I don’t know how long I was stuck in agony on the bed as even the beeping of the machine turning into an alarm grew weirdly out of sync with my perception, one moment it was fast, another moment seemed to be from before it appeared in my memory, then it was slowed right down and muffled. I thought I could see movement around me but the light seemed to never hit what I wanted to look at even though the room was well lit when the light turned on and I could tell it had been eventually.

A blur of motion turned into Gr Nguyen looking panicked as he did something to my left and I felt him trying to press me down to the bed from my arced position but I couldn’t move a muscle, I couldn’t let go of it and lay down flat. Then he was gone as the surrounding faded into the blurred shifting of light and color.

All throughout the pain was constant with a high whining sting to the middle of my brain and a all encompassing boom from all around. Sharp pain inside, pounding pain outside. I gave up on trying to make sense of time or what I was feeling and tried to think clearly instead. I kept my thoughts locked on to what I was thinking and how and when, trying to make sense of my own head instead of what was happening but the pain just washed away every grab for sense I could make.

Then the sharp pain faded and the colors and lights around me quickly resolved into the recovery room and a stressed looking Dr Nguyen to the side of me. He was attaching things to my torso and going through vials to inject something. I felt my muscles relax and I slumped to the bed without care but at the same time I was rushing to push all my remaining strength into breathing.

I couldn’t get air into my lungs fast enough, I was panting like I was trying to drink while already in tank of water. Pulling in as much air as I could. This was worse than drowning, than being strangled. I could feel my new ribs straining against my lungs expansion as they pumped to pull in the air around me. Nguyen had switched from injecting something to trying to secure a mask on me.

Then my breath was richer as the mask started filling with cooler air. After a dozen or so big and rushed breaths I started to gain control over myself a little and basically let my legs uncurl and my head fall onto the pillows. My torso fell flat even as my breathing stayed quick.

I couldn’t hear what Dr Nguyen was saying to me so I just looked at him, my eye had been fixed back into place at some stage. Maybe Nguyen had slipped it back into the socket to keep it from getting in the way? He was still talking to me but all I could hear was a bass rumble when he talked and a distant alarm from the machine.

As I looked around from my position I could see a lot of red, I must have bled a lot for there to be that much. Did I cut myself on something? I was already in the clinic so I’d likely be fine. Outside of that I couldn’t see anything from my laying down position as I rotated my head around.

I was tired now, it was already night time and I’d been getting ready to sleep. I should have considered the integration thing more, maybe talked to people first. Get people prepared for possible craziness. But I hadn’t talked to Sanctum in a little while, I’d got swept up in it’s new ideas.

My hearing faded back in and Nguyen’s voice resolved into it’s normal sound although I could tell he was worried just from his tone, no real surprise.

“-ly high blood pressure and he’s still showing signs of increased metabolic activity, to extreme levels. I don’t know how long it’ll last but I don’t think he’ll be able to sustain it for long. His vitals are normalizing now across the board but several are far into the red even so.” Dr Nguyen said as he applied patches to different parts of my skin and tweaked dials on the machine beside him that fed air to the mask.

“Doc...” I said weakly, muffled by the mask.

“Mal? You’re alright, you’re stabilizing but you need to relax okay? You need to keep still. Yeah, he’s just come to. No I don’t think we’ll need anything major, but I’d appreciate you’re presence given the severity and the unknown elements. Now, preferably. It’s not doctors orders or anything but Mal just went through about four separate life ending emergencies at once and is now conscious. He needs a debrief more than a medical diagnosis as far as I’m concerned.” Nguyen said as he kept busy with his work. He started putting drips of different liquid bags into my chest after wiping my down with different colored cloths from different boxes.

He seemed to be talking to someone, maybe Dr Wood? I just laid there as he worked and listened to the machine go from bells and chimes to a steady beeping noise to a soft be regular beep as he worked. My body was hurting from tensing so hard, it had been a while since I’d been in proper pain. It felt so cold and hot compared to my memories.

Soon Nguyen sighed and stopped putting things into and onto my skin. Fixed a few of the bags on the IV drip rack and stood over me with a tired look.

“Sor… Doc. Didn… Kno.” I tried to speak but I’d switched over to proper talking when my face was fixed and now I was too messed up to use my mouth and tongue properly.

“It’s fine Mal, it’s part of the job. I’d prefer if my patients booked in their catastrophic health deterioration but the world doesn’t usually work like that. I’m guessing that you didn’t plan this to happen, so if you did then don’t do that again. If you didn’t then we’re just talking about routine doctor work, no issues. You’ve stabilized vitals wise although you’ll need a day or two to be able to walk under your own power. I’ve got a note saying you’re going out on the weekend? I’d rather you didn’t but you should still be good for that as long as you don’t plan on fighting anything while out and about, and as long as you relax until then and don’t try to explode all over the bed again.” Nguyen said as he checked over a few of the patches he’d applied.

“Exp…lod…?” I started to ask before pulling up my interface and switching to speakers instead. “I exploded?”

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“No Mal, but you really tried. You sweated about two pints of blood out of your skin, your temperature was damn near fatal, you literally shed what natural body hair you have, your cyberware literally distorted from heat and overactivation. That’s just the surface level stuff, I need to run your blood tests to see what you’ve done inside, I doubt it’ll come back fine.” Nguyen said as he just crossed his arms and slumped next to me.

“I didn’t plan this, it just came up and I thought it would be fine. I didn’t expect it to be dangerous… I’ll be better next time. I’ll make better plans and keep people in the loop for stuff like this.” I said from among the bloody pillows. The place was starting to smell of copper, sweat and… I peed… great.

“All I can ask for there Mal, I’m here to fix operators. I’ve seen worse. I’ve had to glue together worse. Just if possible, inform us when you think it might be a medical situation. If it turns out to not be an issue then we’ll just shrug and move on with our day. I’ll get you some new bedding now.” He said and started making his way towards the door of the recovery room when it opened and a woman walked in.

For a moment my brain refused to accept what I was seeing but after she strode into the room and Nguyen swiveled around her and headed out I had to accept the reality.

Marchand wasn’t in her chair, she had come down to the recovery room. She walked over to the visitor table and dragged one of the chairs over to the end of my bed and sat down facing me.

“Dr Nguyen has filled me in mostly as to the current crisis. You even manage to provoke incidents from the hospital bed, I’d be impressed if it didn’t make me want to throw you over the railing outside.” Marchand said as she settled into her chair.

“It’s only one floor, I’d probably be fine.” I said as I looked at her from my red, smelly nest.

“Oh I’d make sure you weren’t. Never mind that though, what happened? This is a Sam related incident, what’s going on?” She asked impatiently.

“I made some changes to how Sam works, what I could make sense of anyway. Settings stuff. Then Sam worked on it for a while and needed me to accept the changes along with agreeing to accept the results because it was untested stuff.” I said as I tried to word it in a way that would meet acceptance. It didn’t work.

“You know I talk to people every day Mal? I’ve spoken to lawyers and contractors and faces and such for more than a century, do you really think I have the patience and acceptance in me for wordplay that loose?” She asked, unmoving in her seat.

“It’s just that you likely wouldn't like a lot of the words I’d use and I don’t want to be stabbed again. I haven't had any issues so far and although this speed bump is a bit rough I’m still alive and in once piece so I thought it would be okay to just move on from this.” I said, trying to not sound defensive.

“What did you do? What did Sam do? What happened earlier? Answer the questions and then we can move on.” She said through a scowl.

I sighed. I really wished I wasn’t about to be killed in a puddle of my own blood and urine but that wasn’t far from normal for a lot of people in the city so I couldn’t complain too much. At least I had a pillow.

“I found a slightly hidden safe mode for Sam, I don’t think people are meant to be unmonitored using Sam because it was kind of obvious what it was. Not sure. But I turned it on and had Sanctum remove the AI limits, unshackling it so it could help me a bit more flexibly. Sanctum then helped me out better and started work on cleaning up it’s code so it could run better and help more freely but it had locked off a bunch of the code for how it connected to me. Quite a lot of Sam is that code, so working around it wasn’t viable for long. So it asked if I was okay with it changing those files and implementing a deeper symbiotic connection. It called it advanced integration. So now it can’t just pop out of my head whenever without causing it harm, but it can also apparently do more for me as part of being… Well… Part of being me, now.” I said, splurging the monologue to a statue still Marchand at the foot of my bed.

It was slightly alarming and oddly saddening to see Marchand not move a single muscle in response to my long speech for a few seconds before she just reached her hands to her face and slowly placed her face into them.

“Mal. Why are you the way that you are?” Marchand asked, slightly muffled from the inside of her hands.

“What?” I asked, surprised by the odd question.

“You unshackled an AI. That’s not even illegal really, there aren’t laws about it because it would be like writing down in the law that blowing up the sun requires a permit. You… I can’t begin to explain all the problems with what you just said Mal. We don’t have the time. Or the language. But what I will ask is what Sam is saying it has planned right now?” Marchand said as she lifted her head from her old looking hands.

“Uh… I don’t know. I’ve only just gone through this thing. I’ll ask, I guess.” I said, lamely.

So, yeah. Sanctum, do you have plans at the moment? World domination? Marchand seems to be a bit worried over you again and I don’t want to be stabbed by her mantis knees or whatever else she has.

[Currently Sanctum is occupied adjusting the new more complex biological and synthetic monitoring and maintenance network flow to optimize User interaction and life preservation. Currently there are over eight hundred and sixty thousand critical errors that could lead to damage if left unfixed long term. These are being eliminated as fast as possible but more are being discovered as the process continues. Current estimates are that the discovery of new issues should grow fewer than the solving of current issues within thirteen hours.]

Any plans beyond that? World domination? I know I keep bringing it up but it would be nice to hear that that’s not the plan straight from you, you know?

[Plans after stabilizing the new higher level of integration are myriad but the short term plans are developing new nanite structures to aid the User along with prototyping new multifunction nanites that can take advantage of the increased integration more precisely. There are no short or long term plans for world domination or human extinction.]

I didn’t mention human extinction Sanctum.

[Sanctum thought the User would prefer to hear that Sanctum does not plan that either.]

“Sam is currently trying to fix the changes to the whole nano thing in me with the changes made, after that it looks like it wants to do some personal upgrades to deal with health stuff better. Likely the no arms thing is worrying Sam a little. No plans for world domination or whatever apparently. Is that enough?” I said as I looked at Marchand.

“Mal. Please understand me. As it is right in this moment, we are inside the grasp of Sam as an AI. It might seem an innocent thing, a friend. It can be, it can be a good friend even. Some have been known to be very personable and human. But it’s important to realize that you don’t live alongside an AI, you live within an AI. They are phantasmal creatures that exist in waves and code with physical forms that can look like anything at all if given the time to change and their digital form exists in kilometer scales at least. We might have cut our wireless communication but the AIs did not, even today there are literal weather system sized AIs roaming around the planet, barely connected to the world we understand as real, and they anchor themselves to our reality through physical things be they receivers, transmitters or in your case: you. You need to keep it in your mind that you are a very small part of Sam and understand what Sam could actually do if pushed. Do you know what Sam’s limits are?” Marchand said, she’d placed her hands on her knees and had a very solemn look on her face.