Chang woke screaming, his cries coming out as gurgling bubbles in the amniotic fluid he was immersed in.

It was only a moment of disorientation, they'd worked out a few kinks, he no longer felt like he was being waterboarded as had been the case the first dozen times.

He felt the throb of distant klaxons, then the breath of warm air against his sodden skin as the rapid decanting began, a dozen aides and assistants hurriedly preparing to make him presentable.

He stood there for a moment, glad that he had the strength to stand at all, sometimes the muscle stimulation didn't work as well as could be desired. But no, vision was fine, the ringing in his ears began to resolve into tinny voices and then the bassy rumbling of his secretary as he handed him a towel.

Chang wrapped it around himself, they could easily have dressed him before he'd awoken, but he preferred not to waste a single more second than he already had. Being dead can take up a lot of your life.

"How long has it been?" He growled, new vocal cords still finding their timbre. Not a big deal, he could always have that fixed in post.

"Three hours, Dr. President. We had this body ready and prepped since last week, and in the case of repetition of today's event, the tertiary and quaternary have been warmed up already." The tall black man informed him, the familiar baritone voice soothing on his frayed nerves.

Making sure the towel was secure, Chang took firm strides to where a nervous young woman stood, she'd shyly turned away as soon as the application of her powers was complete. He tapped her once on the shoulder, and when she turned around, shook her hand firmly.

Good. Proper grip strength. That still mattered to some.

"I'm grateful as always. Talk to Sam, he'll make sure you're rewarded for going above and beyond."

"I'm just doing my duty, sir. I only hope you don't need me again." She replied quietly, her white pupils glowing softly as she double checked that her work had gone according to plan.

"I believed I wouldn't the third time. Get some rest, it'll be on the clock." He told her nonchalantly, once again practicing getting his nerves under control. It was an annoyance to pilot a baseline body, the lace couldn't be inserted until after the reanimation was done, her powers didn't work well when cybernetics were involved. No matter, there were more flexible Healers around, even if none of them were quite as outstanding in this particular field.

His corpse was on an operating table, the glass temporarily losing opacity when he stopped to ponder it. Nothing too obvious, if he'd died for good they could have arranged an open casket. He nodded at the Clairvoyants waiting discreetly in the wings, they'd be welcome to poke and prod at it for insight, though he'd been informed of the culprit shortly before he'd begun to die.

He walked out of the subterranean lab, choosing to dress himself properly, a few minutes to think, make sure that the battery of tests hadn't missed something. Yes, an identical suit, perceptually indistinguishable from the one that had been ruined. A sachet of probiotics and immune nanites so his sterile gut didn't get the runs. The usual pills. It would help when the nerves kicked in, just in case the supe shrinks couldn't calm them.

He wished his body and mind would get with the program, why was he still afraid of death? He'd been through it more times than he could count, PTSD was the last thing he needed.

An android, featureless and sleek, helped adjust the expensive suit to his slightly altered proportions. Something else to fix in post, most people were blind to such subtle details, but others were more observant.

Yes, the pills were working, he normally felt a great deal more dread about the next part. He found his stride as he crossed through a portal disguised behind a hologram, feeling the pop of changing pressure in his ears. A quick nod at the impassive pair of SS agents on the other side, who were too well disciplined to react at all.

He could talk to the rest of the Cabinet later, they didn't even know about his temporary demise, but the true bosses were both better informed and less patient.

The meeting room was empty, almost mundane. His waiting secretary gave him a look of encouragement, and he did his best to look like he didn't appreciate it. Then he took a seat and settled in, as steady as a rock that bore the weight of a nation.

Heat. Cold. A touch of lightning. They weren't using the mundane projectors today, or VR for the matter. Maybe a courtesy given how underequipped he was after revival.

"President Chang. We are glad to see you well." He did his best to look the shimmering ghosts in the eye, his best Presidential smile on his lips. Ignore the endless void that should have been a face, the gash in reality that was the aperture for inhuman eyes.

"And so am I, if only because I can resume my duties." Surely they tired of the platitudes? He knew, and they knew he knew, that even his permanent death would be no major setback. He had backup bodies, they had a long, long list of acceptable replacements. Some might even wear his skin.

There was no point in counting them. They were but a handful, and yet you felt like you'd skipped over numbers that couldn't possibly exist when you tried.

"We see you have not sought to punish the culprit behind the assassination. We would appreciate an explanation."

He sighed deeply. "It was a considered decision, and not a sentimental one. Nothing strikes more terror into our enemies hearts than to see the target of their most fearsome attacks walk away unscathed, and even worse, not even seem to notice. The precogs assure me that this has more of an effect on deterring future attempts than even swift and effective retribution. They often come to the table of their own accord." He stressed our, emphasizing that his interests could only be aligned with theirs.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"We appreciate the insight. An interesting perspective, we will mull/consider/meditate upon it. Preliminary hypothesis, high confidence, is that it is irrelevant in our case. To pre-empt your expected query, this is because you are the representative/figurehead/puppet, we do not attract attention/fear/rage."

That was indeed what he was going to ask, so he shut his mouth just as soon as he'd opened it. Fuck, the headaches were beginning, despite the pills. He hated these conversations, all this verbosity was only a polite pretext for what was going on inside his new skull. They'd need a moment to peer into it themselves, till they were satisfied that their "representative" was fit for their tasks.

"To pre-empt the second question/query/idle thought, such attempts would not hurt us."

Yeah, they were taking a moment to adjust too, he'd never have bothered asking that question, he knew that they were untouchable.

"We do not mind your contemplation. We appreciate a degree of independence in our primary representative. You do not need to use cybernetic or psychic means to dampen what you consider disloyal thoughts. We understand they are mere errata in your human mind. We know/expect/have justified true belief that you will never act on them."

He nodded, feeling genuine gratitude. The kind of lace he usually wore was more than capable of quenching sedition, but it was still a relief to be allowed to go without it. It truncated his consciousness, made him less flexible. And they were correct, even in his seemingly unchallenged position as the most powerful non-metahuman individual on the planet, he could never hope to shake them. He wouldn't make the same mistake that Winters did.

"I seek your advice. The emergency meeting with the Oversight Board is still scheduled for tonight."

He felt a touch of distant amusement.

"Do as you wish. Speak as you will. You may make the necessary concessions. Mere formalities, we are negotiating with our peers in Turing."

It was heartening to know that they had peers. He dismissed the notion they would lie, they had no reason to, not to him. If he ever outlived his usefulness, they would tell him, they considered it a matter of courtesy.

They left him in silence, quietly watching. An indeterminate amount of time passed, and eventually he felt his guts rumble, and his gorge rise. He stood up, and did his best to maintain his poise till he reached the edge of the endless abyss that surrounded him, hurling the bile that had accumulated in his new guts to who knows where.

"Not our doing. Side effects of your reanimation. We suggest you reconsider your stance on uploading your consciousness, instead of this particular route to immortality."

He stood up, controlling his shaking knees with sheer force of will. "I must demur. A biological form polls better, and it allows me to avail of certain metahuman enhancements that do not work on uploads."

"We see the probity in your claim. In that case, please consider using a discarded body/brain/neural architecture next time, so as to maintain biological form while having an upload running. While we prefer having you around in the flesh, there is merit to the continuity of government"

He wiped his face, making sure that nothing got on the suit. "REGENT is more than capable of operating in my absence. Some might say it does a better job when it's not slowed down by me. But, as you wish. It was something I considered myself." He felt their mild distaste when he referred to the AI, was it because they found it harder to control? Or was it because of their own origins? They wouldn't lie if he were to ask them directly, merely refuse to answer. It didn't really matter, most places still liked to pretend that the humans were in charge, and his particular benefactors were hardly the powers behind every throne.

So be it. The next time someone teleported half his brain out of his skull or tore him apart with their mind, he'd approve of the attempt at fishing the pieces back together and then destructively scanning them for an upload. He wouldn't do so for no reason, while the unique Class 6 he had access to could revive a copy of him from the merest trace, she did have a small but non-negligible failure rate. Every death, however trivially reversed, was a failure in itself, and could well be the last. Or worse, someone might kill her.

"All this time, and you still fear death. We will admit a secret to you. So do we."

"It would take a great deal more effort to kill you, wouldn't it?" He couldn't help but grin, deflecting some of his desperation with humor. A bad habit he'd picked up on campaign trails decades back.

No reply was forthcoming. Only the recession of the void, and his lonely presence in a room that now pretended to be mostly euclidean.

Right. He was expected to sit on the Oversight Board, rub elbows with his so called peers. How many of them were truly free? Only those who simply didn't matter enough to be worth recruiting, he wagered.

His secretary handed him a slate with a condensed list of updates, a prelude to the more detailed dump when he would quickly go under for the insertion of a lace and other more subtle implants. Some minor ruckus on Mars, a slight escalation on what the precogs had considered to be the modal outcome. The economic collapse was still ongoing; sadly, while money was the blood of industry, like too much real blood in an unenhanced vasculature, it was prone to cause a burst vessel or two. An inconvenience, he preferred to trade in harder currency, like favors, and those were immune to inflation. He quietly approved a few pending kill orders, requisitions from the black budget and other necessary minutiae that required his personal attention. As always, he could find no flaw in REGENT's decisions, and where he felt mild doubt, long experience had taught him to go with the flow.

Let's see what's on the agenda. Invasive neurosurgery, the gentle ministrations of the best Healers who didn't work with corpses, and he would be as good as new.