The instant that time returned to normal there was a slight smell of burning meat and then a small puff of steam from my exposed, red skin. I quickly fell to my backside and the agent joined me in the fall except he just fell to the ground dead.
I watched as my arm filled with little black spots and dark veins and put my hand in my pocket of what was left of my jacket. My other hand was not working and wasn’t actively dying on me so I just let it hand loose.
Rocking myself forwards I got to me feet using just my legs and walked the few steps up to Stefen, carefully avoiding showing the actual damage I’d taken apart from my messed up face and my arm that were too blatant to hide.
Not even bothering with my mouth full of broken teeth and ruined synthflesh I just spoke with the speakers alone.
“Is this enough to make the point or do I need to take the other two as well?” I asked quietly, quiet enough to seem quiet but in the full knowledge that the cyberears of the two remaining agents could hear me just fine.
Stefen kept his mouth shut as he looked at me with an expression I didn’t quite understand. Still standing there with his arms behind his back.
“Your example is enough here. A good first entry at least.” Was the response I did get, this one over my connection to Marchand through my netrunning gear. Her voice was a little synthetic but was recognizably Marchand.
“So I’ve done enough to secure her for now then? Enough to secure your support on the matter?” I asked as I glanced away from the odd but reserved expression of Stefen to look up at Marchand and my shared corridor entrance.
“Go get yourself to the clinic immediately, I’ve still got Miss Lal here with me and she’ll remain here for now. As for the other agents, I will have them removed and rejected. You’ve won this little exchange Mal, even though I was trying to tech you some lessons in humility and operating in your limits. Better to learn those lessons now, in this street, than later.
“I didn’t like your price. I like to haggle.” I said with a bit of a smile, not that it looked much on what was left of my face.
Stefen changed his expression as he read something on his interface and quickly took a position close behind me, to the side, as I headed towards the lifting platform. I was careful to keep my steps slow and controlled and tried to keep the growing tremors running through me under control.
We were stepping off the lifting platform and making the short walk over to the clinic corridor entrance when Stefen spoke to me.
“We’re clear, no eyes on us.” He said quietly.
I immediately collapsed to the floor of the balcony in a single monolithic flop with a sigh. My face hit of the fercrete with a slap and I saw some tooth shrapnel roll out. Stefen seemed shocked by my action from what I could tell from his stuttered step. He quickly knelt down next to me and grabbed me under my arms and attempted to pull me upright and into the clinic only to shout in surprise as my “good arm” sloughed off my shoulder inside my jacket under his grasp.
There wasn’t a rush of blood, Sanctum handled the bleeding very closely, but the dead flesh that was my arm had quickly rotted inside my jacket sleeve, that arm had taken the most action under the extreme measure Sanctum had allowed me to do. I was lucky to be able to even have enough life left in it to put my hand in my pocket before it totally died.
I was left with a shredded arm on one side and a dead arm in a jacket sleeve on the other. In that moment I was so glad that Sanctum wasn’t letting me feel the pain of any of it because it’d likely be pretty horrific.
Focusing was becoming hard and even though I hadn’t passed out I was losing little bits of time as I couldn’t hear properly anymore. One moment Stefen was freaking out over my arm falling off, then I was being dragged into the clinic by Dr Nguyen with Dr Wood jabbing me with needles of stuff, then I was on the operating table being I knew it and stuff was happening around me.
The last thing I could focus on was my mom’s face from the corner of the operating room looking scared and crying as Dr Wood was spraying something across my side while Dr Nguyen was cutting patches of what looked like synthskin from a sheet nearby. Then my memory became fuzzy and I fell asleep.
-
Waking up this time was rough. The first thing I did was try to sit up but I couldn’t, a quick attempt to roll to the side didn’t do a lot either. A soft beeping started going off next to me and Dr Nguyen came rushing into the recovery room but calmed down quickly when he saw I was awake and alert.
“Hey Doc. Sorry to impose all the time, not to mention I broke your all your hard work on my head.” I said through the speakers at the back of my mouth. I didn’t know if my mouth was repaired yet.
“Mal. Your shaping up to be one of our most frequent visitors.” Dr Nguyen said as he rolled an office chair from near the door over to me bed and sitting down.
“Yeah. How am I doing? I know I pushed myself quite hard this time.” I said with a bit of a wince as I thought about the fight. The mistakes risks I had taken as I tried to be cautious instead of simply overwhelming the agent with unexpected tricks immediately and decisively.
“We don’t even know what you’ve done Mal. Your arm rotted off like it had been irradiated but without a speck of radioactive material in or on it. It was still warm when you were brought in here, almost steaming when we pulled it out of the sleeve. Then there’s atrophy throughout your torso and hundreds of tears to your entire musculature. Right now we’re just trying to stabilize your health before we look at actual recovery options, you’re cyberware is responsive and your vitals are remarkably stable considering the scale and scope of the damage you are still suffering from. That’s the only reason you aren’t in an induced recovery coma right now.” Nguyen said, leaning back and running his hands over his face.
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“How’s my face and arms? I know they came out of it the worst.” I asked, trying to look down at my sides but I couldn’t move my neck easily because of some sort of brace.
“Your currently covered in foam padded body suspension to stop you from hurting yourself as your body twitches and rolls about. Also you don’t have arms so you can roll a lot more than you think.
The broken arm was a mess, we thought about replacing the bone fragments with steel and trying to rebuild the leftover muscles and replacing the broken ones with synthetic muscle but removing the muscles from the bone cleanly was too much for the tissue and we lost too much of the remaining flesh.” Nguyen said as he sent a simple diagram and moved a red dot around on it to emphasize what he was talking about. “As for the rotten arm it was a total loss, even down to the bones it was dead. I said it was like radiation damage but once we actually looked at the cells the actual DNA was fine and instead they were mostly denatured, like the actual organelles and cell membranes were used thoroughly to the point of destruction in a very small amount of time. There was evidence of some of the tissue structures actively pulling sugars, oxygen and water from less vital tissues like skin and marrow.”
“I’m guessing you want to know what could do that sort of thing?” I asked with a wince.
“Oh no. Not at all. I recognize when medical interests meet operator secrecy. Dr Wood is more interested than I am. I haven’t even kept digital copies of your treatment files, the hard copies have gone straight to Mrs Marchand’s office for her to keep safe. No, I’m just telling you so you can be informed and hoping what I tell you helps that. If you don’t know what I’m saying about your injuries means then that’s a problem you should solve yourself, I’m just here to keep you alive and healthy.” Dr Nguyen said with a smile.
“That’s… Actually really nice. Thank you Dr Nguyen.” I said honestly. I couldn’t really turn my head so I just looked him in his eye from the corner of mine.
“Operators have crazy ware sometimes, or other gadgets. It’s a bit odd for them to be so young and have something to keep secret but whatever. It’s important for a ripper doc to know when it’s time to take a step away from secrets and when to step onto them. Sometimes you need to deal with them to save the patients life, no way around it. Here though? You melted your arm and broke the other along with your ribs, lungs and face along with some musculature damage and some minor stuff. Quite frankly we’ve handled a lot of it and you’re not actively dying so you can hold your secrets all you like.” Nguyen said as he pulled himself from the office chair and stood up.
“How’s my face? I can’t see it and I don’t have much feeling from it.” I said as I settled into the pillow.
“Hm. I’ll get you a mirror, just be aware we had to remove a lot of components so your face is pretty deconstructed right now. The priority has been on your overall health and recovery so some unfinished cyberware you won’t even be using isn’t high on the list.” Dr Nguyen said as he pulled a hand mirror out of a draw on the bed next to mine. It was a black plastic square with a wide handle.
“We get a lot of people who suffer cyberpsychosis symptoms when their face is damaged or mid repair. You’ve shown a unusually high resilience against the dehumanization aspects of cyberware but are you okay with seeing this?”
“I’ll be fine.” I said, trying to put on a confident facial expression only to realize the doctor wasn’t responding to the change. Dr Nguyen turned the mirror around to face me.
As I looked into the mirror I saw my current state. Basically the entire lower part of my face was stripped back to my throat with only a few parts of my palettes remaining and part of my lower jaw. My mouth was basically just a frame of the interior, my nose was gone, my forehead was exposed down to the braincase and my left eye socket was mostly missing with the eye held in place to rotate with what looked like temporary clamps attached to the skull. At least the eye had survived the fight without being destroyed.
I didn’t have any flesh, no tongue, no eyelids or face and what little muscle remaining was mostly just scalp and neck muscle that slid out of sight under the unremoved synthskin. My eyes looked normal apart from them being among all the cyberware unfazed and lacking any little muscles attached to them, instead using a set of hardened wires to move around.
Nguyen noted my silence as I looked at myself.
“I figured it’d be too much. We’ll have a new face on you before the day is out. We’ll get you some mental care work time assigned for the limb losses and general cyberware support.” Dr Nguyen said as he lowered the mirror with a regretful look.
“No, it’s fine. The face is still me even if it’s unfinished. I was just looking at the damage is all. I’m not bothered by some missing parts here.” I said to reassure the doctor, I wasn’t actually troubled by the missing face. It was more the scale of the damage that surprised me, I needed to get tougher ware if I wanted to survive fighting at the boosted speed.
“Mal, you know that’s not a really a typical response for a relatively new cyberware user right? It’s not the healthiest reaction to finding the most human part of you to be largely missing. A lack of reaction usually points to a different cyberpsychotic response.” Nguyen said with a frown towards me.
“I’ve been told I’m a bit psychotic in general, as much as I disagree. I’m looking into it. Don’t worry too much about my mental state doc, I’ve been through a lot of crazy stuff growing up. I don’t know what the wilderness is like for kids but the water district is harsh, you either learn quick and act quicker or you go into the recycling pipe with your friends.” I said as I attempted a smile, I quickly realized my half-made face wasn’t getting the expression across. “That was a reassuring smile by the way.”
“The wilds are rough but kids are kept too busy at camp to get into much danger, camp raids are the only real risk and only in dangerous areas unless they’re dumb risk takers. I was only even in one raid of actual danger and I never saw much more than the flames and bullet trials in the sky. I know you’ve left a lot of yourself behind Mal but you should try to hold onto what you’ve got left a little longer at least. I’m still putting you in for some hours of counseling though, as a doctor I have to.” Nguyen said with a sigh and then another frown.
“I don’t want counseling. But while we’re talking about talking. I need to go see Marchand so can you take these pillows and stuff away so I can leave?” I asked as I rolled around a little.
“Mal you don’t have any arms. You can’t go anywhere. Your torso is riddled with minor wounds and your legs aren’t far behind. You don’t have a face. You’re only just being kept out of a coma by your strong vitals.” Nguyen said as he got up and loomed into my view.
“I’ll be fine, I’m not going far after all. Just upstairs to talk to my new boss. I’ll come right back here afterwards.” I said confidently.
“No. You’re staying here where we can monitor you. You’re too wounded to even move around let alone walk under your own power and even if you could you don’t have arms to open doors and such. Just lay there and we’ll get you better.” Nguyen said as he looked at me with a severe expression.
Sanctum can you handle my muscles and so on so I can go see Marchand like before?
[Your body is significantly more damaged than before but as long as you are only active for a few minutes Sanctum can maintain combat ready operation. You can expect a period of weakness lasting quite a few hours afterwards in addition to a stall in recovery time.]
That’s fine, I knew it’d be something like that.