That was one sweet piece. I wondered where Stepyan had sourced it... and on whose orders.
Mack came to a halt, and pulled me from my contemplation. I looked up, just as the doors to Medical opened in front of us. My mind stopped as the implications hit me, all at once, but Mack moved through them, and I followed forcing myself not to think.
I wondered what Doc would make of my new boots.
Would he like them? Or would he be annoyed that I’d found another way to hurt someone—and hide the tools for doing it. I guessed that, in the end, it wasn’t his choice to make. It was mine. Looking around the clinic, I wondered where he was, almost leaping sideways into Mack, when he spoke.
“Hello, Cutter. Not causing any trouble for a change?” he said from beside me, and I felt the sting of an auto-injector, heard the hiss as each needle drove home.
“What the Hells, Doc!”
“You like it?”
I couldn’t say I did, but the words weren’t being cooperative. The world tilted me into Mack, and Tens helped him catch me. Well, that was short and sweet. I wondered what it would be like to be able to sense a move like that coming—because I figured I would, once the implant was on-line.
I closed my eyes, as Mack lifted me.
“Where do you want her?”
13—Recovery
“How do you feel?” Mack’s voice greeted me as I surfaced, but it sounded from inside my head, and I heard nothing with my ears.
“Yeah. Fine, Mack,” but even to myself, I sounded like I’d gone ten rounds with the Ghoul.
“Nuh. You sounded much worse after just one round with him,” Tens interrupted, and I sighed, tried to find my voice.
“You gave me another party line, huh.” It wasn’t really a question, but Delight chose to answer it anyway. From inside the implant. Cheeky bitch.
“Sure did, sweetie.”
Typical!
“When are we going?”
“We’re a week out.”
That last answer was from Mack, and then Doc Oskar came bustling in.
“Right. The three of you need to get right out of her head—and out of here!”
They went, and I didn’t blame them. I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of that tone of voice, either. When the door had closed behind the last of them, Doc turned to me.
“How do you feel?” he asked, and I realized I was lying face-down.
I pushed myself over onto my side, so I could see him. It took me a minute to be able to focus on his face, but I tried for a smile, when I succeeded.
“Hey, Doc. What day is it?”
“Same as it was when you arrived here.”
“Oh... good?”
He smiled at that.
“Yes. Good. You’re recovering quickly. Mack is pleased.”
“Does it matter?”
Doc raised his eyebrows, and then scowled.
“Of course, it matters, you ungrateful imp. You have a mission to prepare for. The more time you have before it, the better prepared you can be—and if I catch you wasting a single second of that time, I’ll kick your tail, myself.”
It was my turn to go wide-eyed. I’d never heard him say anything in Mack’s defense, before. I was both glad, and worried by the depth of feeling he’d shown—but, before I could say anything, Doc leant down, putting his face close to mine.
“And if you breathe a word of this to Mack, I will make you wish you hadn’t, because I have an entire medical center full of the sharp and pointy, and I’m not as tightly bound by the Hippocratic Oath as everyone would like to think.”
Honestly, if I wasn’t still feeling tired from whatever they’d used to sedate me, I might have been afraid. As it was, I just stared at him, until he moved back out of my face, and then I stared at him a little bit more.
“You’re going to need to lie back down on your stomach,” he said. “I have to check the insertion point.”
I did? He what? Fine. Whatever. I rolled back onto my stomach, only flinching a little at his touch on the back of my skull. I listened as he talked about what they’d done.
“We put this one in in the same area that the old one was. It gave us a chance to make sure there hadn’t been any seepage. This is healing nicely. I gave it a dose of nanites to speed things along, and dosed the site with some localized painkillers.”
His fingers moved lightly over my scalp, and I realized I’d lost a bit of hair.
Doc was already talking about it.
“You’ve got a bald patch,” he told me. “If you want my advice, I’d say to suck it up and shave the lot off. You can use a wig to change your profile until your hair grows back. Your other alternative is to use the old comb-over trick, and arrange what you’ve got left so it covers the patch. Either method works.”
He paused, letting me digest it, and then I felt him move away. He started to speak, again, as I turned slowly onto my side.
“Personally, I think Mack would miss your hair, if you shaved it off. You might want to think about that, when you’re deciding.”
Personally? Personally, I thought Doc should mind his own goddamn business! It was my hair, and I’d do with it what I wanted. In fact, I was tempted to shave it all off just because that would give Mack the most shits. At the same time, though, it was kind of cute that Doc thought it would bother Mack if I did—and that he thought enough of Mack to mention the fact.
I just wasn’t sure what it said about me that I was going to take his suggestion and keep my hair, anyway.
In the end, I decided not to think about it. I just focused on pushing myself up into a sitting position, and
