Page 74 of Sparktopia
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. ButIwas 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.Itwas me.
This isn’t how it feels now. Now these words are an intrusion. A violation, almost. It feels like a parasite. I would’ve gottenthem removed, but it can’t be done. Maybe, if you change your mind early enough, like within six months to a year after the tech is first introduced into your bloodstream, they can be filtered out. It takes about two years for them to really implant into your neural network.
But that would’ve put me at about age fifteen. And at age fifteen I couldn’t fucking wait to join the Sweep. There was no way I’d turn back.
Boots off now, I stand up, looking over my shoulder at the woman one last time, then take off the pants. She’s still sleeping. Or unconscious or whatever. So I get the shower—the water isn’t even close to lukewarm—wash up as quick as I can, then step out with a towel wrapped around my waist.
The next thing I know, I’m staring down the barrel of my own VersiStrike.
I blink at the half-naked woman’s glare. She’s still wearing my jacket, but it’s unzipped now, like she was about to take it off and got distracted. So I can see her whole bare stomach. Her hands are shaking as she points the weapon at me. It was a pretty stupid mistake to leave my battle belt somewhere she could get a hold of it. But in my defense, I thought she was unconscious and even with it pointed at my face, she doesn’t come off as threatening.
Not to a guy like me.
I put my hands up, wave one of them, and try on a smile. “Hello. Nice to see you’ve recovered.”
She doesn’t say anything, not right away. She stares at me for a moment, eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then she starts stepping back, putting distance between us.
“I’m not holding you hostage or nothin’, lady. You’re free to leave whenever you want. But if you try and take my Versi with you, I will hunt your ass down and take it back. So why don’t youjust put it on the bed on your way out the door and we’ll call this whole thing even.”
Her arms stiffen and she shakes the Versi at me. It’s got a hair trigger, that thing. And I can’t tell from this angle if she’s got the safety off, or what setting she’s got it on, but when I used it last night, it was set to flechette. I only keep two cartridges of those loaded at any given time, so she only gets one shot. But it’s pretty hard to miss a target standing six feet away with a Versi set on flechette and I can’t think of a worse way to end this day than being assaulted with a barrage of tactical darts by a woman dressed like last night’s whore.
Especiallywhen I just hauled her ass up a million flights of stairs.
“Who are you?” She’s spitting words at me. “Where’s the god?” She looks around, like there might be a god hiding in the corner of my tiny quarters. “Wheream I!” She yells this last part, then starts shaking the Versi at me again.
I put up a hand, trying to remain calm. “Woman.Do notshake that weapon. It’s very sensitive and if you shoot me, Iwillkill you. Do you understand?”
She takes a breath and narrows her eyes. “Not if I kill you first.”
“You get one chance. Got it? And while being shot with a VersiStrike flechette cartridge would be epically painful and cause a lot of scarring, it most definitely willnotkill me.” Now it’s my turn to narrow down my eyes at her. “So you willnotbe killing me first. You will just be pissing me off. And I get it, we don’t know each other. But take a nice, good, long look at me, darlin’.” She does. Her eyes fall all the way down my mostly naked body, then come back up to meet mine. “Do I look like the kind of man you wanna piss off?”
It’s a rhetorical question. I’m covered in Sweep tats, battle scars, and even though I’ve been out of service for seven yearsnow, I’m nothing but muscle. I mean, while it was a bitch to carry her ass up those sixty million flights of stairs, there is a little part of me that’s proud I could still do something that physically demanding.
I feel the augments in this moment. It’s like a shot of endorphins. And then the blue words are falling down my vision again. They are senseless words this time. Or something more like symbols. Then something really fucking weird happens.
The woman in front of me begins to glow.
I meet her gaze and she gasps, taking quick steps back. She trips over something, the Versi fires, and tactical darts come flying out.
I duck, just on instinct, but luckily, she was pointing it at the ceiling and when I look up there are several hundred scars in the cement above my head.
My gaze wanders back to the woman, who is crouching on the floor, and now I’m angry. I walk over to her, grab the barrel of my weapon, and yank it from her grip. She shrinks back, putting her hands up like I’m about to hit her.
And this pisses me off even more. “Go on, get out if you want. I don’t need this shit.” I point the Versi at her—it can’t automatically reload a flechette cartridge because that was the only one in the magazine, so it’s gonna stay empty until I change the setting or meet a very specific set of high-threat circumstances that this woman will never be able to trigger. But I direct it at her anyway just to make a point. “I saved your life. You were passed out a million levels below ground. You would’ve died down there. So… ya know… you’re fuckin’ welcome.”
“Who are you?” Her voice is shaky now. “What is this place? Where the fuck am I and how did I get here?”
I hold up a finger, ready to make a list. “Tyse.” And then a succession of fingers come flying up as I tick off the rest of the answers. “The God’s Tower ruin. You’re here, inside it. In myquarters. And I already told ya. I carried your ass up a million levels of stairs from below ground. Specifically, sector 4, quad H minus 5, floor 2. Which is, as it turns out, the fucking dead brain room of the ruined god.”
“Ruined god?” She looks thoroughly confused. “But…what?”
