Sam slowly felt his awareness return as the steady beeping of medical equipment began to annoy him. He tried to blink but his eyes felt as heavy as lead. It felt like a monumental effort for him to simply open them. When he finally could he saw his grandmother sitting in a chair to the side of the bed. His mind was heavy, his thoughts moving like a brick through sludge.
His grandmother looked terribly sad, like she’d been crying for hours.
“Grahgh…” he started, finding his throat both dry and full of phlegm. She perked up. “Grand…” Somehow, he couldn’t find the strength to form the word.
“Thank god you’re awake! I’ve had the whole church praying for you. I’ve been so worried, but you’re alive. The doctors say they can fix you. Focus on resting! I feel terrible, I never knew that you were being threatened by someone like that. I wish you had told me. I could have had someone look out for you. At least you’re alive.”
“Juan… how is…”
“We should talk about this another time-”
“No!” Sam said with as much force as he could muster, which was little more than a hoarse whisper. The effort caused every part of him to hurt more. “Tell me.”
“He’s alive, but he was worse off than you are. He has some pretty bad brain damage.” His grandmother said grimly. “We also managed to rescue Loki.”
“The others?”
“I’m sorry Sam. I’m sure they’re in heaven now.”
Sam cried. It made him hurt more, but he wasn’t sorry that he did. Every ache from his broken ribs and limbs was nothing compared to the pain of loss he felt. Surviving had been a miracle, but he didn’t realize how much a miracle could hurt. Talking was agony, but he couldn’t help but tearfully say his regrets.
“He got hurt because of me! They all got hurt because of me, and I wasn’t strong enough to stop it! If it wasn’t for that Elder, I’d be dead too!”
“I’m sorry Sam. I know it’s a lot to go through. I know how you feel.”
“How could you possibly know what I feel?” Sam snapped, anguished.
“When I was younger your great-grandfather’s business burned to the ground and he died. I told you that. What I didn’t tell you is that all of them died together. I was the only employee out that day. I found the lab burning and tried to rescue people before the fire department got there, but the flames were too hot and my little fire extinguisher did nothing. Just the blowback gave me scars on my chest that have never healed. If I had gone in I would have died too. I know those cats weren’t human, but they were people. I know you feel it as keenly as I did when I lost my world, and I know how confusing it can be to find out you survived when others didn’t.”
“Oh.” Was all Sam said in reply.
“Rest. We’ll talk in a bit. Just rest now.”
After that they sat in silence for several hours as Sam drifted in and out of consciousness. Doctors and nurses would enter and inject him with something and soon after, the pain would start to fade. First the unending ache in his ribs began to ease and breathing became much easier. A few hours after that he was able to move his fingers again. He fell asleep and the next time he awoke he checked the digital clock displayed on the wall to find that another six hours had passed. He felt awake and refreshed, but oddly fragile somehow, and stiff. It was like he was made of glass and moving through jello, and it was bizarre. A doctor soon entered. His grandmother was no longer there.
“Alright,” the doctor said, “We had multiple compound fractures on six ribs, both arms, both legs, and your collarbone. There were several places where your spine was smashed as well. In some places the bone was crushed badly enough it was effectively powderized. You had massive internal bleeding and multiple organs failing when you came in here. You’re lucky to be alive, considering you went up against someone with some serious augments. We’d give you a regen augment to speed things up but your guardians refused to allow it, so unfortunately we’re going to have to rely on cleanup and artificial bone regrowth by MekBac’s. Do you know anything about Engineered Bacteria?”
“No.” Sam said, idly wondering why the man had said guardians when his grandmother was the only guardian he had. “I know they heal you.”
“Yeah, okay. We’ll keep it simple then. A MekBac is short for Mechanical Bacteria. Well, it’s really a trademarked name, but all of them are basically the same thing. We artificially engineered bacteria with mechanical parts, run them on a program and they do things in coordination for us. Like a drone swarm on a microscopic scale. Then they die and get absorbed into your body. What they’ve just done is create a framework where your bones and nerves should be. They’re also shifting and returning bone to its proper place and putting it back together. Natural bone is pretty slow to heal this way, even with the latest MekBac’s. If we were slapping in augs you’d be out of here in a few days because we’d just replace it with something better, but you’re going to have to stay for a few weeks. The new bone is incredibly fragile, like a baby. We’re temporarily reinforcing it with a steel frame so your own weight doesn’t snap them. It’ll be a few months before you’re back to normal. ”
“A few months? Months of doing what, just being in bed?” Now partially healed, Sam managed to speak without being in agony. Still, finding out he might stay confined like this was horrible.
“No.” The doctor said, shaking his head. “You’ll be walking again before the month is over. Your bones will be new, your nerves will be new, but you’ll be incredibly fragile. If you re-break these bones, which need I remind you are being remade in some cases from powder, then your healing will be extended from a year to possibly decades of natural healing time, with continual MecBac treatments. That’s with the latest version, Mr. Wharton. You will need to take it slow and be careful. Additionally, I did want to inform you that as an adult you do get to make your own decisions about body augmentation. If this wait time is insufficient for you then I would encourage you to at least upgrade to some carbon fiber reinforced regen bones. If someone like that hits you again it’ll keep you alive.”
“I’ll consider it.” Was all that Sam said. Internally, he just thought to himself, “Do you really think I can afford any of that?”
“Also…” The doctor hesitated. “I don’t really understand your guardian’s objection to augmentation. You’ve already been subjected to a procedure for nerve healing before you got here. When I tried to look it up I was blocked and given guidelines to work around it. I’m not even supposed to talk with you about it, but that violates my code of ethics. I don’t like working on people with augments I don’t understand. Experimental augs are more likely to hurt you than help you.”
“I’ve never… had augs.” Sam said truthfully. “I was injected with something.”
“Well you do now. Apparently I’m not allowed to know what it is or I’d tell you, restrictions be damned. Just know that some crippling nerve injuries are in the process of healing very rapidly. This would normally take a lot longer.”
Sam would have tried to puzzle more out but soon found sleep overtaking him. No other official at the hospital was able to tell him more.
True to his word, a month after entering Sam was able to leave again. He had to spend four weeks in physical therapy in the hospital, slowly moving through exercises and painful training as his body healed. The pain was continual, but thanks to a combination of numbing agents released by the MecBac’s and Sam having built up a tolerance to pain with his virtual training it was something he could handle. Thanks to the hospital's patient access pods he was able to keep up with his education, though he still had to miss about a week before he felt well enough to go back to doing classes.
His grandmother came to get him and he slowly and stiffly walked behind her, enjoying his first taste of freedom in weeks. It was still swelteringly hot outside, but the air was dry and pleasant. Sam entered the old, dilapidated apartment building. As he entered the door he was startled to find a man in a flashy, out of date suit sitting in the living room. Loki, one of his legs in a little cast, was sitting on his lap. He stood up as Sam entered.
“Loki, you’re alive!” He shouted. The cat meowed loudly and did his best to run up to him with his broken leg. After sweeping him into his arms and hugging him, he turned to the man who had been holding him when he entered.
“You’re the man who saved me.” Sam said.
“Sit down Sam,” His grandmother said. “We’ve got something to tell you.”
“We?” Sam asked.
“I’m your grandfather.” The man said, his voice deeply booming across the small room with certain finality.
“What? I’ve never even seen a picture of you before! I thought you were dead! Grandma, you just told me everyone else died in that fire!”
“This is your grandfather. King Wharton. He left the company before it was destroyed. Not telling you about him was my decision,” His grandmother said. “I resented him.”
King spoke up then, and Sam thought he could see the slightest hint of a tear in King’s flesh and blood eye.
“I made a mistake when I was young. A very terrible mistake. It drove us apart.”
“Did you cheat on her or something? Or did you start that fire she told me about?” Sam asked, disgusted. For the first time the man looked upset, and Sam felt vaguely uncomfortable.
“We’ve discussed this already,” She cut him off tersely. “It’s something I’ll let you talk about another time. The important thing is that he saved your life, and I have chosen to forgive him. I don’t want our conflicts to cause problems for your future, so I will ask you to give him a chance.”
“Well you did save my life,” Sam said, happily. “I’m sorry I mistook you for the Machine Emperor, I’ve just never seen anyone else move like that before! Not even the augs in the fighting leagues! I don’t know if you used to be a gangster or something, but as long as I don’t have to kiss your ring I’m grateful.”
Far from being insulted, King threw his head back and laughed, the force and volume of which seemed to shake the room.
“Nothing like that my boy. Although you’re not far off. I work on the Star Stations.”
“You what?!?” Sam was so shocked that he jumped and then winced as his still tender body was punished with a spike of pain for the sudden movement.
“Don’t look so shocked. There’s a hundred thousand people up there, after all.”
“Yeah but they’re all obscenely rich!”
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“Oh, not all of them. But yeah, I do have a good bit of cash. Some of which I’m gonna spend to help you out.”
“Help me how?”
“I’m in charge of a place. I can’t talk about it too much, but you’ll get a spot up there and a chance for a job. I’ll help you get your bearings and get things sorted for you.”
“You can trust him, Sam.” She spoke with warmth.
“I can go to the Star Stations? I can…” His words died off as he realized what he’d been about to say.
I can live. He thought, with relief permeating his soul.
“That’s right.”
“Wait, you injected me with something before I passed out. It’s all blurry now, but I remember that. What the hell was that?”
“Well, that was the other thing I wanted to talk with you about.” King said hesitantly. The man had always seemed supremely confident before, so the hesitation surprised Sam.
“Congratulations on becoming an augment.”
“What? I thought the doctor was full of shit!” Sam asked, startled. He looked at his grandmother with a deeper shock than he’d ever felt before. He looked at her with wide eyes. “You never let me get even a single augment.”
“I can handle one of those,” His grandfather said. “What you’ve got is classified, and he told you something he shouldn’t have. I had a little talk with him about national security.”
That definitely raised more questions than answers, but before Sam could ask his grandmother started talking.
“There’s many reasons I never wanted you to become augmented. One of the most important ones is that those companies all but own you once you get them.”
“So this… classified augment doesn’t own me?” He asked, skeptical.
King laughed his deep, rich laugh that boomed throughout the room.
“Well, you can’t talk about it. There’s no gotcha EULA though. I made it, so if you’ve got a problem with that you can take it up with me.”
Sam stopped to consider for a moment. He’d seen horror stories on the news about lone people trying to make augments in their own home, only for it to cause horrific deaths. Just because the tools were there didn’t mean you were supposed to use them yourself.
“Do you have a team?” He asked.
“Yep. I did most of the work myself, but it never hurts to have someone check. In my case there’s a lot of people to check.” King said, simply.
“So what does it do?”
“Right now nothing much. I had to give it to you to keep you alive. I didn’t have anything else that could deal with injuries that bad. It kept you alive by knitting some of your nerves back together before you made it to the hospital.”
“So it’s like a secret healing MekBac?”
King laughed again. “No, not even close. But I can’t talk about it too much yet, just giving it to you is going to get me into trouble. In the long run though, I’ll tell you that it can do a lot. A whole lot. In the short term you’re gonna have to start eating some aug dietary supplements.”
“Is that why Juan was hurt worse? He didn’t get the augment?”
“That’s a different conversation. He saved your life and so did this little guy here,” King said, pointing to the kitten on his lap. “I gave them the same injection, but it’s not like I carry cases of the stuff. I had two vials and a few replacement needles. Juan and the cat had to split one, and it’ll take time for the stuff to grow in them. Fortunately the little guy didn’t need much.”
“How the heck does something work on a human and an animal? Also what? The augment grows?”
“Ahh, I wasn’t supposed to talk about that. Give me a bit to get clearance and I’ll let you know everything. Just don’t get any other augs for now, alright?”
“Sure. Well I’m glad to be alive, and to finally meet you. Since grandma says I shouldn’t worry about the past, I won’t.”
After that his grandfather said his goodbyes and left.
“You’re really not going to tell me what happened?” Sam asked. “You always told me he was a bad guy, and the first time I saw him he saved my life.”
“He used to have problems. I think he’s finally over them. I’ll let him tell you. Right now I don’t feel like I deserve to be angry with him. I feel like I made a terrible mistake holding you back.”
Sam considered it. He’d nearly died. Even basic augments would have let him have a better chance than he did.
“I’m not happy about what happened, but Ian is the one that hurt me, not you. I didn’t really think about it but I’m eighteen now, aren’t I? I had my birthday while I was in the hospital. If he’d come after me after I got augs I would have put him in the hospital.”
“Yes, you’re an adult now, Sam. I’m glad you don’t hate me. I’m still going to blame myself though. I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you. Now, are you ready for a steak? I’ve got a nice juicy one in the fridge for you.”
As Loki jumped off of his lap and hobbled over to her Sam smiled. “I hope you saved one for this little hero too. Thanks for saving my life, little guy.”
—
It took another month for Sam to finally recover enough to travel. When he had his grandmother let him know it was time to go to his grandfather’s location.
The next day Sam’s grandmother gave him the location. Traveling to the local airport he found a branded two-seater airplane waiting for him. There was a gem-shaped logo he didn’t recognize branded on the side. Loki rode on his lap. He considered himself lucky that Loki slept through most of the hour-long flight. Soon he saw his destination, a building with the same unfamiliar logo. Gem Sky Cybernetics was a small and fairly nondescript building, especially considering the number of high rises around it. It stood as a squat black box on a hill set beneath the towering Sawtooth Mountains. Unlike most tech companies he’d seen on the internet, the building seemed to try to be hiding in the city. The land had once been part of the Sawtooth National Forest but parkland had long since given way to the city. Still, Thompson Idaho remained one of the few places you could see a lot of natural woodland in the state. Much of the rest had been burned or cleared for agriculture.
Sam spotted a familiar figure in a wheelchair getting out of his own small plane. Loki hopped over to him, climbing into Juan’s lap.
“Juan!” He shouted, bending down to give his friend a hug.
“S-saaam,” Juan said, oddly slurring his name.
For the first time Sam noticed the oddly distant look on Juan’s face.
“You see, r-right?” Juan said. “He hurt me - he hurt my head. It was ah - damage. It was uh… uh…”
“Brain damage?” Sam said, horrified.
“Yeah.”
“Dammit! You saved my life! This shouldn’t have happened to you!”
He punched the wall, blood beginning to trail down the black-painted brick.
Juan reached out and put a hand on his arm.
“They said that they can m-make me better.”
“They’d better. I’m not going to let them get away with it if they don’t.”
Internally, Sam realized that brain damage, unlike muscular or skeletal damage, was incredibly hard to heal. Treatments for it cost a fortune and the person that went in was rarely the same person that came out. Rebuilding the mind came with real risks.
“Thinking is what you’re best at, right?” Sam said. “Let’s go in and find out how long it’ll take for you to get better.”
Sam quietly wheeled Juan into the building. The receptionist was a petite woman that was polite and friendly. She took their names, confirmed their appointments and handed them ID badges.
“Go through these two doors and follow the arrows. Use this badge when you come to a locked door.”
All three of them including Loki were given a small dark blue dog-tag sized card on a lanyard. Internal LED’s faintly traced the outline of the company’s logo in neon blue.
They went through the back and found a short corridor. The walls were blank and featureless, the hallway itself somewhat dim. Lights pulsed along the corners, moving down the hall in a regular beat, much like a heartbeat. With each pulse arrows would flash and showed the way forward. They followed it, going past seemingly empty office rooms and a cubicle area. Others appeared to hold servers. The air was chilly, and Sam regretted not bringing a jacket.
The lights ended at the end of the hallway, leading to an elevator. They all went in. Without pressing any buttons the doors closed and they started moving.
“I guess it knows where to go.” Sam said.
The elevator began descending and Sam waited as the floors passed. One… two… three… At each floor the lights would brighten for a brief moment. He kept waiting… and kept waiting. Somehow the elevator ride didn’t seem like it would ever end.
“It’s going d-deep,” Juan said.
“I think we’ve gone down thirty floors.” Sam said.
He started getting concerned as the elevator kept going down after floor 40 - then 50 - then 60. It was only after he counted sixty four floors that it finally stopped.
The doors opened to another long corridor. There was a single ordinary looking door at the far end of the hallway, and the sides were lined with large, stationary guns. They seemed to be powered down and pointing at the floor, but they were no less intimidating for all that. Along the walls, the lights continued to pulse, urging them forward.
“Those bullets are .50cal! They could uh, uh, uh…” Juan stammered as he lost the words.
“Calm down. They’re not on.”
“Your grandpa is serious.”
“Looks like it,” Sam said, trying not to let on how spooked he was himself.
Loki simply hopped out of Juan’s lap and trotted ahead, stretching briefly before bolting down the hallway as fast as he could, then stopping in front of the door. Panting, he turned around and looked at them.
The guns did nothing.
“Well I’m not gonna be outdone by you, buddy.” Sam said, pushing Juan down the hall.
When they all stood in front of the door. A green light in the center beeped and it opened.
The interior was a small room with a wall lined with virtual dive pods, including one that was much smaller than the others. There was a single desk at the far side of the room where his grandfather sat. It had no pictures, no decorations - everything in the room was blank and featureless.
“Hello and welcome to the lab, boys!” King boomed. Somehow his voice seemed to be even louder in such a small room.
“If I knew it’d be VR pods I’d have gone back to the gym,” Sam said, teasingly.
“Ha-HA! No, these aren’t like the ones up there. These ones have some extra features you’ll get to learn all about later, but first I need to go over some things with you.”
The tall man turned to Juan and Loki.
“You two saved my grandson and that is the reason you are here. Even with your injuries, even being his friend or companion wouldn’t be enough to be here. It goes without saying that everything that happens in this building is classified. You’re not soldiers or government officials, so there’s a lot of paperwork you’ll have to do before we can get into the real work. Long story short though, you’ll be going through a procedure only one person has ever been through before - me. If you go through this process there are risks. You could die or your personality could change so much it’s like becoming a new person. I’m not pretending it won’t be risky, but I’ll be with you to help you through it.”
“M-my parents signed the papers.” Juan said. “Can it fix my head?”
“Yes.” King said without elaborating.
“I’m already ready already,” Sam said, eager to finally have augments. “Let’s goooooo!”
“And you,” King said, looking at Loki.
The cat nodded its head emphatically.
“Good. Your species is illegal now so if you hadn’t agreed with this procedure it would have been a pain to get you up on a Star Station. Now I can get you some legal protection as a registered new species. There’ll be some angry people, but I can handle them.”
“He’ll get to come along? Really?”
“You better believe it.” King said, happily.
King pointed to the pods.
“Alright, get in. At least for now it’ll be just like using any regular fulldive VR pod. I’ll tell you more once you’re inside.”