Check Up

Copper didn’t stay long. The doctors shooed him off before questioning Dek briefly about what sort of things he remembered. They decided he was recovering well enough to be left alone for a short while, to rest and think things over. He wasn’t allowed to get up or move around a lot, which didn’t bother him at all. He hadn’t moved much for a week or so, and his system had slowed down, leaving him tired and weak.

The first thing he did, once he was left alone, was to pull up his shirt and look at the thin incision across his chest. The surgery had taken a long time because of the detailed work involved. Bullet proof plating had been grafted into his chest plate. He touched the skin and felt his finger. And his finger felt a hard, smooth surface that hadn’t been there before. Dek inspected the edges carefully, trying to decide exactly how far the plating extended. It was too smooth to feel an edge, and the room was cold, so he pulled the blanket up again.

He turned to his wrists. During training he’d landed wrong in gymnastics and twisted his wrist. It had scared the piss out of him, knowing that people who hurt themselves in training were often permanently excused. Training was serious business and Cy didn’t leave room for error. Dek hid the injury as long as he could, but his trainer noticed almost instantly and took him aside.

“Let me finish the training,” Dek had insisted. “If I was hurt on duty I couldn’t just quit. I can stick it out!” Miraculously, his trainer agreed to try it for three days, before telling the administration. Dek made it through and never heard back what administration thought.

However: it had weakened that wrist so that he favored the other slightly, knowing a knock in the right place could shatter the joint. When he had gone into the meeting a few weeks ago the doctors had already decided it was logical to put more plating inserted around his wrists to strengthen them. It was a more or less standard procedure for many Specials to have retractable blades plated into their wrists. The blades made killing a highly personal act, which discouraged any agents from deciding to go rogue and frightening the public.

Dek looked at his naked wrists now, fingering the slit of Fleshex molded into a place his own skin used to be on the outside of his wrist. Fleshex was made of real cells, grown from his own skin samples. But they had been altered slightly to make the layers thick and tough. No nerves ran through that part of his wrist anymore. He felt with his fingers around his pulse for the trigger to release the blade. He couldn’t find it. It was unlikely he would ever open the blades unintentionally, but he would be issued wrist guards with his M-suit. Last thing he wanted would be to stab himself accidentally in his sleep.

He lay back with a sigh, tucking the blanket over himself again. He was cold. His head had been shaved for the precise measurements to be taken before the chips could be created. A lot of personal tailoring had to be done to create an I-chip. Dek had sat through MRI’s and CAT’s and taken extensive tests about personality and memory. Any kind of cyber implanting was highly experimental. The T-chips and the I-chips had been around only a short while, but their uses so greatly outweighed their risks that it had become standard for Cy Agents.

“Jasper?” Dek tried to summon his superior. No response came. Dek tried once more. He was probably doing something wrong. This wasn’t like trying to work out a puzzle or new gadget. He couldn’t see what he was doing. And even if he was doing it right, he might not realize it. He tried again and again, eventually drifting off to sleep again, the last hour making up for a week of unconsciousness.