We call it the Ten-Year Itch. Not because it itches — though sometimes it does. We call it that because around year 8-10, you start to notice. Small things at first. Your chrome hand takes a half-second longer to close. Your augmented eye loses a few pixels of resolution in the periphery. Your BCI drops a word from a neural-text message. The Saint is getting tired.

PATIENT 1 (cybernetic legs, year 9 of SNT cycle):
‘I used to run. Not jog — sprint. Forty kilometers per hour through the Narrows, jumping barriers, landing on rooftops. My legs were perfect. Now they hesitate. There’s a microsecond of lag between my brain saying jump and my legs responding. A microsecond is nothing. A microsecond at forty kilometers per hour on a rooftop is everything. I stopped running last month. Not because I chose to. Because my Saint told me it was time to slow down.’

PATIENT 2 (cybernetic arm, year 11):
‘The pain started in year 10. Not sharp — deep. Like the arm was becoming heavy in a way it never was before. The neural bridge is degrading. Signals that used to flow clean are now fuzzy. I can still use the arm. I can lift, grip, type, cook. But I can feel it thinking about each of those things in a way it never used to. It used to be my arm. Now it’s an arm that’s attached to me. The difference is everything.’

PATIENT 3 (combat BCI, year 8):
‘The overlay flickers. Twice a day, maybe three times. The tactical display just blinks out for a half-second and then comes back. My handler says it’s normal degradation. My handler does not have a combat BCI. My handler does not know what it feels like to have a piece of your perception disappear and return. It feels like dying for half a second. It feels like a rehearsal.’

PATIENT 4 (full torso augmentation, year 12, cannot afford replacement):
‘Everything is slower. My reinforced ribs ache when it rains — the SNT is losing its ability to buffer the mechanical stress against my organic tissue. My subdermal armor plates feel like they’re floating under my skin instead of anchored. I can’t afford replacement. I’m on a waiting list for a charity clinic that has a six-month backlog. In six months, the bonding layer will be critical. I am waiting for my body to fail and there is a number in a queue that says how long I have to wait.’

The Ten-Year Itch is not a medical emergency. It is a slow withdrawal. The Saint gave you a body that was more than you were born with, and now the Saint is taking it back, one synapse at a time, until you pay for another decade of being whole.