by Eddie Patin
Fair point, Jason thought. He remembered having studied someone in his civics class who'd made a quote about having to choose between freedom and security. Who was that? Benjamin Franklin, maybe? This world had apparently chosen security.
"Poor frukers?"
Riley smirked in the mirror. "I said that's the way it is, didn't I? Doesn't mean that's the way I like it. I'm an adventurer. I left."
They drove through the same dire, urban landscape for a long time, constantly oppressed from all sides by tired skyscrapers and massive, stained structures and advertisements and people—so many people! At one point, the road they were on rose up and Jason saw through a rare clear area between buildings the huge, dark tower he'd spotted before from outside Citadel's wall. In the distance, there was a positively-monstrous building twice as tall as the rest of the city around it. More like a gargantuan temple than a skyscraper, it was jet black, gleaming in the sun, and had a huge orange 'X' on the side. Behind the 'X' was the rest of the word in green. The entire word glowed:
Xygen.
Jason didn't have to be reminded that Xygen was the huge corporate entity that Riley had mentioned. It looked like a sinister villain's headquarters, looming over the rest of Citadel like a dark wizard's tower.
After a good while longer, Riley finally slowed down and pulled off of the road choked with hover-traffic onto a small side-street that led into a dark and neon maze of huge, run-down buildings.
They continued that way for several more miles, weaving through the lowest level of the megacity, sometimes passing through tunnels and tight cuts between buildings. Jason watched their surroundings fall out of repair more and more the farther they deviated from the main highway. He watched peoples' general appearance grow rougher—dirtier—and saw more and more small patrols of Guard soldiers walking the deep sidewalks next to the road with rifles gleaming in pink and green lights. It was fascinating, but Jason felt beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would never want to live in a place like this. While he didn't see any 'hoodlums' or violent incidents or anything else, he had a feeling that such a tightly-controlled government must deal with crime very harshly. He also had a feeling that those soldiers were pretty quick on their triggers.
"Here we are," Riley finally said, pulling into a dark parking garage and navigating through several rows of utter darkness until finding a place to stop. The parking garage was dark as hell, and why not? Didn't everyone here have night vision or something else from cybernetic implants? The light of the hovercar's headlights lit up an ancient concrete wall in front of them, and when Riley settled the vehicle down onto its struts and turned everything off, the three of them were thrust into total darkness.
"Holy shit, it's dark!" Jason said.
"Did you bring a light?" Riley asked, opening his door. Jason felt a wave of heat hit him from the opening. "Stick next to me, okay, Jason? Let's not get separated. It's a big place."
"I am with you, Ranaja," Gliath said suddenly. It always surprised Jason when the leopardwere spoke after not making a peep for hours.
"Yeah, I know, good buddy. I was talking to Jason."
They all exited the hovercar. Jason grabbed his cane from the dark vehicle interior. He punched it down onto the sandy floor of the dark space, thinking back to when he actually needed it to help him walk. Pulling out a flashlight, Jason lit up his path and looked around. It was indeed a pitch-black parking garage with a bazillion other hovercars parked around them, mostly just as beat-up and crappy-looking as Gordon's.
"What are we under?" Jason asked.
"Housing project," Riley said.
Riley led them through multiple dark lanes—it felt like a half-mile of walking—to a stairwell leading up in one wall. They encountered a pair of Concord guardsmen at a closed metal door—their rifles cradled in their arms—watching them approach in the darkness with deep frowns and their faces hidden above the upper lip.
"Offworlders," one of them said, staring at Jason and Gliath. The small white flare of Jason's flashlight reflected back at them from the guy's face-shield. "Show me your cards."
They did.
The soldiers allowed them to pass and Riley led the way into a dank and narrow concrete hallway, also pitch-black. Jason's light revealed many metal doors painted rust-red. It looked like a huge apartment complex of the mustiest, most bug-infested kind. As they passed, one door opened slightly. When the pale, nearly-naked man on the other side saw the three of them, he closed the door again right away. Jason heard several locks turned.
"He's here?!" Jason asked. "In this place?"
"Quiet," Riley replied, leading on.
At the end of the extremely-long hall, Riley led them through a door into a claustrophobic stairwell, up three flights, then into another hall that was pretty-much the same as the first. After over a dozen doors, Riley finally stopped at one that looked like all of the others and knocked. There were no numbers or identifiers on the door that Jason could see.
The soldier met Jason's gaze in the darkness, barely lit by his flashlight. Riley smirked, waiting.
Jason looked back down the hall. The illumination of his flashlight caught in Gliath's yellowish-green eyes, flashing back at him. Interesting that the leopardwere's eyes flashed like a cat's even when in human form.
After a few seconds, the door was opened by a tall and skinny older man dressed in a strange, tight shirt unlike any fashion on Earth. The man's hair was short and shock-white, shaved entirely away from one section of his cranium where Jason could see an array of ports and holes for plugging in God knows what. The man's pupils dimly glowed green in the darkness of the hall. Jason could see a soft, white light coming from inside the apartment behind him.
"Walter," Riley said quietly with a smile.
"Ah!" the old man replied with a sudden grin. "By the ninth! I haven't seen you in a long time, boy! Come in! Come in!"
The three Reality Rifters were immediately ushered inside by the excited man. Jason turned off his flashlight, happy to be in a lit living room. There were two couches and an armchair, a TV, an extra-large coffee table—it seemed to be a thing on Ebonexus, using coffee tables for more than magazines—and a small desk with some books and something like a very old computer in a corner. A modest LED bulb lit illuminated the room from the center of its concrete-like ceiling. There were no windows.
"Riley Wyatt!" Walter exclaimed after closing the door, then he sheepishly corrected himself. "Max, I mean! Max Graves! Ha!" Riley rolled his eyes and smirked. "To what do I owe the pleasure, young man?"
"Good to see you, Walter," Riley exclaimed, shaking the man's hand warmly. Jason noticed that Wally the Knife had several metallic ridges emerging from the left side of his face, now gleaming silver in the white light of the room. "I came to get some work done on a friend of mine. He's an offworlder. Jason Leaper."
Walter's pale eyes went wide and he approached Jason with a look of awe. "A ... Jason Leaper...? Truly?" He smiled broadly. "I have heard of such a creature, but I have never met one!"
"Nice to meet ya," Jason replied, smiling and feeling weird.
"Well, cook my egg!" the old man replied, shaking Jason's hand exuberantly. "Nice to meet you too, my boy! My name is Walter Savage. What can I do for a Jason Leaper?"
"What do you know about Jason Leapers?" Jason asked, instantly curious about how his reputation had preceded him.
Walter scoffed. "I've never met one! But I hear that Xygen's always looking for them. Jason Leapers are very valuable! You're one of many, my boy! You Jason Leapers are ninth dimensional beings. You can rift with your own brain instead of having to use gate technology like we normal humans need to. Rifting without your ability is very expensive, you know!"
"Normal humans," Jason replied with a laugh. He looked at Riley, who only smirked. "I guess I'm here because I'm a little too normal. I'd like to ... uh ... maybe ... um—"
"He needs some synthetic eardrums," Riley said. "His world uses slug guns and he keeps taking hearing dam
age when we shoot. Oh—and image intensifiers in his eyes."
"One eye!" Jason corrected. "Just one eye, for now."
A cold dread started building in Jason's belly. The idea of playing around with his body parts terrified him. What if he ended up deaf or blind? He looked around at this guy's apartment. The halls outside and the parking garage and street around this place made this building look like the worst slum Jason had ever seen.
"One eye?" Walter replied, looking at Jason like he was crazy. "Just one? And intensifier only? Why not let me put in a bionic processor and power source? I can give you a HUD like everyone else here, and you'll see so much better! We should do both eyes. Why would you want to keep your old bio-eyes? It's an easy procedure, and I may as well do it while you're under, kid..."
Riley spoke up. "Ah ... there are no cybernetics on Jason's world. He's a little apprehensive."
Walter stared at Jason for a moment then shrugged. "Eh. And just the eardrums? No aural processing or comm link?"
"Maybe later," Riley said.
"You'll need a power source for the eye. Should I use a CamComm port for recharging the battery, or something different?"
"They don't have CamComms," Riley said.
"You mean for plugging something into my eye to recharge it?" Jason asked. "Like a USB cord or something?"
"I don't know what 'USB' is, Jason Leaper," Walter replied, "and you won't plug directly into your eye, but yes. What sort of connection do you want? What do you use on your world?"
Jason reached into his backpack and pulled out the Infinity Charger that he'd made from electronic parts and an infinity crystal. He quickly disassembled it as everyone watched—Gliath stood there like a ghost, totally ignored—then handed Walter the female USB port from his creation.
"How about this? We charge things with this kind of port back home. The cable has a male end. Can you make it so I can clean it or replace it if necessary?"
Walter took the piece and squinted at it. "Sure, kid. This'll work. Alright, come with me. Let's head to the back. I'll tell you all about what I'm gonna do..."
Later, Jason woke up cool and lying on his back on a mattress with orange sheets. With a quick stab of cold panic, he realized that he couldn't see through his right eye! He was staring up a dark concrete ceiling through his left only, and his ears tickled deep inside their canals.
Jason felt at his right eye, which was blind for the moment, and was momentarily confused when he found an eyepatch under his fingertips. He blinked, and couldn't feel the covered eye move.
"Shit..." he muttered, struggling to sit. Uttering the word made his ears feel funny, and he realized that the sound of the building's air circulation system was sharp and raw to his hearing.
"Hey, you're awake!"
It was Riley's voice, just as edgy and weird as the drone of the room.
Jason straightened up, slightly dizzy, feeling a little dehydrated and like his brain was more like cotton than grey matter. He saw his cyborg friend sitting in a chair in the opposite corner of the small bedroom. Riley stood, smiling.
Then it all came back to him.
Wally the Knife.
Before putting him under, the surgeon had explained exactly what he was going to do. Like he and Riley had hinted at before, the eardrum work would be easy and would be fully healed within a few hours. His right eye was a little more complicated. Jason had decided to modify his right eye—instead of outright replacing it—which was his dominant eye in shooting. He figured that if he ever had to fight in the dark, it'd be better to see with his aiming eye. Walter was going to put some sort of tech inside the existing eyeball, which would enhance his ability to utilize existing light a lot like night vision goggles or a cat's eyes did. The image intensifier had to be connected to a power source, which Walter was planning to install subdermally—their batteries were very small—along with some wiring and Jason's USB port for recharging, which would sit under his hair directly above his right ear. Apparently, the power cell would be good for about a week's worth of juice to the intensifier before needing to be recharged. Recharging would be quick once plugged in. Ebonexus was technologically far more advanced than Earth of u934, and all of its tech was apparently much more efficient. Walter also installed a subdermal switch in the web of Jason's left hand, which would turn the intensifier on and off. His new 'night vision eye' was manual by design. Jason didn't understand how the switch would communicate with the intensifier without wiring in between, but he assumed that it was something kind of like Bluetooth technology.
After remembering the details, Jason looked at the web of his left hand between his thumb and forefinger. His skin was a little red, but he didn't see anything. He reached for the area with his other hand and felt a small button under the skin. Squeezing the area, Jason found that he could click it with ease. He made sure to press it again to turn it off. His skin over the switch was irritated and itched.
"How can I hear already?" Jason asked, his voice sounding odd to him, but clear as a bell. "How's it healing so fast?"
"Nanobots," Riley replied, walking up to Jason.
"He said he'd inject them into my eye, too," Jason said.
"Yeah. You can use your eye again in about 24 hours. I figure we should head to the Wilderlands in the morning to give your healing a little boost. Nanobots are awesome, but there's nothing like semi-magical regeneration."
"Uh ... if your world can just inject nanobots to heal stuff, why don't you always have syringes of them ready to go like healing potions?"
"They need to be programed for very specific tasks. It's complicated. Only doctors do that."
"Huh."
Jason climbed to his feet, grabbed his OCS, backpack, and cane—all stacked up at the front of the room—and the two of them met up with Gliath and Wally the Knife again, who were talking quietly in the front room.
"How do you feel?" Walter asked with a smile.
"Fine," Jason said. "What do I owe you?"
Walter looked at Riley. "Jason Leaper, your friend has already worked something out."
After a little more chatting and instruction about Jason's very minor augmentations, everyone said goodbye and the three of them made their way back down to the parking garage. With one eye patched up, Jason had a much harder time navigating the dark halls with his flashlight, so Riley and Gliath helped him the entire way. He was glad that he'd brought his cane, and used it to help him keep his balance in the long, dark halls.
By the time they were back in the cool controlled climate of the hovercar and on the road again, Jason kicked back on the old-fashioned and worn-out bench seat, laying his head back, and closed his left eye. They hummed along for a long time and Jason alternated between resting and watching the dismal city around them. He was relieved when they finally made it to the wall and left Citadel, skimming down the bridge and out into the great, wide open once again.
Two hours later, they were back at the small house of Riley's youth, telling Gordon all about the trip to the megacity.
"You made a good choice, Jason," the older man said, clapping him on the shoulder. "If nothing else, protecting your hearing and being able to see a little better in the dark are some good enhancements."
"Maybe I'll do more later," Jason replied.
For the last several hours, his scalp had itched here and there where he now had a USB port mostly hidden under his hair. Jason tried not to scratch at that spot over his ear, but he couldn't always resist.
Gordon gave them all dinner again, and the old man had a nice, long quiet conversation with his son as Jason watched the sunset outside once more.
By the end of dinner, Jason's eardrums didn't feel weird or tickle anymore. He could hear things just fine. There wasn't any more raw quality to the edges of sounds, and it felt like his hearing was back to normal as it was before the muting damage of repeated gunfire. If anything, Jason could hear more clearly now.
When the evening wound down, Jason found himself on the couch again
, his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling through his left eye. He was mighty tempted to unwrap his right eye and see what it looked like, but he decided to wait. Those nanobots were still working. Jason really hoped that he wouldn't have any gnarly sci-fi stuff sticking out of his eye, and was more than a little afraid of what he'd find under the bandage...
He remembered Riley saying that they'd likely head home that night, but the sun was down and they were still on Ebonexus. Staring up at the ceiling with one eye in the cool darkness on Gordon's couch, Jason didn't mind heading home the next morning instead.
Jason adjusted the small throw blanket over him, nervously scratching at and toying with the switch embedded in his hand. He imagined how great it would be to shoot his guns without their report hurting his ears. He was also super-excited about what the world would look like through his new image intensifier in the dark.
Dark vision, he thought, thinking back to DnD. Or maybe more like low-light vision.
Jason smiled and fell asleep scratching at his hand.
Chapter 7
With Lillian's cold hand in hers, Morgana paused at the doorway and took one last look around. Townsfolk walked through the streets, most of them starting to head home in the cool, afternoon light. The area in front of the old, abandoned house was littered with debris and broken pieces of the home's stone wall and eaves.
The young woman couldn't shake the idea that all of the people of New Bozeman were watching her; whispering sideways to each other about what a villain she was. Yet, at the same time, she moved through her people like a ghost, shunned and forgotten.
Far in the distance, Morgana could hear Magister Estren's grating voice as he shouted his sermon at anyone who stopped to listen. That bastard stood in the Crossroads in front of the church at the center of town. She couldn't make out what he was saying—she only heard the annoying, blustering tone of his braying voice—but she didn't need to know. It was always the same shit.
