Chapter 28
Ruby
Ruby took a few nanoseconds to adjust to her new accommodation before assessing Ryker's condition. She remotely accessed all the nanobots near Ryker's body, sending instructions for as many of them as possible to infiltrate and saturate Ryker's body to initiate rapid repairs of any damage that had occurred. She accessed the stream of data pertaining to his current condition and felt anger toward Ryker, the Vren, and, most of all, herself for letting this happen.
The variant had turned the tables on Ryker, actively cutting its way straight to his heart. The amount of blood loss and tissue damage would be a chore to deal with, but Ryker had plenty of muscle tissue to draw on for the repairs. First, she had to neutralize this Vren before it harmed him further.
While she was mustering her forces, the Vren had reached his heart and latched onto the left ventricle. Ruby was panic stricken and rapidly tried to get nanobots to Rykers heart before the beast ended her love for good. All at once the sensory data she had access to lit up like a Christmas tree. The Vren was pouring energy into Ryker's heart, and it began rebuilding his body at a supernatural rate.
She watched as the energy danced through his veins, sinking into every cell one by one, healing, replacing, and improving whatever it touched. Ruby had videos and papers showing the vital energy in others healing to a lesser degree, but she had never heard of anything this dramatic.
When the energy reached Ryker's nervous system, it had an unforeseen reaction to the artificial modifications she had made. The energy healed all the damage she had done during implantation and even strengthened the bonds, creating new connections between them. This happy accident would result in Ryker having a not-so-insignificant increase in all sensory input, output, hand-eye coordination, and reaction speed.
Understanding his new full capabilities were yet to be discovered, but for now, she had to find out what was going on with this strange Vren and learn if it was going to be a threat moving forward.
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Ryker finally relaxed as she observed the last of the energy flow back into the Vren. Then, to her disbelief, she could perceive some kind of sensory information affecting Ryker's temporal lobe, which meant he was hearing and comprehending a voice. She scanned Ryker's body and immediate surroundings and found no auditory stimuli. She scoured her database and found nothing that matched this phenomenon, so she decided to get nosy.
She accessed the part of her network that pertained specifically to his temporal lobe's functions and began recording the stimuli. She was able to understand how it was perceived and a perplexing set of information that did not compute. He was hearing a voice in his head and thinking words back to it. The connection between Ryker and whatever was energy-based but like nothing she had ever seen before.
She was unable to replicate that connection, but she could tap into Ryker's side. With a flex of Ruby’s will, she calibrated a subroutine in her language translation software to tap into that portion of Ryker's brain and give her an auditory translation of the conversation. With a few thousand minor tweaks, she had it up and running.
Ruby was then able to hear a deep sonorous voice speaking to Ryker, mid-conversation. “As soon as I cut the flow, you will fall into a minor coma like the rest. I expect you to be up in a few days, ready to work, but for now, rest. Power awaits you when you wake."
She was speechless for the first time in her existence. The Vren in his chest was TALKING TO HIM! Then she heard Ryker's drowsy words before he passed out. “What implants?”
The implications of a Vren speaking sent Ruby’s A.I. mind racing, and she could barely control her new emotions as they ran rampant. She took a deep mental breath before thinking to herself. “Ok Ruby let's think this through. Ryker now has an intelligent Vren attached to his heart that he is on speaking terms with. Said Vren ruined then healed his body and has access to vital energy that it can dispense out to Ryker when it so chooses. Not only that but now I am inside Ryker, and he doesn’t even know it yet. I hope he doesn’t get mad when I tell him.”
As Ruby continued to recap everything that had transpired, she heard a familiar deep voice ring out in Ryker's mind. “I doubt the young idiot will mind. He has more than enough space between his ears for a dozen more of you. And for your information, I am not referred to as THING; my name is Silvar. Do I make myself clear?... machine?”