and starting to bleed.

 

He was trying to erase all the scars.

 

He finally realized he couldn’t, dropped the soap, and leaned his forehead

against the fiberglass wall of the shower. A few moments later he reached down,

turned the water off, and just stood there, his head against the wall. His eyes

were scrunched closed, his lungs heaving, his muscles twitching.

 

Five breaths, six breaths, seven breaths, eight breaths.

 

That was the ritual they had instilled in him when they were making him what he

was.

 

It was painful. All of it was painful. Even when they put him under to do the

innumerable surgeries he would wake up in the most incredible pain.

 

Breathe, they had told him. Count the breaths. Focus on the numbers, not the

pain.

 

He was told painkillers were not an option because they had to accurately

measure what he was feeling. And the only way to do that was to make him

experience it the whole way.

 

When he asked they told him it was all about replication and scale, two terms