“This is gonna hurt…” Pyraci whispered these words to himself as the heat from the slugs melted though his chest from about five different angles. The force of each bullet forced his body back into the next one. What took place in a matter of ten seconds seemed like almost half an hour of pain. One could almost leave the body, walk around, and look at it as it happened. He seemed almost jolted with electricity, unable to move or even change the expression on his face before he hit the pavement with the force of a demolished building. His hand twitched once or twice before the reconstruction process had begun. He’d been over this a thousand times and though it ten thousand. “Stay calm and breathe as slowly as you can. It slows your heart rate and prevents shock.” They always said. It’s not certain whether the shock had set in too soon or if he gave up, but this time he stopped all together. His ears popped, and suddenly the pain was gone.
His residual self image was copied and pasted into the loading area as usual and Riot got a reading of him there, but no one could see him with the construct’s image translators.
“What the hell? He’s in there but I don’t see him…” Riot looked at Gethsemani, who had just injected the captain with stabilizers to keep him calm. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Gethsemani looked back at the diagnostic screens.
“His heart rate is fine, but…” She paused for about five seconds.
Riot turned his hear back towards her. “…but what?”
“Look at his neuro-kinetics…either this thing is broken or he’s downloading something.”
“I didn’t initialize anything.” Riot returned, shaking his head.
A moment later, Pyraci’s eyes opened and he convulsed violently, coughing coagulated blood out of his lungs. The operator sends operatives in and out of the loading construct, but something had forced him out of it. “Get me outta this thing!” he spat. The blood glistened on his shirt and arms. Riot unlatched his arms and legs as Gethsemani clamped and twisted the cranial jack, removing it from his head.
He coughed again as she took a towel to his face to wipe the blood off. He touched her hand that held the towel, lowering it from his face slowly. “I’m… I’m sorry.” He said with a low uneasy tone in his voice. He had a withdrawn look in his face, one no one in his crew had seen before.
Something was different. He was different.
He glanced at the two and walked towards his quarters. A few of the others peeked out of the mess hall to see what all the commotion was about, but he continued un-flinched, as if nothing else existed. He walked in and bolted the steel door behind him as he entered.
