter like skin flakes or blood from a wound that it would then process into material usable for the pod. Due to this feature anyone impregnated would lose their embryo and have it recycled into a bountiful bushel of stem cells. Then while inside the vat it begins to perform the procedure it had been instructed to do. The pod could do wonders for anyone who stepped into it's green liquid chamber. It could install cybernetic implants, preserve people in an artificial homeostatis, change people's biological sex, change their genetics, cure many physical damages possibly even my eye at its finer days. It saved lives and improved others as well as entertain others. Women could change their body types and even exchange their genitals for a male counterpart or even both sexes parts if that's what they wanted. In all honesty the offer tempts me myself to try out a female body of myself. The idea is a fun one but not for now. After the pod performs it's operation it makes sure that it's patient isn't missing any limbs or will die from an open wound by following an organisms template or scan. As a hybrid if I use a freeform pod then it may scan me when I enter instead of immediately starting. This is because I have a modified biology and have to rely on a bioscan for the systems AI to know what precautions to take when working with me. Because I have a snout the bioscan signals the machine to alter it's dental procedures and shift the respirator to elongate for my snout. It would then recycle fallen off fur to reuse possibly as fur or hair for someone else. Then it performs my procedure and allows the pod liquid to heal my body from any damage it sustained during operation, not leaving behind even a scar. There's a specific name for the green liquid that grants all in the pod the freedom of life, but that name has been forgotten only being referenced in the actual machine or it's documents. The machines were fairly cheap to use due to the liquid inside being renewable and it's ability to run off of electricity produced from a nuclear fusion battery. Sometimes doctors would even allow the machines to "accidentally" be used for free if it was close to time for their shift to end and they couldn't be bothered to wait around for the person to finish the transaction. Before the great plague (one of the domino's of the apocalypse) they introduced the hybrid alteration that would allow regular born humans to become hybrids like me through modification and eugenics. I was made in one of those pods which is one of the original features of its design. It has the ability to grow a developed hybrid embryo until it is an infant. I was developed in a test tube and inserted into the green liquid after which I grew into a pup and began my life as a military personnel hybrid as hybrid specific laws were still in the works at the time. I grew up doing military exercises and learning, occasionally discovering the area outside the military barracks and now I'm here staring at the back of another hybrids hair on my way to a place I don't even know about. Then a low rumbling sound fills the area and the sun is blocked out. Me and Boris look up and see far above the earth into the distance a moving object of massive size slowly flying forward.

It was a space cruiser.