Darius opened his eyes wide. His vision achieved perfect clarity, focusing on the speckled and water-stained fiberglass ceiling tiles. He shot up to a seated position on the makeshift bed. It was unusually firm beneath him. He splayed his metallic fingers over the sheet, feeling a solid surface below. Looking around, he saw cubicle walls surrounding him, and the tops of other cubicles beyond.

He slipped down, his bare feet patting softly on the cool floor. He sank downward to a crouching position and quieted his breathing, listening for anyone that might be nearby. Leaning his back to the makeshift bed, he nearly fell through the sheet. Realizing that it was the open end of an office desk, he slid under and covered the opening with the hanging sheet once more.

Darius raised his hands before him, and for the first time, noticed that the pain was almost entirely gone. Aside from some soreness in his spine and legs, he was feeling unexpectedly good. He looked down to see that he was wearing a thin hospital gown, open at the back. He rolled the sleeve over his shoulder to see only a mild gradient of pink where his flesh met metal. Thoughts and theories raced through his mind as he tried to determine where he was and how he had healed so quickly. How long has it been?

He heard a rumbling voice from off in the distance, and a memory raced back to him. “I was shot!” he thought, then he looked over his body to see if he was hurt. Sensing his thoughts, the system populated a diagnostic readout on his vision.

“[SYSTEM STATUS] Operational”

“[BODY EQUILIBRIUM] 5%, ability slot enabled”

“[VITALS] 98% Normal… Heart rate over baseline…”

“[DISPLAY MEDIC LOG - PRIOR 24 HOURS]”

“[TREATMENT SUMMARY] System boot bioscan results: severe septic infection found - safe mode treatment detected - blood cleansing has removed infection agents - blood toxicity is currently 0.075%”

“[MEDICAL ALERT] Severe bodily trauma has been treated by an external source. Drugs used...”

“Enough!” Darius thought to himself, and the display cleared.

Darius slipped out from beneath the desk and stood up. He felt slight pressure in his spine, and some pain in his legs. He walked with a little difficulty but pushed himself past it. The air was cold, flowing through the back of the hospital gown as he took a step forward.

“I don’t mind saying, that’s a nice ass,” Leary was peeking over the cubicle wall. His gray beard was fringed with light brown and tinged with the yellow of cigarette smoke. An impish grin set upon his face as a resting expression. A glimmer of mirth shone in the light blue of his eyes. His freckled skin was flecked with scars and other markings, telling a collection of stories that he had long forgotten.

Darius was startled, and nearly fell over as he turned to look at Leary.

“I’m fucking with you,” Leary said dryly, offering a hand to shake over the short wall. “I’m Leary. I’m not the one that took you down. That was Preature. I would have shot you, but he saw you first and wisely used EMP,” He lighted a cigarette. “I would have just killed you, but what can I say? I’m glad you’re alive.”

Darius analyzed Leary’s face. “I’m Darius. And uh, can I have some pants?”

“Yeah. This place used to be a department store in the 90s. We found some clothes in storage that were your size. They’re a little outdated, though. They’re in the top drawer of the desk, er, bed. I’ll go tell the others you’re awake,” Leary disappeared behind the wall, and his footsteps could be heard moving away.

Darius found the clothes, and put them on. Acid washed blue jeans, a green plaid shirt, underwear, socks, and some sneakers.

“You decent?” A female voice calls from nearby.

“Yeah,” he said with hesitation, looking for her. Without meaning to do so, his eyes flickered to an infrared view, and he saw her approaching through the wall. The view flicked back to normal before she arrived.

“Darius, right? Leary told me. I’m CURL,” she gripped his hand and gave it an odd mixture of a shake and a slap. “How do you feel?”

“Mostly better. My back and legs are sore, though.”

“Yeah, Tinker said you’d had some trauma to your spinal cord. It might not heal right,” She looked him up and down. “You sure you should be standing right now?”

Darius quickly moved to sit on the desk-bed once again. CURL laughed. “Don’t worry. That spine of yours has taken it upon itself to lock two of the vertebrae as part of the healing process. That’s some crazy hardware you’re sporting. It’s lucky we found you before someone else did.” She brushed a strand of hair away from her face and awkwardly raised an eyebrow. “Where did that stuff come from anyway?”

Darius felt his muscles firm up as his face hardened towards her.

“CURL! The boy just woke up! Give him a minute to gain his wits!” Leary shouted before vaulting over the cubicle wall to sit next to Darius. He wrapped an arm around Darius's shoulders and shot CURL a scowl. “Now leave my friend alone. He’s been through enough without having to endure your chatter, too.”

CURL fired a middle finger back at Leary. “Either way, boss man is going to want to talk to him,” She paused and looked at Darius. “Want to meet the rest of the people that saved your life?”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him from the bed. Leary chuckled and walked with them into a hallway. The rumbling voice from before drifted out of a room not far away. It was brightly lit and filled with medical equipment. Preature and Tinker were there looking at another x-ray on the light screen.

“Oy!” Leary shouted. “You were talking so loud that you woke the kid.” His tone was playful, slapping a hand on Darius's shoulder.

Preature walked up to Darius, looking into his eyes with a small flashlight, checking their dilation. “Drugs have worn off. That’s good. We had to pump more into you than would normally be safe. That cybernetics of yours took some time to realize we were trying to help you. It kept filtering the meds from your blood.”

“Once it finished an analysis of the compounds, it finally let us help. How you feeling?” Tinker chimed in.

“Sore,” Darius said in a halting confusion.

CURL broke into the conversation, “This is Preature, the boss man. And this is Tinker, our personal doctor.”

“Medic!” Tinker corrected. “Although I can do anything a back alley street doctor could do.” An edge of offense hung on his words.

“Look. Thanks for your help and all, but what’s going on?” Darius asked, afraid to come off as being rude, but also unsure of who he was dealing with.

Preature took a step back and slipped the flashlight into a pocket. “Kid, you’ve been through the wringer. We’re trying to find out why. That tech you’re sporting is top of the line corpo engineering. You got anything to say for yourself?”

Darius looked from face to face with furrowed brows. He considered the danger he might be in now if he told the truth, or if he didn't. A steeling strength formed within him, coalescing from his stubborn will to live, to spit in the face of danger. His expression hardened to reflect this. “I’m the son of Gradius Byun, CEO of SaeSyn.”

“Fuck!” Leary shouted, then turned quickly to Preature with hands up. “Sorry.”

“What do they even do? I see the sign on the skyscraper, but they’ve never actually produced anything.” CURL asked.

“I… don’t actually know. I didn’t really know my father that well, and he never talked to me about his work when he was around.”

“Tell us what you do know.” Preature insisted.

“Well, I guess they’ve been working on cybernetics,” He gestured to himself. “Like this.”

Tinker stepped forward. “But we found some fi...” Preature laid the back of his hand heavily against Tinker’s chest to stop him from continuing. Tinker and the rest of the team realized that Preature had no intention of telling Darius about the files stored in his new chrome.

“Did your dad install this tech in you?” Preature asked.

“Yeah. From what I remember, but I don’t know why. And his business partner, Del Peck, he… he told me that my dad was dead. Then he threw me into the street. He said something about my dad signing the company over.”

“Typical corpo problem solving if you ask me. Except for the surgery, that sh-crap is new to me,” Leary said, glancing at Preature to see if a nerve had been struck.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Preature rumbled from deep in his chest. “Look, kid. I’m a Ven, and people would pay good eddies for what you’ve got. You never asked for it, but like it or not, it’s a part of you. We just happen to have learned that it’s so completely part of you that it’s even DNA encoded. Nobody else could use it, but we want to know where we can get some. Your surgery wasn’t done. There are more parts, and I want them.”

“Well, they’d be at SaeSyn, right? Where they put these parts on me,” Darius felt threatened.

“We need to learn more about this Del guy and his management style. The tech is probably locked up somewhere, and we’ll need to find out where. Maybe even track down some design docs,” Preature spoke with his eyes locked on Darius's, looking for any sense of recognition at the mention of documentation, or that he knew about the partitioned files stored in his body. However, he saw nothing of the sort. “You’ll be staying with us until we can figure this out. Make yourself comfortable. It could be a while,” Preature pressed past Darius and the others, heading to the store floor where he went to experience his religious braindances.

Leary watched to see when Preature was out of earshot before piping up, “Well shit, then. We might as well get you drunk, you lucky git.” CURL and Tinker perked up at this, following Darius and Leary out to the makeshift lounge.