Chapter 12 #2
“See? Old posts from five years ago. Tons of people still active. I picked a subthread under ‘experimental hardware and intraoperative implants.’ Very niche, very weird, perfect for you.”
My neck prickled.
Perfect for me. Right.
“So I wrote up a case. Middle-aged male, forty-five. History of generalized seizures, medication-resistant. Chip placed at C7 in some vague ‘European pilot program’ two years ago. Symptoms worsening. New onset seizures. No documentation on the hardware. Asked if anyone recognized the design.”
She hit a key. My X-rays appeared, stacked like cards.
Black and white images of my spine, my skull, my ribs. The foreign object sat like a parasite at C7, angled, delicate, threaded into bone.
She zoomed.
“I scrubbed metadata off the images. Updated the timestamp, blurred all the codes.” She shot me a sideways glance. “I am not a hacker, but I can follow instructions. Google is a thing.”
Of course the woman who stole hospital supplies for her underground clinic thought a YouTube tutorial made her Edward Snowden.
“We need this.” Quiet now. “I dug through every public database already. Nothing. If this chip came from some classified contract or private developer, the only people who’ll recognize it are the ones who built it or worked near it.
And where do they hang out? Places like this. Hiding in plain sight.”
My jaw tightened.
She was right. I hated that she was right.
There was no friendly neighborhood neurosurgeon we could call for a house visit. No legal path that didn’t end with handcuffs and an autopsy. This was the least bad option in a stack of terrible ones.
I put my hand on her covered leg and squeezed her thigh once in reluctant agreement.
She relaxed a fraction. “Okay. Good. Because the post has... traction.”
She scrolled down.
Lines of text filled the page under her username, which now read “CN_Benign_Anom.” Cute. Subtle.
Replies stacked below. Eight of them. A little timer in the corner ticked new seconds, the view count climbing.
“The internet never sleeps. Bless it and damn it.”
She cleared her throat and read.
Spinal chip at C7? Unusual placement. Most neuromodulation targets thoracic or lumbar dorsal columns. Baseline function?
She glanced at me.
I tracked the lines, reading faster than she spoke.
Another user.
Image quality is barely adequate. Hardware appears custom-fabricated. No standard STN markings. You sure this isn’t part of a closed trial? Where did you obtain these scans? Hardware layout suggests wireless capability, but signal handling is unclear.
Something twisted in my gut.
Someone noticed the signal potential from a grainy picture. Good. Bad.
Clare typed a reply, narrating under her breath.
Patient declined to answer questions about the original program. Records incomplete. Working in a community setting, limited access to prior documentation. Need to understand hardware risks before intervening on symptoms.
She hit send.
More responses rolled in as she refreshed.
Cervical placement that low risks autonomic headaches if parameters wrong. Patient experiencing dysautonomia? Tachycardia, orthostatic intolerance, syncope? Clare snorted. “Join the club.”
I felt that one like a delayed punch.
Another user chimed in.
Not standard Medtronic, Boston, Abbott, or Nevro. I don’t recognize the PCB footprint. Could be military-adjacent. DoD contracts sometimes produce exotic prototypes. Any history of service or classified work?
Clare’s fingers hovered.
She turned to me.
“You were special forces or some alphabet soup, weren’t you.” Not a question. “Your body screams ‘government science project.’”
My grip on her leg tightened.
I wrote.
No memory. Likely... maybe.
She nodded and typed.
Background unclear. Patient uncooperative on that front. Behavioral signs consistent with prior tactical training.
Dry. Clinical. Code for: this guy kills people for a living.
Forum users kept piling in. Some speculated on power requirements, others argued about material composition from pixel noise.
Half of them sounded like they wanted to fuck the hardware more than understand it.
Clare fielded questions, batting away anything that wanted location, facility type, real names.
Our heads bent over the keyboard together. My bare shoulder pressed against the duvet at her upper arm.
Outside, the light faded by degrees. The rooftop line across from the dormer window blurred into the sinking sun, then sharpened again as the city lights flicked on. Clare’s leg under my hand occasionally tensed when she hit a typo she hated, then eased when she corrected it.
My body sat almost completely relaxed.
That should have scared me more than anything on the display.
She hit refresh again.
A new username appeared halfway down the thread. Different tone before I even read a word.
“V_Actual_87.”
Clare went rigid under my palm.
The post was short.
“This is false information. These images are doctored. No hospital would produce scans with this resolution on non-standard equipment. Who are you really?”
A flat line where Clare’s lips should be.
“Keyboard cop. There’s always one.”
She typed a response.
Images are authentic. Equipment specs not relevant to chip identification. If you don’t have constructive input, please refrain from speculation.
Professional. Dismissive.
She hit send.
Two minutes ticked by. The little “typing...” indicator flashed, disappeared, returned.
The next post slammed into the thread in all caps.
“TAKE THIS DOWN. NOW. YOU’RE A FRAUD. SHAME ON YOU!”
Clare flinched like the words had volume.
“I’m ignoring him.” But nothing about her tone sounded like ignorance. “Troll. Paranoid dick with a god complex.”
Her hand drifted for the trackpad.
I caught it.
My palm covered hers, skin to skin against the cool plastic.
She snapped her attention to me.
I grabbed the pad with my free hand and wrote hard enough that the tip of the pen threatened to tear the paper.
Reactive. Knows something.
I let her read it.
She pressed her lips together.
“You might be right. If a random asshole is this agitated, then this thread hit somebody’s classified bingo card.”
She hesitated. “Was this a bad decision? There’s still time to delete it.”
She had a point, but we didn’t have much choice.
Let them talk and see. They are bound to make a mistake.
I pushed it between her hands.
She stared at the words for a long beat.
She wet her lower lip.
“You realize that’s not reassuring.”
I tilted my head. I meant it as fact, not comfort.
A short, wrecked sound. “Of course. Jesus. I partnered with the world’s most lethal optimist.”
She clicked the logout button.
The forum vanished. Desktop icons filled the display. She shut the laptop with more force than necessary, the plastic casing giving a faint protest.
“Enough for now. I don’t want to live inside the internet while Captain All-Caps has a meltdown. They can yell at the closed tab.”
She didn’t pull away.
Not calm, but no longer sprinting.
I let myself feel the shape of her bones under my palm, the fine tendons between thumb and wrist. Breakable. Stubborn.
Clare blew out a breath.
“Okay.” Lighter. “Reality check. We have half a sleeve of crackers, one sad orange, and those bus station gummy bears I regret buying. You need protein that isn’t neon-colored sugar. I need coffee before I start strangling anonymous surgeons through fiber optic cables.”
Her stomach growled as if on cue. She winced.
“See? My gut agrees.”
She slipped her fingers out from under mine. “Shops downstairs will still be open. Couple groceries, maybe a kebab place on the corner.”
The floorboards creaked under my feet as I stood up. I took a step forward, and the world tilted.
It wasn’t the slow, manageable sway of standing up too fast. The room lurched sideways, as if someone had kicked the building.
My knees loosened. My hand shot out for the desk edge; wood bit into my palm.
The laptop slid an inch, nearly tipped.
The heater’s orange bar smeared in my vision, lines of light stretching and pulsing. Dark dots clustered at the edges of my sight, compressing everything to a tunnel.
Too fast. Each beat thudding in my ears. Sweat broke out under the towel at my lower back even though the room felt like it had lost ten degrees.
I closed my eyes for a second, teeth clenched.
Not now.
“Xavier?”
Clare’s voice cut through the muffled drum, and my name was the last word I heard.