Teen Titans
Adaptation
By Cyberwraith9
New Order: Letters from Home
Cyborg thought, and didn't like it one bit. He thought a lot and often. He only thought. Sometimes he talked. Now was one of those sometimes.
"Then enter 'two-six-six-nine-two-four' into the keypad. That'll open the safe. It has an internal battery and extra shielding, so if anything survived, the safe would," he broadcasted into the holo-projector at Starfire's bedside. "Then, bring what's inside back here, and…that's it."
Grainy footage of Tek and Gloria Xang tickled Cyborg's visual cortex. He had taught himself to "see" by extending his wireless connection into S.T.A.R. Labs' security circuit. The camera in the room's ceiling showed him Tek's slumping posture and Gloria's upbeat ushering as the pair left the room. The door scarcely closed behind them before it opened again for Doctor Brown.
"How are you feeling, Victor?" Brown asked the hologram on the table.
It had been almost two weeks since Robin had torn him apart. He had spent half of that time effectively dead. The rest of his time had been spent like this, as a disembodied consciousness being maintained and made cognizant by the Labs' technology. Talking through a projector and seeing through cameras was bad enough. Watching through cameras as someone talked to a projection of his face was disconcerting. He almost wished they'd left him off.
"Still don't feel anything, Doc. Except bored," he said with a digital sigh. "The non-restricted files on your mainframe aren't exactly what I'd call interesting."
Brown smiled thinly at the hologram. Cyborg hated that hologram. "Well, I'm sorry for that. I have a few of our neuro-statisticians working out how to connect your brain to the internet safely. I don't want to be responsible for replacing your superego with spam insisting that you're the new king of Nigeria."
Cyborg let Doctor Brown laugh without joining in. He liked watching her laugh. In some small ways, Brown reminded him of his mother. The way Brown's long braid swished behind her lab coat, and the way her smile beamed from her rich complexion in the grainy camera image, made Cyborg recall happier times.
Unfortunately, he knew Brown well enough to know when she was really laughing, and when she wasn't. "What's wrong, Doctor?" he asked suspiciously.
She hesitated, confirming his fears. "Victor, we've completed the reclamation process on your old body." It was the process they'd been working toward since he'd been carted to the Labs, and the answer he'd dreaded hearing since they'd waken him. Drawing a breath, Brown said, "The team was able to salvage twenty-nine percent of your original body."
Twenty-nine.
Twenty-nine. Down from forty-six. Which had once been one hundred. Somewhere outside of himself, he knew his stomach was sinking. If he still had a stomach.
Brown seemed to read his mind. "Quite a bit of your digestive tract is still there, and we managed to save a lung, and…" Her wan smile fell. "Perhaps the details can wait. What's important now is that we discuss your future."
"Why does that sound familiar?" he said miserably, thinking back to his conversation with Tek.
"Victor, you've lost a serious amount of biological matter in the last two years. Less than a third of your original biomass is left. You should have serious concerns about whether or not anything will be left if you continue living like this." Brown sat down next to the projector and stared meaningfully through it. He wished she would look up at the camera so he could see her face. "I need to know if you meant what you told your little friend. Are you really finished with…this lifestyle?"
Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine. Twenty-nine.
"Yeah," Cyborg said. "I really…I don't think we're coming back after this. I guess…"
A breath of relief relaxed from Brown's clenched chest. She produced her ever-ready clipboard and paged through a set of schematics that appeared as grayish blobs to the security camera's lens. "Excellent. Because we've made some incredible leaps in prosthetics in the last three years. Much of the latest developments have been because of you, actually, and your father. It won't be like last time at all."
Brown began describing the cybernetics program that had evolved nationwide in S.T.A.R. Labs after his accident, and the plasti-derm skin façade they had developed that looked and felt like the real thing. Cyborg only half-listened. His thoughts wandered as he focused the security camera on Starfire.
She hadn't moved all week. Machinery surrounded her bed, breathing for her, making her heart beat, pumping in nutrient, collecting waste, and bathing her naked, bandaged body in fake sunlight. Starfire had given everything for the Titans, and now she wasn't alive by any definition of the word she would accept.
Cyborg had given everything for the Titans. What did he have to show for it?
Twenty-nine percent.
"—and so we'll need to shut down your sensory functions for the installation process," Brown said, regaining his attention.
"What?" Shut him off? They'd spent all that effort reactivating him just to turn him off again?
She nodded. "We can't very well keep you awake while we're installing you into the new Victor Stone. Surgeons are a notoriously self-conscious lot. Besides, I think our Security Department is tired of you lurking in their camera system." She gave the camera overhead a wry wink.
Cyborg nodded. Then he realized that he couldn't nod, and so said, "We might as well do it now. I'll shut down visual and auditory functions myself. Not like I'll be missing much. How long's the new body gonna take?"
"A few weeks," she said, standing. "But I'll have my best people working on it at once." As she left the room, she paused, and looked back at Cyborg's hologram one last time. "I'm happy for you, Victor. You'll finally look like you're supposed to. You'll have your life back. You could even finish school, if that's what you want. And in the mean time, you should enjoy yourself."
"Enjoy myself? I'm gonna be a head in a jar with no eyes or ears. What am I supposed to do?"
Standing in the doorway, she shook her head. "Your mind is connected to the most powerful mainframe network on the western seaboard. You are essentially a living program. With a little imagination, you can reshape your perception of that mainframe into almost anything. You could even make it like Tron if you wanted."
"What's 'Tron?'" he asked.
Brown glared into the camera. "You children make me feel so old," she groused.
Cyborg took one last look at Starfire before willing his sight and sound offline, effectively trapping himself in the confines of the Labs' computer network. He looked to what being a Titan amounted. Suddenly, twenty-nine sounded like a lucky number.
With the magic of human imagination and the most powerful mainframe network on the western seaboard, Cyborg's psyche constructed for him the largest high-definition television ever conceived by man. He watched it from a leather couch he had manifested from the pure digital essence in which he sat. The world around him appeared white and endless, empty, with light everywhere from no visible source. His television hung on nothing as it presented him with each file in the Labs' network in the form of a channel.
He flicked lazily through thousands of files. Lab reports, office supply requisitions, and parking notices all bored him alike. Days passed as he watched only those experiment reports that had been declassified, like the secret project for NASA they had been working on, entitled "Project Velcro." Time stretched into days, weeks, months, years, centuries, eons, and whatever came after eons.
A yawn split his jaw. Considering that he didn't have a jaw at the moment, or lungs with which to yawn, Cyborg figured that was justification enough for a little mischief. Leaning forward on his couch, he thumbed his universal remote, channel-surfing toward more interesting and less available files.
He reached the personal files kept on the network, one for each scientist that worked in the national network of Labs. Just a quick peek at their basic information couldn't hurt, he decided. He'd make a game of it: count the number of physicists versus biologists versus mathematicians, and see which kind of science S.T.A.R. Labs favored. Maybe send prank emails to departmental heads, or try and stir an office romance with a falsified electronic love note. Forgiveness had to be easy to come by for the poor, unfortunate kid who was a head in a jar, right?
Then he saw a name in the list of scientists' files, a name that made him forget his fun. He clicked the remote, guiding its cursor over the name "Stone, Silas," on the screen. He clicked again.
The file opened into a list of smaller files, organized and numbered meticulously. It took a second for Cyborg to recognize the numbers as dates, days and years not separated by punctuation. Scrolling down, Cyborg found a file for nearly every day of an almost two-year length of time. The first date on the list struck a chord in him.
Cyborg's thumb hovered over the remote. The file had been unprotected, unlike all the others. He could still go back and hack another file for fun, and leave this file and its stomach-churning name alone. He could exit the file, and forget.
Click.
Cyborg felt a jolt as Silas Stone stared back at him from the television screen. The old man sat behind a desk that had been painfully organized into stacks of papers, scientific awards and plaques, all capped with a name plate on the front of the desk that labeled him the head of his department. He wore a rumpled lab coat over mismatched clothing. Peppery hair curled on his head and stubbled his strong jaw. The digital ghost seemed unconcerned with Cyborg's shock.
"Day one. Silas Stone, PhD, Biomedical Engineering," Silas said in a crisp voice devoid of humility. "I am recording this journal separate from the official logs to help track a rather more elusive variable in the experiment; the psychological ramifications of the replacement of biological systems by cybernetic prosthetics in a human subject. As this matter of psychology is outside of my field of expertise, I will merely be recording my observations so that they may be examined at a later time by someone more qualified.
"The test subject, Victor, is an African-American male, aged thirteen to seventeen—"
Cyborg muted the file. His hand cracked the remote. That miserable old bastard had made a journal about him? And just left it on the S.T.A.R. Labs server, where anyone could see it? "Psychological ramifications?" spat Cyborg.
He mashed the mute button again. Click. "—extremely athletic," Silas continued. "A recent altercation with an extra-dimensional being has resulted in the loss of approximately fifty-three point six percent of Victor's biomass. Thanks to the facilities here at S.T.A.R. Labs Metropolis, we were able to preserve the remaining biomass in stasis. Though Victor is legally dead, I and my colleague, Doctor Walter Smith, are confident that we can revive him through the use of Smith's Cybernetic Combat Enhancement Project. We've grafted the prototype cybernetics to Victor's remains. Tomorrow, we'll make our first attempt at reinitializing Victor's cognitive functions."
Click.
"Day two. Re-initialization…did not go well, psychologically speaking. In all other aspects, it was a remarkable success. Victor awoke with almost all memory and cognitive capacity intact, exceeding all of our expectations. Unfortunately, he did not take the discovery of his cybernetic prosthetics at all well. Victor became violent and unreasonable, forcing us to temporarily deactivate his motor functions before he did further harm. His strength is markedly increased, thanks to implants that were intended to enhance soldiers, but his mind is beset with grief. I should make mention of the fact that the same incident that harmed Victor took the life of his mother…
"Excuse me…
"With great patience on the part of myself and my research team, we managed to calm Victor down enough to listen to reason. He is terribly angry, which I suppose is normal in this type of situation. Once he's calmed down enough, we'll restore his motor functions and begin the long process of adapting him to the prosthetics."
Click.
"Day twenty-one. Victor's physical therapy has reached an impasse. I blame myself. He insisted upon attending his mother's funerary services. My official recommendation was to disallow this; Victor has not yet adapted to his increased strength, and does not possess the fine control necessary for real-world interaction. Nevertheless, Doctor Hamilton felt it would be productive toward his emotional recovery, and so I accompanied Victor on the outing.
"The results were as expected. Victor broke two doors and three chairs simply entering the facilities at which the services were held. His loss of control seemed to upset him further, making his clumsiness worse, and therefore more dangerous. I advised the ushers to isolate both him and myself from the rest of the funeral's attendees for their safety.
"As the services progressed, Victor's emotional instability worsened. His mind has not yet adapted to adjusting his new vocal cords. When he attempted to shout at me, he projected his voice at approximately ninety decibels, further upsetting himself and the other guests. My physician is confident that the hearing in my left ear will return, given time."
Click.
"Day one hundred and forty-two. Victor is growing restless living in the Labs. His body has acclimated fully to its new prosthetics. However, I feel his mind is not yet ready to leave. As such, I've recommended, and Hamilton agrees, that he should remain here for the time being. I feel that keeping him here is the right choice. I…He is not ready to go back yet.
"When news of this reached Victor, he became agitated and reclusive. He has barricaded himself in the living quarters we adapted for him out of Lab Three. I remain unconcerned; the lab possesses a table and recharge station with ample resources to keep him maintained. When he decides to stop pouting and come out, we will resume our work rehabilitating him and charting his progress toward his eventual, necessarily distant reintegration with society.
"I suppose it would be untoward of me to ignore the validity of his frustration. As an emotionally-developing adolescent suffering from extreme trauma, it is normal for him to seek out some semblance of his former life. This is why I maintain an attitude of understanding and generosity toward his childish outbursts.
"As a side note, I'm developing an artificial digestive and waste management system for Victor. It will replace the lost portions of his tract, and interact fully with the rest. The chemical energy garnered from eating food will be negligible compared with his new body's total power consumption, but Victor has been complaining of hunger for weeks now. I suppose it would be easier to suppress those hunger impulses via programming, but... Well, Victor always loved to eat."
Click.
Silas's peppered hair had turned entirely white. He scowled into the camera, and tapped his pen against his desk in an agitated rhythm.
"Day two hundred and eight. They found Victor at the cemetery again. This makes three successful breakouts and three retrievals. Of course, I've expressed my disappointment with him, but he remains unapologetic. He informed me that he would continue to escape and that I could take my disappointment and apply it forcefully in a rectal fashion. I paraphrase, naturally. While I in no way condone his actions, I cannot help but admire, from a purely scientific standpoint, the ingenuity he demonstrates in his escapes. Connecting directly with the Labs' security grid and initiating a hazmat emergency evacuation was quite the diversion. Professor Hamilton does not quite appreciate his cleverness as I do.
"It has become obvious that Victor will no longer accept the lab for habitation. With great reluctance, and against my recommendation, Professor Hamilton is discharging him to resume his public education within the week. Special arrangements have been made to guarantee his safety and the safety of the student body.
"I cannot stress enough what a mistake this decision is. Victor is in no way ready to rejoin the population, either physically or emotionally. There is still so much we do not understand about how his body will react long-term to his prosthetics. If something was to happen, and his body began rejecting the replacements, no one would be on hand to help him. No school nurse, regardless of qualification, can restore to function an eight million terahertz cognitive processor. Victor's return to school is a mistake."
Click.
"Day two hundred and twelve. Victor didn't last the day in school. Between being banned from all athletics and being singled out from the student body because of his appearance, I don't believe he'll return to any form of off-site schooling now. It's just as well. S.T.A.R. Labs has offered to pay for the damages incurred, but the school district remains adamant about their law suit. Frankly, I'm just happy to have him back at the lab.
"Unfortunately, the incident has left Victor dourer than ever. I fear society's rejection has been a bigger blow than the loss of his organics. He mopes in his room, refusing to leave. He does not watch those retched television shows he used to frequent, or read the empty-headed tripe magazines I bought for him. He isn't even eating anymore, which is likely the most serious sign of his worsening depression.
"We need to find something with which to occupy his attention, something he can focus on. And I believe I have such a diversion for him, one that will supplant his doomed notion of public education. It's high time Victor became the scientist he was always meant to be."
Click.
"Day two hundred and eighty. Victor is a frustrating student. Despite his superior genetics, he has demonstrated a feeble grasp on the interplay between the human body and technology. I had hoped to teach him more about his cybernetics, to engage him in his own progress. But he will have none of it. Worse, I suspect his failure to learn is by deliberate and spiteful design.
"I am running out of ideas. All my efforts to connect with Victor on a personal level are failing. This is, admittedly, not my strongest suit, but it remains irritating regardless. Victor grows more resentful of me every day he remains here. He won't talk to me. I'm beginning to fear that he is contemplating suicide."
For the first time since the journal's beginning, Silas sighed, and wilted. His studious voice cracked as he said, "I wish Elinore were here. She would know what to do."
Click.
"Day three hundred." Silas's face and voice tightened. New wrinkles had appeared over those that had slowly blossomed since the journal's inception. "Victor has run away again. This time, he has avoided retrieval. He has been gone almost seventy-two hours, and…"
His fist slammed the desk at which he sat, rattling the entire recording. "Why would he run away? We had everything he needs! He was provided for here! He was safe!"
Then Silas breathed deeply. He straightened his clip-on tie and smoothed his hair, which was thinning noticeably. "Forgive me. I'm merely overcome by Victor's apparent selfishness. He refuses to appreciate what we've done for him. I…He can't see the larger picture. In ten months, we've revolutionized cybernetics with a decade's worth of development. Medicine itself will change, and all he can think about is himself. We conquered death, and he's concerned only with the way he looks. I don't—"
Cyborg threw his remote through the television. Its screen burst in a spray of glass. The floating TV teetered, then toppled, smashing on the digital plane. He stood up and snarled, "Selfish? Selfish! You would know, you arrogant old bastard!
"A frustrating student? Look at me! Look at what I've done!" Cyborg gestured down to his body, which wasn't his body, but a digital representation of what he thought his body should look like. His prosthetics shone, newly polished, as he presented them to the broken television. "I've been keeping this hunk of junk going for two years now. I upgrade it myself. I even redesigned my optics to do things you never imagined! I can see in infrared and ultraviolet now, and it's all because of me! My eye is my eye. You didn't do jack!
"Suicide? I just wanted to get out of there!" Cyborg laughed bitterly, and knocked the couch over with an enraged kick. "You kept me in that lab for months like I was some kind of experiment. I was leaving so I could see mom. You didn't care. You never went to see her. You never even took me to see her!
With a poisonous thought, he repaired the television and the couch, replacing them to where they had been. He sat heavily and clicked on the next file. There were still quite a number to see, and all of them were from dates after he had run away. "Well, let's see how your little psychological evaluation goes when there's no lab rat to watch."
Click.
"Day three hundred and thirty-nine. After months without word, I've finally found Victor. Or rather, I have been told where he is. He's staying in California with his grandmother. How he got there, I have no idea, but I'm grateful that he's all right. I'm confident that, after sufficient time to cool off, he will return to where he belongs. Until he does, the Cybernetics Prosthetics project has been placed on official hold. Unofficially, I look forward to this opportunity to test the project's post-release ramifications.
"Mother informs me that Cyborg was in acceptable condition when he arrived. Tired, but able. I must admit, I am curious to know how he recharged himself while in-transit. He is eating and sleeping normally according to her descriptions. At my request, she has not told him that she contacted me.
"Victor is apparently limiting himself to her domicile and yard for the moment. He is likely concerned with how the general public will react to his appearance. I admit, this is a concern we share. I little like the thought of Victor being treated as he was when he went to school. I've sent mother some money, despite her complaints, and with the understanding that she'll use some of it to buy him clothes. He hasn't needed them since the accident, but perhaps they'll help him integrate. I suppose we should have considered the use of clothes at a much earlier date. His current build is not an easy one to clothe.
"The rest of the money will be to compensate for his egregious power needs. Mother described the recharging station he's created in her garage using ordinary appliances. It sounds crude, but effective. I…I wish I could see it for myself. It would be interesting."
Click.
"Day four hundred and one. It happened during one of those troublesome absences my mother kept telling me about. I told her not to worry, that all young men need their space. It seems I was wrong.
"There was some sort of extraterrestrial incident in a place called Jump City. I understand it's not too far from where mother lives. Apparently, S.T.A.R. Labs even has a facility outside of the city. In any case, the incident involved some sort of space lizards. I watched it on the news.
"It was the first time I'd seen him in months. He was incredible. I never dreamed he would adapt to the prosthetics so well. The news footage only caught him for a few seconds. An entire bus! Amazing! And then he just jumped into the fight, as though he had been doing it all his life. Incredible."
Silas cleared his throat. "Of course, I cannot condone what he is doing. He and those metahuman reprobates are building some sort of clubhouse off the coast. They're naming themselves after Greek myths and looking to pursue a life of costumed antics. Ridiculous. He's a Stone. He belongs to a higher calling.
"Still…the bit with the bus was impressive, no doubt…"
Click.
"Day four hundred and fifty-two." Silas's thinning hair had succumbed to a shining baldness.White, wiry hair bulged from the sides, and above his eyes, under which heavy bags hung. He drooped in his chair. His gaunt shoulders vanished into a lab coat that had become too large.
"I've taken a sample of the ET crash they discovered in the Southwest. There are some promising avenues to explore. What I'm trying to do will take mankind's understanding of nanotechnology into a whole new era. It may even blur the line completely between humanity and machinery.
"I need to reach a breakthrough soon, before that boy kills himself.
"I hate the news. I only watch nowadays for Victor. Once in a while the bloated monster destroyed our media catches a glimpse of his 'adventures.' He honestly must get his lack of sense from his mother, because I can't imagine understanding anyone who would do half the things he does."
A tired smile lit his face. "Elinore would have loved to see his antics. She understood that athleticism nonsense. He probably got that from her as well, come to think of it."
Click.
The desk Silas normally sat at lay in ruins. Its carefully organized papers were scattered everywhere. Trinkets and awards lay in pieces. His computer had a letter opener jammed through its screen. Silas himself looked worse. His skin sagged, and his hair was all but gone. Unkempt beard consumed his chin.
"Day five hundred and eight," he said with forced calm. "My progress with the project has petered. I've reached a block, and no amount of testing or examination seems to be capable of circumnavigating it. For all intents and purposes, I've failed. And Victor..."
Silas choked. "I saw him on the news again today. He had taken down one of the Labs' rogue projects, the Artificial Tactical Light Assault System. Those idiots in California can't even program a robot properly. But Victor… He took it down singlehandedly. And when they interviewed him for the news…"
A sob trickled through his voice. "He was smiling. He was happy. And those friends of his…anyone could tell how proud of him they were. Victor is…my son is an honest-to-God hero. He saves lives. He saves so many people.
"Why can't I save him?"
Click.
Silas hunched over his desk. His thin arms trembled with the task of propping him up. His hair was gone. His face puckered disdainfully into the camera. Wrinkles creased his brow and lined his mouth.
"Day five hundred and seventy-three. This will be my last entry. I've been terminated from S.T.A.R. Labs. 'Medical retirement' is what they're calling it. Feh. Those quacks that jab me with cold stethoscopes don't know the meaning of the word 'medical.'
"I failed. I'm a failure. There. I said it. The grief counselors tell me that honesty is important at the end. They're quacks as well. My life has been a waste, and my one accomplishment worth anything is just a mask for my own failings.
"I lost my entire family in the space of one day, and reacted as poorly as I possibly could. Forty-six percent of Victor remained. Forty-six percent of my only remaining link to Elinore lay in my lab, dead and gone, resting in peace, and I couldn't let it go. So I turned it into one of my experiments."
He looked down. Tears rimmed his eyes. "I wish I'd left him dead. I wish I had died instead. Every day, I wish I had died, so those two could live.
"I rationalized it a hundred different ways: I saved him; I furthered the field of cybernetics more than any other individual ever had; I was a hero. Lies, all of it. I had to keep that last piece of Elinore alive in him, even if I had to spit in the face of God himself to do it. . I made my own son into a mockery of life just so I would have something left."
He sniffed, and ran a hand across his bald scalp. "Elinore would hate what I've become. I've no doubt, because Victor already hates me. They both have every right to hate me. I'm a selfish old fool."
Vicious coughing wracked Silas's chest. His whole body shook like it would fall apart. When he found his breath again, he said, "I have no right to be, but I'm proud of Victor. I'm so proud. He suffered like no other human ever should. At first, I thought that suffering had made him stronger. It's only now, looking back, that I realize he had that strength all along. In the end, I'm just sorry he needs it.
"Despite my best efforts, my final project has failed. They're already archiving the test material I took from the crash. It'll be in cold storage until Judgment Day. And Victor will be forever marked by my selfishness. He's more of a hero than I'll ever be just by holding his head high while he wears my sins.
"A hero…" Silas coughed and laughed in one breath. "I am proud of Victor. I wanted to cling to the forty-six percent of a son I had left, and never let him go. I was such a fool. That forty-six percent is worth more than entire buildings full of people like me. My son is doing amazing things, and making more of a difference than I ever could. He's found people who care for him. He's found a place for himself.
"Victor found a way to live after Elinore's death. I think I envy him for that. It's something I never figured out how to do. But I'm so proud of him. I have no right to be, but I'm so proud. So…" His voice dissolved into another coughing fit that doubled Silas over. His haggard face disappeared behind the desk. The coughing worsened.
The screen went black. Cyborg found himself on the edge of his metaphysical seat. He had reached the end of the files. Frantic, he looked at the date of the last file.
Three days after that recording had been made, Cyborg had received notification of Silas Stone's death. He hadn't told anyone about his father. He had refused his grandmother's calls, and ignored her messages insisting that he fly with her to Metropolis for the services. Some small, petty part of Cyborg had felt satisfied at the old man's passing. He had been glad to finally be rid of the miserable man that had ruined his life.
Now he scrolled to the beginning of the files again, and he watched. He watched each day's entry, not just the few days he had skimmed before. He watched, and saw Silas age thirty years in less than two. The middle-aged scientist had wrinkled and balded like a raisin from the day Cyborg had finally ran away.
His father was proud of him. His father was proud of what he had chosen to do with his life, even if it meant he would never win a Nobel Prize. Silas Stone, a man who had yawned at his son's freshman all-state rushing record, was proud of him for being himself. To his dying day, he had thought his son was a hero.
Cyborg manifested a doorway next to his couch. He ran through it, hoping he wasn't too late.
The security cameras became his eyes again. Cyborg looked everywhere in the Labs at once. As luck would have it, Doctor Brown was just leaving Starfire's room. She jumped at the sound of his voice as he shouted her name through the holographic projector at Starfire's bedside.
"Victor? Is something wrong?" she asked, clutching her chest.
As he watched her enter the room, another of his cameras checked the room his body had been in. It was there still, dismembered as he remembered it being. They hadn't installed any new cybernetics yet.
"You haven't built my new body yet, have you?" he asked.
She stared, blinking. Then she shook her head. "Victor, we finished speaking about your new body only a second ago. I was just leaving to inform the project heads."
He checked the system clock. All that time, his entire file surfing episode, had lasted just one second? "Don't turn me off again," he pleaded. "I don't ever want to be turned off again. And don't build that plasti-derm whatever body. I don't want it."
Brown blinked again. "But Victor, I thought we discussed this. Your remaining biomass…"
Cyborg's camera eye focused back on Starfire. She had given one hundred percent for the Titans. If she ever woke up, Cyborg knew she would give one hundred more without a moment's hesitation. Twenty-nine sounded like more than enough now.
"I've still got plenty left in me, Doc," Cyborg told her.
To Be Continued
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Next week we're back with Tek and her totally trustable samurai companion. What wacky hi-jinx will ensue? Stay tuned to find out!