I don't remember breathing. Just the cold. Then the noise. Then Roger, carving through what was left of me like I wasn't already dead. I wake on a steel slab in the dark, belly-down, my head pounding and half my body burning like a parked engine on overload. Acid rain patters on cracked concrete somewhere behind the clinic's glass windows, neon flickers slicing through gaps in corrugated panels.
My vision's blurpunching to life: bright blue lights strobe above me, casting long, twitching shadows of the room. It smells like antiseptic and burning flesh. A man is hunched over me, his hands buried deep inside my insides. Something sizzles.
"Hey!" I growl.
My voice is thick. I try to twist to see the bastard holding me down. His face is buried in scalpels and circuits.
The man jerks, nearly slicing a vein. "Christ, Bale, you always gotta wake up on top of the autopsy slab?"
"Fuck's going on?" I croak. Part of me feels like meat in a grinder – cold metal restraining me by wrists and ankles, my torso raw under my chest. My augmented arm is dead weight; muscles twitching from the wound. I have to push my heavy eyelids up.
The surgeon snorts, a terrified, uptight laugh. He's twitchy, uneven breaths. He's got stitches on his forehead, faint scars around his eyes and he's cursing under his breath in rapid-fire staccato, like Tourette's on caffeine. Roger, the so-called doctor.
"Shhh, keep it down, dog-face," he spits, slamming a fresh auto-injector into the valve of my arm implant. He shoves something high-voltage against my skin; I grit teeth as a jolt surges through me. It's a debugging impulse, I think, to keep me from losing consciousness. "You flatlined. Twice. And I brought you back with duct tape and nerve glue, so maybe don't fucking move yet. Had to scrap half your augmentations, you're lucky to be here. The fight was…mayhem."
I glare at him. "Roger, you fucking slapped-out maniac, explain. Why am I strapped down like a pig for the butcher?" The metal slab under me is cold and hard as ice. My body aches from a thousand angles, half my vision is static, and my blood tastes like rusted coins.
He wipes sweat off his forehead with a gloved backhand. "Seein' you bleed's bad for business. Had to stabilize your goddamn self or you'd've bled out."
His needle shakes in his hand. "Your arms are half-dead. Neural net's fried. I slapped on some experimental braces to keep the skeleton from shattering if you wake up pissed. If those circuits held for a fuckin' second longer, you'd be dust."
The restraints dig into my wrists, rubber straps and steel teeth. Something flickers in my vision, the new implants syncing. Even when I'm conscious, it feels like my body's in revolt. "I woke up with half my synapses burned, asshole. Is your doctor-bag full of this junk?"
He snorts again and a shadow of a smile crosses that twitchy face. "I should've dumped you in the acid canal and prayed. But hell, I'm an idiot.""Hey, science ain't polite. You wanna walk outta here in more pieces? Thought not. Took some liberties patchin' you up. Added adrenal crash compensators... stops you from crumpling if your blood pressure bottoms out... And a subdermal clot mesh to keep you from bleeding like a stuck pig. It's illegal tech, sure, but so is pulling your guts out with half a pack of chewing gum and a smile."
I growl low. The pain in my shoulder flares as if remembering an old war wound. I try to speak, the words tasting like copper. "You think about letting me outta here, doc? Or do I owe you a tourniquet?" My jaw locks; twisted wires at my incision hiss like living snakes.
He gives a twitchy laugh, voice quivering from excitement. "You owe me a new scalpel, asshole. Ha! Kidding, kidding. I know you. Black Dog's not a whiner. You ask for that tourniquet next week, though, okay? Rest now, I patched the hole in your chest. You get up, you bleed out, you die."
"What about Silvio?" I try. That name tastes bitter. "Got through, Roger?"
He shrugs, panic ebbing to anger. "No. Nada. Slept on a tile. Everything's comatose. Might as well be on vacation in deep space." Roger mutters into the air. "Gentlemen, he's gone dark."
My heart goes dead. "You had a secure channel open to HQ?"
"No. Folks from Silvio's crew aren't responding anyway and why should I stick my neck out for a guy leaking more red flags than blood?" He darts behind me. His hands slide beneath a metal tray and emerge with a pistol and a handful of bullets.
"Listen up. I'm too comfortable being a corpse to help you die like this too. When you're horizontal again, you get me a good latte for old time's sake… I got your back. At least, one of yours."
I snort, partly in agony, partly relief. Roger may be mad, but he's the only surgeon in the sprawl with a shard of a soul. "All right, Doc."
He carefully unstraps my leg. The blood is already blotting the white canvas. The blood is, ironically, a comforting color to see. I wriggle my limbs: one arm is heavy and wooden at the elbow where circuitry shorts out. He's rigged a brace with titanium. It rattles slightly, makes a chemical hiss. My heart pounds with every move.
"Easy, dog," Roger growls, restraining me by the shoulders. "I don't know how stable those new bones are. Take baby steps."
I force the weight on my one good leg and hobble to a rough stool. The adrenaline compensator kicks in, draining me of the dizzying crash of pain. My chest feels tight, measured breaths.
Roger laughs unpleasantly. "Hey, haven't seen you this upright in months. Don't fall." He pats me on the back too hard, nearly knocking the wind out of me. "Okay. Let's get you geared up."
Weapons and gear appear out of the shadows: pistols with a silencer, three combat knives fitted to my forearm sheathes, a 10-round clip in hand, spare mag strapped to thigh. He tosses me a box of blood packs and tech chewing gum (painkillers with a nano-patch). "Chew, pain is like a shitty joke, right?"
I grunt as I tear open a pack and drop it between my teeth. The sharp mint pepper burns along my gums. Pain numbs. "Sore enough," I say. "What else?"
"Don't start telling me what happened," Roger cuts in suddenly, his tone flat. "Whatever mess you walked out of, I don't want to know. You bleed, I patch. That's the deal."
I pause, then nod. Maybe that's mercy. Maybe he just knows better.
"Thanks," I mutter. The word feels awkward in my mouth. I'm not used to saying it. I want to answer. I want to believe someone still gives a damn. But I already saw how the story ends—lying face up in a rain-choked alley with her face above me and a barrel in her hand.
"Don't mention it," he says. "You start saying things like that too often, people might mistake you for human."
I pause at the armory locker, half-loading a clip. "Hey... while I'm getting stitched back together, maybe you could dig into the kill order that nearly had me turned into alley mulch. Monkey Gang tried to kill me."
Roger lets out a snort so sharp it could cut steel. "Oh great, targeted by tattooed chimpanzees. Sure, I'll check."
[New Message - MARTY: Where the hell are you? Call me back.]
[New Message - JESSICA: Bale... please respond. Are you okay? Something's wrong. Marty and I are worried. Just ping us. Anything.]
I head to an armory alcove, loading my pistol. My new stabilizer makes my fingers clench like a rusty claw. I squeeze and recoil, adjusting. One new addition he mentioned: a neural shock shield, something that scrambles a bullet's impact. So they claim. I'll find out soon.
Roger watches over my shoulder as I pack a survival kit: lockpicks, comm-app key. Then he steps around me, holding out a chunky injector rig with five loaded cartridges lined up along the barrel—each a different murky color.
"Here," he says. "Custom mix. Five shots. Street-grade SynthMorphin, Cortical Override, clot suspension, pain nullifier and one that's just labeled 'Fuck-It Juice.' It'll block pain for a few minutes if things get ugly. It won't stop you from bleeding out, but it might help you finish the fight first."
"Listen," he says quietly, not touching the gun's barrel. "When you hit the street, be aware. Your pal Silvio… didn't finish his coffee this morning."
I flatten my palm on the cold slab where I woke. Something in my gut twists. "What happened to Silvio?"
He taps the side of my head as if clearing static. "If he's back at HQ, he's on the other side of life. That's all I know."
I snap my jaw shut. He's not givin' much, but it smells like betrayal.
A faint clicking gets my attention; Roger's turret syndrome is acting up. He winces and pins me. "Alright, enough pity," he snaps. "Go. Watch your steps. I'm threading hell for using you as a test dummy."
I nod and wince at the pain. Final words from Roger as I back toward the clinic door: "Come back, alive."
He tosses something onto the tray behind me. I glance down, an old thermal-printed receipt, yellowed at the edges, total scrawled in ink.
"What the hell is this?" I ask.
"Your bill," Roger says, already turning away. "Thirty grand. Covers cybernetic stabilizers, illegal clot mesh, three vials of nerve glue, and two death resurrections."
I snort. "You're charging me thirty thousand for a second chance?"
"Hell no," Roger mutters. "That's the discount. First one was free. This one's for making me care."