Whether Love Lead Fortune
Kerr’s eyes fluttered. They felt sticky, like they’d been glued shut. Not even an offline signal when she tried to focus on her Opti.
“About time you woke up.”
Kerr didn’t recognise the voice. Nor could she turn her head to see to whom it belonged.
The naked woman came into her field of view, considerably less naked this time.
Filtering the light, her blonde hair created a halo effect, making her appear even more ethereal and beautiful than she had the last time Kerr had seen her.
Rage, but her body wouldn’t respond. Only nausea as the cortisol dumped into her stomach.
“You.” Kerr managed to force her mouth to shape the sounds. They came out like speaking through frozen rubber.
“You probably shouldn’t do that. There’s a bunch of wadding in your mouth.” The woman made to remove it, but paused. “Don’t bite.”
Kerr tried to scowl. She probably looked ridiculous, squinting at her captor. The woman laughed.
“If I told you your girl behaved in your absence, will you promise not to bite?”
Her face relaxed and the woman plucked sopping cloth from Kerr’s mouth.
Kerr rolled her jaw. It still felt frozen and thick. “Wha happened?” she managed.
“You got shot in the neck. Now you’ve got some decisions to make.”
Kerr vaguely remembered being held captive, but not being shot. She instinctively focused to access her Opti before giving up. “You’re Model 2.”
“Mackenzie,” she corrected. “We removed your Opti. And most of your other cyberware.”
Eyes feeling like sand, Kerr tried to sit up. None of her muscles responded.
“We stemmed the bleeding and brought you here. You’re alive, but the bullet destroyed your central processing array.
Even if we hadn’t removed your cyberware, none of it would work without that.
Also, your spinal cord. The DocPod pieced it back together, but it’s not going to be the same.
Like I said, now you have some decisions to make. ”
Kerr heard a door open and another woman entered wearing a lab coat, mousy brown hair in a simple ponytail. “She’s awake! Can you go get Lusa?”
Mackenzie left. Kerr heard the door click. Her eyes travelled back to the new woman.
“I’m Jenni. I run the medical centre here.”
“Where’s here?” Kerr’s mouth moved a bit easier, but still not without effort. A dull ache started at the base of her jaw.
“How much did Mackenzie tell you?”
“Not much. Processing array is down, spinal cord is down, something about a decision.”
“Not down,” Jenni corrected. “Gone. Repairing it would take materials we don’t have. Our DocPods are configured to build living tissue, not cyberware. We haven’t really needed to until now.”
“Then take me to one that does.” Kerr tried not to sound ungrateful. “We have several in the tunnels.”
“That’s an option,” Jenni conceded. “But right now, your nanites are confused. Whatever happened to your processing array is sending them signals to over-repair your tissue. We have them under an override signal right now, but you can’t move.”
“My what?” It hurt to move her eyes, but her field of view was limited.
Jenni took a deep breath.
Half an hour and a cursory explanation of nanites later, Lusa arrived. She threw her arms around Kerr. Kerr wept, unable to feel her body press against hers. Kisses followed and then halted abruptly as Lusa was yanked away.
“That’s enough of that.” Mackenzie frowned, but there was amusement behind it. “She hasn’t decided anything yet.”
“Someone tell me what it is I need to decide.” Kerr’s mouth had loosened considerably thanks to Lusa.
“New body or old,” Lusa blurted out, anxiety obvious.
“It’s more than that.” Jenni pulled out a display pad and held it up for Kerr to see.
“Option one is to send you back to the Chargers. Their DocPods can repair your central processing array. They can’t fix tissue to the same extent as ours, though, and there’s a very good chance you’ll require additional cyberware just to walk. ”
“What about the one we stole from the Styx?” Kerr knew she must be missing something.
“Mackenzie blew it up.”
Mackenzie made a face, more proud than ashamed. “I remind you that we were being hunted.”
“New cyberware isn’t being made and anything I get will be scavenged parts,” Kerr mused aloud, assessing the situation.
“Mom and Tornit can help. They upgraded Pinga’s arm, remember?” Lusa said, sounding too hopeful. She squeezed Kerr’s hand.
“How much damage are we talking about?” Kerr tried to squeeze back, but she couldn’t. Why did she feel the need to reassure Lusa? She was the one who was injured.
“At least both legs. Likely more.” Jenni looked sombre.
“Head in a jar.” Mackenzie was far more blunt. “Your nanites will fuck up your remaining tissue the instant you’re away from this field. And I remind you, your Pods can’t fix that to the same extent that the ones here can.”
“And then there is Mackenzie’s option.” Jenni tried to sound comforting, but everyone could see the scepticism on her face. She swiped the pad and presented another scenario. “Rebuild from scratch. Everything mostly the same, but cyberware would be impossible.”
“Your DocPods can do that?” Kerr was glad she could move her eyebrows, at least.
“Not without some serious reprogramming. Which is why you should be thanking me.” Mackenzie smiled, but Kerr couldn’t help but feel there was something more sinister behind it. “I did design them, after all.”
“Why didn’t you design them to work without nanites, then?” Jenni asked.
Mackenzie waved her hands, brushing off the annoying question. “The first models needed them. Even the newest ones work a lot faster with them and it shortens their lifespan without. Do I have to remind you that there won’t be any more after these break?”
“I like my cyberware, though,” Kerr redirected the conversation back to her.
“It’s already gone. Your nanites ruined it when your central processing array went down. “I’ll build you biological replacements, like mine.” Mackenzie flexed her eye socket in a sort of weird wink, but Kerr had no idea what she was trying to do. Jenni smiled unconvincingly.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Kerr looked to Lusa, but Lusa only shrugged.
“I’m going to make you a boy,” Mackenzie announced proudly. Everyone’s problems will be solved. Lusa choked. Apparently, this was news to her as well.
“I don’t want to be a boy, yeah?” Kerr tried to comfort Lusa, but her hand wouldn’t respond.
“But it would solve so many problems. For everyone.” Mackenzie looked around, surprised that she wasn’t being hailed as a hero. “I did mention that, right?”
“I keep telling you that Cam is right there.” Jenni gestured toward the door as if Cam stood just outside.
“Yes, but Cam wants the dangly bits and the gene that makes those are the ones the retrovirus targets.”
Lusa and Kerr shared a confused glance. Jenni looked exasperated. Mackenzie huffed and explained. “The gene is non-recombinant, which made it a perfect insertion point. The rest of them, I can shuffle around.”
Lusa frowned. “What?”
Mackenzie stole the pad from Jenni and made some swiping gestures before turning it around. The disconcertingly accurate diagram showed Kerr, with an intact right forearm before it zoomed in on the pelvis. “I’m going to encode sperm-producing ovotestes.” Mackenzie glanced over at Kerr.
Kerr was utterly bewildered. Too much was happening too fast. Too much had already happened.
Mackenzie ignored all of it and pointed to another section.
“These new veins will run to the surface to carry heat away and this thicker seminary vesicle will keep them insulated. I also gave them the same acid resistance as the oocytes. Then they reroute to the skein glands.”
“I don’t know what those words mean.” Kerr’s forehead was stiff, but she could feel herself frowning.
“You don’t need to,” Mackenzie said with perfect nonchalance. “You only need to know that you should take scissoring out of your repertoire or you’ll potentially get Lusa pregnant.”
“I don’t want to get pregnant!” Lusa’s voice rose an octave.
“I would be a terrible mother, yeah?” Kerr hoped voicing reality would put Lusa at ease and Mackenzie on a different track. “Or father?” The lack of movement in her muscles wound up in her face.
Mackenzie waved both of their objections aside.
“It comes with the bioengineered cyberware. Funny how I spent so long designing it and never came up with a better name.” Mackenzie nattered on as if they were a fun side experiment.
“It won’t be quite the same as the cyberware you’re used to, but there’ll be no decrease in fertility either.
” She peered uncomfortably close. “I’m interested to see how it works in a specimen without my level of intellect. ”
“So, my options are brain in a jar or become your weird science experiment?” Kerr’s pulse racing made it hard to talk.
“Yes.” Jenni and Mackenzie said in unison. Jenni acknowledging the truth, despite her hesitation did not give her hope.
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Lusa’s grip was like a vice.
Kerr looked from Mackenzie to Jenni. “Can you give us a moment?”
The door clicked shut. Lusa waited, an aura of high voltage electricity crackling around her, like she would burn the medical centre down at any moment. Kerr swallowed thickly. “I know we just met.”
“No.” Lusa interrupted. “I know my parents had some whirlwind instalove romance and it worked out. I’m not them. I don’t want to have your babies, or anyone else’s.”
Kerr managed to wobble her head a little. “Look. I like you. A lot. And I also want to take things slow. But this isn’t about you.”
Lusa chewed at the inside of her cheek and looked away. Kerr might not be the best at relationships either, but she’d seen that look often enough to know there was more. Lusa was scared of something else, not that she would admit it.
Kerr tried anyway. “What is this really about?”
“I already told you. No babies. The thought of getting pregnant creeps me out.” She clipped her words and still refused to meet her eyes.
Kerr tried to shrug, but she only felt the muscles in her neck tense. “I agree. No babies. I’d be a terrible father-mother anyway.” She tried to make it sound like a joke, but Lusa’s expression didn’t change. “There’s more though, yeah?”
“I can’t…” Lusa couldn’t finish the sentence. She turned away further in case a tear fell.
“You can’t what?” Kerr asked, but Lusa didn’t budge. Several moments passed in the soft hum of the Hexaline lights. Kerr tried to sigh, but even that required more muscle power than she was currently able to produce. “We’re not in Tyton, are we?”
Lusa didn’t say anything, but Kerr caught the slightest ripple of her glossy black hair.
“Is this where you live?” Kerr tried to keep the conversation going. She had a feeling that if Lusa shut down, it would be a very long time before she got her back.
Lusa sniffed and blinked away the moisture that threatened to fall before she turned to look out a small window.
Filtered through clouds and windswept leaves, sunlight splashed yellow beams across her gorgeous sienna skin.
Kerr could tell by the light alone that they were no longer in the city, even if Lusa hadn’t confirmed it.
“I need to go.” Lusa stood abruptly.
Kerr tried to hold her back, but her fingers wouldn’t respond. “Stop!”
Lusa hesitated at the doorway. Kerr took several halting breaths, trying to find words that would explain how terrified she felt. How everyone left her. How she was never enough, or always too much.
Lusa’s lips quivered for a moment before she let the words slip through. “I promise, I’ll be back.” She wiped impotently at the tears. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not Chalice.”
“Then why…”
But Lusa interrupted her. “Because I’m a fucking mess, Caoimhe. I need you to trust me?”
Lusa using her name softened the blow. And Kerr not trusting her, running away, is what got her into her current state. “You want me to trust a fucking mess?” Kerr burbled a half-laugh.
“I know I’m a lot. But I promise,” Lusa repeated.
Kerr waited until her breath caught up with her. She could do this. And even if she couldn’t, her body wouldn’t let her run again. “Okay.” She pursed her lips, tensed her jaw, anything that would keep her from crying.
Lusa swept forward and kissed her forehead.
Then she left.