Free Web NovelChapter 108: Harness
Tali came to the safe house at oh-six-forty with a black tool case and a thermos.
She put both on Iris’s kitchen table. She took off her jacket, hung it on the back of the chair Marcus had sat in eight days ago, and rolled up her sleeves to the elbow.
"Shirt off, scrubber." Caleb took his shirt off, and Tali studied his ribs.
The override harness was riding too high. The black mesh had stretched. The silver thread that grounded the bypass to the harness had darkened where it crossed the lower-rib spirals. The skin under the thread was a deep ash-purple Caleb had not seen on himself before.
"Yeah," Tali said. "I’m not going to lie to you. This is going to hurt."
"Okay."
"Sit." He sat, and she opened the case.
Iris cleared the table. She moved the kettle. She moved the fourth folder, which had been sitting there for six days. She moved Caleb’s helmet to the floor.
Tali laid out her tools on a clean towel. A laser stylus. A pair of fine-tip forceps. Two pre-loaded syringes. A scalpel that was older than Caleb. A bone clamp shaped like a small wrench.
"Where’s the anesthetic," Iris said.
"There isn’t one. The piece reads anesthetic as a threat and overloads the bypass. He has to be awake. He has to feel it. If he stops feeling it, the piece is winning."
Iris didn’t answer. She poured Caleb a glass of water. She set it next to his hand. Tali’s comm clicked on.
[Brother: Caleb.]
"Yeah."
[Brother: I’m here. I’m going to talk to you for the next hour and you are going to answer me. If you stop answering me, Tali stops the procedure. I am your timer. Don’t make me stop her.]
"I’ll answer."
[Brother: Good. First question. What was the name of the dog we had when I was six?]
"Wrench."
[Brother: That was a strange name.]
"Dad named it."
[Brother: He would. Second question. What did Mom feed us on Sundays?]
"Rice cakes. The ones from the place by the rail yard."
[Brother: I haven’t had one in four years. Add it to the Day Seventeen list.]
"Adding it."
Tali had her stylus on his ribs.
She made the first cut.
It hurt the way Caleb had been told it would hurt.
He kept answering.
His brother asked about a school friend Caleb hadn’t thought of in fifteen years. He asked about a movie they had watched together when their father was still in the house. He asked about a fistfight Caleb had been in at thirteen that he had told no one about, because their father had been the one who broke it up, and because that had been the last day their father had been there.
Caleb answered all of it.
Tali worked.
She had her gloved hands inside the long incision along his lowest right rib. Her forceps were holding the bypass open. The laser stylus was tracing a re-routed pathway along a sub-rib she had to access without lifting the rib. It was a centimeter of work that was going to take twenty-eight minutes.
She did not speak.
Iris stood behind her with the clamp in her hand in case Tali needed it.
[Brother: Tali.]
"Yes."
[Brother: Tell my brother about Pyotr.] Tali’s hands didn’t stop moving.
"Pyotr was my brother," she said to Caleb. "He was four years older than me. He was a mechanic in Sector Six. He died in twenty-nineteen during the Class-Six event. He was fixing the lift gates at Perimeter Four when the backwash hit. I built three of the suits I have built since then with parts from his locker. I was supposed to tell you that two years ago when I gave you the first iteration of the bypass, because the bypass is the same architecture as the suit he was wearing the day he died. You have been carrying a piece built to keep him alive, and it did not keep him alive. I should have told you that. I didn’t because I didn’t want you carrying the weight of it on top of the weight you were already carrying."
She moved the stylus a millimeter.
"I am telling you now because the rebuild I am doing on you is a rebuild I never got to do on him. He died before I figured out the second iteration. Your bypass is going to hold today because his didn’t hold then. That is not a metaphor. That is the architecture."
Caleb breathed through his teeth. "Tali."
"Yeah."
"Thank you."
"Don’t. Answer your brother." Tali kept working with the same narrow focus.
[Brother: Caleb.] "I’m here."
[Brother: What was the dog’s full name?] "Sergeant Wrench."
[Brother: I had forgotten the Sergeant. Good.]
The Hacker came on the channel at the twenty-minute mark.
[Hacker: I’m sorry, Caleb. I have to take a sponsor today. The decline pattern is now a signal. Furuhashi is the cleanest of the three. I’m taking them. The contract is a six-month exclusive with a Day Seventeen escape clause. You don’t have to do anything. The contract is signed by my desk. You stay quiet on stream for the next eight days and they pay out regardless. The contract is a parking spot.]
"Okay."
[Hacker: I am sorry. I held it as long as I could.]
"I know. Take it."
[Hacker: I took it twelve minutes ago. The press release goes out at oh-nine-hundred.]
The channel went quiet.
Tali finished at the thirty-one-minute mark.
She closed the bypass. She closed the incision with the same micro-suture she had used on Caleb’s brother’s augment line two years ago. Caleb could see the pattern. She wrapped the harness around his ribs and clamped it to the new connection point. She tested the seal three times.
She sat back.
She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist.
"Hold up your shirt for me, scrubber."
Caleb pulled his undershirt up, and Tali studied the spirals on his ribs.
She went quiet.
Iris came around the table to inspect them too.
The spirals were not purple.
They were silver.
A thin, even silver, running along the ridges of bone where the marks had been purple twelve hours ago. They were not glowing. They were not warm. They seemed like metal laid into the skin from underneath.
"Brother," Tali said into her mic. "Talk to your father. The marks went silver during the rebuild. I have not seen this before. He needs to know."
[Brother: He knows. He told me about it on Day Three. He said it would happen on Day Eight or Day Nine. He said to tell you when it did. He said the silver is the right color.]
"Tell him from me that I am going to have words with him about advance notice."
[Brother: He says you always do.]
Tali laughed once.
It was the first time Caleb had heard her laugh.
It was a real laugh.
It was a small one.
Iris brought him his shirt back.
He pulled it on. The harness sat right under it. The harness was quieter than it had been in a month. The bypass was at eighty-three percent. A sixteen-point drop in thirty-one minutes. And the climb-rate counter on his visor had reset to zero.
Tali packed her tools.
She did not pack the thermos.
"Drink it," she said. "There’s no anesthetic in it. It’s just coffee. It’s strong."
He drank.
She took her jacket off the back of the chair.
She paused at the kitchen door.
"Scrubber."
"Yeah."
"I’m glad my brother gave me parts that worked on yours."
She left. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
Caleb sat at the kitchen table for a long time after she was gone.
His undershirt was warm with sweat. His ribs were not.
The silver under his skin was the temperature of the room.
He pulled the shirt up once more and studied the silver.
The marks were the shape they had been. The shape was the same. The color was different.
He could not feel them at all.
