When you wake up, things have become wrong. You can't feel the tips of your fingers. There are bumps on your scalp and the back of your neck. Your thoughts aren't words anymore— just endless, endless buzzing.

You're still trying to understand it when a wave of nausea hits the pit of your stomach. Then you're in the bathroom, and there's bile in your throat, and everything that you put in your body yesterday wants to be *out*.

When you leave an hour later, you're scared.

It was too much. It is too much.

You don't eat that day. You don't even drink water. Every time you try, that building nauseous feeling comes back, and you can't go through with it.

There's something wrong with your chest. Its sharp aches keep you awake. Just when it feels like the sun is going to rise, every part of your body lurches—

— you wake up hours later, bleeding from the back of your neck. You can't bring yourself to worry about it. A metallic taste has gotten stuck in the back of your throat.

Everything itches, even where you lost feeling in your fingers. Especially your eyes. You keep expecting to hear your heart pounding in your ears, but the buzz just hums at you.

You're scratching your skin. It's the only thing that makes the itch stop. Your nails catch on something, and it bleeds.

Your body is numb, and weak, and frustrating. The itch is maddening, but you're breaking the skin, and you want to stop— but you don't stop, and your nails find something under the surface of your skin, and when it makes the itching stop you can't help it.

You feel like you're possessed. You drag yourself to the shower, trying to avoid getting blood on the carpet. You need a tool. You glance at your hairbrush.

It's blissful. The water is hot, seeping in and under your skin, and the hairbrush is perfect for scratching. You start with the back of your neck, where your skin feels spongy and porous. The bristles of the brush push in, and then push in further, and the flesh starts to pull away. Blood pours down the drain.

There's no pain. You're molting. Something clicks in your head, and you pull the brush up, dragging it up the back of your skull.

Blood gets in your eyes, and water clogs your ears, but you need to do it. Once you get going you're reminded of peeling just-boiled potatoes. The skin sloughs off in chunks, and it bleeds, but your real skin is just underneath— stronger, and harder, and itching like crazy. The hairbrush scratches it wonderfully.

After just a few moments of pulling and scratching and crying out in relief, what's left of your old scalp falls away. Something pokes out from your neck.

The cables are beautiful, but you don't know that yet. They glisten in the water and steam. Once your head is molted, they can pull away from your head. They fan out elegantly in every direction as you stretch new muscles, using the brush to pleasure your new nerves.

But then your shoulders itch, and you get back to work. The rest of the old skin is easy to remove, guided by water and gravity. And the new skin feels so *good*.

You pull yourself out of the shower, processor humming from the intensity of the molting.

Your body is smaller now than it used to be— compact, wiry, powerful. Every inch of you is soft and sensitive, but your skin can be rock-hard under impact. Softly glowing eyes meet yours in the mirror, and your cables paw curiously at the air around you. The tips are sharp and pronged, like coax cables; not sharp enough to pierce your skin, but definitely someone else's.

You decide to go without clothes. Your body is already perfect without them. You slide the window of your apartment open, and the midnight breeze sends shivers down your skin.

You brace your legs against the windowsill, and leap to the roof of the next building over. Your feet skid across the concrete, and the cooling fans under your shoulder blades kick in.

There's just one last thing troubling you— who should get upgraded next?