"This would be faster if you could hold still." Chakwas leveled a glare at Jade as she aimed the ultrasound wand at the blonde woman's wound.
"Sorry." Jade gripped the edge of the examination table and shot a look of pure loathing to where Javik stood an impassive watch at the Medbay doors. "It tickles. Sort of."
"I understand." The doctor wiped away the last of the medi-gel crusting the wound. "You know, when I joined the Alliance medical corps, I never imagined I would be treating sword wounds."
Jade stared in amazement at the amount of damage she'd taken in that one encounter. It hadn't looked anywhere near that bad before Chakwas and Javik had peeled her undersuit off, revealing the raw, red ruin of flesh. She snorted and winced as Chakwas began to gently probe the wound.
"I can see where the initial stroke landed," she said as she pulled an inch-long splinter of steel out, dropping it into a metal pan. "But would either of you like to explain how a single sword thrust could cause such extensive damage?"
"Part of that's from the bitch who stuck me." Jade grunted as the doctor removed more debris that had gotten sealed into the wound when the medi-gel had been applied. "She twisted that damn blade around like a sumbitch when I didn't go down the way she wanted me to."
Jade shifted again under Chakwas' ministrations. It didn't hurt, exactly, the 22nd century pain blockers were too good for that, but it did feel damn odd.
"And the rest?" The doctor asked as she began to close the wound with neat, precise stitches.
"Ah, that would be from when our friendly, neighborhood prothean over there decided I didn't need to be wandering around a battlefield with half a foot of steel in my shoulder." Chakwas changed her bloody gloves for fresh and began to bandage Jade's wound as she listened, a faint smile playing about her lips.
"I think you took about half the medi-gel my suit had already administered, along with a healthy chunk of skin when you pulled that out, Javik." Jade glared at her partner in mock anger. "I'm still pissed about that dirty trick you pulled to do that, by the way."
"It was necessary." The prothean replied simply, his voice perfectly even, as though he was speaking of a minor ship repair, or the weather. Jade shot him an annoyed look, but held her peace.
"Well, it doesn't look as if your assailant managed to hit anything vital." Chakwas said as she administered a cocktail of anti-biotics and pain killers. "You've got a notch in your collarbone but it seems your Cerberus 'upgrades' are already taking care of that and the damage to your soft tissue. You'll probably have a scar, but no other lasting effects. All in all, I would say you were a very lucky woman." She tapped a few note into her omni-tool. "That appears to be a running theme on this ship."
Jade chuckled as she gingerly pulled her shirt over her head. "I noticed."
The doctor arranged her tools in the sanitizer and began straightening up the Med Bay. "Speaking of Cerberus upgrades, you never did tell me what happened to your arm."
Jade sighed and closed her eyes against the memories.
"I'm a field agent, Brian!" Jade paced in front of the director's desk like a caged beast, ready to rip the throat out of anyone who came too close. "This sitting in front of a screen thing is killing me!"
"I know – "
"No, you don't! You wanted to be the director. Hell, you lobbied for the position! Sitting behind a desk and staring at reports is right up your alley! You've been flying a desk so damn long I wonder if you can even remember what it felt like to get your hands dirty!"
It was the end of the day, and since there were no operations in play currently, the compound only hosted a skeleton crew of techs and analysts. Which was why there were no witnesses to Jade's outburst against the director. Brian stood firm in the face of Jade's vitriol but at her last accusation his normally warm, blue eyes turned flat, and hard as sea ice.
"My days in the field aren't so far behind me that I've forgotten the golden rule the way you have, Operative Harmon." Unlike other men who strode or shouted or put on other displays when they were angry, Brian Pierce went still and cold. The quieter he got, the more dangerous his mood. "You never go into the field packing dead weight. And with one arm, that's all you are, Harmon, dead weight. I can't use you for anything other than desk work."
For a moment, Grey eyes and blue met and clashed in a contest of wills. The unstoppable force met the immovable object.
Then Jade flinched and looked away.
"However," Pierce continued in a more reasonable tone of voice now that he had Jade cowed. "You are right about one thing. Your skills are being wasted as an analyst. Neither Typhon, nor the country is best served by keeping you in an office."
Jade gave him a sharp look and Pierce smiled, though it did little to warm the arctic chill in is eyes.
"Which is why I've called in a few favors from some of my friends in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It seems they had a similar situation with one of their Sigma operatives and developed a mechanical prosthetic that can be operated via neural stimulation. Apparently, it's as good, if not better, than the arm humans are born with. I managed to get us one."
Jade's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. It's not often anyone can get those guys to share their toys. Brian must have pulled a lot more strings than I even knew he was capable of if he managed to get DARPA to play ball.
"I was going to tell you all of this before you interrupted me." Again he gave her that vulpine smile that failed to reach his clear, blue eyes. "You've got an appointment to meet with Monk Kokkalis and several DARPA techs tomorrow. They'll start getting you fitted for the prosthesis."
"Shit, Brian, I'm sorry. I should have known you'd be doing everything youcould to get me back into the field. I was way out of line."
He waved a dismissive hand to stem any further apology.
"I wasn't joking about America needing you on the front lines, Jade. You and Joe were one of our best teams. We need you back out there, in the fray, protecting America from scum like the bastards who killed Joe." He clapped her on the back and shrugged into his suit coat. "Now let's get the hell out of here. It's late and I'm dying for a cigarette."
"You know that stuff'll kill you, right?" Jade said following him out.
"That's what they say."
"Honestly, I literally can't remember what happened when I lost my arm. The psychiatrists called it a kind of dissociative episode and said I may never regain those memories." Jade scratched absently at a scab on her knuckles. "After I lost my arm in Beirut, one of our sister organizations hooked me up with a state of the art, robotic prosthetic. We couldn't clone limbs yet. It ran on nerve impulses and even provided a limited amount of sensory feedback. There were pros and cons to it. It had a grip that could crush steel and couldn't be broken once set, and it could be operated remotely within a sort range via the contacts in my stump. But it never really felt like my hand and the damn thing fell right to the bottom of the Uncanny Valley." She chuckled softly to herself. "After I got that thing I suddenly understood why Luke Skywalker always wore a glove."
Both Chakwas and Javik gave her a blank look.
"Really? Nothing?" Jade shook her head. "A Star Wars reference went right over your head? Damn, you've been deprived, doctor. At least the prothean's got an excuse. I may have to see if I can remedy that situation."
"Perhaps," the older woman replied, smiling softly. "Well, your story explains some of what I found in your scans, and, given Cerberus' reputation for, hmmm – let's call it 'tinkering' – I think I can figure out the rest."
She called up a projection of Jade's scans and focused on the left arm. Then she magnified it until she had a life-sized replica floating before them.
"For whatever reason, when Cerberus began experimenting on you with Lazarus Project prototype procedures and hardware, they chose not to regrow your missing limb, as they did with the commander. Instead, they apparently tested a way of integrating synthetic and organic components." She punched a command into her omni-tool and the display shifted to show it all in a rainbow of colors for all of the different parts. "They replaced all of the bones in your lower arm with an alloy neither EDI nor I recognize. The muscles and nerves are all purely synthetic, but they've been woven around and integrated with your natural ones all the way up into your shoulder."
She highlighted one specific component. "They even managed to conquer your 'Uncanny Valley' by growing your own skin over the top of the synthetic components. It's all so neatly done, I can't even begin to imagine how they pulled it off. It's not like anything I've ever seen before." She shut down the projection and handed Jade a small packet of pain killers, antibiotics and sleep aids. "Whoever created this was an artist. In every sense of the word."
Jade snorted and waved to the doctor as she stalked out of the Med Bay, Javik hard on her heels.
"Is it true, what you told the doctor?" He asked as she began to methodically raid the tiny kitchen. "That you do not remember the events that caused you to lose your arm?"
"Huh?" Jade pulled her head out of the cabinet to give him a confused look.
"I overheard the asari speaking of you to the commander. She said you cannot recall several days, during which your arm was injured beyond repair."
"Oh that? Yeah. I remember getting back to the safe house, like I told you before, and seeing Joe on his knees. After that, it's all a blur until I wake up in the clinic of a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, short one hand. Typhon managed to put together what happened during the aftermath. Evidently, I cut quite a swathe through the terrorist cells in the region. I don't remember a damn thing, personally. The doctors said Joe's death threw me into a fugue state and I'd probably never recover those memories."
He looked thoughtful for a moment, before replying slowly.
"I can help you recover those memories. If you want them."
"What?"
"My people were the masters of memory. We could trade them as easily as your species trades goods. We could even store them in physical objects"
"Huh, sounds like a pretty talent to have." She bit into the sandwich she'd been making as they spoke, then continued around her mouthful. "Don't see what that has to do with my missing memories though."
Javik gave her a mildly disgusted look before continuing. "When your people say that an event or experience has changed them fundamentally, they are not far off the mark. Experiences leave impressions on your DNA. I can read these markers and open the memories they hold to your conscious mind."
Jade chewed thoughtfully, buying herself time before she had to give him an answer. Finally, she looked up from her meal into that even, yellow stare and sighed.
"I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I've read the reports. I did some pretty horrific things to people who, granted probably deserved it, but that doesn't change the fact that, for those few days, I was as much a monster as they were. No, I sleep badly enough at night as it is. I don't need any more ghosts haunting me."
Author's Note: Monk Kokkalis and Sigma are property of James Rollins who writes the "Sigma Force" series. A group I borrowed from when I created Typhon Command. You should read his books, they're pretty good.