Something rumbled in my throat, my body battling itself for control. I tore myself away with bone-wrenching force, tendrils of desire still squirming inside me as I ran through the exit, bullets chasing me into blinding white light.
19
The Locked Brain
The world blinked and stuttered around me in electric waves. My body was as taut as a chainmetal cable, my heart jackhammering against my chest. My vision tilted, my legs wobbling as I stumbled into the shadow of a droid docking pod. Safe. I’d had enough sense to smash the access panel before I’d dived out of the facility, locking them inside. I’d been madly sprinting for at least an hour, my body still geared up after the fight. No one would find me here.
I drew back my helmet and raked deep, shuddering breaths, aware of my body and the sticky, fluid warmth flushing through it. Every sensation heightened to the hilt: the shuddering of my heart, the sweet-sour scent of my sweat, the blood rushing to my muscles. Blue mist swarmed at the edges of my vision and there was a sickly-sweet taste tickling the back of my throat. If I didn’t get a grip on myself the stormtech would swallow me and I’d be lost to it again.
I had to go through the steps to comedown. I let the armour’s inner tendrils and abrasive surfaces press up against my body, itching, tickling, grounding me with stimuli to loosen the stormtech’s grip while I inhaled deeply. It had started to rain and I tilted my face upwards, letting the cool drizzle of water trickle down my cheeks. I ran through a set of stretches and cast my mind to the calming landscapes of my childhood home, exactly as I’d been trained. The peaceful tops of snowy, razorbacked mountains stretching over the horizon. A cold breeze whistling through the windswept tundra, through beaches of black sand and soaring cliffs. Taking myself elsewhere, beyond the suffocating cage of my body.
I breathed out, hard. I’d passed the worst of it. I blinked, able to think straight again.
Had to get out of this place.
The blood and smoke coating my armour was a dead give away. They hadn’t seen me outside of my suit yet. I assessed it, and decided I’d done enough to loosen the stormtech’s grip. I released myself from the suit’s protective embrace and stepped out into open air. I shivered at the cold and suppressed the urge to slide back into the armour’s warm insides. Instead, I smeared the blood off its chest and sent it home with my weapons. Now, I was able to get a good look at myself through the underskin. Before, the stormtech had been faintly visible on my body. Now I was livid with it. Thick blue strands inched along my ribs and spine like curious fingers. It spun vicious patterns along my chest and stomach, globules dripping down my legs.
Stormtech doesn’t just enhance your body, it submerges you in it. Fills your entire conscious being. It’s literally like being cocooned in power. But it can also drown you. I was through the worst of it, but still dangerously within range. Had to be somewhere public, keep following my training, where I could feel human again. Even though my flesh crawled as I stepped onto the people-packed promenade. I felt every glance, every smell and gush of air, every brush against my skin.
I found myself stumbling back towards the sweeping parkland I’d noted earlier. It was distant and public enough that they wouldn’t look for me here. I rubbed my eyes and blinked at my surroundings. I’d gone further than I realised. A line of coffeehouses and bakeries rose upwards to form small glass cube-shaped structures tilting sideways at precarious angles. Creatures that looked like jellyfish floated in the air, dust motes falling from their tentacles. They’d been brought from some local planet to add to the rich biodiversity here. Loose knots of people were scattered around me on benches, enjoying a day out.
I sprawled out on the long, damp grass like a star. Chest rising and falling, my breathing starting to slow. Feeling the stormtech rumble through me in long echoes before gradually seeping and fading away again, as it had always done. You can’t go instantly high and stay there, it doesn’t work that way. It takes time, consistent use and aggressive feeding to crank the stormtech up to maximum output levels, just as it takes time to dial it back down. Always being surrounded by combat during the Reaper War meant I was kept on what we called Cloud Infinite. It hypersensitised you and dulled your empathy, your humanity. The most terrifying Reapers were always the least human. Organic killing machines wrapped in flesh. By that stage, they had to be kept drugged up to their eyeballs with mood-controlling meds before being unleashed on the enemy like hunting dogs.
Was I headed that way before this was over? If I managed to save Artyom, would he even recognise me? Would I?
I wasn’t back at Reaper levels. But I’d torn through the mental and physical suppression that held the stormtech at bay, wedging myself back open to it. Stormtech was like any other drug: the harder and longer you used it, the stronger it became, the more difficult to quell its urges. After the whole Tipei payroll had tried to blast me into pieces, the stormtech was wrapped all that much tighter around my body, all that much harder to resist it again. I felt it scrape against my bones, claw up my bloodstream. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the tickle of grass against my neck, the cool wind against my sweat. Thick, slow drops of rainwater pattered across my torso. Slowly, slowly I felt my senses rolling back down, my sight, smell and hearing growing duller, like I was gently descending from high
