The Deviance

Part 4 - Overload

Bastion awoke to sensory overload and confusion. He couldn't access his ocular or hearing implants, and for the first time in his life he felt the world filtered through purely human functions. Everything seemed too bright, and too loud all at the same time, he covered his ears and closed his eyes I futility. He had no concept of time as he waited for his body to normalize, opening his eye he began to make out the outline of the room he was in. It was cubic, with harsh yellow light emitting from the ceiling and bouncing off the eggshell white walls. He could perceive no door in his prison.

As he stumbled to his feet, his first thoughts were to find an escape. He began examining the walls with his hands as he still could not trust his eyes. Walking alongside the walls he tried to find any break or indentation that could possibly be a door. Exasperated he sat in a corner with his back facing outwards.

The realization of what was happening came slowly, he couldn't access his usual cybernetic functions because they were simply offline, not only that, without whatever protocols they possessed controlling his functions, he felt like his body was having a hard reboot like old computers. It was as if his brain were forcibly triggering switches on and off, and it made him nauseous. He closed his eyes again and tried to use his experience in science to track what was happening, to his surprise, he discovered that he could actually perceive himself internally. This new sense of self-awareness caught him off guard because it was completely down to a cellular level. Now he knew for sure that he was also a skin dancer like Crimson, and while he was new to this ability, his experience with genetics and human biology meant that his brain was on autopilot making the changes to his body to compensate for the lack of his bionics. Now he understood why face dancers were so rare, someone without his medical background stumbling on this gift would surely kill themselves if they didn't receive immediate training.

While he wasn't an adept like Crimson in changing his flesh, he found that he was quickly becoming acclimatized to his new situation, the ringing in his ears subsided, and he opened his eyes excited to be able to finally focus on his surroundings. It was strange though, while his body came under his control, he still had a feeling like his brain was seeping out of him somehow. He closed his eyes, it helped him focus on his newfound gift, he could conceive the workings of his body acutely and realized that he was starting to reject his cybernetics, something which he realized he could stop, so he did. Checking through all of his biological functions was slow at first, the process felt like learning a new language, however, if he mistook a word or phrase in this instance, he could wreck his body.

Finally deeming himself stable, he relaxed so that he could investigate his brain. Nothing seemed wrong, nothing genetic, chemical, or physical was wrong, but he still felt as though something was pulling memories from him. It felt like a tug on his mind; memories, faces, emotions, seemed to flash and disappear, almost as if someone were casually browsing through everything he had ever experienced in life. As difficult as it was, he tried to focus on what was happening internally, without much success of determining what was actually happening so he decided to explore his new gift rather than worry. He closed his eyes to focus.

Being a scientist was at his core, even as a small child he was always precocious, and while he was uncomfortable with his current situation, he had nothing better to do than experiment. He started with an observation, and what he could mentally follow when he turned this perception on to his own body, the first thing he noticed was how deeply engrained his cybernetics were into his system, and that it felt alien to him. The implants ran from a small CPU located on the base of his neck, it had links through fine wires, almost as fine as nerves, which connected various to various parts of the brain and spinal cord, there were also small implants on his auditory and ocular nerves which fed into the CPU. He also had small nanites floating inactively in his bloodstream, some free-flowing, some attached to his white blood cells, these nanites were capable of cellular repair and were primarily what kept humans ageless and in peak form. This explained why his body was buzzing with cellular activity, his face dancing gift making the adjustments needed to his cells, the way the nanites would.