She touched her temple. The metal was warm now. Pliant.
The first boy laughed. "You gonna kiss it?"
The car shivered .
She didn't attack him. That would be too quick, too human. Instead, she unzipped her own forearm. Bene the flesh, there was no blood. Only hydraulic fluid, black and sweet. The boy stared. His friends stared. And from the wound, a seatbelt slithered out—not nylon, but something organic. Ribbon of ligament. It wrapped around his ankle.
The Cadillac's headlights flickered on. Not yellow. Amniotic . titanium pelicula
She turned. Her left eye had gone chrome. "It's going to kiss you back."
She walked to the Cadillac. The 1969. The one with the busted radiator and the leather seats that smelled of rust and milk. She placed her palm flat on its hood. She touched her temple
The cold came first. Not the cold of winter, but the cold of the operating table. The cold of the morgue drawer. Alexia lay on the linoleum of the garage, her scarred skull humming against the concrete. The titanium plate the surgeons had screwed into her cranium years ago was no longer a foreign body. It had grown hungry.