Lab Rats ?

Chapter One

Case #87311/JSB-Steve Austin

I try not to think about crashing the Daedelus – the accident that resulted in my becoming a case number. It was the only time I've ever battled a machine where the machine was victorious. My memories of that day are only partial ones, anyhow: the plane refusing to do what I was telling it to do, to level off; the ground coming up on me, way too fast; the heat of the fire. Those are all bearable memories, things I've learned to deal with. Sure, the loss of a billion-dollar aircraft was hard to swallow and an awful exclamation point to end a career, but what really bothered me was the loss of a big part of my humanity.

There was a lot of time during recovery with nothing to do but lie there and think, and there were basically only two things on my mind. The first was that this was no longer me, no longer my body, and what did that make me? Sub-human, or something even less than that? My second thought was of...Jaime. We weren't even together then – hadn't been for years – but my heart has belonged to her since my first day in third grade. Somehow, I always knew we'd find each other again. Lying in that hospital bed, though, I had to wonder if she'd ever be able to even look at someone who was now just half a man.

A couple of times, right after "it" happened, I tried to make a permanent exit. Rudy asked me this morning, when we started this little survey of his, if I still felt they should've let me die, instead of tampering with nature and fate. The answer? Yes – and no. Yes, because I do believe I wasn't supposed to survive that crash. No, because of...Jaime.

Knowing how I feel about my own bionics (a necessary but unpleasant reality), I can't always square in my own mind how I could be presumptuous and selfish enough to have made that same choice for Jaime. I mean, years after my own accident, I still struggle every day with the thought of human versus machine inside my own body. How could I have made the same choice for the woman I love more than life itself?

Rudy asked me about nightmares; there's my biggie, and it isn't my own accident. On my very worst nights, when I close my eyes, I'm seeing Jaime falling through the sky, suddenly without a parachute. I've never hated my bionic eye more than when it zeroed in to see her face as she realized what was about to happen. Yes, she knew, even if she mercifully doesn't remember it. Should I have jumped up, tried to catch her and break her fall? Rudy tells me that even with bionic legs, it would've been a physical impossibility and we'd likely both have died on impact. Still, I wonder sometimes if I could've saved her from all of this, if only...

Once she hit the ground, I held her in my arms while we waited for the ambulance. It almost felt like my life was draining away at the same time as hers. She was dying, and a part of my soul was dying right along with her. Jaime had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember, and when the doctor came out and told us there really wasn't any hope, I couldn't even begin to imagine my life without her in it. I saw her lying on that table, and she knew it was over for her; she'd already begun to accept it, but I just couldn't.

Calling Oscar and convincing him to make Jaime bionic was the most selfish thing I've ever done, and for all the wrong reasons. I can't say I regret it, because she's still alive, happy and doing well. Jaime tries to spare my feelings, but I know even she wonders sometimes if it was the wrong thing to do. I think her amnesia was fate's way of saying 'How dare you, Steve?' and I deserved what happened between us for the cavalier way I chose to put her through pain I could barely endure myself.

Now, it seems the fates saw fit to give us back to each other for one more try, and as I hold her in my arms, I know that Jaime is my saving grace, the answer to all of my internal struggles. She is human – 100 percent – and that means that I am, too.

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