.........*beep*........

 

"...huh....?"

 

........*beep*........

 

"...the hell is that?"

 

........*beep*........

 

"Shut up I'm trying to sleep....."

 

........*beep*........

 

Eva groaned and tried to move her hand to bat at the noise in an attempt to silence it. She became immediately aware that even though she could move her hand and fingers, her arm failed to respond to her command. Her eyes flared open and she found herself facing down at the floor, laying on her front looking down through a padded hole in whatever she was laying on.

 

She strained to move but only managed to barely wiggle her limbs. Was she paralysed? No she could feel everything but nothing would obey her. Her breathing quickened as panic rose inside her, causing they irritating beeping to speed up.

 

"Doctor, she's waking up." a woman's voice came from one side.

 

"Relax Lieutenant Hawkins," came a man's voice from the same direction, "You're in the infirmary of the Retribution."

 

"Why can't I move?" Eva asked through gritted teeth.

 

"You were injected with a lethal dose of military grade stimulants. When you were recovered from the wreck your major muscle groups were torn and in the process of myonecrosis. We were forced to remove the dead muscle tissue and put you on dialysis to flush the toxins from your system. You can't move because we have not turned your new muscles on." the doctor explained.

 

Eva lay silent for a moment processing this before speaking, "Turn... them on....?"

 

"Execute syth-muscle prototype activation, level 1." Eva heard the doctor say.

 

"Yes doctor." the woman's voice replied.

 

A few moments later Eva felt a subtle warmth build through her body. Inside her arms, legs, stomach, over her shoulders and across her back. Small aches throbbed at her joints where the synth-muscle anchored to her body, not fully healed yet.

 

"Try to move now, Lieutenant Hawkins. Slowly does it, you are still some days off being fully healed." the doctor said.

 

Eva tentatively told her arms to move and they responded slow and sluggish as if she was trying to move through molasses. She braced her hands next to her chest on the bed and pushed off, eventually moving herself to sit on the edge of the bed. She lifted her hands up into her line of sight and examined her arms, noticing mostly healed surgical scars trailing the lines of where her muscles should be.

 

"Good," the doctor said while glancing between Eva and a nearby console where the nurse stood. The console screen displayed a cross-section image of a human body with readouts and real-time graphs. "Latency seems minimal, co-ordination and balance degradation apparently minimal. Nurse, activate level 2."

 

The nurse nodded and touched a finger to a slider on one side of the screen, pushing it up to the second notch. Almost immediately Eva found it easier to sit upright, her abdominal muscles gaining strength. She moved her arms again and found them to move more freely.

 

"That should give you enough strength to move around slowly without hampering the final stages of healing on the anchors. It won't be much longer before we can start properly calibrating your body to match your old strength but for now you should get as much rest as you can." the doctor explained.

 

"When can I see my squad?" Eva asked.

 

"Let me be perfectly clear Lieutenant," he said, his bedside manner vanishing and replaced by a stern commanding voice, "The technology we put in your body is experimental and classified. You will not be able to see your colleges until after the calibration is complete. Once we are convinced that your anchors are set and your systems are operating properly we will graft your scars away and no unauthorised personnel will know the extent of your augmentation."

 

Eva scowled as she settled back against the bed, noticing for the first time a tightness of skin across her back as it touched against the mattress. She remembered the lashings that occurred in between the electrocutions in that cold room, and closed her eyes with a shiver.

 

NEXT ENTRY: Karma