Her eyes open, but everything is brighter, as if a filter has been placed over them. Over her shoulder, she hears the creaks and hums of computer servers. The room is cold, like she has awakened in a refrigerator.
Emi blinks several times, trying to clear her vision and her mind. Where am I? How am I alive? She starts to sit up.
“Ah-ah-ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” His voice is squeaky, almost rat-like.
She tries to reply, but no words come out.
“That blade did a number on you. Going to be expensive to buy back your voice.”
She looks down at the pain in her left leg, not remembering she no longer has the bottom half of it.
“Ah yes, legs too…very expensive. You do have the limbs you came in with, however. Unfortunately, ‘twas the only way to save you. I did have to replace your eyes, they were threatening to pop at any second. Can’t have that happening…not again. You will of course, need to pay me back.” He lowers his voice to the level of a mouse, “With interest, naturally.”
Where am I?
The man stays in front of the servers tapping behind her, reading her question as it appears on the screen. “Welcome to Hachijo Cybernetics.”
They must’ve given me a brain implant.
“While we had the eye-sockets emptied, it only made sense to go ahead and install the brain-computer-interface.”
Do I at least get a discount for making it easier?
“Afraid not.”
Hachijo…like, the prison?
“Precisely like the prison.”
You make all the inmates lie around naked?
He stands, rushes to cover her with a silk blanket that is as cold as fresh fallen snow. “Sorry about that. You were a vegetable for quite some time. Didn’t know if you’d ever be alive again to care about such silly things. Don’t fear, bodies are nothing more than machinery to me. Might as well be made of circuits and wires.”
How comforting…
“Yes, it is, isn’t it.”
Why was I brought here?
“Fear not, amnesia is to be expected. Your father was murdered…by you.”
Her mind is an incoherent stew of flashing thoughts. The meat of the thing is she doesn’t accept she would ever do such a thing—she loves her father.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“Unfortunately, it is true. He managed to take your leg, but you took his head.”
Was there no trial?
“Seeing as your father, the appointed Judge & Executioner of the island was dead, there was no trial to be had. The Emperor thought you unlikely to wake, and he figured if fate were to intervene—which in this case was me—you would spend the rest of your life suffering here. He rightly thought this a just punishment for the murder of his brother and right-hand man.”
Can I have something to drink?
“Best let me unplug you first. More than a few have electrocuted themselves due to the malpractice of their surgeons after the hard part was already done.” He moves where she can see him, revealing his own, white-lit eyes and wiry frame with no flesh to be found. His hands are cold, just like everything here, as his metal presses against her flushed body and jerks plugs—seemingly at random—from ports he put inside her.
She sits up, the silk dropping to her lap. Seeing the coldness of the man-made-robot, she doesn’t bother to recover herself.
How long have I been here?
“3,786 days.” She has been sleeping through a decade of her cursed life.
Got anything stronger than water?
“Way ahead of you.” He tries to smile, but his face has no muscles.
She takes the glass of sake and drinks it in one hard gulp. She barfs gray fluids atop the silk sheet in her lap. It is several minutes before it stops coming long enough to give her a chance to wipe her mouth clean using the back of her hand and slide her leg over the side of the metal table. The room is spinning from the sake, but at least she is ever-so-slightly warmer. So, what can these cybernetics do?
“I thought you’d never ask.” He sounds giddy…for a machine. Back at his computer he presses keys faster than she remembers being possible.
Her sight fills with data screens. How do I use them?
A voice sounds inside her head; it’s voice exactly like her father. “Hello, Inmate 392689. I am happy to assist you. The data screens can be—”
Can you change the voice? I don’t need my father to still be talking down to me all day every day.
“Of course, for five hundred yen. Thought it would be nice to help you remember him.” He cycles through some options. She picks the soothing woman with an Australian accent, finding the voice a funny juxtaposition to her harsh reality.
The voice talks soft, exaggerating the Australian as much as programmed. “The data screens can be easily accessed by squinting at the specific pixel you want to see.”
She squints at the first number she sees, and it zooms in large enough to read while the voice dictates the information in a strange blend of Australian-accented Japanese: Part Number 5487; Days used - 3,786; 62% remaining. She turns to the surgeon who made her. A name appears: Inmate Number 143787 (Nygil). Illegal Enhancements. Chrome. Specialization: Cybernetic Implants. Balance: ￥3,756,976. Personality: OCD.
She looks at her cold reflection on the steel table. Inmate Number 392689 (Emi). Murderer. Cyborg. Specialization: Assassin. Balance ￥-100,756,098. Personality: Immature. She shivers at the information.
Am I real? She pokes at her chest.
Nygil answers, “You were sleeping a long time. But thanks to my meticulous, care your body kept growing without you.” He forgets to mention the slight, but significant, mis-calculations that have made the recovery process so slow.
Where can I find my clothes? Seems I have a lot of work to make up for.
The voice in her head answers, “Take a left outside the nearest door, then right to the laundry room.” A waypoint appears above the doorway mentioned.
Emi drops onto her leg, ties the silk sheet around her as best she can, and hops to it.
The voice sounds in her head: ““New Inventory Item: Silk Sheet. Warning: as soon as we leave this room, we are part of the game.”
