Chapter Thirty

When I woke, seemingly seconds later, my vision was overcome with scrolling code, flashing past at a speed that was incredible. For long seconds I stared, lost to the mass, confused, and yet awed, until finally a shouted word made it through the mass.

“—chance!”

“Wha… what?” I asked, blinking and trying to clear my vision, confused as all hell.

“This is your last chance!” Lion snapped, holding the paper out before my eyes, shaking it, even as he held a shotgun leveled at my head, and on the table next to me…

A container of nanites.

I’d never before seen just how mesmerizing they were, the way they streamed, the flowing intertwining mass of code that they broadcast while they physically swarmed in a mass too small to pick out individuals and…

“Kabutt!”

I blinked, then looked at the paper again and started to read.

“ In Grangemouth there's an oil refinery, a port, a canal and a winery, and to thrill you to bits, all the girls have ten tits, that is if you count them in binary…” I snorted, shaking my head as I finished, blinking as the world seemed to settle slightly, the sounds of the other two rising in volume as the flow of images and code faded still further.

“Kabutt?” Lion asked slowly, and I nodded.

“Who the hell were you expecting?” I asked. “I couldn’t damn well focus as my eyes were updating!”

“Updating?” he asked slowly. “I didn’t install an update.”

“Reboot.” I lied. “Not sure why, but they were rebooting, and I guess an update or something must have been queued?”

“Fuck.” He groaned, resting the shotgun barrel down and shaking his head. “I thought you were going fucking specter on me…”

“Give a man a damn chance!” I growled. “I literally woke up, you’re shouting, my eyes are going nuts… the drugs are still in my system…”

“Yeah well, you can’t blame me! Alright, try moving ,” he said , leaning over and snapping loose the straps that bound me to the chair.

I did. Laid there, I started with my toes, then my feet, and then my legs, just little movements, as Lion monitored the system, playing with something.

“Try the left knee again ,” h e ordered, fingers flashing as if beating out a rhythm in the air, and I dutifully flexed that knee, then the other at his urging, before moving back and forth.

I lifted my arms, and waved them. flexed fingers and more, stood and walked, then turned and squatted, did a forward roll at his insistence, and didn’t miss the stifled smile as the fucker clearly enjoyed how awkward I was.

“Anything else?” I asked, trying to keep the growl from my voice. “I’m sore as shit you know.”

“Don’t be such a baby ,” h e replied absently. “The inflammation will die down in a few hours, the flesh is already knit, and the nerves are responding well. All you’re feeling are ghost impulses from the excised sections, and misfiring neurons. It’ll fade.”

“Anyone ever tell you your bedside manner sucks ass?” I grumbled at him, and he grinned.

“Yeah, you did last time, and a few others. Mind you, this isn’t a bed, and I’m sick of your face, so do me a favor and go test that arm out.”

The arm! I’d been so focused on the spinal mod, on making sure I could still run and bend and shit, that I’d barely thought about the arm!

I extended it out before me, marveling at the sheer artistry of the manufacture. It was perfect, the individual locking plates gave the impression of flowing sculpted muscle, the bands of magnetic relays were high points of color in bronze, copper and gold that contrasted against the solid, gleaming black. I shook my head in disbelief.

I was gonna be beating mod fashionistas off with a fucking shitty stick.

“How do I use it?” I asked.

“Its integrated into you now, so it’s down to you to learn to use it mate, probably going to take a while to actually get it to work properly, so…”

I felt fluctuations in the arm as the power flooded it, in the way that sections seemed to raise and shiver, the new sensation of the world around me, and yeah, the nanites.

This was coming from the mod on the arm, I realized, not the one in my spine, which was a bit of a relief. I’d worried that the sudden fixation on nanites was the first sign of going specter, but as I focused on the container of nanites that Lion was carrying, I could feel distance opening up between us.

I reached out instinctively, despite them being well over a meter out of my reach already, and heading away, and I ‘pulled’.

“What the…?” Lion grunted, stopping dead, then twisting to look at me. “Was… was that you?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I think so?”

“Do it again ,” he said quickly, holding the container up.

I did… or at least I tried to.

Suddenly ‘pulling’ at the nanites through the air the way I had? It seemed about as possible as lifting my feet off the ground, and staying up.

No longer could I feel the ‘nites, not their metal, nor their code, not the way I had, and yet…

I tried again, a dozen different ways, flexing and pulling, pushing, summoning, hell, fucking demanding both aloud and silently, and still nothing worked.

Only when I snarled in frustration and flexed my hand, did anything change, and that was because the installed claws, the filtration system we’d built in, suddenly awoke, sliding out, ready.

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“Fuck!” Lion jumped back, and even Todds took a step back out of range as I stared in wonder at the gleaming black claws.

“Right ,” I said eventually, flexing my hand—it was like relaxing my fingers, but not quite the same—and the claws retracted, then out, then back again. “I think this is going to take a while…”

“Most likely weeks.” Lion sighed. “Look, let’s review it in a month, alright? If you’ve made no progress then, well maybe…”

“Six months,” I said. “We review it in three, but we’re not selling before six months are up. We need to know how it works, and we need to recoup the costs.”

“Yeah well, we’ll see.” He grunted, waving us off as Todds and I left the shop.

The cab ride back to the warehouse was a longer one, but it was also a chance to relax. With us not planning on doing anything this evening, and Todds having already spent the entire day watching over me while Lion operated, he was done, and so was I.

He went home to his kids and new partner, and I grabbed a cheap ass ground cab, sitting there in the back as it bounced and rumbled along, taking three times as long to get to the warehouse, as I sat and plotted.

The arm, and the sense of nanites was weird. I’d certainly not expected to be able to sense them after the install, but hey, equally I’d not be complaining.

I needed to train this new sense, but if I could master it? Flashbangs were going to be far less of an issue that was for sure.

When the cab finally pulled up and I crawled out of the rear, stretching my back and groaning as the doors locked and it pulled away, I swore that never again would I ‘not waste money’ on me. I’d taken the cheaper ground cab because hey, we’re going to be saving money where we could and pooling it all soon, so I might as well start now, it was only me after all, and it wasn’t that much slower…

It was a fuck load slower, and it was also a fuck load more uncomfortable.

I’d passed through a section of the city that was having a shift change, and the road essentially became gridlocked. It was normal, it happened literally around the clock, always had and always would, but when you were in an aircar? It changed the designated lane, and boom, you were past it. You never even noticed.

Twenty minutes in the aircar, an hour and fifteen in the ground. No fucking more.

I strode through the front gate and into the compound, still grumbling, as I saw Gessh heaving on a box, dragging it inside, and I hurried to help her.

“What’s up?” I asked, grabbing one end and helping to shift it around, as we ‘walked it’ on the edges of the box along the ground.

“Oh hey…” She groaned, as we shifted it, and then set it down to rest. “Our glorious leader returns eh?”

“Yup, I’m back… what’s this?” I asked.

“Turrets ,” she said . “Reign got great deal on a shipment from—”

“Don’t say Oshbob!”

“—Oshbob.”

“Fuck!” I groaned.

“What’s up boss?” Gessh asked frowning. “Is it because—”

“No, it’s not because he’s an orc ,” I said . “It’s because every goddamn time I turn around that fucker just made more money off us! I thought we were going to try and buy the damn place first!”

“I asked, he’s working out a deal for us, said he likes Luna and Gessh, that they’re ‘good kids’ and he’ll look after them ,” R eign said, jogging down the stairs, then half throwing herself into my arms for a kiss.

“Hello?” I said, surprised, but enthusiastic as she reached around me… then slipped a hand up under my top and felt my back.

“He did!” she called out loud. “Told you!”

“Fuck!” Gessh growled. “That’s not a different spinal is it? Something different to the one that the banshee gave you…?” she asked hopefully, and I shook my head.

“It’s too good to pass up and… wait, what the…!” I broke off as Reign started laughing, then kissed my cheek.

“Thanks lover, easiest twenty credits I ever earned!” She grinned, as Gessh rolled her eyes, and apparently made a funds transfer.

“Wait, you bet I’d…” I broke off, shaking my head and refusing to look at them. “Fuckers.”

“We just know you, that’s all, boss ,” L una called out. “I bet with Reign by the way. Gessh thought you’d be more self-controlled than that, but I heard Reign nearly get nailed through my wall last night, so I know you’ve got none!”

“I get so much respect,” I muttered under my breath, shaking my head. “So much.”

“You love us all really.” Reign grinned. “Come on then, let’s see it.”

I paused then grinned, and nodded, unable to help myself. I’d been wearing a long sleeved jacket when I went out today, body armor—because after a while in the army you felt naked without it—and a long sleeved top underneath that meant that from dressing at Lion’s chop-shop, I’d hidden my mods away.

Now I pulled that all off, standing there in just my combat pants.

There were several seconds of silence, then Gessh clapped, before shaking her head and grinning. “I never really showed you mine did I?” she asked Reign and I, before stripping down to her underwear to show her new legs off.

We compared the gleam of the metal and the workmanship of her legs, to my new arm, and in minutes the room was changed into the four of us in our underwear showing off various tattoo, mods and scars, followed by drinking and pizza, as Luna got her new legs booked in with Lion.

That sobered us up more, when Reign started to go through the job we had arranged for first thing in the morning.

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