by Adam Thielen
She bit her lower lip. “Don’t pretend, Matthias. Not if it means pissing me off. You’re going to miss me.”
“Yes.”
Tsenka smiled. “You’ll survive.”
“I just thought we’d have more time,” he said. “You need more training.”
“Come on, Matt.”
“I am being serious.”
“I can’t wait forever,” she said. “This is what I do. Besides, there won’t be any action, and a lot of planning is going into making everything smooth.”
Matthias fidgeted in his seat, rocking subtly on the cushion. “Where is it?”
“Where?”
“The assignment,” he said. “Must be outside the NR.”
Tsenka pursed her lips for a moment. “Yes. East Asia. I shouldn’t say more. Shouldn’t have said that.”
“I see,” said Matthias. “Can you call it off?”
“No!” she said loudly. “Why would I do that?”
“I’ve been reading the briefings,” he said. “The reports are disturbing. There are large gaps in our intel. Chantech is like a black box.”
“Very true, but this mission needs to succeed,” she said. “I wish I could say more, but stop worrying so much.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I’m just being selfish. But I still wish you’d stay.” Matthias studied her facial features, burning them into his mind. He opened his mouth again, but his voice refused to work. He didn’t believe it, or he didn’t want to. He closed his mouth and swallowed.
“You’re sweet,” she said. “I’ll miss you, too. And when I get back we can have some real fun,” she said, teasing the tip of her straw with her tongue. Matthias couldn’t fight off an encouraging smile.
* * *
A young woman stood in front of the wooden door of a middle-class house in the Kansas City suburbs as the final bits of daylight disappeared behind the horizon. Her dark brown hair was woven into tight braids running from the front to the back. Her caramel skin had a subtle sheen, and the iris of one of her eyes was set in a honeycomb pattern. Her right hand gripped the handle of a modest suitcase.
Her heads-up display, or HUD, fed her information both relevant and seemingly less so concerning the objects in front of her. It told her how thick the door was and what wood it was made from. She knocked, and her seismic sensors attempted to map the interior of the house based on sound waves and vibrations bouncing off solid objects.
Fucking awe, she thought, as a projection of the interior, with several gaps, overlaid her vision, allowing her to simulate seeing through the door. She looked at the projection of the table and reminisced. After waiting a minute with no response, she knocked again, this time hard. The interior map revised itself with a wave that emanated from the door and moved outward.
Another thirty seconds passed and her ears picked up the sound of footsteps approaching the door. It violently swung open to reveal her friend, her lover, her mentor. Matthias didn’t wait for her to step inside. He moved to her and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug with her arms trapped at her sides. Tsenka Cho had returned to him.
Matthias pulled her inside and closed the door. The sun could still be felt and he had started to sweat. The vampire waved the lights all the way up and stepped back from Tsenka, who stood there waiting for his assessment. He looked her up and down.
“I’m back!” she said.
“You look great,” he announced. “Really, really great.”
Tsenka dropped her suitcase. “Even the face?” she asked, disowning it.
Matthias shook his head, still smiling. “It’s beautiful, like it always was.”
“I think it looks different, strange,” she said. “I’m still trying to get used to it.”
“Maybe a little different,” he acknowledged. “Might be the nose, but it’s still you.”
Tsenka’s mouth curled up in approval, the left side with a slight delay. “How do you like the skin? Looks like I’m oiled up or something.”
“I think that’s something I’ll just have to judge later,” he said, stepping close again. “Are you... cleared for that sort of activity?”
“Down boy, too much effort.” She walked past him toward a cloth-upholstered recliner. “Yes, I still have holes,” she said, flopping onto the chair, then groaning in regret. “I think I need some time, though.”
Matthias stared at her. She was the same, but different. Her skin wasn’t completely convincing, and her nose was indeed different. Her eye was an implant, but she wasn’t trying to hide that. He suspected there were more cybernetics hidden under the surface. More than that, she moved differently, and she seemed more aloof. Matthias admitted to himself that he could be imagining the latter observations.
“Understood, Ms. Cho,” he teased. “Besides, we vampires don’t really need that sort of thing.” He took a seat on his couch. He had waited weeks for this moment and now could think of little to say. “Want a bite to eat? I can order a pizza,” he managed.
“I’m on some crazy meds,” she said, leaning back and sliding her butt forward. “I can tell already I wouldn’t keep it down.”
“I’ll get some anyway, in case you change your mind,” he said.
“I think what I need is some rest,” she said. “I had to talk them into releasing me yesterday, then I spent a day at my old apartment and I couldn’t stand it. Thank you for letting me stay here.”
“Bros for life,” said Matthias. “How long did they have you in rehab?”
“Two weeks,” she said. “And I am still getting the hang of a few things that work a little different. They had to rewire my receptors for my left hand and leg, and sometimes I try moving the old way and it doesn’t work.”
“I won’t ask about every surgery, but is there anything I should know about?” asked Matthias.
“What do you want to know?” Tsenka lifted a leg and sat it on a small round glass coffee table. Matthias internally winced as her sneakers plonked onto it.
“You’re okay, right? I mean, are there risks to your life from injuries or drug complications or neural disorders?” he asked.
Tsenka brought her left hand up and looked at it and made a fist. “The docs gave me a list of possible complications and side effects. There’s nothing imminently life threatening, just a lot of maintenance.”
“I know you said already, but if you want to stay in my room, you can,” said Matthias. “The offer will remain open.”
“Thanks, Matthias,” she said. “Speaking of which, want to show me my room?”
Matthias took Tsenka to a small utility closet he had renovated by walling off the heating and cooling unit. That is to say, he paid contractors to renovate it and make it look like a bedroom. It had no windows, but a smart screen was embedded into the largest wall that would do a convincing imitation of one.
She followed him around the rest of his basement, mostly unfinished with beams and wires for a ceiling. He showed her the bathroom and family room for when she needed more space. The latter had a bench press, weight machine, and an aging elliptical, all fairly dusty. He pointed them out for future reference but realized what she really needed, for now, was some time to heal and adjust, and a peaceful place to do it in.
Matthias took her to see Shawn, who drifted in and out of consciousness, but made sure to compliment Matthias on his new girlfriend. Tsenka found it hard to keep straight that Shawn was the son and not the father or grandfather. When Shawn seemed to tire and become unresponsive, they went back to the dining room.
They spent a couple hours talking about her hospital stay and her anxiety over her career, now in limbo. They wasted some time watching news feeds together in her room. Eventually, they grew bored, left the house, and took a ride in his old electric car to an upscale grocery store. There they browsed the aisles for nearly an hour, gawking at the prices of non-synth food. To Tsenka’s surprise, Matthias threw whatever she seemed interested in into his cart, the sum total of which amounted to a full month of her co
mpensation.
They returned home and ate about four days' worth of wages then parted ways, Tsenka to the basement and Matthias to his room. Both watched TV, checked network sites, wasted more time. Tsenka decided she needed to adjust her sleep schedule to sync with Matthias, and so she held on until four in the morning before passing out on her small bed. The lights and screens dimmed as the room’s camera watched her eyes close.
A couple hours later, Matthias lay on his back with his hands overlapping on top of his solar plexus. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep slumber. Below him, Tsenka tossed to one side, then the other. She pleaded with her assailant to stop, and tears ran down her cheeks. She slept trapped in a nightmare.
When his eyes fluttered open and the grogginess began to wear off, Matthias decided he may as well rise and do something productive with his day, like obsess over network message boards or play some augreal games. He would let his new guest sleep, he decided. But when he unlatched, electronically and physically, his bedroom door, he found Tsenka Cho sitting at the dining room table hunched over a bowl of overpriced cereal doused in forty percent real milk.
Matthias smiled when he looked at her and felt renewed relief that she was now safe with him. “Hi there,” he said, taking a seat across from her.
“Ey,” she said between chomps.
“Everything okay with the room?” he asked. “You get any sleep?”
She leaned her head to one side and then the other, an approximation of it was fine but not a four-star hotel, and continued eating.
“Feel like lying around and watching some cartoons tonight?” he asked.
Tsenka placed the spoon in the bowl and sat up, resting her elbows on the table. She made him wait as she chewed and swallowed, then gave him a wry grin. “No,” she declared. “I want to train.”
Episode 4: Burned
An argument requires two participants. It doesn’t need to be verbal, but winning an argument can be difficult when your opponent refuses to employ words. Despite her recent troubles, Tsenka Cho had a reputation for being a shrewd tactician and getting what she wanted. And when Matthias attempted logic to persuade her to get rest and seek tranquility, Cho simply left on foot, jogging toward the gym near downtown.
This behavior amused Matthias as much as it concerned him, and he immediately jumped into his car to follow along behind her. His amusement faded when Cho stumbled and fell to the ground. She rolled out of it and stood up, brushing herself off.
Matthias rolled down the passenger side window. “You win,” he called. “Let’s go.”
Tsenka poked her head inside the car. “To the gym.”
Matthias nodded. “Yes, Tsenka, the fucking gym.”
Tsenka rubbed at her right knee on the way there.
“You okay?” asked Matthias.
“Just burns,” she said. “I can go back to the clinic to adjust intensity thresholds, but I want it to feel real.”
“They had to rewire a lot, didn’t they?”
“More than half, they said.”
“Jesus.”
“They told me it’d be just like the real thing after some practice,” Tsenka whined.
Matthias’s car came to a stop at the ideal parking spot at the near-empty gym and shut off.
“It will be,” he said. “I know a fair amount about cybernetics. It just takes time.”
“And practice,” she added.
“And practice,” granted Matthias.
They started slowly by using the jogger, a machine intended to correct a poor stride that over time could cause spinal disc stress. The bottom of the machine clamped around her legs. Servos and hydraulics simulated the feeling of jogging forward while forcing the legs to align correctly. This wasn’t exactly Tsenka’s problem, but Matthias surmised that the machine would correct any desynchronization caused by her synthetic nerve paths. It provided feedback by judging the legs’ resistance to the correct movement, and each day she stepped out of it, the reported deviations lessened in magnitude.
They sparred, but Tsenka’s timing was sluggish so she went back to doing head and foot movement drills. For the rest of the evening, they focused on a standard mix of cardio and strength training to rebuild her muscles. In between sets, Tsenka would take pills out of a plastic organizer.
In the early morning hours, they returned home, said very little to each other, then went to bed. Every night she trembled and tossed, sweated and cried. Why am I still alive? she wondered. On the eleventh night at Matthias’s home, her mind refused to stop churning long enough to sleep. The silence in her room became maddening, and the loneliness unbearable.
Walking through Matthias’s home during the day had become foreign and strange. She threw a loose-fitting t-shirt on and slipped off her panties before knocking on his bedroom door. Her sonar map displayed the contents of his bedroom, including the vampire himself, still lying on the bed, face up. Every few seconds she knocked again, until she saw him sitting up.
Matthias answered the door with a confused look on his face. His eyes traveled down Tsenka’s body. Once he had gotten a good look, she pressed herself against him and he leaned forward to kiss her.
She felt his hands on her back and became self-conscious. Her skin would be different now, with a smooth, almost rubbery texture. If he noticed, he didn’t give it away, pulling her to the bed. Cho allowed him to guide her, gently laying her down on her back. Matthias hurriedly removed his own clothes and lay beside her.
The skin on her body conveyed his touch, but it wasn’t quite the same. It didn’t give her the shiver it used to. His hands slid down to her crotch and began to massage one of the few parts of her body left unmodified. But instead of feeling a thrill, a sharp sense of dread swept over her.
Tsenka endured it, lying quietly, urging her body to cooperate. Matthias’s mouth teased one of her nipples, and he slowly moved in between her legs. A terror gripped Tsenka, and she turned her head to the side and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to be alone that night, she couldn’t be alone that night.
She felt his dick brush against her, and a word escaped from her lips. “No.” But Matthias continued. He kissed her neck and reached down with his left hand to position his member, pressing it against her opening.
“No!” she yelled. “No, no, no,” she continued, her voice breaking into sobs. Tsenka pushed him away and pulled her legs together. She rolled to the side and curled into a ball. “Please, no. Please.”
Matthias stared. He hadn’t known. No one had told him. He reached a hand forward to touch her arm but stopped midway. As realization took hold, something strange happened to him. Fluid gathered in the corners of his eyes, then spilled down his face. He clenched his teeth as his heart broke and he knew the thing that he... no, that they gave up could never be retrieved.
He rolled off the bed and pulled a folded-up throw out of his closet. He wiped his face and draped it over Tsenka’s body, tucking it slightly at the edges. He pulled on his briefs and closed the bedroom door before climbing back into the queen size bed, making sure to give her space.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Tsenka’s mind was a blur. The fear that had driven her mad began to abate. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I am sorry.”
“You’ve done nothing,” he replied. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need. Try to get some sleep. Do you need me to go?”
“No,” she cried. “I came here to be with you.”
“I’m here, it’ll be okay,” he lied. “Try to sleep.”
Tsenka felt too much. Sadness, guilt, rage. Matthias had poked a hole in the dam, and now anguish wouldn’t stop leaking out, threatening to break free and drown her. She continued to cry, but did so more quietly, until calm took hold and she fell asleep.
They both woke as night set in, but neither left the bed. Tsenka brought up a virtual screen using the neural adapter implanted behind her left eye. She lazily caught up on the news and messages from her people at the agency. Kate wanted to k
now how she was doing, so Tsenka sent her a dishonest message to let her know she was fine.
“Did I talk in my sleep?” asked Tsenka without facing toward Matthias.
“Not really talk,” he said. “But—” Matthias stopped for a minute. “You need to see someone.”
“I know,” she said, to her own surprise and that of Matthias. “I’m scared.”
Matthias rolled over to face her while she continued to stare at the ceiling. “I will set it up and call a car. You get in, you go, you come back.”
Tsenka didn’t accept or decline the invitation. She thought of the face of the man who had raped her, killed her, stolen her life, and she considered which was more important, her happiness or his demise.
“Do you want to talk to me about it?” asked Matthias.
“No,” she said. “I want to train. Get me a therapist, and then let’s get out of here.”
And so they did. Tsenka, for all her stubbornness, wasn’t willing to let pride get in the way of her mission, and so three times a week she visited with a specialist, and her nights got quieter. She and Matthias slept together, but with little or no physical contact.
Tsenka was able to step away from the rehabilitation and synchronization activities and step back in the ring with her vampire trainer. Her reflexes, while rusty at first, improved rapidly, and after a few days, she noticed that she was moving faster and flowing more smoothly than before the incident.
Nerve impulses travel along biological fibers quickly, but Tsenka Cho was rewired with optical fibers that terminated in bio-adapters, increasing her body’s ability to react. The path the bullet had taken through her brain left her with holes in her memory and with degraded motor functions. Neurosurgeons had used the available space to implant a nervous system computer to bus signals around faster than the previous brain matter could.
After lying in the hospital helpless, Tsenka did not fear change. She researched articles on some of the most outlandish neural modifications and implants, then convinced Kate to sanction the installation of an experimental memory interface. It allowed her to use quartz storage directly linked to her synapses. Unlike brain matter, it was a perfect recall medium. If active, anything she was taught she would master instantly, including instruction sets uploaded to the storage module.