3.
You pull yourself off the table and stagger. Your legs are numb and you totter, until Electra catches you. You're right, she really is a lot taller than you. You barely reach up to her shoulder.
"M-my legs hurt," you stutter, clinging to her.
Electra nods seriously, her hair flopping in front of her face. "That's normal," she says earnestly. "I had to replace a lot of the musculature, and of course your old knees were just
ruined. Completely ruined. Shattered. Smashed in to stop you running. I managed to save most of your shins, but even at the top they're being held together by a mix of bone ceramic cement and the metal braces." She grins. "I made such a neat job of it, you wouldn't believe! With the cybernetics to replace the knee joint and to anchor the fractured join, you'll barely notice!"
You wince in a flash of pain. Yes. That would make it hurt. You… you think you might know a bit about medicine. That's the kind of injury which requires cyberisation to allow the victim to walk and… you shudder, twisting convulsively in a spasm. Electra holds you upright.
"Head. Hurts," you say thickly. Your tongue feels numb and painful, along with your throat. You think it's the anesthesia. It feels like there's a lump of dead meat in your mouth and when you try to push it away, you remember that it's your tongue. It feels too big.
"I know, I know," Electra says. "But we need to move. Now."
"Yes," you say dryly, letting her support you. "Move. Trying. M-my best."
"I know, I know, and you're making a really good job of it! Just move your feet. One after another." Electra turns, looking behind her as you half-stagger and are half dragged along. "Mau! Come! Obey!"
The metal dog-thing thunder-rumbles deep in its chest, and trails after the pair of you. You try your level best as a staggering aching person who doesn't even know their own name to keep Electra between you and that… that
thing.
Outside the… the surgery, you guess, things are if anything more messy. The bare concrete walls are covered in wear and markings, and in places the blackened outer layers have fallen away, to expose embedded burned-out wires and steel beams. There looks like there's been a fire here. Maybe that's why everything looks half built - it's being renovated.
But then where is everyone? You don't know. Has something happened? You ask yourself this again and again, as Electra sings an out-of-tune song to herself. Has there been… some kind of evacuation? Where even are you? What happened to you?
You don't remember anything. Even your name. You wrack your brain, and say the first thing which sounds vaguely name-like.
Caroline," you whisper to yourself. It doesn't sound right in your mouth. Your toungue easily shapes it out, but it doesn't feel familiar. You try other names, saying whatever comes to mind. "K-Kiara. K-Kiyoko." You wet your lips. "C-C-Carmen. C-C-Cuifen."
Of all these, Caroline sounds the best, the most likely, but… even it sounds wrong. You don't stammer when you say it, but…
You clench your fists. Oh, this is ridiculous. You're… fairly sure your name starts with a hard-c sound. It might be Caroline or Kiara or Carmen or Kiyoko or… maybe Cuifen, although that doesn't have the same hard-c sound so that's probably less likely. So you might as well work from that knowledge and that's who you'll be for now until you find the right answer. Kay. Or maybe Kai? No, Kay is more honest. Wait, no. Kay is a boy's name, you think.
Hmm.
Kae, then. Which happens to sound the same, so it won't matter unless you're writing it down.
… can you write? You can probably write if you can make comments about spelling in your head, right?
You glance at the wall next to you. There's a stencil painted on, and you read:
FIRE ESCAPE KEEP CLEAR
Right. So you can certainly read. Which means you can almost certainly write, at least once your fingers stop feeling so stiff and uncoordinated. Typing isn't hard, anyway. It might take longer to handle a pen, but who uses those things nowadays anyway?
The sound of scuttling things in the walls draws your attention back to reality and your aches and pains. So much for that moment of distraction. Electra, frowning, raises a hand. You stop, largely because you don't have any choice. Because she's basically carrying you. Your legs are working a bit better, but she's walking much faster than you can manage. She's basically running. Also, she has much longer legs than you. It's not your fault she's faster, and you like to think you're making a pretty good job of it considering the state you're in.
She's just standing there, head cocked.
You wet your lips. "Wh-what's happening?" you ask.
"They say that soldiers have landed at one of the docking bays," she says, irritably flicking her head. The sunny smile comes back. "Well, they'll find a surprise soon enough."
Almost immediately afterwards, a boom shakes the ground and concrete dust drifts down from the ceiling. Electra laughs happily. "Happy birthday to you," she sings to herself. "Happy birthday to you! Nah ha nah nah, we're nearly there, nah ha ha." She seems to have lost track of what she was saying, but she doesn't seem to mind as she keeps on humming.
The corridors here are widening up, and there's more metal and tiling on the unpainted walls. It's getting colder, too, and the air doesn't smell clean. And then you turn the corridor, and the wind hits you like a wave. There isn't an exterior wall at all here. The air here stinks of fumes, and makes you cough. It's also blowing quite hard. There was plastic sheeting over the gaping hole in the building, but that's been cut through in lots of places. The wide-open burned out concourse has polluted water pooling on the floor, and leaving the once-white walls grimy and filthy.
You cough. "F-fire," you manage.
"Yep! There was a fire! A really big one." Electra seems to have misunderstood. You're talking about the smoke in the air. "Everything shorted out! They weren't ready at all so all the super-rich people had to run away!"
There's another boom, but it sounds different. Further away. Peering out with watery eyes through the slits in the plastic, you can see that the black thunderclouds. They hang heavy and thick over the city. There are holes in the roof, and looking up you can see that they're directly overhead. The tall buildings which dot the landscape reach up into them. As you watch, there's a flash-boom, and lightning earths itself on one of the giant towers. The megatowers.
Mau rumbles, pacing up and down.
"What is it, girl?" Electra asks, cocking her head. "Prey? Do you want to eat?" She runs her free hand through the pink side of her hair. "You," she says, easing you down. "Rub your legs, get them working. We might need to run. Just wait here and I'll be right back. Mau smells bad men, so me and her are going to make them go away. 'Kay?"
Kay. Kae. Yes, that's your name. You nod, wincing. "Yes," you say quietly. You don't want to sit out in the fumes, but - you shiver as you look at the dog thing. You don't want to spend any time near it if you can avoid it.
Happily, Electra gives you a hug. "You're being so brave," she says, delight in her voice. Then she leaves, taking her dog-thing with her.
You do as she says at first, rubbing your legs. It hurts, but the sensation does shift a little. You're wearing - you swallow - cheap trainers on your feet, but the soles are stained in something red-brown that smells like metal. It's blood. You walked through blood, and not recently.
It's not that you're afraid or disgusted. You feel numb. But… but you're vaguely aware that blood shouldn't be covering you, like this.
Your examination moves upwards as you rub, your legs and arms feeling much better as you move them. They hurt, but you can waggle your fingers and toes and even walk to the nearest pillar and back on your own. There are the seam-like scars running along both the fronts and backs of your legs. They feel like ridges under your skin when you run your fingertips over them. The same ridges run all the way around your knee , and then continue up your thighs, moving under your clothing. There are similar marks on your arms - though only the underside - and you lift up your bloodstained t-shift and see that you have another mark running down the centre of your chest all the way down to the top of your shorts, which splits at your sternum into two scars leading to your shoulders. And you can feel another ridge down your back.
Surgical scars. Yes. You know what they are. That's what… what a modern, good-quality surgical suite can do. Advanced… advanced polymorphic synthflesh injected into an open wound leaves these ridges of synthflesh, and then a plastic surgeon can make them blend with the original skin. You know how that works. You don't know how you know that works, but you do know it.
"P-p-p," you spit, trying to shape the words. You can feel the seething bitter anger inside you, building. You can think these things! But your mouth doesn't say what you can think. It doesn't do what you want it to do, and… and… "P-poly. Morphic. S-s-synfless," you try. "F. L. Esh. Flesh."
Perhaps it's welcome a little bit, as a distraction. The anger, that is. Because the surgical scars are all over you. Arms, legs, face, chest, and back.
You look up with a dawning sense of horror as thunder cracks outside. What the fuck happened to you?
And then you see the thing rise into sight through the slits in the plastic.
It looks like a giant mechanical eye the size of a small child. A giant mechanical black eye, glowing faintly red from the optical sensor mounted up front, suspected from four flaring thrusters. It's a darker shape against the dark sky, save for that red glow. Underneath there's some kind of gun, which relentlessly scans from left to right. Your breath hitches in your throat and you try not to make a sound as it whines and whirs, maneuvering in through the cut plastic. It hasn't seen you yet, but it will if you don't move
right now.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
[ ]
Hide - What the hell is that thing! It's… it's got a gun! You're just going to get out of sight and hope it doesn't spot you!
[ ]
Fight - It's… it's quite small. Maybe if you just keep out of sight, you might be able to ambush it. And then smash it. If you do it right and get the drop on it, it might not even see it.
[ ]
Flee - You have had it
up to here with today. Between the creepy weird lady and the creepy robot eye… no. You're just going to run away. From both of them. You don't know where you're going, but you also don't know who you are or where you are, so it's not like that's making your knowledge any worse off.
[ ]
Call For Help - If you call for help… uh, maybe Electra will come back. But then again, maybe the eye is here to help you. You might as well try one of them.
-> [ ] Electra
-> [ ] The eye
[ ]
Surrender - Look, yes, it might be a mechanical eye, but you don't trust Electra one bit. Maybe if you surrender, you can get away from her. They wouldn't shoot someone who's trying to surrender, right? R-right?
;
