Troy woke up to a headache of sorts, his chest warm due to the storage unit. The young man noted that he’d need to ask Adam about whatever made him feel the need to speed up time to such an extent during the night of all times. Not at that moment, however. Popping another pill, Troy waited for it to take effect as he rose from his bed. He nearly fell to the floor due to the lack of balance. If not for his right arm gripping the bed frame in time, his face would have met the floor without another word. He loathed that without restraint.

Everybody but him and Charlie was awake. The larger man hadn’t been awake for too long, however, the man was still getting himself some coffee to drink. Coffee… the mere idea of that godly drink made Troy lose all other senses but those that could locate the liquid gold. Being in luxury truly was the greatest.

“Good morning to you, half-man,” Charlie said, cracking a joke. The very same Charlie that had been unable to curve his lips upwards mere days ago had an actual smile on his face. What? “Did you see the machine yesterday as well?”

Charlie pointed at the coffee machine with one of the fingers holding his cup. It nearly made the liquid fall if not for a hasty rebalancing. Troy almost laughed at that but held himself calm. His mood was improving at least.

“I might’ve been too distracted last night,” Troy somberly noted, feeling the urge to scratch the back of his head. A piece of his hair sat wrong on his ear but there was no arm ready to fix it. Doing it with his right hand felt extremely unnatural. “How does it work?”

“You just press the button in the middle and a coffee comes out,” Charlie answered bluntly, pointing to the only real configuration on the machine. Troy couldn’t spot anything else on the fine metal.

“... How do I tell it my preferences?” Troy inquired.

“You don’t,” Charlie answered, clearly getting enjoyment out of Troy’s expression when he said those words. “This thing has a ‘drink of the day.’ That’s what we all get. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“That is extremely dumb,” Troy commented as he just went through with it, not wanting to wait for his caffeine any longer. With any luck, it would at least have some semblance of blackness to it. His preferences were once again working against him, betraying him as well the moment he saw how much cream was begin jammed into the packet.

“But it stops us from having to think about what we want to order, making the morning a bit quicker for all of us,” Charlie commented. Troy supposed that was true as he took a sip of the drink. It still had the flavour of god himself but the lack of punch made him a bit sad. Not sad enough to not get a second cup afterwards though. Caffeine was caffeine and he had been without it for much too long.

The others woke up a bit later, Dr Hale commenting on their need to be quiet while she slept. It took another thirty minutes of everybody getting a chance to rid themselves of filth before they finally began to move along. Food was had in plenty, some amount of small-talk mixed in. Not much action at all, really. Downtime was the best.

“That arm needs to be fixed,” Dr Hale said as Troy stumbled for the fifth time in that hour. The lack of a balancing tool made the weight distribution way too off. Troy supposed he could anchor down some weight on the one side to even it out but that would be counterproductive in the long term. There had to be something he could do.

“Wouldn’t it be the lack of an arm that needs to fixed?” Troy questioned, some form of gallows humour feeling appropriate. Either the joke flew over her head or Dr Hale didn’t care much for it as she continued speaking without pause.

“The nerve endings aren’t completely dead yet so that we can still get some form of biological limb put into place. The chance of finding anything of that manner in this country is impossible, however. They’ve barely even gotten past the idea phase in that field,” Dr Hale talked on, the others listening with undivided attention. “This means we have to go the… mechanical route instead.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Mara?” Charlie questioned from the side, the man having returned to a more serious attitude quickly enough. Troy wasn’t too sure if that brief moment of happiness had been a fluke or not. He hoped to see it again sometime.

“We need him alive and that means he needs to be functional,” Dr Hale retorted, looking at the larger one with a cold gaze. Troy felt some need to comment that he was still pretty decent but knew it was a lie. He could barely walk right. Running was out of the question entirely. “The plan was to go into the capital to meet with an informant but we have to take a detour mid-way. I have the location for a place where we can get the necessary parts and installation.”

“Should we ask why you have information like that?” Cassandra asked.

“In the event that my own parts were to fail, to an extent where Charlie couldn’t fix it, I had alternatives set up,” the woman explained to the new member of the group. The larger man didn’t seem too fazed by the lack of trust in his skills.

With that, the plan was set in place. Given that the hotel still had rudimentary access to the digital land-scape, they were able to buy tickets going into the country. Or, buying was a strong word. They were given for free to apparent refugees of the war in the name of protecting them further. With the identification Adam had made previously, there was no real trouble getting them. Those fleeing weren’t given too harsh inspections, after all.

Another day of rest was allowed before the time did come, nearly all of which were spent lying around and enjoying the silence. Information was kept secret to an extreme level, the initial attempts at scouting for anything being fruitless. It was decided to just stay in the room to avoid any random detections from passersby. Not that anybody really complained about it. Troy was given another day to learn how to walk properly, even going far enough to attempt using a single crutch. It worked in no real sense of the word and he resigned himself to being assisted by either Charlie or Cassandra when going out for the bus.

The bus itself was fine enough. Seeing an apparent cripple was enough to get first pass into the vehicle, an attendant even asking if medical supplies were needed during the ride. Troy felt a bit weird about the attention, though Charlie was able to play into it and get some painkillers for later. Gaining supplies of that variant wasn’t something they’d say no to, after all. Being on the run for so long made it clear that keeping up stocks was the most important thing of all.

The bus they took did go farther into the country but it swayed more west after an hour or two, letting them finally off once they arrived at a slightly larger town than the one they’d left. It was still quite far away from the border, luckily, but this one had fortifications that could help in the long run.

“I never have seen such a dense place before,” Troy noted as he was helped out of the bus, looking towards the skyscrapers to all sides. They couldn’t get into the actual city with the vehicle, no roads being present. Rails took up all the space on the ground itself, any pathways for humans being quite a bit higher in the air. “It just looks like one big block.”

“It is the most defendable block in the country,” the attendant retorted before moving along to help somebody else. Troy couldn’t fault her for the wording, however. Looking upon the several hundreds of steel stacked upon each other, he couldn’t help but feel some sense of security. It would take more than a bomb to get through the armour itself.

Though, the issue was that they’d could possibly fight against some more than just a bomb. Looking at the swarm of smaller drones flying overhead, Troy had to remind himself what the country really was about. They were above biology, instead of having moved over to technology as a whole. That meant life would be a bit more… moving.

The wide doors opened up as they went inside, administration doing brief notations of all who entered. They got through without issue, moving along quickly enough. The perks of looking like a war refugee never did stop.

Now came the hard part. Looking at the massive crowd ahead, Troy felt a pull from his right as Cassandra helped him along. The place was without end but at least Dr Hale seemed to know where they were going.