He found nothing.
That feeling of loneliness and emptiness pierced the pain and seized his breath. He flailed helplessly, his physical motion mirroring the spiritual. Even the room felt empty, the magic stripped and expended.
The loss was too much to bear. For the first time in his entire life, Lucas felt alone. His confidence crumbled like a sand castle under a breaking wave. The darkness of oblivion rose up and seized him, pulling Lucas down into relieving ignorance.
Lucas tried to open his eyes, but his lids felt impossibly heavy, and refused to listen to his brain. Everything was dark. Reaching out with his other senses, he did a quick assessment as coherent thoughts started to form.
A constant murmur of voices surrounded him, as well as the steady clip of people walking on a hard surface. A regular high-pitched beeping punctuated through these sounds. The tone clawed at his memory as he tried to place it. He knew he recognized it, but every time he came close to mentally grasping it, it slipped away. Like a latch being freed on a closed door, the answer clicked into place: an ECG. He was in a hospital. That also explained the scent of bleach permeating everything.
Groping in the darkness, he reached up to his face. The entire top half of his head was covered in bandages. That explained the blackness and his eyes’ refusal to open. Lucas felt around, searching for anything else he could identify. There had to be a control or call button somewhere. The beeps from the ECG came faster as his hands slapped around on the bed looking for something to anchor him, some sense of control.
Someone with a heavy tread walked into the room and coughed, interrupting his search. Lucas turned toward the sound and waited. The top half of the bed whirred to life as it rose, lifting him into a seated position.
“Hello, Lucas. I’m Doctor Church. It’s good to see you conscious. You’ll be happy to know that you’re well on the road to recovery.” The mysterious voice was deep and heavy, but had a note of gentleness that softened any edges it might carry. It wasn’t quite guttural enough to be the voice of a troll.
“Where am I?”
“Seattle General. DocWagon picked you up and brought you to a small hospital up north. They stabilized you and then transferred you here. The doctors there decided that for your health, you should be in a more modern facility.”
Lucas took a moment to digest the information. That made sense. After the explosion, or whatever it was, he had passed out from the pain. All of those years paying for a contract he never thought he’d use had finally come to fruition. It was an insurance policy he’d hoped never to test.
But the facility had technically been corporate territory—the one place DocWagon shouldn’t have been able to help him. His membership barely covered emergencies in public spaces. Why would they have made an exception in his case? He started to ask about that, but a single concern short-circuited his train of thought.
He reached up to his bandages with shaking fingers and touched them, more gently this time.
“Am I blind?”
The silence stretched on long enough that fear crawled up and threatened to steal his breath again. His body shook as he clutched at the sides of his head. The darkness tried to swallow him until there was no space even to breathe.
“No, not exactly,” the voice reassured him. Large hands gripped him by the wrists and eased his own hands down to his sides. The motion was soft enough that Lucas went along with it and felt a calmness seeping through that touch. “You see, that’s why you were transferred here. The hospital you were at didn’t have the facilities to do the necessary augmentations. We thought it would be best.”
“Augmentations?”
The doctor let go of Lucas’s wrists and began unwrapping the bandages. Lucas turned his head to face the man and waited.
“There we go. Now it may take a moment, but I want you to think about opening your eyes.”
Lucas didn’t realize what the doctor meant. You didn’t think about opening your eyes—you just did it. But to his surprise, they wouldn’t open. It was odd, like trying to move muscles he’d taken for granted all this time.
Eventually, his eyes opened and he winced, pulling his head back from the sudden rush of color. The lights felt too bright and he reached up to shield himself from the glare.
After a couple of blinks—which again, he had to force himself to do—things began to come into focus. He could lower his arm and observe the room without feeling like the light pierced his skull. The blob of colors at his bedside took form and became the doctor in a white coat standing with a tablet held in the crook of his arm. The man was a dwarf, tall for his race and with a soft, gentle smile that was comforting without being patronizing.
He held up a penlight.
“Very good, now follow the light as I move it.”
Lucas did as instructed while the doctor moved the light from one side to the other and then up and down. He spun it in his grip and pointed the beam directly into Lucas’s right eye. It wasn’t bright enough to make him squint, but it still wasn’t comfortable. After a quick inspection, the doctor checked the other eye. Then he switched it off and tucked it back into his coat.
“It appears like everything is functioning normally. Although it may take some time before you can access the higher functions.”
“What do you mean, higher functions?”
Annotations floated in the open air next to everything he saw. He saw the doctor’s patient treatment rate (89%) hanging over his head like a neon sign. The doctor’s glasses had a line attached to them listing the manufacturer and model number. Even the blank wall got an electronic note indicating that it was eggshell white, color E6DEDC.
Lucas scrunched his eyes shut, his brain pounding at the sudden influx of information, and pressed the back of his head into the pillows. His hands clenched in fists, tightening up the cheap fabric covering the hospital bed.
“What’s going on?”
“If I had to venture a hypothesis, it would be that you’re getting a headache from excess of information. I can promise you that this is normal in some of our patients if they accidentally trip the higher functions before they’ve developed the cognitive skills to limit the hardware’s capabilities. In short, it’s like having a new muscle you need to train yourself to work with. We have specialists who can assist you with that, and some exercises you can do on your own time.”
Lucas snatched at the air where the doctor had been standing moments before. As soon as he felt resistance, his fingers tightened around the fabric of the doctor’s coat. He jerked the doctor forward, yanking the dwarf off balance so he had to grip the side of the bed to keep from falling on top of Lucas.
“What did you do to me?”
“Based on the recommendations of your DocWagon contractor, we outfitted you with a new set of cybereyes, the latest model available.”
Lucas let the man go and his hand dropped to the bed. Cyberware? Him? How could this happen? He reached out with his other senses, feeling for the astral plane and his connection to Mountain. It was still there, but he felt like something resisted him now. It was as if a free-flowing river had become cluttered with detritus. The connection was still there, just not as easy and free as before.
“If we hadn’t done that, you would have been blind. As it was, most of your optic nerve was lost before you even arrived at our facility. You should be thankful that you can see at all. That you can is due to the skill of the miracle-worker surgeons here.” The earlier gentleness in the doctor’s voice had been replaced with patronizing reproach.
Lucas didn’t want to hear any more about how he should be feeling. He waved at the doctor, dismissing him. The man had no idea what he was going through, what it meant to have his connection impeded on any level. How could he? The doctor wasn’t Awakened. He’d never known what it was like to feel the spirits with every bit of your body’s essence. And now, Lucas knew that some part of that, even a small part, would be forever missing.
Maybe he would have been better off
blind.
Days passed. At first, Lucas resisted the training, refusing to accept what had happened. But his stubbornness would not remove the cyberware, nor would it restore his connection to the astral plane.
When he finally embraced his new reality, it only took a few days of solid training before Lucas learned to function with his cybereyes as well as he’d been able to with his natural ones. He had to admit, they were an impressive piece of technology and were capable of things he never could do before, such as zooming in to read papers on a desk on the other side of the rehabilitation center and making a recording of whatever he saw. As exciting as those benefits were, they felt trivial compared to the resistance he felt when accessing the spiritual realm.
Lucas meditated and communed with Mountain, relieved to find that it was still there, still as resolute in its support. That first night in the hospital, Mountain sent him a vision of tectonic plates shifting and grinding against each other, causing earthquakes and volcanoes all around the world. But when it stopped, the mountains were still there, still strong on the horizon, and still a force that could be counted on. Lucas knew what the vision meant. No matter the changes, Mountain would still support him.
The day of his final examination arrived, and he passed it with no difficulties. The evaluators declared him fit to return to his daily life. He had to resist the urge to sprint out of the hospital after being given his dismissal papers. They recommended continuing to follow up with regular training sessions, but also gave him exercises for home therapy.
Checking his PDA, Lucas was surprised to see that his Americar was parked in the hospital extended-stay lot. It seemed that the favors continued well beyond saving his life. This was well past the services that DocWagon would have provided.
When he got to his car, he searched both the exterior and interior, looking for anything that didn’t belong. At least this gave him a real-world opportunity to try out his new set of eyes. Despite a thorough search, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But the entire situation still felt wrong. Lucas walked around the car a second time and even dropped to the ground to scan underneath it. Still nothing. With slow movements, he opened the door and slid into the seat, his muscles tense and expecting something to go wrong. But everything seemed fine.
As soon as he got to his apartment, Lucas logged into his terminal. He wrote a quick but thorough report about what he discovered and why it had taken him so long to respond. He needed to let the elders know he was still alive, what he’d discovered at the facility, and that there was an unexpected medical emergency.
He hesitated when he got to the part about waking up in the hospital. His hands started to shake, and he wrung them to try to loosen them up. Lucas stood up and walked around the small room a few times before coming back and finishing his report. He glossed over the cybereyes and refused to reread it before sending it off.
For several days the elders didn’t respond, which was highly unusual. He by no means expected an immediate response, but usually they got back to him within a day. Lucas spent so much time pacing around his apartment, he left tracks in the cheap carpet. Even though his PDA would inform him the moment he got a secure message, he checked the terminal almost hourly. Sleep was difficult, and he found himself waking up drenched in sweat and panting for breath. At these times, the only thing that could calm him was meditation and thinking of Mountain.
When his PDA signaled a received message, Lucas rushed over to the terminal and knocked over the chair in his haste. He crouched in front of it and scanned the words. The message was short and requested his presence. The details would be discussed in person. Lucas was so excited that he literally sprang into the air before bolting to the door and snatching his coat off of the hook. He jumped down the stairs an entire flight at a time as he ran out of the complex. It was rare to see the elders in person, and he couldn’t wait to take advantage of this opportunity.
He climbed into his car and pulled out into the street, heading toward the Salish-Shidhe border before even shutting the door. As he drove, he found a new advantage to his enhanced eyesight—predictive visioning. His eyes let him know where it was safe to pass vehicles and take advantage of openings. This spurred him to even greater speeds as he drove north.
Soon Lucas arrived at the small village that served as his home away from home. It was his tribe. Even though he’d been born in Seattle and still lived within UCAS territory, the people here welcomed him as one of their own ever since he had found his connection with Mountain. It was Mountain who had led him here seven years ago, when his powers first manifested. Ever since then, he had grown to know the people here, and considered them his family.
He pulled into a small lot at the edge of the village and climbed out of his car, a genuine smile plastered on his face for the first time since he had received his last mission. The great hall in the center of town drew his eyes, and he walked toward it at a pace that would make a speed walker proud. His skin prickled as he walked through the town and the hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms stood on edge. It took him a moment to figure out why. He had been so focused on the great hall in the center of the village that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings.
People were ignoring him, shunning him and looking away as he walked past.
“Shawna! Trey!” he called to a young couple walking down the path.
They turned and strode in the opposite direction, putting distance between him and them as fast as they could while staying at a walk. Lucas resisted the urge to run after them and ask why. The elders would have an answer for him. His jaw tightened and he fixed his gaze on the central hall with laser focus.
As he entered the lodge, sweat broke out on his skin at the sudden change in temperature. The warm air inside blew past as it rushed to get outside, bathing him in its heat. In addition, the air positively tingled with magical energy. He was sure that if he opened his eyes to the spirit realm, he would be nearly blinded by the auras.
Seated around the central fire were the five elders of the tribe. The woman in the center, Winona, was the eldest of them all. Lucas had only seen her twice before. She practically radiated mystical energy. With a nod, she gestured for him to come forward. When he got next to the flames, he started to sit, but she held up her hand to stop him.
“I’m afraid that I have one of the most unwelcome tasks ever to fall upon me this day.”
She paused, and Lucas felt the trails of sweat drip down the sides of his face. He clenched his fists and held his breath as he waited for her to continue.
“You know we have laws. Not the laws of man, but the laws of the spirits given to us, which we must follow with draconian vigilance. It is not our place to question them, nor allow exceptions.”
“You’re dancing around, not wanting to tell me something. What have I done?”
Winona stared him in the eyes, holding him still with her gaze alone. Despite his nervousness, he met that stare, not wanting to look away. Whatever his crime, whatever his punishment, he would accept it. To his surprise, she looked down at the ground before him before continuing.
“You have accepted that most vile of sins and polluted your own body with technology, a crime which is unforgivable to those of our tribe. The punishment for this transgression is exile.”
Lucas stood there, unable to say anything, his mouth hanging slack. He felt like his heart had plummeted to the depths of the void. The old woman nodded, and all of the elders in the circle turned around so their backs were facing him. He was dimly aware that none of them wanted to look him in the face, and their shoulders were slumped as they faced the walls.
He wanted to fight. He wanted to argue. He wanted to scream at them that it wasn’t his choice, but he knew that it would do no good. It was a mandate of the village, not a decision that they had made. Nothing he could do would change that fact. If he could carve out his mechanical eyes, he would have, but even that wouldn’t change what had happened.
Instead, L
ucas turned and marched out of the building, slamming the door on his way out. A crowd had gathered outside. Clearly this was no secret. He kept marching with his chin high and his gaze focused straight ahead until he reached the small parking lot.
Someone leaned against the side of his Americar, blocking the driver’s door and fiddling with her hair. As soon as she saw him, she stood up straight and tossed her long brown braid over her shoulder. Eileen’s lips were pressed together and her hands danced over one another as she fidgeted.
“Lucas…”
He moved to shoulder past his friend and get in the car. He needed to be away from this place. What once felt like a sanctuary now felt twisted and wrong.
She stepped into his path, forcing him to look at her. His intense stare made her wince, and she backed up a step.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“It’s not fair what they did. Just because of some old rule—”
“No, it’s not fair! I’ve given everything I have to this village for the past seven years. And how do they repay me? Repay me for doing something they asked me to do? Repay me for risking my life? They kick me out! Not even so much as a blessing or a ‘you’ll be missed,’ just a ‘get out now.’” He didn’t realize he was shouting until he found himself leaning into Eileen and taking a small step forward.
She didn’t back down from his advance. Instead, she reached out and wrapped both arms around him, holding him close. He took several quick growling breaths, his entire body heaving with the effort. Eileen simply squeezed and rested the side of her face against his shoulder. He crumpled in her embrace, and his eyes began to water.
“I…I have to go. I can’t stay here. I don’t want them to see me like this.”
Shadowrun Page 22