Silva

Conduit raises her hand and raps lightly but firmly against the door. She waits a moment before walking inside, per his wishes. Her electromagnetism wraps around the locking mechanism and she slides it free. Opening the door slowly, Conduit steps into the lab. His laboratory is a spartan place. He lives by function over form in every aspect of his life that he permits her to see. This is the epoch of that ideal. Machines in various states of construction sit on tables and sprawl in corded off sections of the tile floor. His private specialty lies in weapons, the sort meant to amplify or modify a super-human's abilities. This place is where they are born. Conduit is familiar with a few of them. The rest look either new or freshly dismantled into an unrecognizable state.

He is not waiting for her at the door. Relief washes over her body. Something else occupies his mind, so this shouldn’t take long. Conduit scans the room while walking inside. Eventually, she sees him in the far left corner of the room. He colossal desk is the centerpiece of the room. It isn’t even in the actual center of the room, instead tucked into a dim corner, but it stands out like if it is centered. The hulking structure consumes swaths of wall like a weed allowed to fester. Multiple shelves, drawers, and computer screens line the walls as beacons to his planning. She used to try and read them.

Conduit closes the distance between her and the desk. Her solid footsteps bounce off the metal contraptions around her. She comes to a stop at the invisible and unspoken edge of his desk’s bubble, a solid three meters away from him. He disliked when she remained any closer. She has little desire to upset him. The doctor doesn’t initially turn to face her, finishing typing out the last of whatever project preoccupied him first.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Reinhardt,” Conduit says, keeping her voice low and professional. She watches him from the safety of the obscured visor. He’s relaxed, shoulders resting against the back of his lab chair.

Still not looking up from his work, he replies, “Assuming by the absence of mechanical stress that you were successful in retrieving what I asked.”

His work absorbed him, good. She can make this brief and return to her bay.

“Indeed,” Conduit reaches behind her into a secure compartment in her exosuit and retrieves a USB. She holds it up to try and make it as visible as possible.

Dr. Reinhardt holds up his hand, and Conduit quickly steps into the unseen bubble. Carefully, she places it in his palm. The moment he wraps his fingers around it, she retreats to the edge again. She moves calmly and deliberately, the best method to allow him to continue to work undisturbed. Only she notices when she relaxes outside of that unspoken range. She bites back a sigh.

He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a plain laptop. She knows its a bare bones piece of hardware with no identifiable information that serves to ensure nothing sneaks into the data she retrieves. He plugs it in and opens it up. It boosts up quickly and, when the USB doesn’t immediately fry it, he closes it again. Setting it aside with the USB still inside, Dr. Reinhardt finally turns to face her. Finally, she can read him properly. His brow is furrowed in a concentration she can’t quite place. He taps the armrest of his chair almost absentmindedly.

“I will have that analyzed later,” he says more to himself than to Conduit, “Updating you will give that data enough time to reveal if it was any malware waiting for me.”

Under her exosuit, Conduit stills. She isn’t expecting to be modified today. Normally, she has notice, or when her exosuit is damaged enough to require repairs. Then she’s expecting it. It’s never unprompted. She gets a chance to prepare.

“Update?”

“Yes,” Dr. Reinhardt rises to his feet and begins walking towards Conduit’s armoring station. “I’m updating your suit.”

Conduit doesn't move. She swims internally as the sounds of his footsteps echo off the inside of her helmet. She gets warning. He gives her warning. Modifying her is a long, complex and painful process. She has time to prepare. It makes the process easier on him.

“Is something wrong, Conduit?” Dr. Reinhardt asks. His voice is empty, almost hollow. Conduit snaps to attention. He’s standing over by the armoring station. One of his hands rests on it. His fingers idly drum against the steel. A shadow casts over his face as he looks at her. His brow furrows ever so slightly.

Please don’t make me do this. I’m not ready.

“No, doctor,” Conduit says instead. She begins to walk towards the table, “Nothing is wrong.”

Dr. Reinhardt steps back just enough to allow her to slot herself into the person shaped divot in the armoring table. It vaguely resembles an operating table, the sort that can me mechanically raised and angled as needed. The largest difference is the box like compartment underneath it where the mechanical arms that are required to unbolt her from her exosuit. Conduit steps into the device. She presses her fingers into the tiny pores in the finger slots, pulling air into her lungs slowly and methodically. Her chest expands out enough for her to feel the edges of her exosuit.

He presses a button on the side of the table and the machine groans to life. It slides backwards, holding her up at an angle. Multiple arms extend from under the table and loom over her. The largest descends and its plate snaps onto her chest. The electromagnetic parts hum in her preternatural senses. A pair of smaller arms emerge from the plate and hook under the breastplate. Tiny screws loosen and Conduit can feel the plate click off and she watches it rise away from her.

The anchors in her endosuit pull as it snaps away. A puff of air whistles from her lungs. Her muscles go tight. A burning sensation runs up the sections of her wires once inside the exosuit. Stray wires rest across her skin. More arms grab hold of smaller plate across her body. The ones across her forearms slowly pull away as smaller arms press into her skin. Little mechanical digits dig in and unlatch tabs in her skin. The burning spreads.

She wants to wince. She doesn’t.

Then, one of the mechanical arms hovers over her face. It latches to her helmet. Smaller ones dig into the sides and slide between almost airtight seems. The tips tickle the skin around her scalp and throat. They twist and she hears the screws unwind. The sound is deafening. A crack, and light pours in through the seams. The arms pull her helmet off and the wires across the back of her neck. It rises up and away from her body, adding to the collection of parts out of Conduit’s line of sight.

It takes a couple minutes to pull and push off the rest of the titanium. A few more minutes to pull the cloth barrier meant to prevent chaffing. Once the cold laboratory air touches her skin and endosuit, she involuntarily shivers. The mechanical arms and plates slide back under the table as their task is finished. Conduit half lays half sits on the armoring station, reduced to the biological flesh that exists under the metal. Her muscles tense and her eyes flick around. A wariness rises in the back of her mind. Reflexively, she tugs on the metal around her. She wants to wrap herself in it, reconstruct her external skin in a fragmented form for nothing but comfort.

But she doesn’t. Instead, she slowly turns her head to try and watch Dr. Reinhardt work.

Normally, when Dr. Reinhardt wants to modify her exosuit, he takes the shell over to one of his many work stations. Two are within arms reach. So when he doesn’t move and instead gets closer to her, Conduit forces herself still. A line of nervousness clings to her spine. In that second, she’s grateful that the lab is always frigid. The slight trembles of anticipation can be chalked up to the cold.

“Now, if we want to access the internals,” Dr. Reinhardt mutters to himself. “We will need to hemostatic agent to keep this clean.”

The air entering and leaving her lungs freezes in place. This isn’t modifying her exosuit. He is modifying her endosuit.  The part of her suit that exists in her body. Modifying it requires cutting into her to reach the delicate circuitry. This isn’t working under her mechanical skin; this is working under her biological skin. Conduit takes a breath as silently as possible.

“Doctor,” Conduit forces her voice into professionalism, “Was there a scheduled update that I missed?”

Dr. Reinhardt shakes his head and almost shrugs, “No, I was just thinking about your in-optimal electrical output when exposed to adrenaline. I’ve noticed a through line from your suit’s data and I believe I’ve found a solution and I’d rather test it now.”

Her mouth dries.

Dr. Reinhardt steps off to the side and opens a drawer out of her line of sight. There's glass sounds bumping together and he fishes around. She internally coils up in the brief moments of silence. Then, there's a popping sound and more silence.

The needle sinks in right above her collarbone. It’s a pinch following a very warm sensation rolling through her body. It washes over her shoulders and latches onto the back of her spine. It grows warm, almost unbearably so before her muscles relax. Each fiber in her body goes still, starting with her shoulders, then arms, then torso, and finally her legs. Her body stills as the paralytic takes hold. It starts to creep up her face, and the last thing to leave her throat is a nervous whistle.

A few more minutes pass as Dr. Reinhardt prepares away from Conduit’s small circle of vision. Even her eyes start to glaze as those muscles relax in her skull. Eventually, he comes to stand over her still form. Conduit sees the light catch on the side of a scalpel. Dr. Reinhardt positions himself to her left and places a gloved hand right under her collarbone.

It bites into the skin. She cannot wince as the pain ripples up her neck. Dr. Reinhardt reaches down and pulls out a slender tube. Using the edge of the scalpel, Conduit feels him lift the layers of skin covering an access point to her mechanical parts. It taps against something and her electrokinesis ripples across her skin. An involuntary spark pops near his fingers.

“Don’t,” Dr. Reinhardt says focused.

I’m not trying to.

Conduit tries to focus on her abilities. Tries to feel for the electricity injected into her body and hold onto it. It skips under her mental fingers as the scalpel digs deeper, moving something metal aside.

Dr. Reinhardt places the tub in the mouth of the opening and slides it deeper. It fits itself firmly against her circuitry and grabs a hold of something. Her wires, long having found their homes nestling among her muscles and sinew, bump and prod under her skin. Long lengths of wire twitch and shift. A section of her spine radiates with dull ache. The anchors meant to keep the exosuit connected to her throb with an odd phantom pain.

He reaches over and pulls out another syringe and presses it into the tub. His thumb pushes the stopper and the conception sides down the tub and into her body. Its cold, but doesn’t alleviate the pain. The white hot pain mixes with the mechanical chill. her wires grow cool under her skin and slowly as the serum spread through her body. The mechanical parts that her mind forgot about now sit firmly in her senses. Old aches and pains from the intrusive additions to her body return for the first time in years.

Conduit wants to scream. Empty her lungs of any air and fry her vocal cords. Every nerve is on fire. Her neck and collarbone have the white hot feeling of blood pooling under her skin as he presses and moves flesh to access whatever entrance he installed in her. She wants her exosuit back. She wants to wrap herself in the cold familiarity of mechanical locks and curl in her arming bay.

“There we go,” Dr. Reinhardt mutters to himself as he sits back up. He steps backwards and pulls off his gloves with a quiet snapping sound. Her senses barely pick up on the sound of him walking over to where her exosuit sits.

Please give it back, I don’t want to be out anymore.

“I need to make some additions to the exosuit,” he says, once again more to himself than to her, “A few optimizations should reduce the strain when exposes to adrenaline.”

Gail focuses instead on Miriam’s quiet noises as she works on her back. A part of Gail is morbidly curiosity to see her exposed muscles. She knows that her wires weave through the muscle, dip into tendons, and poke holes in her spine. Today’s surgery is an attempt to pull some of them off her cervical spinal nerves. If Miriam’s theory is correct, which Gail really hopes it is, shifting some of those wires off them should reduce the pain spikes across her back. It is a Hail Mary neither she nor Miriam want to admit, but the only person who knows her endosuit well enough to make any true changes is the same man who installed them in her spine.

She would rather deal with chronic spinal pain her entire life than ever see Dr. Reinhardt again.

Dully, Gail acknowledges the odd pressure of Miriam’s gloved hands working up her body. The tension in her skin as it sits pulled apart form her body throbs painlessly in the back of her mind. Vaguely, she feels Miriam’s scalpel carefully split the muscle anchoring her wires down. A pinpoint of pressure pokes at Gail as Miriam pulls one of the wires free from her flesh and reattaches it slightly southward. Pull and push. Over and Over.

While Gail can’t feel anything painful, blood still has a smell. Its irony and sweet reek floats past her face into the ventilation system. This operating room smells like sterility locked in a constant war with copper wires. The faint sound of muscle and metal moving also ripple from her back. Its a sound so subtle that if she wasn’t well versed in its hymns she’d never notice it. The lack of taste in her mouth didn’t help either. She understands with a certainty why surgeons prefer general anesthesia. The complete deprivation of the senses, or at least their mark on the memory, helps ward away panic in ways most people will never comprehend.

She’s a bit grateful that Miriam refused to feed her morbid curiosity and let her watch.

Then, poking through Gail’s daze, Miriam’s voice presses through the surgical mask, “You’re doing great.”

“Thanks,” Gail says, her voice farther from her than she can acknowledge until the words are already floating between them.

Out of sight, sitting somewhere that would normally be used by medical students, Lillian speaks up, "Are you almost done, Miriam?”

"Almost," she answers, sounding deeply focused. "I just need to stitch up these wounds and we'll be done."

Gail slowly turns her head around. An odd ripple of sensations that aren’t pain but are not pleasant travels up the base of her skull. She cranes it around, catching the corner of the observation area with her peripheral vision. Gail tries to project her voice, "I'm fine, I've been through worse surgeries."

While Gail doesn’t see it, she knows that Lillian's brow furrows, but she doesn't retort further.

"If it helps," Gail continues with a light chuckle, "If this goes well, some of my pain will die down."

Miriam speaks from behind her, "It should, you sit very well for a conscious patient! Most of these wires are also separating from your tendons very politely."

Gail lets out a breath that makes do for a replacement laugh. “I’m glad they’re behaving.”

Lillian gives her own chuckle, but it has that shallowness that laughter caused by mimicry does. Gail tries to shoot Lillian a comforting look, but the angle of the operating table makes that difficult.

"Let me finish bandaging you up, Gail," Miriam hums, "And we'll be done."

"Do we have painkillers for her recovery," Lillian asks, relief twinging the edge of her voice.

"I don't think I'll need anything stronger than ibuprofen,” Gail adds, more consciousness returning to her voice.

"I’m giving her a epidural steroid injection," Miriam answers, shooting me a playfully scolding look. “It should help manage the pain in the following weeks.”

"We appreciate it, Miriam," Lillian says with an authority that Gail doesn’t push back against.

Miriam finishes and Gail can barely feel the edges of the bandages as she wraps them across her back. Habit keeps Gail perfectly still as Miriam stands. Her latex gloves snap off and fall into the trash. Gail tenses up and looks up, trying to count ceiling tiles. Miriam’s initial clean up and steps into postoperative care feels longer than the surgery in itself. A panic that simmers like barely boiled water starts to turn up the heat. The room feels less and less like Cawthorne Medical Center and more like a facility hidden behind white-lies and bribery.

Come on, Gail. Get it together.

“Luckily,” Miriam starts as she begins to unlock the bottom of the medical table, “Your epidural shot should be wearing off soon. In about an hour you should be able to walk.”

Miriam spins the table around so Gail can see Lillian. She flashes Lillian a weak smile and focuses on her face. Her angular features, her braided hair, her good, but not too good posture. It’s grounding. Lillian smiles back and stands. Gail watches her make her way towards the door separating the observation station and the waiting area.

Gail wonders what lies that Lillian and Miriam had to spin for this surgery to happen. She can sense that the cameras that hung around the room are disabled. The hum of electric current that sat in the back of her mind is noticeably absent from them. Her electrokinesis pricks along her wires and she can feel the changes in numb flesh. Sensation of being suspends over a sea of nothingness. She hears Lillian speak, but the syllables don’t make sense. There’s only the faintest ring of electrical pulses.

She doesn’t remember getting into a wheelchair.

She doesn’t remember getting out to Lillian’s car.

Her senses are hers again as she apparently allows Lillian to help her back into the car. Dawn is starting to creep over the horizon. Pinks and reds start to stretch across the sky. Miriam stands behind Gail as Lillian takes most of Gail’s weight and moves her into the car.

“It’s morning already?” Gail asks as she rests onto the passenger seat. Her voice is still at that odd distance she can’t quite place. The medication is slowly beginning to wear off. Her torso is now a quiet buzz of sensation. Instinctively, she wiggles her toes. On old ache inches back into her spine and the edges of her fingers. Its not as loud as it could be, but its certainly present.

Nerve damage is an odd thing. Gail internally marvels at how the internal circuitry of the human body could unwind like the very wires in her body.

Miriam nods, “I know, time flies when your focused.”

“I thought it was when you were having fun?” Gail lazily chuckles.

“I would hope I would enjoy the thing I spent almost a decade studying,” Miriam says with a playfulness in her eyes.

“Miriam,” Lillian almost cuts her off.

Miriam pauses and gives Gail an apologetic smile.

It’s silent as Lillian finishes helping her into the car. Normally, it would bother Gail that the silence is in homage to her condition. However, she’s in no condition to talk or even think about why that is. She flexes her fingers, pressing her head into the headrest. Gail closes her eyes and feels around for the broken electrical system in her nerves. Her electrokinetics aren’t so fine-tuned for her to actually pull and manipulate it. But, if she really focuses, it could feel like a hair resting on the skin of her artificial meta-gene.

A few sparks pop off her skin. A reflex.

Gail watches Lillian say her goodbyes to Miriam and walk around the side of the car. Lillian opens her car door and steps inside. Gail hears the key slide into the ignition and she feels the electrics in the car roar to life. Biting back the urge to reach out and play with it, Gail lets herself settle into the seat.

“How are you feeling?” Lillian asks as she starts to drive off.

“Numb,” Gail answers as the hollowness begins to leave her voice, “But that’s normal after stuff like this.”

Lillian exhales, “Is it better than before?”

Gail smiles dryly, “We’ll find out.”

“Gail…” Lillian says, “You can advocate if you don’t want to go through these procedures if they’re too much. Miriam won’t be offended.”

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m fine.”

“I mean it,” Lillian says with a comforting authority, “If this is too much like your time as Conduit—”

“I don’t want to think about that right now.”