Page 93 of Neon Flux

She pulled her hand back, frowning now.

“So you damaged it and haven’t gone to your fancy doctors at POM. Why?” Finally, a question.

“Like I said, I can handle it. Don’t need a doctor poking around in me to tell me what I already know—which is that this tech is garbage and trying to remove it would probably kill me.”

“I can’t believe they put it in your face…” I didn’t like the look she was giving me. Like I was someone to be pitied. I grabbed her wrist as she reached out to touch me again.

“What, you saying I’m not pretty anymore?”

“Nah, whatever junkyard Modder you went to did decent. He might’ve helped you out, actually.” She smirked, and the sadness in her eyes washed away.

Good. I didn’t want her pity. I did like her looking at me, though.

“Doesn’t change the fact you’re glitching. And I’m not risking my life over your pride. Get that shit fixed, or the job’s off.”

“You don’t exactly have the leverage to make that call.”

“Watch me.” She walked out and flipped me off as she left.

I hadn’t beenable to sleep and had wandered into HQ at an ungodly hour. Now, I stood in the antiseptic white room, tapping my fingers against the metal table beside me. The whole thingwas designed to be comforting. Soft white lighting, just a hint of pleasant music, everything so clean you were probably better off eating off the floor in here than at any Magenta food stall. It set my teeth on edge, and my arm twitched harder than normal.

Why was I even here? Why was I listening to her, like she was the one who had leverage over me?

Fuck this.I pushed off the wall I’d been leaning against just as the door to the small room opened and the POM doc in his white coat walked through.

“Cyanos Hoshina, I see you’re experiencing some issues with your Flux tech.” He flicked his Vysor off, turning it transparent so he could get a good look at me. “Let’s have a look at that chip and get this figured out.”

“Sorry, Doc. No chip to speak of. You’re gonna need the heavy machinery today.” His eyes widened, running up and down my body in a way I wasn’t used to. Assessing—like I was a rat in a cage, some novel new experiment he got to tweak.

“Full-body mod tech… I’ve never—” He coughed, stopping himself. Not good to let the yarou you’re working on know you have no idea what you’re doing.

“Well, we’ll certainly figure this out. What are the symptoms?”

Full body pain. Trouble sleeping. Brain fog so bad I can’t work without Vector.

“Left arm’s been twitching, especially when I use my Flux.”

“Okay, can you walk through the Mercer Protocol for me?”

Baby stuff. I held my hands out before me, touching my thumb to each finger and lighting a spark in between. No twitching. Then I held my arms out and sent lightning back and forth between my palms. I felt like an idiot—especially when my left arm twinged so badly the lighting missed and arced to a nearby electronics panel.

The doc flicked out a holographic keyboard and took notes. “Volatile unilateral instability, possible muscular adhesion.” He waved at me to keep going, and I did, like the good monkey I was.

After a few minutes of this, I was really starting the get agitated when he said, “All right, lay down on the table for me.”

My arm twitched again. I looked at that metal slab, and my stomach clenched in a way I never let it. It pissed me off even more. He was just some corpo doc. This was fucking POM medical. I had nothing to be worried about. Nothing.

“All right, Doc. Diagnose me.” I lay back on the cold table, the thin VegLeather pad on top doing absolutely nothing to soften the surface. The fluorescent light above blinded me, and my body seized as an unwelcome memory surfaced.

He’s awake. What the fuck?

It’s his Flux. I only work on pyroteknik kids. I can’t fucking compensate for this EM shit—it’s messing with the anesthesia.

Well, too late now. Hand me the saw.

The whirl of the blade had me snapping up off the table, grabbing the doc by the collar, lightning dancing over my skin. His face had blanched white.

“It’s just the diagnostic probe—it shouldn’t…”