“Clarify.”
I shift my weight, feeling the protest from multiple sites, each one singing its own sharp note. “Pain narrows focus. It makes you predictable. You think you’re measuring my limits, but you’re really measuring how well I tolerate what you expect.”
The mechanical arms still.
For the first time since waking, the room feels…attentive.
“You are suggesting,” the voice says slowly, “that our data is incomplete.”
“I’m suggesting,” I reply, “that you are overconfident.”
Silence stretches.
Then: “Proceed.”
This time, they don’t tell me where.
The device clamps around my hand, fingers splayed awkwardly. Small bones. Complex. Easy to damage badly.
“Pain estimate?” the voice asks.
I hesitate.
This is where it changes. Where I realise the shape of the trap.
If I answer honestly, I help them refine the model. If I lie badly, they’ll know. If I refuse, they’ll proceed anyway.
They want my cooperation dressed up as participation.
“Seven,” I say.
The clamp tightens.
The pain is immediate and vicious, a lightning strike that rips a sound from my throat before I can stop it. My vision whites out at the edges. Something in my hand gives with a sickening crunch.
I gasp, chest heaving.
“Structural damage?” the voice prompts, calm as ever.
I swallow hard, tasting copper. “Multiple fractures,” I manage. “Metacarpals.”
“Recovery time?”
My vision clears enough to see the schematic update, glowing lines spiderwebbing across the hand.
Here. This is the point.
If I tell them the truth, they adjust. They refine. They improve the next iteration.
So I don’t.
“Three weeks,” I say.
The actual answer is longer. I know that. They know it too – or they will.
“Noted,” the voice says.
The scanner passes over my hand. There’s a subtle shift in the hum of the machines, a fractional recalibration as they process the discrepancy.
