As Alex and Lazarus’ footsteps receded down the hallway outside, I threw the blanket off me and my legs off the hospital bed.

  I was honestly half-expecting an alarm to go off when I got out of the bed, closely followed by a horde of overpaid security guards storming into the room to hogtie me back under the covers. Instead, nothing happened. There wasn't even a security camera in sight. In spite of the things I saw, knew, and did, the clinic was giving me the exact same security treatment as any other patient.

  That would be their mistake. I wasn't about to get roped in with that suited asshole, no matter how much money he eventually decided to offer. I was more interested in what this StormHand of theirs was about, since they were going through this much trouble and risky investment to recover it.

  I wouldn't dream of letting such a perfect opportunity to get under MergoTech’s skin pass me by.

  First, though, I needed to get back to Darian. And that meant it was time to put my fancy new arm to the test.

  I remembered how Alex implied they'd taken hold of the possessions I had on hand—not that I cared all that much, but there were still some things that I wouldn’t want MergoTech having instead of me.

  Going by how they usually handled these things, either they were keeping my stuff in a downstairs room that I’d never reach, or they stuffed it all into that locked cabinet Alex sat next to about five minutes ago. For convenience.

  I decided to try for the closer and much less messy option first. Besides, I was hesitant to start another prolonged chase and/or brawl too soon, since I was still aching after the last one left me with a body full of bruises and metal. I'd give it at least four more minutes before trying that again.

  I knelt down by the cabinet, giving the handle a few test-pulls to see how tight the lock was. It shook a little, but the bolt held rigid. This was a strong lock.

  Well, I doubt it’ll be strong enough to withstand this.

  I pulled back my shiny new metal fist, and after taking a brief second to lock up my joints (imagining that the cabinet's doors were Alex's face), I slammed my knuckles into the lock.

  That was probably overkill. The wood splintered, and the metal of the lock and hinges crumpled like paper; the SNAP of its impact was loud enough to wake everyone in a ten mile radius from their morning naps. The lock's bolt clattered to the floor.

  But hey, it opened! Who cares.

  I pulled back my fist. As I opened my fingers back up, a few electric sparks arced between my finger joints. They slowly dissipated the longer I went without clenching my fist.

  There was a feeling of power behind my arm, the sensation entirely new to me: Like I could feel the electricity that strengthened it and made it move as easily as I could feel any other part of me.

  I could get used to this. That was enough to make me smile, but it was made all the better when I saw that my initial guess was right: They put what little of my "possessions" I had on a plastic tray sitting inside the cabinet.

  I dug through them to see what I could carry—not that there was much anyway. There was a phone that I used less often than allergy meds (I have no allergies), a couple archaic copper coins that I kept on me for good luck, the broken handle-half of my late stun baton, and the little earpiece that I had carried with me the whole time I was fruitlessly trying to rob this clinic. The radio I had nicked off that first officer was noticeably absent (as was my knife and bloodied shirt), to my mild disappointment.

  I immediately pocketed everything I saw in there, except for the broken stun baton and the earpiece.

  I put the piece back up to my ear and flipped it on.

  There was nothing. No static, no buzzing noise, not so much as a beep to indicate that the thing still worked. It was like it had completely shorted out.

  The hell? I removed the earpiece. Was the StormHand’s interference so strong that just being near it completely broke—

  There was an open slot on the back of the earpiece where the micro-form battery was supposed to go.

  Oh. They probably confiscated it when they took my things.

  I frowned, then pocketed the earpiece. It wouldn’t be difficult to find a new battery for it. Soon, hopefully. Considering my only company had been a couple of leering corporate executives, I sorely missed hearing Darian’s voice. The thought that he might be worrying about whether I was even alive right now slightly sickened me.

  But instead of being introspective about those thoughts, I pushed them aside and focused on getting out of here. I also threw on a random-ass white tank top that I found in the same cabinet, which was a little awkward to get on ‘cause of the whole robot arm thing, but I had scant enough dignity that I didn’t want to go running around half-naked.

  I quickly realized the same tactics I used to get in here (i.e., sprinting about like a headless chicken and clocking people across the neck) weren't going to get me out of here. I might've been able to use my snazzy new arm to get through normal guards just as I’d used the stun baton, but I had a gut instinct that so long as Alex was still here, I wasn’t going to slip away that easily. I got a weird impression of danger from him that was difficult to put my finger on, and wasn’t eager to find out why.

  But if I couldn’t get out through, say, the front door, then there was at least one option left….

  I walked over to the window just behind the hospital bed and looked out. It was bright outside, the cityscape awash in the glow of the late-morning sunlight. Based on how high up I was, I was likely on the fifth floor of the clinic.

  Outside, directly below the window, was a vast construction yard, featuring mud and dirt, rusty fencing, and the sort of excavation equipment that looked so spotless that I’d bet money they only used the stuff twice a day to draw out contracts. The lot surrounding it was cleared out.

  A perfect escape route.

  The construction site wouldn’t be connected to any room inside the building, meaning there was only one way in or out of it—unless the corporate enforcers were planning on climbing wire fences.

  I couldn’t spot Darian’s van anywhere, but I was confident that as long as I got out of here and back into the city proper, then I could find him. He wouldn’t completely leave me here, and I could find out where he was hiding once I was home free. The thought fueled me with fresh hope.

  Now, how to get out that window without breaking every remaining bone in my body?

  Considering that my late cybernetically-enhanced arm managed to help me get up this building’s wall no problem, I figured that a full-on mechanical arm would make getting down the wall a complete cakewalk.

  Doing that was going to make a lot of noise, though, and when the clinic’s staff inevitably got into the room to investigate the commotion, they would instantly spot my escape route.

  As I glanced around the room one last time, I saw a familiar red button next to the door that could remedy—or, at least, delay—that issue. My resulting grin was downright demonic.

  I quickly regretted feeling that glee, as the moment that I slammed the emergency override, the door clicked shut, and the blaring red lights and screaming klaxons kicked back on.

  But fuck it. That would be enough to cover my exit.

  Before I could stick around long enough for my ears to develop fatal tumors, I ran back over to the window and socked the glass with my right fist. It didn’t immediately break, but a second hit was all it took to finish the job. Shards of glass exploded outwards into the air, and my fist crackled with little lightning bolts as a surge of strength pulsed up and down my arm.

  I pushed my amazement at the arm aside, then leveraged my robot arm to vault over the sill and out the window.

  I only had a moment to relish the relief of escape before I spun around in the air and slammed the fingers of my right arm into the building’s outer wall, like a beast sinking its claws into a tree trunk.

  This time, unlike when I used my old cybernetics, there was no delay that allowed momentum to push me down the wall. The force of my grip was strong enough to immediately ground myself beneath the window; my fingers held with unrelenting strength.

  It didn’t hurt in the slightest, either. It was hard for the texture of chipped bricks to grate against your fingertips when your fingers had no skin.

  I braced myself against the wall with both my legs, perfectly at ease.

  At least I pretended to be. The funny thing is, you’d think that because I had a much stronger grip on the wall than I did before, then I would feel more confident about not falling to my death, this time.

  But at least I was used to my old cybernetics. In a weird roundabout sense, me having more control over my mechanical arm made me feel like I had less control than I had before. I needed more time to learn how to use this bulky thing; instead, I’d thrown myself into a literal do-or-die deep end.

  Oh well. It can’t be that hard, right? Just had to do what I did before, but downwards this time. Easy as cake.

  I took the first step down and immediately realized my delusion. Trying to slip my robotic hand downwards without dragging my entire body down with it took quite a bit more elegance than I was used to. In any context.

  The first time, I scrambled a bit, but still managed to work myself down, nearly reaching the fourth floor of the building.

  The second time, my hand slammed into the bricks below me without enough force and I barely managed to catch myself as my entire body swung to be on-level with it. It left me shaken-up, with a fresh head-sized bruise on my knee.

  Whatever. I was alive. Standards. A little clumsiness didn’t mean I couldn’t make it all the way down to the bottom.

  As a matter of fact, clumsiness guaranteed that I would make it to the bottom.

  The third time, I got too cautious, didn’t put enough strength into my arm’s next grip, and my hand barely even scraped into the brick. With that, I lost all purchase, and gravity took the wheel.

  At first, my brain refused to process the ground rapidly zooming towards me and the wind rushing through my hair as anything other than a point of confusion.

  Then, like a switch flipped in my skull, I realized what was happening.

  My eyes shot open and I started wildly flailing my arms about, thinking but not capable of yelling, Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, OH SHI—

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  I reached the dirt in less than a second, miraculously not dead. In fact, I was on my feet, and hardly felt any pain whatsoever from the experience. Besides aching knees and a mild heart attack.

  I blinked, then looked down. What the hell? Besides being on my feet and not being a puddle of blood and broken bones on the ground, I had somehow made a small crater where I landed. My feet were buried in dirt, having sank a good foot or two into the ground. Ironically.

  I tilted my head, then carefully pulled one of my legs out.

  From the knee down, my leg and foot were almost entirely covered with hexagonal, bright-white metal plates that molded around my leg in the shape of form-fitting armor; a mellow violet-blue glow emanated from between the seams of each hex plate. My legs didn’t feel any different, besides a slight pain and surge of energy that wasn’t so different from how my mechanical arm felt.

  I pulled both my legs out from the dirt; they both had this weird-looking armor on it. I felt like I could run a mile without wasting a breath, in spite of having just plummeted from five stories high.

  I reached down and tapped one of the metal plates, convinced it was an illusion that would vanish if I looked too closely. But nope. I could feel it alright. They were stale and cold to the touch, pulsing and humming with a constant electrical current that raised the hairs on my arms.

  How the fuck did I do that? I reached a hand up to properly scratch my head in confusion, until I realized that the hand was my robotic one.

  There was something on it that I hadn’t until then.

  I held it outwards, looking at the palm. There was a hexagonal piece dead in the center of my palm, outlined with a softly-glowing blue LED. I could’ve sworn it wasn’t there before, but maybe I just hadn’t looked closely enough? Or at all?

  It was slightly elevated from the rest of my hand, not dissimilar to a button.

  I pressed it down with my left hand.

  There was a weird electrical distortion in my vision, then as if from nowhere, the hand I used to press the button was covered in those same metal plates. As was my entire goddamn body.

  I took a few steps back, too bewildered to pay attention to the construction yard around me. I was almost sure there were a few people nearby giving me some funny looks, but that seemed infinitely less pertinent than the fact that I was covered in a fine metal powersuit that I could barely feel.

  It all materialized before my very eyes, and I could barely feel this shit as anything other than an insubstantial sense of weight and energy that settled over my shoulders. It was only by tapping each of the metal plates that made up the powersuit (which was slick enough to make that gunslinger’s powersuit look a century out-of-date) that I could feel confident that it wasn't a hallucination.

  I knocked my knuckles against my head; sure enough, they rebounded against metal plates instead of my scalp. I couldn’t even feel that I had a fucking helmet on: There was nothing different about my vision besides the occasional flicker of static in the corner of my eyes.

  Nothing gets more experimental than making an armor suit appear from thin air, I guess.

  Despite not really feeling the armor’s presence on me, there was one very clear sensation that rose as I clenched my fingers and moved my arms.

  It felt as if white-hot lightning burned through my nerves. With every twitch of movement, the energy intensified. I was driven by an overwhelming urge to start moving and never stop. To act. To fight.

  Awareness of my surroundings stopped me in place, though.

  I was inside a little fenced-off area within the construction yard, surrounded by metal debris buried in dirt, piles of bricks, trash, and at least four construction workers who were giving me befuddled stares.

  One stood by a gateway through the fence, slowly backing away without taking their eyes off me. Another stood paralyzed, blinking stupidly at me, his hands wrapped around a shovel that was stuck in the dirt beneath him.

  Such judgemental looks would normally make me feel ashamed, like I should find any excuse to slink away to some distant corner or bathroom stall. The honest-to-balls powersuit I now wore somewhat helped my confidence, though.

  I smiled at them. Which they probably couldn't even see through my helmet.

  There was another worker I paid more attention to: A moment ago, they were shining a flashlight into a large half-buried metal pipe. Now, they limply held the flashlight in one hand and stared out at me from under the brim of their helmet, eyes wide and mouth shut.

  I slowly approached them, waving amicably. “Hello, friend! Could I convince you to pass over that—”

  My sentence hung half-finished in the air as they dropped the flashlight into the pipe and sprinted off toward the exit gate of the yard. I frowned at their back, only to realize that everyone else in the yard had also slunk away.

  Huh. Rude. Am I that off-putting?

  I put the encounter out of my mind. The flashlight was still there in the pipe, sitting on the rim. It was threateningly close to tipping over one side and vanishing into the mud.

  I picked it up and shook it with one hand; the tiny flashlight felt lighter than a puppy, with my powersuit’s invigorated grip. The sound of a battery rattling inside gave me quiet satisfaction.

  I clicked the flashlight off, popped the back cap open so forcefully that I nearly dented the metal by accident, and slipped a tiny silver disc out of the back. It was barely bigger than a fingernail.

  I pulled the earpiece out of my pocket and replaced the battery inside—or lack thereof. After closing the cap and making sure the battery worked, I smiled. Yes, I think we got a chance here, bud.

  Before I could think about whether I was talking to myself, someone else, or had started referring to my own earpiece as “bud”, I put it back in my ear.

  Except I couldn't, because the side of my suit’s helmet was in the way.

  Oh. Alright then. Time to figure out how in the hell to control this thing.

  I knew I had deployed the whole armor suit by slamming the button on my palm, but I wondered: If this tech was so advanced, was it possible for me to disable one part of the armor and leave the rest up and running?

  Mind you, any assumption that I had that level of control over it was blind guesswork, derived from the paradoxical point that I had no idea how any of this worked, and therefore it must work in a more spectacular way than I can imagine, which I used as a basis to try to imagine and extrapolate how it worked.

  Don’t try too hard to follow that train of logic. I know I didn’t.

  I studied the hex on the palm of my hand. It was still outlined with the same soft-cyan light that connected all the other hexagonal plates on my fancy powersuit, but the longer I looked at it, the more it reminded me of something like a… well, I feel like "trackpad" is a bad comparison, but you get what I mean. Something that was more of a multi-faceted interface as opposed to a single-purpose button.

  Experimentally, I ran one finger along it, gently enough as to not press on it until I felt a slight dip in one of the corners. Or vertices. Or whatever.

  I pushed down on the corner. The rest of the hex tilted into the point of pressure; after a faint electronic hiss, my left arm abruptly felt much lighter—even though I never realized it felt different from usual in the first place.

  Sure enough, all the white metal plates had vanished from my left arm, leaving me with the sight of my dirty-ass, scarred-up arm, and the edge of the shirt I stole from the clinic.

  I tried pressing down on the hex corner again, and sure enough, the plates on my arm reatomized as if they had never vanished in the first place.

  Okay, I'm on to something here. Lucky me.

  I tried pressing another one of the corners, but all that did was make my boots vanish—which was at least beneficial in figuring out how I conjured them during my fall in the first place, but otherwise useless.

  I pressed down on one more corner of the hex, and the moment I felt where it made the armor plates vanish, I slammed the button again so quickly that the plates reappeared before the blood could finish rushing to my face. Any consolation I got from knowing that nobody was around to see that happen was offset by how disturbed I was when I tried to imagine why the hell that was even built into the armor. The simple and most horrifying answer being: because somebody used it.

  But at least the fact that it corresponded with the bottommost corner of the hex ensured I no longer had to play guessing games.

  I pressed the topmost corner, and my vision fuzzed up for a moment before the helmet dissolved around me. I know I said that I had barely noticed a difference when the helmet overtook my vision, but now that I wasn't seeing the world through an advanced filter, it felt like my eyesight had dropped in screen resolution.

  But quality of vision was hardly why I went through all that trial and error. I impatiently stuck the earpiece up to my left ear and flipped it on.

  At first, I only heard a demoralizing amount of static. Then, after giving it a second to clear up, I could make out a quietly humming engine, hissing sparks, and those familiar, sickeningly nostalgic rock tunes.

  The sparks stopped. After a singular second of unnerving silence, Darian muttered, "Christ alive…"

  "Wish I was him, but alas."

  Another moment of silence. "You know, I really shouldn't be surprised that's how you greet me after vanishing for almost forty hours."

  I winced. "Well it wasn't like I stayed in bed to enjoy my dreams. I've been out for nearly that long."

  "Yeah, I figured as much. Don't take it personally, but I wasn't about to go charging in after you all by myself. Especially not when it was surrounded by officers. I value my body parts too much."

  Considering the parts I was currently missing, the statement felt extra pointed—not that he knew that, yet.

  "Speaking of which, care to explain just what the hell happened that left you stuck in there for so long?" he asked.

  I opened my mouth, paused, then shut it again. Between the StormHand device, the giant murder android, the maiming, and my fresh new assortment of robot parts, I didn't know where the hell I would even begin explaining the cascade of nonsense. It really only just occurred to me how much sheer bullshit I had been rolling along with up until to this point.

  "Uh, you know what? This would al be way easier to explain in person," I said. Which was partially true. "Mind telling me where you're camped out right now? I’ll just meet you there."

  There was a long enough pause on the other end that I could tell Darian saw clear through my excuse, but blessedly, he didn't comment on it. "Sure, if that's what you want. It's a little out of the way, though—in an isolated driveway that just barely has a view of the clinic. Where are you, right now? Still inside?"

  "Nope. I'm in the construction yard just out the back of the clinic. Don't ask me how I got there."

  "Trust me, I wasn't planning on it, though I'm sure I could connect the dots.” He sounded like he was holding back either a laugh or a sigh. "Anyway, since my spot is somewhat out of the way, I'll just send Gracious out so she can lead you to me. Sound good?"

  I tried to hide my excitement at getting to see Gracious again, and cleared my throat. "Sure. Sounds great. And, umm… one more thing, Darry?"

  "Yeah? What's up?" He sounded a little confused, and honestly, so was I. My mouth spoke those words before my brain figured out what they’d be.

  "Thanks for not leaving me behind, here. Y'know, since I vanished on you and everything. "

  There was yet another pause on the other side. A long one. The longer it dragged, the more a feeling like a chain slowly tightening around my chest grew.

  Then, that tension shattered when Darian just laughed—and it was a damn lovely laugh, if I say so myself. Beautiful as singing butterflies. If butterflies could sing, anyway. I don’t know shit about insects.

  "Tarry, bud. Why do you think I would leave you there?"

  "Uhhhhhhhhhhhh." It was suddenly much harder to think of clear words to say. "I don't know, but I know I wouldn't want to stick around near a MergoTech buil—"

  "Dude," he cut in. "There's no way in a million years I was going to leave the area until I knew you were safe. We're in this together, and if you leave one half of the team behind, then it ain't really a team anymore, is it?"

  "Um. I guess not?"

  "Didn't think so," he said, and sounded painfully smug for it. "Now, we're getting you back here, and we're gonna haul ass and put this mess behind us. Got it?"

  Considering the fact that the mess in question had left me with a couple robot parts, an I-hesitate-to-say magic powersuit, and a burning curiosity to dig into MergoTech's secret project, I doubted we'd actually put this behind us anytime soon. But it was a nice sentiment.

  "Got it,” I said, grinning. “Sure as shit sounds better than staying in this dirty yard."

  "Thought so myself. Now, hang tight. I'll be in touch."

  The connection went dead. I felt a little deflated that the conversation ended so soon after it began, but I was rejuvenated that we had talked at all.

  I’m not alone anymore.

  The past day had been a thoroughly isolating experience, where my only company had been ominous corporate suits who clearly wanted something from me, security guards who tried and failed to apprehend me, and those three crooks who had brutally succeeded at getting me.

  Darian’s voice was a sign of normalcy, away from all the madness. I was almost free. The hardest part was over, and all that. Easy peasy, smooth sailing from here.

  I pushed the thoughts of my partner aside, redeployed my helmet (which materialized over my earpiece), and moved on.

  I passed through the gateway and out into the larger enclosure of the construction yard. There wasn't much to see besides a featureless concrete foundation, a fence gate on the other side of it that led out to the open streets, and a couple bulky excavators and building equipment. There were piles of steel bars here and there, all of which looked like they'd only been touched when contracts needed padding.

  The construction workers I’d spooked off were nowhere in sight, but I quickly realized I wasn’t alone. My entrance was welcomed by a woman and two men—all in MergoTech security uniforms, standing atop the foundation with unholstered handguns.

  There's no reason that should surprise you. Fate has a terrible poker face.