Uller stared blankly then as he reached the last lines he started to yank and pull at his hand.
“Shit shit,” What do I do?
He yelled and screamed for help even before the lances of pain started to warp and move through his body.
Authorization Revoked.
Failed Authority Token.
Processing Token Recovery.
This will hurt worm
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Jack came over just after the screaming started and saw Uller, both feet planted across the Terminal, desperately trying to pull his hand off of the Pad.
Jack couldn’t help the dry grin from lifting his left cheek, he remembered that feeling alright.
No one looked eager to touch Uller, it kind of hurt to even look at him. His clothes started to lose cohesion and fall apart. Jagged uneven patterns started forming around his body.
Jack and Tule got in each others way for a second before Jack ceded limb-slicing rights and Tule sliced Uller’s hand off.
As his hand was separated from the HandPad a burst of retributive energy created arced and launched Tule to a violent spin across the floor.
In the split second of the hit, Jack couldn't be sure but didn't think it was electricity. Tule got up with Korl’s help. He limped his way back over.
“Any other ideas?” Tule tiredly threw out.
Matter of fact, Jack did have an idea. He looked at Uller, unconscious and… off. It looked like everything in him was out of place in a way that triggered some sort of subconscious aversion. It looked like someone who used to be Uller.
“Yeah, don’t touch it.”
Jack walked over to Uller; he had stopped himself halfway through throwing a Medjel packet over and calling it a day. Instead he threw it to Tule who snatched it cleanly from the air.
The guy did help come up with the Nano-cloud bomb or whatever it was called. Why would he get greedy with a Terminal this close to the end?
Regardless, he had earned a personal call with Dr. Jack.
He knelt down next to his body, eyes involuntarily squinting. He turned to the woman next to him sitting on both knees as she stopped and started tending to different areas. It looked uncoordinated. I could see something happening to the stump of Uller’s lower forearm. From the blade?
Jack winced again as he looked over Uller again, he saw the woman trying her best to spread her healing efforts over the unconscious pyromaniac.
“You’re Eilien, right?”
She turned and jumped.
Why was everyone doing that?
“What? You’re the woman who can heal right?”
She flustered and paled and stuttered something.
“Are you ok? Did you get hurt or something?”
“Ah no uh, yes.” Jack’s raised eyebrow to her response led to clarification, “I mean I’m fine, you just… scared me.”
He resisted rolling his eyes, better crab guts on him than his guts on a crab.
“So how does your healing work?” If he could get her moving in the right direction maybe he wouldn’t have to waste Medjel or have to get knuckles deep inside another person’s body.
“I… uh, I can aspect my Nano to match another person’s Nano. I can also program that Nano to speed up biological processes.”
“Ok soooo, you can replace someone’s missing Nano with your own”
“Well yes, essentially.”
“And then you program the new Nano and their own Nano to have them heal faster?”
“Yes, pretty much. The overcharged healing factor will destroy some of his Nano, that’s part of the reason why I have to match their aspect and transfer my own Nano to replace the loss.”
Interesting. “Can you use this?” He held out a Magno-Tube.
She thought for a second, “Well yes… probably, but one won’t do much, it’s Raw Nano. Most of it is going to waste unless it gets aspected at a Terminal.”
Jack turned to his other side and looked at the Terminal.
Even if his AI could beat the SI, would it open the Door immediately? Even if it protected him, would it protect Uller the same if he put his remaining hand on the Pad?
He was already thinking that the AI had been messing with him. After his last upgrade to 11 IQ he had started to notice gaps in his recent memories. Was that because of the Terminal? There was too much he didn't know. He didn’t want to have to make even more risky choices on top of the entire base of risky choices he'd had so far.
The final part that settled the debate was the sight of Uller’s hand sliding down in jagged, uneven, unbelievably-thin and irregular sheets. He could see through the slices of hand. Jack looked around, Jonah was studying it as well.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Hey Jonah, can you come over here?” Jack pointed on the other side of Uller.
Jonah rubbed Eilien paternally on the back and spoke softly to her, Jack didn’t bother catching it. After he joined them Jack asked, “What,” he pointed at the thin sheets slowly sliding to the ground, “is going on with his hand?”
Jonah opened his mouth, closed it, then got up to study Uller’s hand closer. He came back to kneel across from them.
“First of all,” he took a deep breath like it was hard to say, “I don’t know.”
Jack attempted to channel his best Yuma as tried to bore through him with a look.
Jonah finally caught it, “But! But I can guess.”
Jack wanted to throttle the older man. Out! OUT WITH IT!
“If I had to guess, it is some sort of Nano-molecular agitation. This close to the Core it makes sense that the SI could hijacked the HandPad do something. The SI agitated the Nano and the base molecular structure of his body. The thin sheets coming off of his hand are from some of the molecules finding each other again.” He smiled to Eilien, something passed between them. Jack snapped his fingers to bring Jonah’s attention back.
“So everything is out of place, just a little?”
Eilien hopped in, “Kind of yes, imagine that each molecule or piece of Nano is a person, they are all standing next to each other. Each person takes a random step in any direction. Some will find their way back and connect together again, others get lost, and more than a few end up bumping into each other.”
Ok, that made more sense. He looked back at the Terminal. No he definitely wasn’t going to risk having this happen to him. He took out Magno-Tube after Magno-Tube and handed them to Eilien.
After he handed over the dozenth completely-full Tube, she stopped him. It was enough. Now more of their group of 13 were paying attention.
“I’ve done very good and very bad things to men for half that much Nano.”
That was Kala.
Nervous fast whispers, that was Korl whispering to Tule.
A glare could be felt somewhere in the group; he checked his affinity, it wasn't Yuma.
Mikey and Kensey were laughing and joking about how it was a waste of good Nano for a ‘piece of shit’ like Uller. ‘Lipstick on a pig’ is what he heard. He liked that one, he knew exactly what they meant.
He tore open some Medjel, he didn’t know how exactly he was going to use it yet but he definitely was getting a ‘Medjel’ kind of feeling. It was a matter of 'when' not 'if.'
Jack started to think. Doesn’t Uller basically have shit for structural integrity right now? He found a nail that had broken poorly on his left hand and gingerly sliced a section of skin on Uller’s side.
The tear in his skin immediately deepened and stretched, it set off a chain reaction that Jack tried to stop as he jammed the tears with Medjel.
Shit. He had said he wasn’t going to do it and here he was reaching fingers inside yet another person. He wanted some fun surgery. Was there ‘fun’ surgery? He burned through 5 or 6 packets but he was pretty sure that Uller wouldn’t continue to slide apart anytime soon. Jack gingerly lifted his hands off the patient.
“So you just do that to anyone huh? Thought you had some standards.” Kala barking laugh cut through the end of Yuma’s comment.
Jack turned to Yuma and shrugged, desperately trying to project a calm he didn’t feel, “Sorry, didn’t know it was anything special.”
Fuck it. He finished it with a wink.
Her fake pensive look he could see, and her half smile he couldn’t; they both froze as the top of her cheeks lightly flushed.
He looked around, the entire group was surrounding them now.
Great. Exactly what every Improvised Surgeon needed, an audience.
He watched Eilien hand the Magno-Tube to Jonah who fiddled with it.
“I’m still going to be able to use it afterwards, right?”
Jonah looked offended and Jack let him continue his work.
Eilien was emptying the Raw Nano into her hand, a shifting, almost ephemeral blob of silver and grey. She was doing something and red and orange colors faintly flashed inside the small cloud. She moved her hands over his head and the small cloud of Nano faded out of sight when it got close to his brow. Eilien started to sweat as she continued moving her hands around his head. One hand remained hovering over Uller’s head, the other was cupped and reaching out. Jack emptied a Magno-Tube into her palm. When her hand didn’t retract he added the contents of another.
“What are you doing in there?”
“Fixing everything, the brain holds a lot of Nano, depending on how he is specced. Everything is out of whack. The entire brain structure all the way down has shifted out of place.”
She grunted and refocused, Jack studied Uller’s head. Finally she gasped and sat back down on her feet. She started murmuring to herself.
“Say it out loud, one of us might think of something.” Jack reminded her.
“Well the main problem is that I have to replace missing and dead Nano, most of it is out of place. Some areas get too much healing, some none at all. There’s also the problem of making those changes while trying to not cause a chain reaction that splits him in half, at best.”
Jack could feel the winds shift and move, nearly there; he looked to Uller’s ribs and side that he barely managed to hold together. Better make sure.
“So you’re having trouble holding him together?”
“That’s part of the prob-”
I knew it.
He paused. “Kala.”
“Huh?” She looked bored by the proceedings, now looking at HeLbert. Jack waited until she looked up.
“He owes me for this and if he dies YOU owe me for this.”
She shrugged in a questioningly affirmative way then looked on with mild interest.
Jack opened up mini-duffel and reached a hand in. A few gasped, a few others stopped their side conversations. Yuma hopped in and started tearing packets open. Jack started by applying a thin coat of Medjel going down from Uller’s head. Jonah joined in to help, Eilien was one of the loudest gasps from before, she was shocked either by the sheer quantity of Medjel on display or at the cleverness of the idea. He didn't think it was anything special, the stuff was always available and cheap as dirt. Either his sense of cost was wrong or everyone else's was.
The three were the picture of calm, quick efficiency, disrobing Uller and slathering on Medjel. The methodical nature of their work slowed down as they approached his crotch. The skin started to crack and they quickled resumed.
Looked pretty good. He was completely naked and slathered in Medjel, they had even carefully moved his body to cover his back. His mouth was sealed shut and had an extra thin layer of medjel coating circling the inside of his mouth, that was necessary to stop a flaking crack from continuing down his throat. They were able to leave the nose airways open.
There, the Medjel should be hardening. Jack tested it with a finger. Tap tap, good mostly solid now.
“Uhhhh, ummmm. Can we stop for a second?”
Everyone turned to Eilien, who shrank from the sudden attention of the 12 other people surrounding her. She had a ball of Nano floating in the middle of her hands, “Where am I supposed to insert the Nano?”
Everyone’s attention shifted back to Uller in unison again.
It was Kala who figured it out.
“What about up his ass?”
Jack stared at Kala, Kala stared back at Jack. Neither said anything. No one else said anything either.
Yuma debated, he felt her do it and reached out with his affinity. He felt her roll her eyes as she joined the stare towards Kala. Her henchmen provided no support either, split between wanting to support and about how hilarious it would be if the boss lady had to do stick her fingers up Uller.
Korl looked at Yuma then Jack and joined their effort. Eventually, most eyes in the group settled on Kala.
“What? Why are you all looking at me? I’m not doing it!”
“It was your idea.” Jack wanted to settle this while he carried the group's momentum. Even with his low-EQ there were some things that were inbuilt, 'peer pressure' is as baseline Human as it gets.
He wasn’t going to do it regardless of who the group tried to choose, but it was better if it was settled this way.
Shit shit shit, whatever. Just do it. “Fine, I always said I'd put my boot up there, what are a few fingers?” She didn’t want to do this, but she wasn’t going to look like a bitch now that it had come down to this.
“Better than a few of my fingers,” Jack smiled and held up his hugely oversized middle finger. Kala pictured it and couldn't hold back her barking, hearty laugh. It mixed with the uneasy laughter of the rest of the group.