“This is some real new tech. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Tinker says with tempered excitement. “I mean… who is this guy? And why was he living in the street?”

Darius was laid out on a medical table, still sedated. CURL leaned on the wall, watching as Tinker plied his trade.

“They didn’t finish the work. I can still see the isotope markings from where they were going to install more hardware. Not to mention that this guy has been walking around for days with this infection. Choomba should be dead.” Tinker looked at CURL. She was avoiding eye contact. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure how I feel about harvesting him like this.” Her arms were crossed. She was chewing her lower lip. “Seems wrong. He’s still alive. We should be trying to fix him.”

Tinker nodded in agreement. “To be fair, Preach never said to harvest. He said to appraise.”

“You know what I mean,” CURL shifted her stance to have her weight on the other foot. “There are bigger questions about this kid than the monetary value of his hardware.”

“Look. I hear you. And, I don’t think Preach meant it that way. I think he just wants to find out where this kid came from, like the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” she said weakly, unconvinced.

Tinker held a probe, pushing it along the bleeding edge of Darius's metal shoulder. He was fishing for a feedback conductor. It was a component that came with every piece of cybernetics, allowing it to interface with the body’s nervous system. However, none of these parts seemed to have one.

“It makes no sense,” Tinker mumbled. “CURL, check for a registry file again.”

“I’ve done it five times! There isn’t one!” She gritted her teeth now, eyeing the x-ray on the light screen. “No feedback conductors. No registry. The only thing we know for sure is that this wasn’t the hack job it appeared to be. He’s corporate. And his install wasn’t completed.”

Tinker’s expression went blank, and he nodded faintly. “Not completed, so not at equilibrium. New tech… What if it doesn’t need feedback conductors?”

CURL’s gaze sharpened on him. “Then how…?”

“The spine houses his natural nervous system, but it also manages it. It has nodes in his brain and across a number of his organs. This setup could do a full vital diagnostic on him and control his autonomic bodily functions… make them more efficient!” He moved to the light screen and started to write on it in dry-erase marker. “The spine is his nervous system, it controls both the machine parts and the human parts. Get it?”

“Nope,” CURL shook her head, furrowing her brow. “That explains nothing.”

“When this setup is running as designed, it doesn’t need to interface with the nervous system, it IS the nervous system. I can only imagine what those missing parts would have done. Either way, he’s got something special here.”

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“So… what’s your valuation, then?” Preature stood at the doorway.

“He’s priceless.” Tinker responded. “He has full deliberate control over meat and metal. This stuff hasn’t even been rumored to actually exist. This tech, working at a fraction of its capacity, has kept him alive through the worst case of sepsis I’ve ever seen. Look, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but this could give humanity a chance at immortality.”

Preature gave a single nod and removed his mirrorshades. He entered the room and looked down at Darius.

“He’s not for sale,” Preature rumbled quietly.

Tinker and CURL watched Preature as he stood over Darius. There was something in his eyes that they had never seen before. Some acknowledgement, or was it validation?

“Well...” Tinker started. “These cybernetics, uh, they die with him. It’s proprietary tech. Very advanced. It’s DNA encoded, it can’t be reset without the proper software to access it. It will only work for him. It’s no good to anyone else. It’s burned out pretty badly. It’s a miracle that he’s even able to use it in safe mode.”

“A miracle,” Preature mumbled, looking at Darius's burnt and swollen face. “Tinker, do everything in your power to heal him and get his tech running as designed.”

“He needs a SOLA-Med, not just a medic,” Tinker said cautiously, watching Preature’s reaction.

Preature laughed softly to himself. “Good thing SOLA-Med is here, then.”

Tinker looked confused, but CURL nodded in acknowledgement. “I’ll get your stuff,” she said.

She returned shortly after with a SOLA-Med kit.

“You?” Tinker squinted at Preature.

“Yeah,” Preature responded. “Long time ago.”

Preature opened his kit and prepared his tools in a way that only years of experience could teach. “They dropped me. Layoffs. However, what I’d learned there, brought me my fortune. I took notes on every scene I was at.” He moved to the sink and began to scrub up. “It’s amazing the kinds of places Execs and Vens find themselves bleeding to death. In fact, that’s how I’d learned about the bonanza of boats. An old cargo vessel off the coast of Newfoundland, GPS still working, crew all dead. I’d gotten to it before anyone else had. The rest is history.”

Tinker nodded with an emphatic smile. “Damn! SOLA-Med!”

“Language!” Preature scolded, then allowed his own smile to widen on his face. “It is pretty damn cool though.”

The team got to work, injecting rapid heal cells into Darius's most infected areas. Tinker worked on the spine, finding that as the swelling reduced, the cybernetics became more responsive. Then he got CURL to start interfacing with the nodes in the right brain. Some damage in there had caused the hardware on the left side of the body to lose connection with the system.

Preature was focused on Darius's face, trying to reduce the scarring with a concoction of trauma drugs and anti-inflammatory balms.

“Hey, there’s something strange in the code,” CURL said, eyes moving back and forth over the data on her visor. “Encrypted files. One in each of the pieces of cybernetics, each different. I haven’t been able to decrypt, but the brain nodes contain a README including some text about design files for something called CellarDoor. I think these files have been partitioned from a larger one and stored within the parts. Somebody was smuggling them in this kid’s cybernetics. He’s a mule.”

Preature and Tinker stopped what they’re doing and looked up at CURL with wild amazement.

“You mean to say, the design files for this tech are in our hands right now?” Preature asked in bewilderment.

“Encrypted, incomplete, but maybe. I suspect that there are more files in the parts that didn’t get installed,” CURL insisted.

“Then we need to find out where these parts are from,” Preature said looking thoughtfully down at Darius.