Chapter 15. Sasha. The man on the gurney was the most comprehensively broken human

Sasha had ever seen. His jaw had been ripped completely out of its socket and shattered in four

places. His eyes had been gouged into horrible, smashed grape-looking things. His hands and

fingers were all broken, as were his feet and shins.

His ears appeared to have been bitten off.

His tongue had been severed and the wound cauterized with something that had charred the flesh black.

Sasha hadn't known a person could take such punishment and survive.

The chart at the end of the bed identified him as Sergeant Lufkin, a two-year

veteran martyr who'd been guarding a checkpoint outside of Dallas. He was conscious. Every now and

then he'd thrash about and let out a burbling moan. But the man didn't appear capable of any

sort of intelligible communication. Well, these aren't combat injuries, Dr. Brant said. These men look almost like they've

been in a car wreck, only the damage is too precise and too deliberately targeted. I've never seen

anything like it. It was Sasha's duty to administer the men's painkillers, just a tiny drop of morphine

each. It wasn't enough by any proper hospital standards. The soldiers

were all in clear agony, but the Heavenly Kingdom was short on painkillers, and this was the most

they could afford to spare for invalids, as Dr. Brandt had called them. This frustrated Sasha.

Her mother's hospital could have restored all four men to full health and vigor, with perhaps,

a month of treatment and physical therapy. But the Heavenly Kingdom forbade vat-grown organs and limbs.

Cloning contravened the Lord's will. Sasha agreed with that, in theory. She'd fled to the

Heavenly Kingdom, partly because she believed Juven treatments had robbed the Amphet of its humanity.

But still, it seemed so wrong that these men would go the rest of their lives as twitching

in sensate lumps of flesh. The number of things that felt wrong about this place grew every day.

...