Flesh and Blood Read Online Free

sometimes drank, gleamed in the dappled light and a vegetable garden, walled with stone to keep the Wombat out, provided Realfood for our kitchen.
    There were changes inside as well. More books, bought on the antique market CityNet, and bright rugs on the polished wooden floors, found at a utopia up the coast that Ophelia had told me about.
    Ophelia. I hadn’t told anyone at Black Stump that I was having my power restored. How can you say, ‘Guess what? My mind can now whirl 1000 times faster than yours,’ to your friends?
    But I’d tell them about the baby. Soon.
    There was food waiting for us in the kitchen, just as it had been waiting for me when I had first come here, hurt and alone, two years ago. A loaf of bread, still warm and wrapped in a tea towel, fresh eggs, a roast chicken in the fridge, its stuffing oozing out in the slightly charred, non-perfect way that no Virtual could get quite right — even mine. A fruitcake, Neil’s favourite chocolate chip biscuits with peanuts in them, an apple pie. Elaine must have spent all yesterday baking.
    I got Neil settled on the sofa (he refused to go to bed), called Theo and Elaine to say we’d arrived (it was incredibly good to hands-free Link again, to use my mind to set the parameters instead of my fingers to type in commands), set water onto ultrawave for the tea I’d serve them when they got here.
    I had just heard the putter of the dikdik over the hill when the faint chime of a call coming in sounded in my head.
    I shoved it onto message mode. Another chime sounded an emergency override.
    I hesitated. I didn’t want to speak to anyone now. I wanted to sit with the people I loved and talk about the future, the incredibly bright future. I wanted to watch Theo and Elaine’s faces as we discussed baby names, baby plans. I wanted to glory in their emotions and my own.
    On the other hand it might be Dr Meredith with a medical warning, symptoms to watch out for. Or a call for Elaine. As the utopia’s Meditech she was constantly on call. Perhaps there had been an accident.
    Now my ability had been restored I no longer had to watch a screen to see the faces of those who called me. I could simply shut my eyes, or even multitask and see the image in my mind while I did other things.
    Not handle boiling water though. I sat down at the kitchen table and let the call take over.
    It was Michael.
    Once my lover, then my enemy when I believed he had betrayed the Forest to further his career in City Admin, and now, perhaps, my friend, though I wondered sometimes if the remnants of a closeness such as ours could really be called friendship.
    He didn’t say hello. We’d never had to use a verbal form of greeting in the old days. He just looked at me for a few seconds then said, ‘Did it work?’
    My skin went cold. I sat back slowly, to give myself time to think. ‘Did what work?’
    ‘Restoration.’
    I stared at him. ‘Has the City been spying on me?’ And what action would they take against me, I wondered, now I’d had a Proclaimed ability restored. What action might they take against Dr Meredith and the others at the Clinic; against Neil if they knew he had been modified too.
    ‘Stop panicking,’ said Michael. Even without MindLink Michael knew me well. ‘The City knows nothing about it. Yet.’
    ‘Yet?’
    Michael sighed. He looked even paler than Neil, I realised, as though he hadn’t slept for days or eaten either. ‘I guessed what you were going to do,’ he said. ‘Then when I couldn’t get through to you for a month I was sure of it. Worried though. I didn’t expect it to take so long. Were there problems?’
    So he didn’t know about Neil, or where I’d had the operation performed. ‘No,’ I said carefully. ‘They just wanted to make sure everything was all right.’
    ‘Then it was successful?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Thank goodness.’ He closed his eyes, as though the weight of thankfulness was too heavy for them to stay open.
    ‘It was a fairly minor