Page 42 of Pride
“All right, here we go,” Flint said as he slotted the robotic arm up the new humerus bone and then held it there, just shy of connecting. “Sloan, you want to activate the sensory wires?”
“On it.” Sloan brought a magnetic key to the arm and flicked a switch. Out of the arm encasing, what looked like hundreds of micro-wires snaked out as though alive and searching. In response, Parker felt an itch and a tickle as the micro-wires from within his own arm emerged. Wires from each side found each other and bonded.
“Good traction,” Flint mumbled, and slid the arm up higher on Parker’s shoulder. “Adjust the grip, Sloan. Tighten. More. Yes.”
A clicking and whirring sound locked in place. Flint let go and the weight of the arm pulled on Parker’s shoulder. Everyone in the room held their breath as the arm powered on, lighting up along the joints in the elbow, shoulders and fingers. Mentally, Parker felt no different. Physically, a little sore and unbalanced. Emotionally?
He tensed, unsure.
Flint put a water bottle on top of the table. “Pick that up.”
Parker looked at the bottle and moved his arm. It jerked at the shoulder but failed to engage.
“It’s fine,” Flint said. “This will take practice. Try again.”
Parker tried.
Failure.
Anger heated his face. “Does everyone have to watch?”
Mary, who’d been leaning on the kitchen counter, raised her brows but then looked for something to do. Her eyes landed on the manila folder sitting at the edge of the counter. For a moment, Parker’s heart rate spiked. That was the background check Sloan ran on Alice, but it was either let Mary look at it, or have her watch him fail. He darted his gaze to Grace on the couch and she’d already busied herself with her cell, so he went back to the bottle.
Move.
Nothing.
Again.
A twitch.
“Maybe it’s broken,” he offered.
“It’s not broken. Your brain just needs to work out that the arm is there again after not having it.” Flint picked up some tools he’d taken out and put them back in his toolbox. “Keep trying while I tidy up.”
After ten more goes, Parker’s frustration swelled to every cell in his body. He felt The Beast stirring, waking up as though called to defend. But there was no battle. None but the one in his mind. Cool calm washed over him. It was so sudden and instant that he knew it hadn’t originated from his own body. He glanced at Sloan, who gave him a soft smile along with more of her calming gift. His sister could not only read others’ emotions, but affect them too. “You can do this, Parks. Just search for that zone we find when meditating. Like yourShifutaught you in Fujian.”
He raised a brow. “I hated mediating.”
She snorted. “I know. So what do you do then?”
His mind traveled to the ropes in his room, to the knots he would form, to the way it quieted his energy and mind, but being a rigger worked best when he had a model to work on. Shibari was about the art as much as the meditation and eroticism. But he wasn’t willing to share that pastime with anyone. He glanced at Mary, more specifically to the folder in her hand, and then frowned at the water bottle. He didn’t need help.
“Just keep me from getting worked up,” he said, and tried to pick up the bottle again.
A longer jerk this time. The hand moved. But it wasn’t enough.
“Stop,” Grace said, standing up. “I hope you don’t mind me intervening, but I think you need to try some different exercises first.”
“Like what?”
“Like simple limb recognition.” She took Parker’s hands, both the metal and the flesh, and held them. That’s all she did. “Can you feel me holding your hands?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Good. Now what about this?” She rubbed her thumbs over his hands.
“I feel it in my actual hand.”
