Surface: Doomed Planet

Excerpt 17- Augmentation

I'd been shot, cut, blown up and stabbed before, so I'd sort of been down this road already. I'd grown used to the feeling of bullets ripping through me, however, getting something severed was a completely different ball game. I'm not sure I have words to describe exactly how it felt, but I'm sure we can all agree that it's not a feeling you want to know.

When I came to, I found myself in my room at the hotel, everyone of my friends were in the room with me and, excluding Chy and Alcatraz, they were all asleep. I wasn't sure what alerted Chy to my waking up, but she said.

"Hey Sky, how are you feeling?"

"Not sure", I said, "can't really feel anything right now."

"It's the Anesthesia", Alcatraz said, "everything should be normal soon."

"Everything will not be normal", I said, or more slurred, since half of my face was still asleep, "I' no longer have any arms!"

"Yes you do", Tyler said, having woken up, "your welcome."

This was about the time when I realized that, yes, I did in fact have feeling in my arms, so I looked down. What I saw were some really high dollar looking prosthetics that were styled with the common place bare metal and hydraulic looks. They weren't any bigger than my original arms, however, I knew that a hydraulic strut in place of tissue and bone would lend me a few favors in hand to hand combat. I had full control over my fingers and despite being drastically different from appearance wise, it felt as though nothing had changed, even the palms of my hands were covered with a material that felt like normal skin.

"Where the hell did you get these?", I asked, "these look like military versions."

"They are", Chy said, "bio augmentation was common place in the more developed parts of Calos, we made a special trip into town to get them from Ryu's guards, who spent 4 days searching for them for you."

"4 days?", I asked sitting up, "how long was I out?"

"About a week", Sarah said.

"A week?", I asked.

"Yep", Alcatraz said.

I sighed, "so how bad has the Supply Situation gotten since then?"

"It hasn't gotten worse, but it hasn't gotten better either", James said from the corner of the room, "it's slowly slipping away from us. We're doing what we can, but the Super Storm is keeping us from doing a whole lot because the Volatiles are out."

"And speaking of", I said looking to Chy, "reason for cutting my arm off please?"

"Would you rather have turned?", Chy asked, "it was either lose the arm or your life."

"Fair enough", I said, "but from now on, we all go together, no more of us splitting up, we take objectives as a team, Agreed?"

"Yes", Alcatraz said.

"Yeah", James said.

"Agreed", Allen answered.

"Yep", Mike said.

"And on that note", Alcatraz said standing up, "Ryu had a course set up so we can kill some time until the storm blows over. Let's go run it."

"Sounds like a plan to me", I said sitting up, "but gimme a few minutes to get the feeling in my limbs back."

"We'll meet you down there", Chy said.

"Okay", Alcatraz said stepping out of the room with the others behind him, James, the last one out, shut the door behind him. I sighed, starring at my new arms, not sure if I'd be able to adjust to them correctly, everything felt normal, but feeling cold steel where there should be Chitin wasn't sitting well, never mind the fact that I could feel a piece of metal coming off both my shoulders and eventually disappearing into the back of my neck. I'd heard too many stories about biology rejecting technology and what happened to people when it did. Chy leaned up against my back, putting her arms around me.