Graft by Matt Hill

her eyes had been mysteriously tweaked for, received images grainy and green-tinged, and stroke the brother or sister’s face until they slept again.
    In their daytime whispers, their tight-knitted circles, Y became the cradle suite’s night-comforter whose name they dared not mention, but who in the morning they always remembered.
    On one particular night, it was a girl three rows forward and nine cradles down. Y went to her, fluid through the wire nests, the gridded cradles and cabling; a dancer en pointe . She felt certain the cameras hadn’t followed her.
    The girl was bruised, bewildered. Y didn’t know if the girl could see her, or if Y was simply a blank shape against the background, her shadow dulling the cradle’s arms and attachments.
    Y offered a hand, which the girl squeezed against her chest. Through the gloom, Y could make out the girl’s face: shining cheeks, a black-matted but glued gash in her hairline, and a seam of puffiness along her jaw. The girl was shivering, so Y pulled up her cover and tucked it under her chin. She couldn’t see any obvious modifications; wondered what they might be making her.
    â€œHe watched me,” the girl whispered to Y from cracked sleep, sniffling quietly and apparently delirious. “He watched me.”
    Y stroked the girl’s hair, the girl’s cheek, and absently squeezed her pendant. The girl’s words made little sense, even as they unsettled her.
    â€œHe kept watching,” the girl said. “He said he was my father.”
    At the foot of the cradle, which had been set to curve upwards, there was a pile of clothing. Y made out a shattered square pattern – didn’t recognize it as digital camouflage – and boots spattered in mud. On top lay a crumpled beret. With greater awareness, Y would have recognized the smell as the residue of heavy weapons. But knowing exertion more than anything else, Y could only identify the girl’s sour sweat.
    There was something else in the pile. A rolled piece of fabric, tied closed. And when the girl dozed off again, her chest less frenetic, Y moved to the foot of the cradle for a closer look. She rolled off the tie and unfurled the sheet. She could see it was the outlined torso and head of a person, boxes in ever-decreasing sizes, with the smallest a single square over the figure’s forehead. There were little holes burned into it, which Y didn’t understand, and there were stains on the fabric, still damp, and Y didn’t understand these either.
    She dropped the fabric, unexpectedly scared, and snuck back to her cradle past the suite’s central hub – a mass of electronics and monitoring equipment.
    Back in her cradle, she discovered the sticky dampness was still on her fingers, so she wiped them on her cradlewear, lined herself back in, and tried her best to sleep.
    In the morning she found a deep maroon smear down her front. An hour later, it would earn her a thousand extra pressups.

3
    T he Transit job’s a time-sink. It’s why Sol hardly notices the car pull in. The tall, easy-limbed man who steps out. And despite the car door slam, feet on gravel, the headlight glare, Sol only really reacts when the man’s shadow spills across the workshop floor.
    Sol downs tools and checks the van’s bonnet catch. Looks once, thinks twice, and picks his spanner back up. Is this it? Is this the man in bike leathers?
    The stranger seems to fill the whole gap under the roller doors. He’s completely still.
    â€œAlright in there pal? Pete about?”
    Sol looks at his watch. Late evening. “Sorry,” he says. “You just missed him.”
    The stranger shrugs. “It’s Solomon, yeah?”
    Sol squints into the diffuse. Raises a hand to shield his eyes. It’s tricky to make out the man’s features, odd to hear his full name from a stranger. He looks down, vision smeared purple. He unpockets a rag and wipes his