FICTION: Cyborg Sleeps Part 20

In which Asira Y overdoes things in trying to prove her injuries aren't so bad, and Dr McDonald launches a search for the missing patient.

Catch up with the rest of the story here.

Part 20

Walking proved to be harder than Asira had anticipated. Her legs were still natural muscle and bone rather than machinery and flesh-substitute so the damage she'd sustained just 36 hours earlier had taken its toll. It was also a surprise to her how much her missing arm affected her pace. Human motion tends to use the backwards swing of an arm to counterbalance the forward swing of the leg, and it takes more effort to walk while keeping the arms still. For Asira, trying to make her usual pace, the loss of her synthetic arm left her off-balance and frustrated. Her side also ached and the stiffness of the girdle was restricting her natural motion.

The combined effects of her injury and the measures taken to repair it meant that Asira's progress was about half the pace she normally expected. She also found herself running out of energy a lot sooner than she thought she would. Her training and temperament responded with the determination to push through it no matter what, and so she forced herself onwards with the intention of completing the route she had in mind. She was cursing the doctor for the girdle, and for telling her not to do too much but never considered that this might count as “too much” or that it might have consequences. Gradually, though she would firmly have denied it, she was slowing down.

***

At the nearest point, the perimeter fence was a mile and a half from the main complex and at its farthest was three and a half. Asira's intended route would make about a four-mile journey that, at peak condition, she could expect to complete in just under an hour without any difficulty. It had now taken her more than that just to reach the fence. Training was important so Asira decided to observe from a concealed position the activities around the fence. There should, of course, be almost nothing happening except a patrol coming past every so often. In practice, however, there might be wildlife of various sorts and the skills for recording enemy movements could easily be practised by observing the actions of foxes, wild birds and other animals as they approached the fence. The magical elements of the barriers around the base usually made the creatures veer off before they got very close, but the cleared land for line-of-sight meant that you could see them moving about before they got close enough for that to be a factor.

Observing the fence itself was harder because of the spells used to conceal the base's existence from the outside world. Asira still had a little of her cryptoscopy spell working so that the faint shadow of the fence that was visible was decorated in her vision by sparkles showing where the hidden structure really was, making it easier for her to record accurately the things she observed while she staked out the fence. Here at least she could forget about the aggravations she felt about her situation at the complex.

***

At the medical centre, the nurse who was assigned to change Asira's bandages was the first to discover she had absconded from the centre. She reported to Dr McDonald that Asira was not in the centre but initially there was no panic. Orla did think that it was worth tracking her down, though, because the agent's resentment of her medical confinement was easy to see. Making sure she was playing by the doctor's rules seemed like a good idea.

Orla's first call was naturally to the shooting range where the quartermaster told her what had happened, including the fact that Asira had met and conversed with Agent Charles Vee. He hadn't seen which way she went after leaving the range, however.

***

Asira woke suddenly, shocked that she had somehow lost consciousness while on observation duties. Her side ached horribly. She ignored that part, though, because she had felt worse on some missions. The same with the hunger now making itself known in her belly. But falling asleep when she was supposed to be on duty (according to her own decision to practise) watching and recording events? This was unforgivable and had never happened to her before.

Asira checked her internal clock and the shadow positions, and realised she had been out for nearly two hours. She tried to move but somehow her body was not responding properly, lethargic and weak. She cursed fluently but without as much vigour as she intended. She tried again to move, a first hint of fear starting to creep into her mind. No one knew where she was so she would have to rely on her own efforts to get back to the complex and recover. She could try lying still for another few hours and see if that helped, of course, but she had fallen asleep once already and it was after waking that she had found herself so incapacitated. She had to get moving and get fixed up. First part: get moving. That was proving more difficult than she had anticipated. She rolled onto her side, taking care not to tear the coating on her shoulder cybernetic port or allow dirt to foul the mechanisms there. Folding her legs, she brought her knees to her chest and struggled to roll onto her shins. She was now kneeling. Using her one remaining arm for balance, she forced her legs to move again, unsteadily finding her feet and standing up. She made to take a step, and stumbled heavily.

“Shit!” She swore. She set herself, and made a second step, and stumbled again, almost falling and damaging her implant. If she screwed that up, then she would be out of commission for a lot longer while the doctors, technicians and magicians removed and replaced it. It would be like the conversion process all over again. Asira looked around for a stick or other way of gaining a third point of support. The landscape here had no trees or other sources of useful materials, and she was out of luck. Gathering herself again, she made another attempt at a step, and this time she did fall, twisting herself as she did so to protect the implant but bruising her right shoulder as she hit the ground, a grunt forcing itself from her lips. Her side felt as though she had been stabbed again. She felt too weak to curse any more, but refused to give in. She had no idea how long it would take her to get back to base shuffling on her knees but she would have to do it if she had no other way. She willed her aching and feeble limbs to move.

***

Dr. McDonald knew she could delay no longer. She would have to bring in other elements of the base's personnel if they were going to find her patient. The question was, how wide, and how far up the chain, did she have to go with this? Director Gattell, she thought to herself, would be really cross when he heard about this, and it would be so much easier if she could present him with a happily resolved situation rather than an ongoing search for his cyborg. To start with, she called the High Priest at the temple. Locator spells were notoriously unreliable but the more information about a target the spell's caster had, the more likely they were to receive useful information, and the base had a lot of information about its cyborgs.

Next was to try to figure out where Asira might have been heading and give other searchers a better chance of tracking her down. Ideally, she would have asked Charlie Vee about his encounter with the missing cyborg, but he could not be disturbed from his preparations for his mission. Instead, McDonald decided to check with the nurses whether there had been any hints in Asira's behaviour or comments before she absconded. In the end it was only an afterthought by one of the nurses, who recalled the visit by Priestess Wainwright. “Maybe she will have some ideas?” suggested the nurse. McDonald thanked the nurse and immediately placed a call to the Temple's assignments officer to have him find Wainwright for her. Bena Wainwright quickly came to the phone.

“Priestess Wainwright here, how can I help you, Doctor?” she asked

“My nurses tell me you visited Asira Y at the medical centre yesterday,” began McDonald, “And now she's gone missing after visiting the shooting ranges. We were hoping you might have some idea what she's thinking and where she would go?”

“I'm sorry, I barely know her,” replied Bena, “I just wanted to relieve the boredom I figured she'd be feeling if she couldn't move about like normal. We just played cards for a bit, didn't talk much.”

“That boredom is certainly what we think caused her to run off like this, but it makes my job very much harder. Thanks for your help anyway.”

“Oh, I did have one thought!” Bena suddenly added. “She seemed very antisocial, maybe she wanted to get as far away from people as possible?”

“Thank you, Priestess, you may have a point. I'll pass that idea on to the people searching. Thank you for your time, I'll let you get back to your work.”

Orla McDonald then called the guardhouse and spoke to the lieutenant there, explaining her problem and asking if he could spare some soldiers to search. “We've got an idea she'd go somewhere as far as possible from anyone else, and you'll have a good idea of the ground in the base. Any ideas?”

“There's a few places, Ma'am, but I've got a couple of ideas about how special forces operatives think, I think she might want to prove how superior she is, which means she'll want to be away from everyone but keeping surveillance on them at the same time. From what you say, her range isn't going to be what it normally is, so I'm looking for good observation points around the main complex. I'll send a couple of lads out to check them for you.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Let me know if you come up with anything, and I'll give you any information we get form this end.”

“Yes, Ma'am, glad to help.” The phone call ended and Orla sat in her office, trying to think of anything more she needed to do now.

***

“It really hurts my knees,” thought Asira, but it was not in her nature for that to stop her. But the weakness that would not let her stand and walk with any certainty was also making it hard to make her legs shuffle forwards through the scrubland. Exhaustion would, eventually, take its toll and stubborn as she was, she knew this deep inside and was beginning to fear that she might not make it back in time.