A/N: This fic is better on AO3, where it's presented unedited and in its original formatting: /works/58977832
Oh, and if you're here for ship stuff, you'll wanna skip to Chapter 4. I won't tell. ;)
At Schneider Aeronautics Labs, two years into the Jupiter War, it takes one release form and thirty-three signatures to undergo human augmentation. The recently designated C4-621 balances a datapad on their knee and scrolls the eight-point text in subdued silence, leaving one arm free to be manipulated by their assigned medical officer - Dr. Doan, or Down, or Dong; the alliteration being the only thing about the graying man worth remembering. He eases an IV into 621's arm but they're too occupied with the exact means and extent by which they're about to become SAL R property to register the sharp scratch.
The operating theatre is a minimalist cube of polished steel and glass, lined with dark screens and jigsaw gaps where monitors, surgical arms, and diagnostic machinery has been pulled out in preparation of the task ahead. 621 scribbles down signature number thirty and kills time waiting for their key to verify by imagining he's one of those machines, too: that at the end of the day he'll retract into his own Dr. Doan-shaped recess and become another unremarkable outline on the wall.
Or maybe they're being hard on him, because the full-spectrum kill-everything lights overhead manage to drain colour from everything in the room: even beside them, the usually brilliant dress of R1 Kabuki, Chief Engineer, feels dull. SAL yellow tends to border on offensive and it barely clocks as beiger in the datapad's reflection, where they watch her watch both Dr. Doan and the release form with equal amounts of hawkish scrutiny.
"They really stripped the process down to nothing, huh," she says. Her synthetic digits drum against the bed's supports, a rhythmless clacking against the hollow metal frame like the swing of a newton's cradle. 621 wonders what it voices that she can't and appends another signature to the form. "Did you cut the section on continuity frameworks?"
Brain boxes, 621 thinks.
"Modern augmentation doesn't come with the risks your generation did," the answer doesn't come from Dr. Doan, but from the last body in the room, a man perched comfortably on one of the modular stools: R4 Operetta. Legal liaison to SAL R . "There've only been six operators requiring continuity frameworks in the last two years. None of them were generation four - and none of them came out of our lab."
621 scrolls another paragraph of text. Between the blocks of a generic augmentation contract, there are spliced-in sentences regarding right to operate and retention of CCCD keys 621 notes only because of the subtle shift in voice. Operetta's work. Kabuki must know about them because she doesn't slow down on them like they do.
Thirty two.
"My generation wasn't getting bought out from under us by giants like Arquebus," she bites back. "They have their way, it won't be 'our' lab for much longer."
"The rep board won't let that happen."
"You're damn right it won't. I'm on it."
"If the rep board does let it happen," they supply, voice breaking the air of the operating room for the first time since they've arrived. They don't know if Dr. Doan is more surprised by their voice or by the three-finger gun they form with a hand, eyes widening like they've just drawn a real pistol. "I can always just shoot them."
Kabuki gives a narrow-eyed grin. The severe look isn't entirely gone, but 621 still thinks this one is much better. "Just think about shooting the bad guys for now, R6."
"I'm always thinking about shooting the bad guys."
"Believe me, I know."
They go back to the release form, quickly rounding off signature thirty-three and handing the pad to Kabuki. She appends her own key and places it in Operetta's waiting palm.
He clicks his tongue. "All yours, doc."
Dr. Doan sags slightly with relief. It probably has something to do with the lack of hand-guns in the room. Or legal soon to be leaving his operating theatre. Or both. "I've sent Chief Kabuki all the pertinent details regarding the post-op. You should be able to pick them up in a day or so."
Kabuki nods, then reaches for their hand and squeezes. "We'll be there when you wake up."
621 wakes up.
The jagged edge of a sawtooth wave rises to greet them, grinding just above their awareness. And a faint vibration - 621 recognises it for an internal combustion engine, but it's not one they know. It rumbles up their whole body and rattles wires and Coral conduits attached to ports on 621's body that weren't there a second ago.
But no sluggishness. No weird anaesthetic dreams. Not even the knowledge of time passing - just the invisible span of a blink throwing them from SAL medical headlong into what they intuit is an AC cockpit. And not even their AC: not the irregular polyhedron of displays and exposed wiring where they had to remove some heat shielding to accommodate their body's awkward proportions. It's all too seamless. Too spacious. Too… new?
Augmented human C4-621: Entering Standard Mode. System Recovery Protocols active. 694 of 1120 processes routed to AC LOADER 4.
So something went wrong during or after their augmentation surgery. About 60% of something if they're trusting COM, and they have no reason not to - They catch text spilling upwards to their lower right that isn't on any display, knowing without knowing why that it's the boot information for their ocular HUD. Each line occupies their field of view for a fraction of a millisecond but 621 still parses each one wholly and with ease, a feat they know they weren't capable of seconds ago but the gulf between what they know and how they should be reacting is so complete that they can only manage an icy recognition of the discrepancy.
621 touches their face, pressing just enough to feel the resistance of their skin and fat, assessing their own ash-tinted veins in a display's reflection like it could tell them where those emotions went. The dim Coral glint of fourth-generation ocular augments stare back from the dark.
Okay. So they've still got a body. That's good.
621 reaches for the AC monitors and finds that they can't. Or, they tell their left arm to move, but the smooth metal form of a - their - prosthetic arm remains coolly disobedient. They repeat this process with their legs and find the same left-prosthetic right-flesh configuration, but neither of them cooperate, so it's clearly not just a wetware issue.
Okay, they've got some of a body. About 24% less of a body than they thought - but still a body.
Their HUD finishes booting. The AC terminal is open before 621 is even aware of their impulse to open it. Fucking augmentation, man.
C4-621 LOADER-4:~$ ls /proc
A familiar dump of files. Easy to navigate - an RRI fork, though 621 doesn't recognise the developer - and full of impartial systems data they can scrape. Their new Coral augmentation quickly assimilates the new data, stacking fact on fact until their seconds-old theory of crashing out of augmentation surgery is obliterated by a forty-two year gap between the SAL release form and LOADER 4's last security patch.
This time, the implication makes their heart beat.
"Already awake, are you?"
That voice isn't Kabuki. Or Operetta, or Dr. Doan, or anyone they recognise at SAL - but an invisible chord of authority resonates in 621's mind with it. They recognise the impulse from a Cerebral Coral Control Device plainly for what it is: the forceful correction of their thoughts and the small jolt of dopamine that comes with it. That theirs is in the hands of someone they don't know is a fact they process without emotion not because of gen four emotional withdrawal but because their CCCD makes it so.
They know this without knowing why.
The cockpit lights up with a visible-spectrum view of their AC's external cams. Ribs of titanium alloy outline the pill-shaped belly of an AC transport, LOADER 4 the sole occupant of its three bays. Their CCCD compels them to focus on their handler - what else could he be? - in the technician's booth dead ahead. Their mind runs through the array of questions they have, which ones to ask, which ones he could even answer. Every time they think they've found the one they can build the rest of the network from, they find something more basal that needs to be slotted in first.
Maybe he takes their silence for confusion, maybe for anger. Whatever he takes it for, he keeps talking. "Here's what you need to know: you're aboard the CYNOSURUS, en route to Rubicon 3. We're after Coral."
None of that fills in the forty-year gap in their head, but it tells them he doesn't care to fill it, which is an answer in its own right. They'll take what they can get from him and learn the rest from their augmentation. Whatever answers he doesn't care to give they can get from crash dumps and man pages and the boot/debug/recovery information continuing to scroll up-left in their vision.
At least they know his name: Walter. That much is in the systems logs.
"Rubicon's open again?" they start.
"No."
"You with a corp?"
"No."
"What's the work?"
"Whatever gets us to the Coral," he says plainly. 621 can see him shift oddly through the glass. Old injury, maybe? Is he leaning on something? "But you don't have to think about that now. We're two days out - use that time to knock the rust off."
They nod, before remembering he can't see it, before remembering he can see it if he's monitoring the LOADER 4's cockpit. They count the dark eyes of three cameras trained on various angles of the pilot's seat. 621 drums their fingers and jumps at the rhythmless metallic clacking that follows, glaring at the joints like they've injured them - half because the sound feels like it belongs to someone else, and half because that limb wasn't working a few seconds ago. Even with the weight of corded wires and Coral conduits 621 knows-without-knowing the purpose of, the artificial limb moves with the acceleration and resistance of a free arm. It's uncanny. It's fucking weird.
"I don't remember anything after my augmentation surgery."
"RA is a common side effect of long-term stasis," his answer comes quickly. 621 gets the sense he's used to giving it and they don't like what that means at all. "It isn't a problem - not as long as you remember how to pilot an AC, anyway."
"And if I don't?"
"Then you've got two days to learn."
