by Gideon Mills
Marcus Ward, programmer Mara Corp subsidiary
Stats:
Intelligence: 8
Strength: 7
Cunning: 6
Speed: 4
Modification: Right arm
That was the strangest thing to see, and Amita wasn’t sure what to make of it. How to react. The doctor continued to work on her. He had a strange smirk.
Amita didn’t know what to say. This was both a dream come true and a nightmare. She was having trouble taking it all in. “How much?” Amita asked again.
The doctor smiled. “Your arm and leg. Part of your torso. Your face has remained untouched—unless you would like us to upgrade that too?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m fine.”
“Very well. We will need to test you and make sure you have accepted it. This was a very rushed job.”
That didn’t surprise her, since Amita had no idea she was going to be modified. Not that Amita knew much about it. Amita had never known a person to be upgraded before. She was the first in her family, the first from the Halo Home.
Amita wasn’t sure what to make of it or what was going to happen. Part of her was so happy, so excited for what was going to come next. Yet another part feared she’d still be stuck working for Mara Corp—just in a different way, now that they owned her since they'd fixed her.
“How did this happen?” Amita asked.
This time, Marcus spoke. “You saved me.”
Amita nodded. “I remember.”
“After you did that, I couldn’t let you die. I paid for the modifications to save your life.”
“You what?” For a moment, Amita panicked. Scared of what he'd done. Why he'd done it. Her heart raced, picturing all the reasons. It made her happy and confused. Also, frightened. No one had ever been that nice to her before.
“Since you didn’t qualify for emergency work, I paid for it.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. This super cute guy said he'd taken care of the cost for her.
“T-Thank you,” Amita stammered. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome,” he said. “You saved me. I owed you.”
It was too much, just too much. A complete stranger had saved her. It didn’t matter that she had defended him and helped him. He'd spent credits on her, and Amita imagined lots of them. She wasn’t worth that. No way Amita would be able to repay Marcus.
“It’s okay,” Marcus said. “I can afford it.”
The doctor laughed. Amita wasn’t sure what was funny, but she just stared at her hero, at the man who'd kept me alive.
“What happens now?” Amita asked.
“You rest. You recover,” the doctor said. He looked at a chart on a tablet. “Then we test you and make sure it works. We have to make sure your body can handle it. Not many people have so much done at once, and, to be honest, they're not usually in the poor health you were in.”
Amita had never considered herself unhealthy, but looking at them, she must have been. All the people on the ground level must be. The people in the room were all fit, with glowing skin. They had a radiance about them that none of the people did back home.
It wasn’t fair they got so much more than the others did. It angered Amita that Keres and her company had the world at their fingertips while Samantha had nothing. Sam would think Amita was dead, that the world was over. Amita feared Sam would be sleeping on the streets soon, taken over by Dyno in an attempt to forget Amita.
Sam wanting to forget Amita would be understandable, as would wishing to end it all. Even if she didn’t know how bad she had it, she could guess. It wouldn’t even come close to the truth, but it was bad enough.
“Okay,” Amita said and shook her thoughts away.
The doctors left the room. It had been awkward with several of them in there, but only the one talking.
Once they were gone, Amita turned to Marcus. “I still don’t understand why.”
He tilted his nearly perfect face. It was still slightly bruised from the attack. “You showed bravery that I had never seen before for a person you didn’t know. For a person you should hate.”
Amita looked away. It wasn’t that impressive. They had been hurting Marcus, and she couldn’t just let it happen. “It was nothing,” she muttered.
“Amita,” he said.
She liked the way it sounded as he said it. Her heart skipped a beat.
“That was definitely something,” he continued. “Trust me. I may not know much about Section One Thousand or the Street level, but I know a hero when I see one. You, Amita, are one. It takes courage to stand up to people you know. More than anything else.”
Amita couldn’t control it. Tears flowed, covering her face. Her eyes grew puffy. “I…” It was all Amita could manage. The words were lost.
“Amita, rest. It is okay. You deserve this.”
Amita nodded. Her body hurt from head to toe. Amita wasn’t even sure if it was the procedure or the beating that was the cause. Both, most likely. There weren’t enough drugs in the world to make it go away. Not even the way the world was, now, was enough to distract from the pain. Even though Amita could see how powerful everyone was, or how they could instantly research anything. See the stats as if in a video game.
Time and rest. She needed both, but she also wanted to know what she was able to do, what her future held. Not knowing was going to make getting rest nearly impossible.
6
Learning the Ropes
It had been a long week. Amita spent most of it in bed, talking to doctor after doctor. Each one was very impressed with her recovery and wanting to poke and prod her some more. She had grown to loathe doctors and their needles.
Back home, she'd seen a doctor once and only once. The doctor hadn’t been very remarkable. All she did was approve Amita to work at the factory. A few pokes and a Fit for Work order was given.
This was so much more invasive. Amita guessed that was expected, with what the doctors had done to her. “Upgrading her” as the doctors had put it. Amita was literally a new person, one who was capable of many new things.
That was beyond true. The way she saw the world had shifted, and it was amazing. Seeing the stats of people. Knowing their upgrades, and what they were capable of. It almost didn’t seem fair. People with modifications really had an unfair advantage.
Today, Amita was going to learn more of that. The doctors had given her the all clear to leave the room and go through the actual test to see if she was interacting properly with the cybernetics. To see if Amita would reject it.
According to Marcus, that hadn’t happened, but they liked to triple-check. As he put it, cross their t’s and dot their i’s.
All Amita wanted was to get out of the room. It was getting a little small for her liking. In the past, she'd been okay with that. It was about the same size as her apartment, but there, Amita had no visitors. In this one, she constantly did. That made it feel so much smaller, so much less.
Amita walked out of the room and to the testing area. It was nice to have some freedom even if she still couldn't leave the hospital. This little walk out didn’t take long, and she arrived at a room with even more equipment in it.
“Amita,” Dr. Quinn said. He was a short, pudgy doctor with small modifications, both his eyes and his hands. Maybe other parts. To see if her guess was right, Amita scanned him with the modification in her body. Amita wondered how all this worked since she didn’t have anything done to her face, but she saw the stats as if she did.
Doctor Adrian Quinn, Mara Corp Doctor
Stats:
Intelligence: 8
Strength: 5
Cunning: 2
Speed: 2
Modification: both hands, both eyes, left foot
Amita had been mostly right; she hadn’t figured the foot, but he was wearing shoes to cover them up. In many ways the mods were lifelike, but different. The colors were white or silver, but in the typical shape that one would expect. Amita had seem t
hem look even more robotic than her own, with wires showing, but hers were almost like having part of her body with a different skin.
The doctor continued, “I’m going to connect you to the machine here. It will run a diagnosis of your cybernetics. When that is done, one more pull of blood.”
“Okay,” Amita said, still a little confused on his foot mod and wondering what it was for. But she wouldn’t dare ask.
Quinn connected a large number of wires to connections Amita hadn’t realized she had. So many ports had been installed.
“How does this work?” Amita ask. “The cybernetics?”
“An implant that is placed in your body is connected to your nervous system and your modifications. This implant allows you to control your modifications as if they are a part of your body.”
Amita didn’t like the idea of more electronics inside her, but she would live. She had feared they had done something to her head. At least it wasn’t as bad as Amita thought it was. An implant didn’t sound too invasive. Though that did explain the way they saw the readouts; if an implant was connected to her in that way, it wasn’t that much of a stretch for it to be able to show Amita a readout.
Once the doctor was done connecting the cables, he went over to the machine and punched a few buttons. It came to life and buzzed and beeped. Quinn read all of the readouts on the monitor.
Amita stood still and waited, hoping this would be good news. If it were, Amita would be able to test the body out and put it through its paces. It had been killing her that she hadn’t been able to see what she could do.
The machine went silent, and Quinn wrote down a few notes before turning to face her. He appeared pleased but said nothing.
“Well?” Amita asked impatiently.
“Your modifications have integrated with you and are fully functional. The blood tests have all been good, but one last one to make sure won’t hurt anything.”
The doctor drew blood.
“The results will be ready in the morning. One last day, then you’ll be able to experiment.”
“Thank you,” Amita said.
The next morning, Amita was outside at what they called the training facility. It was used for people who had modifications of the legs or arms. They wanted to see how strong and fast she was, among many other things. There was a track and equipment. It was just like she'd imagined a high school athletic field.
Amita wanted to see what she could do as well. It was what she had been waiting for.
Being outside again was great. This was different from the ground level. Amita had hoped to see the sun, but it was still blocked out by another level, which Marcus informed her was the top. She was so close to seeing the actual sky. That thought was truly amazing.
Someday, Amita hoped to see it. As it was, this was the freshest air she’d ever been in. It was different, the way it felt as she breathed. It wasn’t labored or harsh. Amita wasn’t drained or tired. This air gave life. Not that the air on the ground level didn’t. It was just so polluted that it wasn’t the same. The factories made it smoggy and thick.
It angered her that the upper levels had it so much better, but there was little she could do. So many people were happy and content with the way things were. Amita was just one girl, a small petite one who had never been able to defend herself. Who was scared of the Mara Corp. She’d always be terrified of it.
Off to the side was a group of people from the headquarters. In their center was Keres Mara. Keres was the most terrifying woman Amita had ever seen. Even more in person than on the screens. The people around her looked like they were walking on eggshells, scared of making her angry, fearful of her wrath.
Unable to stop herself, she scanned Keres Mara.
Keres Mara: CEO Mara Corp
Stats:
Intelligence: 10
Strength: 9
Cunning: 10
Speed: 5
Modification: classified
Interesting. She was even more scary with the stuff being hidden. The woman was intense, and Amita wanted nothing to do with her.
Keres Mara was the last person Amita wanted to be indebted to. Even with Marcus using credits to pay for her modifications, Amita was, like everyone who was modified, in some way indebted to Keres. That was the way it had to be.
Dr. Quinn stepped up next to Amita. “Are you ready?”
She inhaled deeply. This was going to be epic, amazing. She’d finally learn how strong she was.
“Do I use just the cybernetic?” Amita asked.
The doctor laughed. “Sometimes I forget that you don’t really know much about this. You never saw a modified person.”
“I’ve seen Security Force members,” Amita said, “but only walking by. Never more than a punch or a kick.”
Quinn nodded. “Yes. The brutes don’t do much more than that. Just don’t tell anyone. They don’t like being called brutes, but they are.”
Amita smiled. The doctor was growing on her, especially with comments like that. Not all the people here were terrible. Quinn and Marcus had shown her that. It was still an uphill battle, one that Amita wasn’t sure she was going to win. She didn’t fit in. Many had gone out of their way to point that out. Just yesterday, a nurse sneered at her while she took her readings in. She called Amita a Streeter and acted like Amita was a disease-filled rodent. Amita was sure the nurse scanned her and saw that Amita didn’t belong.
Amita was a Streeter or a Thousander to people here. She was sure they had even more terms they used behind her back. At first, it annoyed her, upset her, and made her depressed. Amita had learned the first week to not let it get to her. They weren’t worth worrying about.
All that mattered was that Marcus had saved Amita, and he cared. He visited every day to make sure Amita was okay, that she was healthy. Even his brother, Jameson, visited once, though to him Amita was a freak show. He didn’t use the terms, but she imagined that he was thinking them.
“Both arms?” Amita asked.
Quinn nodded. “Yes. The human arm is more for balance. The other will be doing all the work. Just act like normal and complete the task.”
“Okay.”
In front of her were objects of varying weight. Amita was to lift the blocks, starting with the smallest and working her way up. Marcus said he had made it to the sixth out of ten. That was the average for most people. They wouldn’t let just anyone watch, which meant that Marcus wasn’t here. Amita hoped to get at least a few up. The last thing she wanted to be was an embarrassment.
Before starting, Amita scanned the objects. Seeing how much they actually weighed. That was a bit of a mistake. Some were heavier than cars. It was a daunting task. Closing her eyes, she breathed in deeply.
The first one was easy. It felt like Amita was lifting air. When she set it down, Amita turned back to Quinn. He gestured for her to continue.
Amita worked her way through the line. Each one was slightly harder to lift, but she managed it. She reached the sixth and picked it up. Never in her life was Amita so happy to know that she was at least average.
The Mara Corp people, along with Quinn, were taking notes.
She moved onto the seventh. This was the one where most failed. The sixth hadn’t felt too hard, but that didn’t mean anything.
Amita reached under the weight and began the lift. For a moment, Amita felt like she was going to fail and not get it up in the air. Then, her adrenaline kicked in, and she got it up. When Amita set it down, the Mara Corp people were in complete shock.
Quinn was grinning from ear to ear. “Go on,” he urged.
She attempted the eighth. It was massive, bigger than her. No way she’d be able to lift it. It weighed an insane amount.
Getting a good grip, Amita lifted. This one was tough. It was so heavy and awkward for her. Her size was a definite disadvantage here. If she had been Marcus’s size, this would have been so much easier. Amita got it off the ground, only slightly, before she realized she couldn’t get it all the way up.
“Damn,” Amita said as she set it back down.
Quinn walked over to her. “That was impressive. You actually got it into the air. Not many can.”
Amita had wanted to do them all after she got the sixth one up. She had to settle for seven, but she had been so close.
The rest of the assessment was more of the same, testing her physical limits. Having only one leg replaced made her faster, but not as quick as double legs, like those of the Security Force.
By the time it was done, Amita was drained and ready for sleep. Before she could return to her room, though, the Mara Corp people wanted to speak to her. More importantly, Keres Mara did. Amita was shaking in her boots. Not literally, but her heart raced as Keres and her minions marched to Amita.
Amita’s body wanted to flee and hide. Keres was the most powerful person in the world, one who got what she wanted when she wanted. Amita only joked that she did what she wanted and got what she wanted, but for Keres, that was actually the case.
“Miss Callen,” Keres said. “I see you adjusted to the upgrade well. That is rather unexpected.”
“Uh, thank you,” Amita said. That sounded like a somewhat backhanded compliment.
Keres realized Amita’s confusion. “Oh. It’s nothing personal. Just that your kind, the street level people, are inferior stock.”
Amita bit her tongue. As much as Amita wanted to speak her mind, she knew it would be the end of her. Now, more than ever, did Amita want to slap this mean, cruel woman. It didn’t matter if any of the rumors were true. Keres thought she was better than Amita just because Keres was born wealthy, born into the Maras.
That didn’t matter. What did matter was who a person was, how they acted. Amita was a better person than Keres was. This moment proved that to Amita. Amita had thought differently until then.
Amita been holding Keres in high regard for her intelligence, her power. Now Amita realized that didn’t matter. All that mattered was how a person treated others, especially those beneath them. Keres failed—and spectacularly.