Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
When we finally make it to the lobby the government ID people are gone, but there’s still a few people waiting in line for dinner services.
I look down at Anneeta, ready to ask her if she thinks the dinner people will take a passed-out woman, but I find her eyeballing the short pantry line in a way that has nothing to do with this woman over my shoulder.
She’s hungry. I recognize the look. “Go on, go eat. I’ll take care of her.”
Anneeta looks back up at me, questions in her eyes. “What are you gonna do with her?”
I blow out a breath, frustrated. The closest health center is a long way off. I don’t wanna do it. So I tell Anneeta the only other option I have. “Just… take her upstairs to my place and let her sleep it off, I guess.”
Anneeta finds this solution to be acceptable, because she’s nodding before I even finish. “That’s a good idea. I’m super hungry. Are you hungry? Do you want me to bring you some dinner?”
“Thanks, it’s a nice offer. But no. Go eat, then go to sleep. It’s past your bedtime.”
“OK, Tyse.” She yawns cavernously as she talks. “I am pretty tired. And hungry. I’ll come check on you tomorrow.”
“Hey, wait.”
She turns and looks at me.
“Check my pocket.” I nod my head down to the one along the side of my leg. “Take four coins. Hell, take five.”
Her eyes brighten. “Thanks!” Then she shoves her hand into the pocket, pulls out a handful of coins, counts out five, then drops the rest back into my pocket as she flashes me her new toothless grin. “Now I really will come by tomorrow!” Then she skips off and joins the short line for dinner, looking over her shoulder one more time to wave.
What a weird day. And I’ve only been awake for the end of it.
I hit the main stairwell, still carrying the woman like a sack of flour, and find that very few people are interested in the fact that I’m hauling an unconscious woman up to my quarters. A few of them make jokes, but most of them don’t even look twice.
That’s the thing about living in the God’s Tower ruin—pretty much anything goes. As long as you don’t mess with people, they don’t mess with you.
By the time I get home and drop the woman facedown onto my bed, I’m exhausted. It’s been a while since I did so much physical exercise and I probably climbed forty or fifty flights of stairs in the past few hours.
Once I’ve unloaded her, I grab the disposable phone from the trash can, checking for battery. It’s at three percent, but that’s good enough to shoot off one text to Stayn: Found your disturbance. All good now. Check in tomorrow.
It sends, but immediately after, it does the death beep, so I throw it back in the trash.
Then I turn and look at the woman. What now? Wake her up? Is she dying? Should I take her to the health center anyway?
I actually laugh out loud at the thought. It’s not happening.
After all that exertion I’m due a shower. So I take myself over to the bathroom, which is just a tiny space separated from the kitchen by a curtain.
A few seconds later my battle belt is hanging over a chair and my shirt is on the floor. I peek past the shower curtain, start the water—praying there’s enough power up here right now to get it lukewarm—and then sit down in the chair and unlace my boots as I stare at the woman on my bed.
She’s pretty, I’ll give her that. Long blonde hair, nice body… niiiiice body. And a little bit slutty. Which is… kinda how I like ’em.
I’m just about to chuckle at my internal monologue when all of a sudden, my augments come to life again. The waterfall of text starts falling, too fast to read. But the moment I think that, they slow down. And I realize it’s just one sentence repeating over, and over, and over.
Hide her.
Then it all disappears again. And the moment it does, every hair on my body sticks up on end. The spark.
I close my eyes, shaking my head. I hate that the augments can still affect me like this. And it has been quite a while since it’s happened, so I kinda forgot how creepy it could be.
Back when I was younger, at the peak of my augmentation around age seventeen, it was a seamless interaction. I would think something and the augments would contribute. It was a little like a discussion—a brainstorming, maybe. Ideas floated, considered, discarded. But I was in charge, the tech was just a tool I controlled. The same way I control my hands and eyes. The blue text scrolling down my field of vision didn’t come off as some kind of trespassing personality back then. Those were all my thoughts, enhanced. It was me.