Born Without Collarbones Novels & Stories

All wrong. Her torso had swollen on the left side, pushing out like a tumor the size of a basketball, while the right side had caved in, ribs visible pressing against paper-thin skin. The skin along her ribs had split open in vertical tears, each about four inches long. Inside the tears, gray tissue bubbled and contracted, looking like lung tissue growing where it shouldn't be, expanding and deflating out of sync with her breathing. Her left arm hung three feet longer than it should. The bones had stretched but the muscle hadn't, so you could see the white of her radius and ulna through skin gone transparent. The elbow had broken and healed wrong twice, creating two extra joints that bent ba

the noble gases of Novus, her lungs acting as a secondary filter that utilized the heavy atmosphere for rapid cellular repair. As news spread through New Aethelgard, the "First-Gens"—the grizzled survivors who had bled to reach this world—felt a sudden, sharp pang of obsolescence. They looked at their calloused hands, their scarred lungs, and their heavy boots, and then they looked at this new creature who was perfectly tuned to the planet.

But how? He was about to receive the baby, but the nurse unwrapped the towel. Hade saw horror in front of him. The baby had very small limbs; his skin was covered in fish-like scales, and they were deformed all over. His left foot was obviously longer than the other one. Both his hands did not have fingers. Or he had; but they seemed connected to each other. Hade took a small step back as he looked at the child. The nurse must have sensed his hesitation, and she spoke in a very shaken. "The baby... did not make it."

A child had just been born to a couple who had stood at the Battery Park floodwalls during the first surge. ​"Thomas... Aara..." Elena’s voice was hushed, filled with a holy awe. "The baby... she doesn't have a 'Presence' signature on her wrist. She is the signature. Her skin is glowing with a natural, bioluminescent indigo. She’s born with the 'Vocal-Signature' already written into her heartbeat. She doesn't need ink. She doesn't need the Press."

Her tone had changed, “There’s something unusual about the fetus.” My heart clenched, I knew it, I knew nothing good ever happened to me without a negative following and tainting it. “What’s wrong?” I asked quietly. My voice barely sounded like mine. “It isn’t fatal,” she said, and I exhaled shakily. “But the child shows signs of congenital weakness. Unless you receive the Wolf Mother’s Bone within the next month, the baby may not survive.” The Wolf Mother’s Bone. It was very rare relic, even the witch who saved me didn’t have it.