Ports

Every resident of the Sanctum has ports hardwired to their spinal cord. Immune and natives of the Sanctum have 5-6 depending upon height. Clones have 12 smaller ports.

Construction
he external face of the ports is a smooth, circular face, usually with a slightly raised rim, constructed of a nonflexible matte gray metallic alloy. Internally, the port is anchored to the spinal ligaments, which are actually manipulated to grow and heal around the inner face, giving a strong yet flexible seating to the device which carries less risk of severe trauma than adhering it directly to the bone. The central portion of the face is capable of opening, though the equipment to do so is generally only available to certified port technicians and medical personnel. Once opened the port channel allows successively deeper layers of access for purposes of diagnosis and treatment, from subcutaneous tissue to muscular layers to the spinal canal itself. They are placed, generally, in evenly-spaced sets of five, with the topmost port just below the nape of the neck and the bottom-most just above the hips. The size of the port is generally a circle that would roughly occupy the hollow of the individual's hand. Different lines of ports exist in different sizes, thicknesses, and other parameters.

Ports are issued in complete sets, and the serial numbers on each port should line up, differing only by the suffix number corresponding to the level at which the port is placed. There are fine differences depending on the age and manufacture, but there is generally a letter prefix, a set number, and a suffix. For example, when Jack had his ports placed, they were a new set, part of the Argus line. So his top port is etched ARG-1252-I, the next one down ARG-1252-II, and so on. The Immune are issued their own line of ports, with the series prefix IMM.

Placement
Sanctum natives have their first port surgery around five to six years of age, and it entails the placement of flexible, non-metallic temporary ports and the priming of port sites to accept and heal into the future implants. Permanent ports are placed between the ages of ten and twelve, with the individual growing into them through adulthood. Standard of care for port surgery is heavy sedation if not total anaesthesia.

There are times when an adult will require placement of new ports, either electively or by necessity. These surgeries will often involve flexible bone-tethering with synthetic ligament and approximately two weeks of regeneration therapies aimed at re-establishing the biological anchor. In the event that a port site is damaged beyond the possibility for use, it will be repaired as thoroughly as possible and new sites established in undamaged tissue. In the event that there are not sufficient existing spinal levels for port placement, th[REST OF STATEMENT REDACTED]

Legacy Ports
Ports are perfectly sterilisable and re-usable, and they are occasionally re-used. Most often this takes the form of legacy ports - sets of ports that are passed down for some explicit purpose from one owner to the next. Very often legacy ports are kept to individuals in the same profession, and though they are frequently placed in adults (a promising researcher receiving the ports of her renowned and groundbreaking-research-publishing grandfather, for example), it is not unheard of for children from families with strong legacies to have legacy ports placed as their first and only permanent pair, with the explicit pressure then to "live up" to the tradition. Legacy ports also exist among the Callsigns, who, within a month or two of promotion, will traditionally have their predecessor's ports installed.