Page 154 of Dustwalker

“Damn it!” Kevin roared through his closed mouth. He swung his arm over the surface of the table, clumsily sweeping all the blocks off. “I told you I don’t want to do this!”

“It’s all right, Kevin,” Doctor Anderson said. “We can be done for today.”

Another flicker, and the scene changed. Kevin paced in a carpeted room. A beige linen couch and two matching accent chairs rested nearby. A blonde woman who looked to be in her early forties sat in one of the chairs, wringing her hands in her lap.

“Kevin, please,” she said.

“Please, Diane?” Kevin stopped abruptly with his back to her, his eyebrows sinking low. “I don’t know what you expect. You tell me that and I’m supposed to be cool and collected after all this time?”

“Just…be patient, please. We knew this would take time, and it’s worked out better than we hoped. You’re stillhere, Kevin.” She pressed her hands down on her thighs and bowed her head. “We want you to come home, but the psychiatrists say you’re still…adjusting to the changes.”

“They won’t let me see the kids, Diane. My fucking kids! It’s been eight months, and I haven’t seen them since I first woke up. I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, I don’t use the fucking bathroom. All I do is think about the life I’m supposed to be living.”

Diane stood and approached him. She reached out and hesitantly placed a hand on his arm. Kevin jerked away from her, taking several steps away.

Diane’s hand fell, and her face crumpled. “I know it’s hard?—”

“You know?” he demanded, whirling on her.

She retreated, nearly tripping when her foot caught on one of the chairs.

Advancing, Kevin grabbed the chair, lifted it overhead, and hurled itagainst the wall, shattering its frame. “You think you have any fucking idea what this is like?”

Diane held her hands up as though to shield herself. “Kevin, stop! Don’t do this!”

“You, too?” He dug his fingers in his neck and pulled upward, tearing off a chunk of synthetic skin to reveal the metal plates of his jaws and cheek. “Thisis what I am now. There’s no going back from it, so take a long fucking look!”

“Oh my God,” Diane cried, tears running down her cheeks. “This isn’t you. This isn’t you! My Kevin would never —”

He stared at her, utterly still, his eyes cold. “No, I’m not your Kevin. He died on the operating table.”

He turned and stalked away from her.

The door burst open, and several technicians hurried into the room. Diane, sobbing, was escorted out.

Kevin glanced over his shoulder, the plates of his jaw shifting as though he were clenching his teeth. He closed his eyes. The video went black.

Ten seconds passed, and an image flickered on. A black-haired woman with brown eyes leaned back in her seat, pinching the bridge of her nose. She bore a faint resemblance to Nancy Cooper. The bookshelves behind her marked the room as some sort of office.

“My name is Doctor Jessica Yuan. I’m a neurologist, and I led the team that pioneered the method by which Kevin Randall Turner, age forty-three, had his consciousness transferred into a robotic surrogate body. The procedure, at its core, was successful. There are thousands of hours of video documenting both the procedure and our work with Mr. Turner during his recovery.”

She leaned forward, resting her elbows atop the desk, and raked her fingers through her hair. “I’m making this recording because the future of this project is uncertain. The war has spilled onto American soil, and the military has shown increasing interest in our work—particularly that of my colleague, Doctor William Anderson, who has made great advances in robotics and artificial intelligence. It’s inevitable that they’re going to seize our research, and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it.”

Sighing, she ran her gaze over the bare desktop.

“We didn’t foresee the consequences. We pushed so hard for this, and…we should’ve known. Ishould’ve known. Mr. Turner’s mentalstate is extremely unstable and volatile. He often refuses to work with us, demanding to see his wife and children, but his psychiatrists, Doctors Foster and Kuering, are convinced that he’s a danger to his family. He came close to harming his wife during her last visit six weeks ago. That’s when he tore off his face.”

Jessica swallowed thickly, eased back in the chair, and placed her hands atop the desk. “It’s apparent that the magnitude of the changes he endured were too much for his mind to cope with. Everything is different for him. He sees, hears, and feels in ways that no human was meant to. The everyday bodily functions of his old life are gone, and it’s given his already fragile mind excessive time to wander. He rages against what he is and clings to what he was.

“Perhaps it’s a matter of…mental fortitude? Tenacity? We don’t know. He’s the only successful candidate. It’s possible that this process would break anyone subjected to it… All I know is that heisdangerous. God, I can’t imagine what would happen if the government tried to use this to produce soldiers.”

Her head sagged, strands of dark hair falling into her face. “This isn’t what I wanted. You have to believe me, it’s not what any of us wanted. This was supposed to help people. He told us in his final pre-op interview that the risks were worth the chance at more time with his family. And now… He is, effectively, immortal, and he cannot spend any of that time with the people he loves the most.

“He’d said that if he had died during the procedure, it would’ve spared them his suffering. And what have I done but tainted their last memories of him?”

She tilted her head back. Her dark eyes sparkled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she rasped, and reached for the camera. The feed cut out.

Heavy silence fell over the war room. Ronin’s processors poured over the information. What kind of world had this been all those years ago?