Page 14 of Redstone
“Good.” Demarcos rubbed his head again. “All right. No being stoic now, okay? You don’t feel well, you let us know.”
“I will.”
“Good. Good.”
The doctor reentered the room, a frown on his face. “I’ve got an inmate with a broken pelvis to get into the Regen tank, gentlemen, so let’s move this along, shall we?”
Watching his lawyer leave was almost enough to trigger a panic attack in Kyle, damn the doctor’s tutting at the readings that spewed from his device, but he held onto his calm with the skin of his teeth. He wasn’t going to break down, hewasn’t.He was strong, he had to be strong. He could do this. He’d survive; he didn’t have any other choice.
“Take a few deep breaths, Mr. Alexander,” the doctor advised him as he settled at the top of the device, tightening it around Kyle’s head and neck. “This will all be over soon.”
Kyle had time for exactly one deep breath before the first node of his implant was spliced into. From there, it was …
It was like being in a vast mansion or maybe a maze. It was a familiar maze, all the twists and turns well established. Only this time as Kyle began to run it, corridors that should have been open were suddenly closed off. Inaccessible. Paths he’d trod for nearly two decades were suddenly blocked, and he turned in circles again and again, trying to find his way, only to be stymied. The main passages were still there, well-worn avenues, but between one second and the next, Kyle forgot the name of the martial art he’d studied with Berengaria. He forgot how to load and fire a shrike gun, he forgot how to sayI love youin French and Cantonese and Arabic, he forgot …
It felt like he forgot everything. It couldn’t have been everything, of course not, but his mental maze was filled with fog now, even the main passages obscured in places where Kyle’s mind had made connections with his deactivated mods that now no longer functioned. It was like being drugged, and as the machine was loosened and drawn away from his head, Kyle suddenly rolled over onto his side and vomited helplessly. It was like being twirled on a spit even though he knew he wasn’t moving.
“Damn it,” the doctor muttered irritably. He pushed a syringe of some kind into Kyle’s neck, and the nausea subsided, but thewhirling sensation stuck with him. “I can’t put you into the tank like this; you’re a mess. Broken pelvis first, then you.”
“My …” Kyle spit to clear his mouth of foulness. “My lawyer …”
“Later, once you’re tidied up. I should have guessed you’d make this difficult.” He left, and a moment later, a bot came in and started to clean things up.
Kyle stared at it blankly. He should have known what kind of robot it was immediately; he should have known its make and model and capabilities, but where those memories usually resided was just … fog. Slick, crawling fog that stuck tight to his brain and concealed his own thoughts.
Kyle had no idea what was going to happen next. He wondered if he’d known a few minutes ago.
***
Getting into the Regen tank at last was a welcome relief. The device closed over Kyle like a cocoon; his body sank into the gel pads, and his headrest tilted back to partially submerge him in fluids. Kyle shut his eyes and let the machine do its work, the familiar sound comforting.
The liquid was warm on his skin, soaking evenly through the thin cloth of his prison garb, and as his headache and nausea began to recede, a little of Kyle’s optimism started to come back. So he might be without mods, but he wasn’t helpless. He didn’t have to be able to do everything at the level of expertise he’d displayed before; he just had to be better than the competition. He could manage that. Hecould.
Kyle’s reverie was abruptly disrupted by the manual override of the Regen tank. He opened his eyes to see a guard in black body armor, face mask down, push back the top of the tank. The guard reached in, grabbed Kyle around the upper arm, andhauled him out of the Regenic fluid before he could do more than gasp in protest.
“What are you doing?” Kyle demanded once he was on his feet. He tried to turn and look at the guard, but whoever it was swiftly bent Kyle’s arm and wrenched it high behind him, arching him on his toes. This person’s mods were obviously working perfectly—every move Kyle tried was countered immediately.
“Where’s the doctor?” he asked as the guard marched him out of the med unit and down a sterile gray corridor with inset red-and-yellow lights. Kyle felt like he was walking down the trachea of some immense beast, and the red-and-black barred door at the end of the hall was the entry to its tumultuous gut.
Kyle pressed back as hard as he could without dislocating his own shoulder. “I was supposed to have a meeting with my lawyer first—I haven’t even finished the Regen treatment!”
The guard smacked a red button on the side of the door. The camera above it scanned both of them for a moment, and then the door began to open. The light inside whatever was beyond the corridor was bright, too bright for Kyle to make out much of the room ahead of him.
The guard jerked Kyle close for a split second. “The inmates like it when new arrivals come in wet and ready,” the metallic voice hissed. “Just think, with Regen for lube you might not even tear. The first few times, that is.” Then the guard shoved Kyle into the light, the door closing with a resoundingclangbehind him.
Kyle’s eyes adjusted after a moment. He was still in a corridor but a very short one, leading to a large room that seemed to be full of people, milling around a wide, square door. The corridor wasn’t empty, though. Three people had laid claim to it, and before he knew what was happening, one of them had grabbed him and shoved him against the small exit he’d just been ejected from.
“Knew if we played the odds, someone’d come in through here eventually,” the man—or person, rather, he looked like he’d lost so many mods coming in here that all that was holding his face together was scar tissue and raw sinew—grasping him by his collar said with a sneer. “Always follow the little red lights, s’what the boys in black’ve said to me. Little red lights for naughty little problems they want taken care of.”
He had at least a foot of height on Kyle, and he used it to every advantage as he towered over him. “Guess you’re one of ’em problems, lad.” He leaned in and licked a long swipe up Kyle’s cheek, humming appreciatively at the taste. “Fresh out o’ the tank too. We’ll squeeze your clothes out into a bottle, and then we’ll squeezeyoufor a while until we get tired of playin’ around, yeah?”
“Orno,” Kyle choked out, and he brought his knee up as hard as he could between the giant’s thighs. The man gave a shocked little moan as he crumpled back and down, and Kyle smoothed his wet hair out of his face and evaluated the other two men, who seemed nonplussed.
One of them reached for him, and Kyle grabbed his wrist, torqued it in a tight circle, and sent his attacker toppling over the bent form of the giant, who snarled and struck back at his own companion as he tried to regain his composure. Kyle didn’t have any shoes, thanks to whoever that fucking guard had been, but his shin would do as a bludgeon in a pinch. He cocked his hip back and smashed the giant in the face, grimly noting to himself how much longer it took him to kick now that his combat mods were deactivated.
The third man looked at him and held up both his hands. “I’m not here for trouble,” he said smoothly. He looked as smooth as his voice, his long, neat handlebar moustache as bright as copper. “I just need a little taste of what you’re wearing.”
“The Regen?”
