Chapter 17 – CyberNETic Implantation

            As Alos, Xri, and Levitas, boarded the ship, Xri trotted off straight for his chambers. He had said he needed to go watch the tracking device to see where Jomin was headed and by the look of how fast he was walking, Alos knew he wasn’t kidding. Levitas led Alos up and around the corner, catching a glimpse of Xri jumping up into his chambers.

            “Don’t worry about him, he’s just anxious.” Levitas, placing his arm around Alos shoulder. “Dealing with Crusaders always gets to him.”

            “Did something happen between them or something?” Alos was genuinely curious considering the wide range of emotions displayed by Xri when the topic came up.

            “Well I mean the fact that they killed his mom, almost killing him in the process isn’t exactly a good start.” Levitas chuckled, shaking his head. “Growin’ up with the Magnams and Wizards didn’t line him up for the best relationship with them either. Crusaders were always tryin’ to raid their temples.”

            “Yeah I could see how that would leave a bad taste in his mouth.”

            They had entered the main room, where they found Dardaños sprawled out on the couch watching the screen. Up on the screen was the same television show that he and Alos had been watching recently. The two remaining contestants had just walked through the massive up folding entry door and into the arena, one sporting long fiery red hair down past his shoulders with matching eyebrows, while the other had equally long dark brunette hair. They both had their rail guns from last time, but this time they lacked their team colors. They were wearing bright yellow jump suits and more importantly bright confident smiles. That is until the monster came out.

            Across the platform from which they stood, rising from within an open slot on the floor, was a fourteen foot tall, armor clad, technologically implanted, and by the look of his overly crowded muscles, genetically modified Magnam. Tubes came out of the beast’s neck draping down and wrapping repeatedly around its shoulders. Where a left hand used to be, was instead a tri-barreled arm cannon, the tubes extending down from his left shoulder and connecting into it. As the beast came to the top of the rising platform, the arm cannon spun around, whizzing with the rotating gears, and then stopping with the plasma barrel aligned into the top track. To make matters worse, the arena they were standing on was bulging out from the side of a building, so high up that clouds sat in the sky around it.

            The Magnam threw its head back shrieking out, shaking the cameras and chilling even Alos to his bones; he couldn’t even imagine how the contestants were feeling. Then he remembered it was just a show, with characters and a plot, and so he sat back to enjoy the action.

            Both members shot out in separate directions, firing their rail guns rapidly at the head of monster, but every rail merely colliding with its face and then falling flat to the ground ineffective. Then, a bright purple flash lit up the screen followed by a chunk of the ground missing with black smoke and steam rising up from it and the Magnam’s cannon. The two characters continued dashing apart from each other, working their way around the sides of the beast, slowly but surely forcing it to turn around to follow them. It decided to track the red haired character as it turned to follow, rotating its arm cannon over, spinning until the top track was aligned with a short range missile launcher. With the cracking sound of igniting rockets, a flurry of small blazing missiles shot up out of the cannon and into the air, redirecting midair and then homed onto the red haired boy. A smile shot across the boys face. He darted towards the Magnam, leaping and diving, and then slid on his stomach through the monster’s legs. The rockets curved around through the air trying to follow him when they caught the side of the Magnam, exploding with compiling force, knocking it back and staggering towards the ledge. Then, the other character, the brunette boy, bolted over to the behemoth and ran straight up its front side, vaulting off its face, firing his rail gun repeatedly pointblank, before back flipping off.

            The red haired boy followed up, continuing to fire at the Magnam’s face trying to drive it back and over the edge. It staggered back trying to find its footing, searching for just a menial fraction of balance. It didn’t want to fall over a hundred stories to its death, and more importantly it didn’t want to let these two win. Then, it found it. It threw its weight downwards, planting its feet into the ground, caught itself mere inches from the edge. Both characters’ eyes widened with fear, widening further when the Magnam let out a deep bellied growl of triumph over their pitiful attempt.

            Rumbles began to shake the platform, throwing both the characters off their feet, and even began to make the Magnam sway. Suddenly, from over the side of the edge, a quad rotary turbine ship asserted its dominance as it rose over the Magnam. The powerful thrust of the turbines wound down and over the edge of the platform, blowing the beast off its feet and over the side of the cliff. Each turbine seemed to be pointing slightly inward creating the effect of an upside down pyramid of wind below it, and the Magnam was swept into it and shot downwards like a twig in a tornado.

            It was just then that the show cut to commercial, flashing out of the show and into images of alcohol consumption followed by tightly dressed women with said alcohol and then a giant bright image of the logo slowly rotating.

            Alos shook his head in disapproval at the advertisement as he turned to Levitas. Levitas actually seemed to know what was going on with the show, despite his inability to see. How though, he didn’t know.

            “Dis show ess gettin’ good.” Dardaños said as he pulled his head up to face Alos and Levitas.

            “The few parts I’ve seen do make it look pretty exciting.” Alos nodded his head, raising his brow in agreement. “All the action is a little over the top though.”

            “Soo dey fight wit’ some flair,” Dardaños snickered, accidentally sneezing at the end of his laugh.

            “Sleeve it; getting sick is the last thing any one of us needs.” Levitas said as he motioned towards Dardaños to put his nose into the indent of his elbow by doing the same.

            “Myee bad.” Dardaños shoved his nose into the crevice and wiped his nose back and forth.

            “Kid, you should take that hand to Bert and have him attach it. The sooner the better, trust me.”

            Alos lifted up the lunch pale, eyeing the outside while slowing rotating it in his good hand. Levitas was right, he had been waiting for his hand for so long now and when he finally gets it the first thing he does is get distracted. There really was nothing more Alos wanted than to finally have functionality over his dominant hand again; feeling dexterously stupid was beginning to feel old.

            “Yeah you’re right,” Alos began to walk away and then paused. “Dardaños, any tips for the procedure?”

            “Don’t worry ‘bout et, he’ll knock yah right out.” He smiled holding up his metallic arm, the hand at the end spinning around like a corkscrew. “And after yah get tuh do dis.”

            “I’m sold, let’s do this.”

            Alos walked down the hall, over to Bert’s room and then stopped in front of the door. Above the doorway, the light signal showed red, so Alos figured he should knock. He placed his hand up to the door, pulling his left lunch pail containing fist back to knock, when the light turned green, and the door swung open.

            “Enter, I have been expecting you.” Bert sat lumbering over into a slouch upon his equally large wheeled chair.

            Alos stepped inside, swinging the pail up and dropping it onto Bert’s lap.

            “This is the hand Yacapo gave me. I don’t know the specifics, but he said you could put it on.”

            “Yacapo sent me the schematics,” Bert’s headset folded out, extending a visor in front of his eyes, and illuminating a small section over the right eye with graphics, “It should not take long.”

            Bert continued, standing in front of his sink and washing his hands, “Lay down on the bed beside you.”

            The bed was a long thin gurney with side rails propped up between the walls of the room. Alos folded down the closest side and crawled up on top. It was surprisingly comfortable, the cushion mattress being a soft sponge under his body, allowing him to relax.

            Small pricks of anxiety began to run across Alos’ head, in painful random patterns. He didn’t think he was nervous for the operation, in fact, he thought he was excited for it to finally be over with, but the churning acid in his stomach thought otherwise. Bert was across the room filling a vial with some substance unknown to him, only exacerbating his anxiousness of getting a mechanical limb permanently attached to his body.

            “Like last time, you will feel a coldness, and then a numbness.” Bert walked back over to Alos, the syringe filled with a blue tinted clear liquid in hand. “Then you will be awoken by me after it is finished.”

            “So I’ll just pass out then?” Alos asked, when he was suddenly prodded with the needle directly into the tip of his nub.

             "Ahh, ow! Come ON man, give me some heads up!”

            Almost instantaneously, he felt the coldness flush through his wrist followed by the lack of sensation he called numbness. The chilling frost crept up his arm through his veins, up his shoulder, down into chest, and then through his heart.

            That was the last thing he remembered.