Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Crisis Core copyright Squaresoft/Square-enix.
**** Zack's POV ****
I was woken up by a steady rhythmic beeping that I heard more clearly than anything else in my life so far. The beeping could only be a heart monitor; I was in a hospital. There was something a little off, however; I could not feel the bed under me. I felt like I was watching TV through someone else's eyes.
"Am I alive?" I asked a moving white blur.
"That depends on your philosophical view of 'alive.'." The white blur answered.
"Are you an angel? Everything is blurry." I wasn't sure if I was on Earth still or had woken up in the afterlife.
"Again, depends on your philosophical view. But let me fix your blur issue." The white blur answered again, and then stung me with some sort of remote-shaped object. My vision went black for a couple seconds and then returned with inhuman clarity; I could almost see the individual fibers of the nurse's outfit. She wrote something on my bedside chart and then left the room. Shortly after, a man about in his 40s with mostly black hair and a golden hand walked in and sat down in a chair next to my bed.
"Hi, I'm David Sarif, founder and CEO of Sarif Industries. How are you feeling?" he asked me.
"What happened? Last thing I remember is lying on the ground in the rain, slowly losing consciousness. Next thing I know, I wake up here." I told him what I remembered last; I was trying to remember for myself as well. Sarif let out a heavy sigh.
"What I'm about to tell you won't be easy to hear." He sounded like a worried parent about to tell their child that their pet died. He put his hand on mine and I heard a beep in my ear. [David Sarif, founder of Sarif Industries. No threat detected.] The words suddenly appeared and seemed to float in mid air.
"What happened to my eyes?" I asked in a panicked voice, as I reached to feel them. My fingers hit a hard plastic surface that covered my eye well completely.
"You have ocular implants that help you see better. You had some damage to your eyes from whatever happened to you, so my surgeons returned your sight to pre-incident functionality; better even." Sarif explained. It's ok, its just eye implants. Nothing major. I thought to myself, assuring myself I was still human; augmentation had always fascinated and scared me at the same time. I looked at my arms and they looked slightly different; my muscles were at least a hundred times more defined than I last remember them. I looked at my chest and saw relatively the same thing; highly defined and slightly metallic in appearance.
"What… what all did you augment?" I asked with hesitation; part of me was afraid of the answer because of what I felt and/or didn't feel. Sarif let out a heavy sigh and stood up from the chair. He took a couple steps away from the bed before he spoke.
"We had to go beyond augmentation in some parts of your body. There was just too much damage to fix it by augmenting it, so we replaced it entirely. It was the best we could do." Sarif explained; his voice carrying more sadness than Cissnei finding me on that deserted beach. His answer broke something in me, and made me burn with the rage of Hell itself. My mind was growling with uncontrolled rage.
"Are you shitting me?!" I heard myself shout as I flew out of bed and saw a short sword swing out of my forearm like a switchblade. I was moments from contact with Sarif when I heard a piercing clash of metal against metal, followed by what felt like a sledge hammer hitting me in the stomach. There was a man in sunglasses and a black trench coat that appeared out of nowhere that had blocked my arm blade with his own and then flipped me over his back on to the floor.
"I may not have asked for my augmentations, and I may not always agree with Sarif, but I will not let him die in some punk's fit of rage." The man said in an almost growling voice.
"*cough* where the hell did you come from?" I snapped back. He was not here a couple seconds ago; was he eavesdropping?
"I'm Sarif's Chief of Security; you try anything like that again and you won't get the opportunity to ask questions later. Do you understand?" He asked in a demanding tone.
"Yeah, yeah. You have your humanity taken from you by force and see how you feel." I grumbled. The man picked me up by the throat and looked me right in the eyes,
"Listen, you-"He started to say before he was interrupted by Sarif.
"Hey, easy, Jensen! I didn't spend close to half a billion dollars just so you could break him 5 minutes later." Sarif put his hand on Jensen's shoulder.
"What is going on in here? Why is the fresh-out-of-O.R. patient on the floor? And why do you look like you're about to kill someone, Jensen?" The nurse asked in a concerned tone.
"The 'fresh-out-of-O.R.' patient tried to assassinate Sarif, so I neutralized the problem." Jensen grumbled in his usual tone.
"Well if you're done playing 'assassins and bodyguards', I would like to get him back into bed. He needs rest just like the rest of us after 14 hours of surgery." The nurse said sarcastically as she helped me get back onto the hospital bed.
"I think you both should leave for now." The nurse advised after I was in my bed again.
"I'll keep in touch." Sarif said as he walked out of the room with Jensen following him.
"Just press the call button if you need anything." The nurse said pleasantly and left the room. What do I have left now that most of me is a machine? I thought as I stared at the hospital ceiling.
"Zack! You're alive! I was afraid I we were too late; it's good that you are still with us." Cissnei sounded happy.
"With you in spirit, maybe. There is barely anything left of me. These are all augmentations and various other cybernetics. I have gone too far into it and no longer have my humanity." I grumbled; I had considered getting a couple discreet augmentations, but this was entirely too much.
"Zack, the one thing that sets us apart from machines is that we have emotions." Cissnei pleaded using her voice of reason; she could convince me of almost any viewpoint with that voice and part of me hated her for that.
"I've felt only two emotions so far: anger and resentment. I am pretty sure there are more emotions than that. I might as well be a machine." I almost killed Sarif, and was snappy with almost everyone else so far, so I thought my assessment to be pretty accurate.
"You feel whatever you let into your heart the most" Cissnei unintentionally hit a nerve; though it was unintentional, it hurt just the same.
"My heart? You must mean my Guardian FX energy conversion module. That feels plenty of electrical pulses telling it to distribute synthetic blood to various parts of my cold, steel body." I snapped back sarcastically.
"Maybe I am still at least partially human since I've still got the capacity to be pissed off." I added after a few minutes of awkward silence.
"I can still feel things, but not in the same way anymore. Now, it is a computer telling me I am touching something and what it feels like. I am basically being told what to feel, and how something feels like. THAT is why I no longer feel human. And it pisses me off that I lost that because of Shinra." I started normally but ended in a growl.
"Warning, blood pressure exceeding recommended level." The patient alarm in my room chimed.
"Or you can use the patient condition alarm as your call button, whatever. That doesn't work at someone's nerves at all." The nurse sounded sarcastic, but still concerned.
"If I have to answer one more patient condition alarm because of someone dicking around, there will be no visitors allowed for 6 hours." The nurse warned as she left the room; never losing the concern from her voice.
"I… I think I better go for now." Cissnei sighed and left. I know she didn't mean it, but damn it still hurt. I felt bad that I snapped at Cissnei; I wouldn't have even made it to this point if it wasn't for her. I wanted to agree with her; I did still have my emotions, my dreams, and my honor. There is no honor in hiding like a rat. I lost my honor when I escaped from that lab at the Shinra Mansion. I thought as I remembered being on the run since the reactor incident. I wish I hadn't asked all those questions that eventually drove Sephiroth mad; Genesis was no help either. Maybe if I just went in there and-
"You pulled off one hell of a fish story, Slick." I heard Reno's voice come through the doorway. He walked in stood by my bed.
"Rude and I were racing to find you before the knuckleheads at Shinra did, but they just simply had more ground coverage. When we found you, Rude just thought you were DRT*, but I disagreed. I knew that if I just gave up right there, I would always think 'what if I could have saved him?' There was also three people counting on me, and I just couldn't live with letting them down." Reno gave me the recap of what happened before him and Rude picked me up.
"Where is Cloud? He was with me at the time." I asked him; since he brought me this far, he'd probably tell me what happened to Cloud if anything.
"I didn't see him down there. The helicopter sensors did pick up another presence in the area, but it was non-hostile so we didn't bother with it. If Rude had seen Cloud, he hasn't said anything. You never asked me that question. You're not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be here. This operation never happened. It's supposedly a completely black project, but since there is more than one person that knows about it, I'm not sure how black it will stay and for how long. With that said, I'll see you around." Reno started walking away but I still had some questions.
"Wait! How is…how is Aeris?" I asked; the Turks were always weird when I asked about her, but I figured it was worth a try.
"She thinks you're dead. I suggest if you want to stay alive, you keep it that way. If you show up to Midgar, Shinra will find you, and they will kill you. Again." Reno said in a grave tone and walked out of the room. At least I know she's alright; physically anyway. I was comforted by the fact that Reno actually gave me an answer more concrete than "hmm" or "don't worry about it" like Tseng usually did when I asked about Aeris. Even though Reno told me to stay away from Midgar, I'm sure I'll find a way to visit her with the endless amount of augmentations I have now.
"Good to see my efforts weren't wasted. Well, not entirely wasted." Tseng's slightly regretful voice floated through the door.
"You! Here to turn me into those freaks at the Science Department?" I snarled at him; I'm surprised he even dared to show up here. A sudden panic came over me. How did he even know I was here? Is this what Reno meant? My mind was racing frantically to and from all kinds of wild theories.
"Warning, heart rate exceeding good health guidelines." The alarm in my room chirped again. The nurse showed up almost instantly.
"Alright, you! Out! Now. No more visitors for 6 hours." She said sternly; an armed security guard 'convinced' Tseng to leave. I did not feel like dealing with him right now. I turned off the lights in my room and tried to get some sleep.
*Dead Right There
