What woke him wasn't the pain, but the complete lack of. For as
long as he could remember there had been nothing but endless agony, and
then nothing, a stop so abrupt that the absence was almost as bad as the
pain itself. At first he didn't know that he was awake. There was
darkness, and he knew that there was some way to end it, but he couldn't
remember what that was. Something had existed before the darkness, but
the memory was elusive and the dark was soft and smothering, and he
couldn't muster the will to try and leave it.
He wasn't sure if he'd become unconscious again but his thoughts
had been comfortably blank for a long time when the darkness was
stripped away, replaced by blinding light. Noise assailed him too,
harsh, penetrating, scratching against the inside of his brain. He
wanted to make it all stop but again his memory failed to provide him
with how.
Finally, just before he thought it would drive him insane, the
noise faded. "Audio connections have been finalized," an unseen voice
said. "All lines are green." There was a pause and the sound of
movement. "Damn it, you messed up the visual lines."
"Sorry," a second voice said. "Correcting... now."
The light diminished, and he could now see shadows moving in front
of him, but his vision was watery, the shapes around him wavering, vague
and undefined. A light suddenly appeared in front of his eyes, a
bobbing sphere of yellow that made him think of butterflies, and his
eyes involuntarily followed it as it wove back and forth.
A voice behind the butterfly spoke. "Ocular response normal,
patient is conscious although he has not yet attempted to vocalize."
"That's because we haven't connected his larynx yet," the first
voice said. "We had to bring him around in order to verify that all the
delicate cranial work was connected correctly."
There was a pause and the butterfly vanished. "Oh."
"Put him out again." The first voice sounded distracted, and he
heard metal on metal sounds. "Since we've confirmed greenlines on all
the vital nervous connections, we don't need him to be awake anymore."
"I'm on it."
Something picked him up and squeezed him, crushing him into a tiny
pinpoint, then crushing that tiny point of being even smaller, and the
light and the sound faded once more.
Consciousness returned once more, but this time his mind was all
there. He felt his body around him, remembered what the sensation
meant, the meaning of the sounds reaching his ears, the light pressing
on the other side of his eyelids. He fiercely resisted the urge to open
them, to leave the soft darkness behind. It was comfortable and
unchanging, and a feeling deep in his gut told him that to whatever lay
out there, his little cocoon of dark was infinitely preferable. His
ears however, he could not so easily keep shut, and noise forced itself
upon him..
"He's not waking up. Give him some more." He didn't recognize the
voice, but it seemed insistent.
"He's resisting the stimulants. That's a good sign actually.
Focused decision making like that indicates that he still has use of his
higher brain functions. He should be awake now, it's just a matter of
time before he finally admits it and opens his eyes."
Spike did just that. "Whaddya want?" he asked. His voice sounded
strange to him and he still felt oddly numb. He felt no pain, no
pressure, just a stubborn persistence to the fact that his body
existed. He blinked several times, and he could've sworn that something
in his head _clicked_ and the watery, multicolored blurs in front of
his eyes resolved into a doctor, only his eyes showing through the cap
and facemask. Another man stood behind the doctor, carefully keeping
his distance. He kept a mask pressed over his mouth with one hand, and
wore the distinctive 'uniform' of one of the syndicate's foot soldiers.
He couldn't move his head, and aside from the doctor and the other
man, he could see little of the room around him. He thought he
recognized where he was though; one of the syndicate's high level
medical clinics. As far as he knew, only two existed, both on Mars, and
they were used almost exclusively for the Triumvirate's life extending
rejuv treatments, or when the syndicate required 'special' medical care
for a particular patient. He doubted that the fact that he was here now
boded well.
"Mr. Spiegel," the goon said, "I'm glad to see you made it. We
weren't sure for quite a while."
Spike was surprised as well. The accumulation of wounds that he'd
gained during his fight to Vicious' sanctum would've proven mortal, he
was sure of that. Vicious' last stroke should have cut him in half,
would have, if he hadn't just put a bullet in the middle of his
protege's forehead, reducing Vicious' final stroke to a mortis twitch;
and even his death reflex had nearly been lethal.
The doctor's voice contained a note of pride as he turned towards
the goon. "I told you, with today's medical techniques there's almost
nothing that can't be fixed, so long as the brain is recovered mostly
intact."
Spike tried to raise his head but his body failed to respond. He
didn't think he was bound, but he couldn't turn his head to check
either. "So why am I here?" he asked, trying to put a note of defiance
into his voice. He'd blown the hell out of the syndicate's Martian
headquarters, killed who knew how many of its men on three separate
occasions, and put a bullet into forehead of the syndicate's leader.
What purpose could they have in keeping him alive, unless... "Vicious?"
he said, unbelieving. He knew that he'd shot Vicious in the head, saw
the blood spray, saw the life leave Vicious' eyes. There was no
possible way that he could still be alive, within enough gray matter
intact to do more than drool.
The doctor gave the goon a nervous glance and then cleared his
throat. "I said, that there was very little I couldn't fix, so long as
I had an intact brain to work with. You made sure that in Sir Vicious'
case, I didn't."
"Then why, how?"
The goon was the one who spoke. "The Triumvirate and Sir Vicious
were very thorough in their elimination of potential rivals. After his
first attempt at a coup, the Triumvirate purged all the younger men
who'd made it into the upper echelons. Sir Vicious' purge eliminated
all the older. Before your little rampage, I was little more than a
lieutenant on the street. Now... I'm probably the highest ranked living
member left in the syndicate."
It took an unbelievable amount of effort to curve his lips up into
an ironic smile. "So now that you're the boss, what? You want me for a
little amusement."
The goon laughed. "If I tried to seize power, it'd ignite a war
for control that'd tear the syndicate apart. We need someone that
everyone will accept, if only on terms of respect. Before Vicious
killed him, Mao was hoping that you would return; he was grooming you to
be his replacement before you left. I think a lot of things would have
turned out better if you hadn't."
Spike tried to laugh, but for some reason he couldn't. "You go and
think all you want, it won't change the way-." His head suddenly seemed
hollow as he realized what he was being asked, the goon's words echoing
endlessly, hammering away at his brain. "You want me to lead the
syndicate?" he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse and hollow.
The goon nodded earnestly. "If you don't, then we're all dead.
The syndicate won't survive."
"Okay, I think I get it," Spike curled his lip up into a sneer.
"But if you want me to become the great leader, why'd you tie me down to
the bed? Afraid I might run for it if I'm allowed up and around?"
It was the doctor that answered, his voice regaining its previous
self-assurance. "The reason why you can't move is because I haven't
finished connecting the nervous pathways to the rest of your body."
"My what? Just what the hell did you do to me?" Spike demanded.
The doctor sounded nervous again. "Mr. Spiegel, you have to
understand the sheer level of injury that you'd endured. Your body...
had simply sustained too much damage to be salvageable. The only option
I had that offered any significant chance for you survival was full
cybridization.
"You... did...what?" Spike closed his eyes, trying to again flee
into the safety of the darkness. It was too much to believe, too much
for his mind to accept.
"Aside from your brain, we were able to salvage and or reconstruct
your spinal column, nearly all of your rib cage, liver, a third of your
intestinal tract, your endochrinal system, heart, your left leg to the
knee, and your right arm to the elbow. The rest had to be replaced.
All in all, we were only able to save about ten percent of your original
organic structure."
Spike started laughing, and he didn't like the way it sounded,
spidery, skittery, skirting the edge of insanity. "You turned me into a
robot? I don't believe it."
"Mr. Spiegel, please understand, it was the only way. I know that
you've undergone cyber surgery before so this is nothing new to you.
The only difference this time around is the scope."
The laughter subsided, but Spike could feel it bubbling in his
throat, waiting to burst forth again. "Nope, you're going to have to
peddle your bullshit somewhere else, 'cause I ain't buying."
A sheen of perspiration shown on the goon's forehead, and Spike
wondered why. He certainly didn't feel warm. He almost started
laughing again.
"I-I saved your organics for cell cultures, I can show them to you
if you want."
"Yeah, you do that."
The doctor's hands shook as he turned the bed, and revealing a long
row of cylinders to Spike. His first thought was that the operation
must've taken a lot of guts, because that's exactly what was floating in
the first cylinder. He started laughing as he took in the loops of
intestine, stomach, everything floating serenely. He laughed so hard
that he felt his brain catch fire, sparks of flame flaring up within his
skull and racing across the convoluted surface. The image before his
eyes began to break up, colors washing out, the picture stretching out
in distortion. A green and yellow shape that might've once been the
doctor shouted, picked up something purple and then disappeared from
Spike's field of view. All of a sudden a chill swept over him, a cold
that he could feel settle into his brain, snuffing the flames one by
one. He stopped laughing and the urge to keep his eyes open faded, even
as the image before him righted itself once more.
Vaguely he heard the doctor and the goon begin to argue. "I told
you this wouldn't work. You simply can't replace this much of a man and
expect him to survive. Physically, we might be able to keep him going,
but mentally, its simply-"
"I don't care how hard it is," the goon interrupted. "You are
going to keep him alive. I don't care if you dope him up to the gills,
just leave him in a condition where he can appear to lead, and do it
fast. I've already lost control of our people on Europa. Venus is
balanced on the edge, waiting to see how we deal with Europa before it
decides which way to jump. We loose Venus and the entire syndicate is
going to unravel."
"Hey," Spike said, staring at the cylinder in front of him. "Could
I get a hand over here? How about one of those two?" He started to
giggle, his eyes moving to the next. He recognized its contents,
remembered where he got that bullet scar on the thigh. "I guess... that
I don't have a leg to stand on." He wanted to laugh harder, but the
chill in his brain kept him from letting loose with anything more than
the occasional giggle. Even that stopped as his eyes rested on the last
tank, a single, brown irised orb staring back at him, and he wondered
what it was that it saw.
"I'm sorry," the doctor said, "it was the only way."
"Mr. Spiegel," the goon broke in, "what is your answer? If you say
no..." he struggled with himself for a few moments. " If you say no,
I'll understand, and see that you're allowed to leave without any one
bothering you, but I can't guarantee that the amnesty will continue once
the war starts."
Spike closed his eyes until the doctor turned him away from the
cylinders. The chill was fading from his brain, making it easier to
think. He'd died once to get away from the syndicate. He'd died a
second time to settle his past accounts, and now... He hated being
called Mr. Spiegel. No one had ever done that. From the time he was a
child, he'd always just been called Spike. Now... he couldn't think of
the doctor, or the goon, or anyone calling him anything else. Spike was
dead. Spike was floating in pieces in a row of cylinders. "Yeah," he
said to the goon, and the urge to laugh was only slight. "I guess you
got your man."
long as he could remember there had been nothing but endless agony, and
then nothing, a stop so abrupt that the absence was almost as bad as the
pain itself. At first he didn't know that he was awake. There was
darkness, and he knew that there was some way to end it, but he couldn't
remember what that was. Something had existed before the darkness, but
the memory was elusive and the dark was soft and smothering, and he
couldn't muster the will to try and leave it.
He wasn't sure if he'd become unconscious again but his thoughts
had been comfortably blank for a long time when the darkness was
stripped away, replaced by blinding light. Noise assailed him too,
harsh, penetrating, scratching against the inside of his brain. He
wanted to make it all stop but again his memory failed to provide him
with how.
Finally, just before he thought it would drive him insane, the
noise faded. "Audio connections have been finalized," an unseen voice
said. "All lines are green." There was a pause and the sound of
movement. "Damn it, you messed up the visual lines."
"Sorry," a second voice said. "Correcting... now."
The light diminished, and he could now see shadows moving in front
of him, but his vision was watery, the shapes around him wavering, vague
and undefined. A light suddenly appeared in front of his eyes, a
bobbing sphere of yellow that made him think of butterflies, and his
eyes involuntarily followed it as it wove back and forth.
A voice behind the butterfly spoke. "Ocular response normal,
patient is conscious although he has not yet attempted to vocalize."
"That's because we haven't connected his larynx yet," the first
voice said. "We had to bring him around in order to verify that all the
delicate cranial work was connected correctly."
There was a pause and the butterfly vanished. "Oh."
"Put him out again." The first voice sounded distracted, and he
heard metal on metal sounds. "Since we've confirmed greenlines on all
the vital nervous connections, we don't need him to be awake anymore."
"I'm on it."
Something picked him up and squeezed him, crushing him into a tiny
pinpoint, then crushing that tiny point of being even smaller, and the
light and the sound faded once more.
Consciousness returned once more, but this time his mind was all
there. He felt his body around him, remembered what the sensation
meant, the meaning of the sounds reaching his ears, the light pressing
on the other side of his eyelids. He fiercely resisted the urge to open
them, to leave the soft darkness behind. It was comfortable and
unchanging, and a feeling deep in his gut told him that to whatever lay
out there, his little cocoon of dark was infinitely preferable. His
ears however, he could not so easily keep shut, and noise forced itself
upon him..
"He's not waking up. Give him some more." He didn't recognize the
voice, but it seemed insistent.
"He's resisting the stimulants. That's a good sign actually.
Focused decision making like that indicates that he still has use of his
higher brain functions. He should be awake now, it's just a matter of
time before he finally admits it and opens his eyes."
Spike did just that. "Whaddya want?" he asked. His voice sounded
strange to him and he still felt oddly numb. He felt no pain, no
pressure, just a stubborn persistence to the fact that his body
existed. He blinked several times, and he could've sworn that something
in his head _clicked_ and the watery, multicolored blurs in front of
his eyes resolved into a doctor, only his eyes showing through the cap
and facemask. Another man stood behind the doctor, carefully keeping
his distance. He kept a mask pressed over his mouth with one hand, and
wore the distinctive 'uniform' of one of the syndicate's foot soldiers.
He couldn't move his head, and aside from the doctor and the other
man, he could see little of the room around him. He thought he
recognized where he was though; one of the syndicate's high level
medical clinics. As far as he knew, only two existed, both on Mars, and
they were used almost exclusively for the Triumvirate's life extending
rejuv treatments, or when the syndicate required 'special' medical care
for a particular patient. He doubted that the fact that he was here now
boded well.
"Mr. Spiegel," the goon said, "I'm glad to see you made it. We
weren't sure for quite a while."
Spike was surprised as well. The accumulation of wounds that he'd
gained during his fight to Vicious' sanctum would've proven mortal, he
was sure of that. Vicious' last stroke should have cut him in half,
would have, if he hadn't just put a bullet in the middle of his
protege's forehead, reducing Vicious' final stroke to a mortis twitch;
and even his death reflex had nearly been lethal.
The doctor's voice contained a note of pride as he turned towards
the goon. "I told you, with today's medical techniques there's almost
nothing that can't be fixed, so long as the brain is recovered mostly
intact."
Spike tried to raise his head but his body failed to respond. He
didn't think he was bound, but he couldn't turn his head to check
either. "So why am I here?" he asked, trying to put a note of defiance
into his voice. He'd blown the hell out of the syndicate's Martian
headquarters, killed who knew how many of its men on three separate
occasions, and put a bullet into forehead of the syndicate's leader.
What purpose could they have in keeping him alive, unless... "Vicious?"
he said, unbelieving. He knew that he'd shot Vicious in the head, saw
the blood spray, saw the life leave Vicious' eyes. There was no
possible way that he could still be alive, within enough gray matter
intact to do more than drool.
The doctor gave the goon a nervous glance and then cleared his
throat. "I said, that there was very little I couldn't fix, so long as
I had an intact brain to work with. You made sure that in Sir Vicious'
case, I didn't."
"Then why, how?"
The goon was the one who spoke. "The Triumvirate and Sir Vicious
were very thorough in their elimination of potential rivals. After his
first attempt at a coup, the Triumvirate purged all the younger men
who'd made it into the upper echelons. Sir Vicious' purge eliminated
all the older. Before your little rampage, I was little more than a
lieutenant on the street. Now... I'm probably the highest ranked living
member left in the syndicate."
It took an unbelievable amount of effort to curve his lips up into
an ironic smile. "So now that you're the boss, what? You want me for a
little amusement."
The goon laughed. "If I tried to seize power, it'd ignite a war
for control that'd tear the syndicate apart. We need someone that
everyone will accept, if only on terms of respect. Before Vicious
killed him, Mao was hoping that you would return; he was grooming you to
be his replacement before you left. I think a lot of things would have
turned out better if you hadn't."
Spike tried to laugh, but for some reason he couldn't. "You go and
think all you want, it won't change the way-." His head suddenly seemed
hollow as he realized what he was being asked, the goon's words echoing
endlessly, hammering away at his brain. "You want me to lead the
syndicate?" he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse and hollow.
The goon nodded earnestly. "If you don't, then we're all dead.
The syndicate won't survive."
"Okay, I think I get it," Spike curled his lip up into a sneer.
"But if you want me to become the great leader, why'd you tie me down to
the bed? Afraid I might run for it if I'm allowed up and around?"
It was the doctor that answered, his voice regaining its previous
self-assurance. "The reason why you can't move is because I haven't
finished connecting the nervous pathways to the rest of your body."
"My what? Just what the hell did you do to me?" Spike demanded.
The doctor sounded nervous again. "Mr. Spiegel, you have to
understand the sheer level of injury that you'd endured. Your body...
had simply sustained too much damage to be salvageable. The only option
I had that offered any significant chance for you survival was full
cybridization.
"You... did...what?" Spike closed his eyes, trying to again flee
into the safety of the darkness. It was too much to believe, too much
for his mind to accept.
"Aside from your brain, we were able to salvage and or reconstruct
your spinal column, nearly all of your rib cage, liver, a third of your
intestinal tract, your endochrinal system, heart, your left leg to the
knee, and your right arm to the elbow. The rest had to be replaced.
All in all, we were only able to save about ten percent of your original
organic structure."
Spike started laughing, and he didn't like the way it sounded,
spidery, skittery, skirting the edge of insanity. "You turned me into a
robot? I don't believe it."
"Mr. Spiegel, please understand, it was the only way. I know that
you've undergone cyber surgery before so this is nothing new to you.
The only difference this time around is the scope."
The laughter subsided, but Spike could feel it bubbling in his
throat, waiting to burst forth again. "Nope, you're going to have to
peddle your bullshit somewhere else, 'cause I ain't buying."
A sheen of perspiration shown on the goon's forehead, and Spike
wondered why. He certainly didn't feel warm. He almost started
laughing again.
"I-I saved your organics for cell cultures, I can show them to you
if you want."
"Yeah, you do that."
The doctor's hands shook as he turned the bed, and revealing a long
row of cylinders to Spike. His first thought was that the operation
must've taken a lot of guts, because that's exactly what was floating in
the first cylinder. He started laughing as he took in the loops of
intestine, stomach, everything floating serenely. He laughed so hard
that he felt his brain catch fire, sparks of flame flaring up within his
skull and racing across the convoluted surface. The image before his
eyes began to break up, colors washing out, the picture stretching out
in distortion. A green and yellow shape that might've once been the
doctor shouted, picked up something purple and then disappeared from
Spike's field of view. All of a sudden a chill swept over him, a cold
that he could feel settle into his brain, snuffing the flames one by
one. He stopped laughing and the urge to keep his eyes open faded, even
as the image before him righted itself once more.
Vaguely he heard the doctor and the goon begin to argue. "I told
you this wouldn't work. You simply can't replace this much of a man and
expect him to survive. Physically, we might be able to keep him going,
but mentally, its simply-"
"I don't care how hard it is," the goon interrupted. "You are
going to keep him alive. I don't care if you dope him up to the gills,
just leave him in a condition where he can appear to lead, and do it
fast. I've already lost control of our people on Europa. Venus is
balanced on the edge, waiting to see how we deal with Europa before it
decides which way to jump. We loose Venus and the entire syndicate is
going to unravel."
"Hey," Spike said, staring at the cylinder in front of him. "Could
I get a hand over here? How about one of those two?" He started to
giggle, his eyes moving to the next. He recognized its contents,
remembered where he got that bullet scar on the thigh. "I guess... that
I don't have a leg to stand on." He wanted to laugh harder, but the
chill in his brain kept him from letting loose with anything more than
the occasional giggle. Even that stopped as his eyes rested on the last
tank, a single, brown irised orb staring back at him, and he wondered
what it was that it saw.
"I'm sorry," the doctor said, "it was the only way."
"Mr. Spiegel," the goon broke in, "what is your answer? If you say
no..." he struggled with himself for a few moments. " If you say no,
I'll understand, and see that you're allowed to leave without any one
bothering you, but I can't guarantee that the amnesty will continue once
the war starts."
Spike closed his eyes until the doctor turned him away from the
cylinders. The chill was fading from his brain, making it easier to
think. He'd died once to get away from the syndicate. He'd died a
second time to settle his past accounts, and now... He hated being
called Mr. Spiegel. No one had ever done that. From the time he was a
child, he'd always just been called Spike. Now... he couldn't think of
the doctor, or the goon, or anyone calling him anything else. Spike was
dead. Spike was floating in pieces in a row of cylinders. "Yeah," he
said to the goon, and the urge to laugh was only slight. "I guess you
got your man."