The sterile white sheet beneath Megumi was already stained red.
Sweat dripped from his chin as he clenched the wooden spoon in his mouth.
Above him, Serena perched on his lower back, her knees pinning his hips while her fingers worked the neural interface of the cybernetic spinal wire.
"Once I let go, it's going to drill inside your body and connect with your inside like some kind of hive mind. It going to hurt no question about it." she warned, her cyber-eye zooming as she aligned the thrashing chrome tendrils with the incision on his left shoulder.
"Nod if you are ready?" She asked.
Megumi barely nodded before cybernetics slither it's way and forced it's way inside.
The world dissolved into white-hot agony as the implant fuse inside him.
He felt every inch of it—something moving within his body and expending throughout his each limbs, tendrils fusing to vertebrae, lightning-bolt filaments weaving through muscle tissue, his pain receptor were going on overdrive.
His back arched off the table as the wire connected to his nervous system in a burst of electric blue light as his eyes started to glow.
>> PRIMARY SYSTEMS ONLINE
>> BIOLOGICAL INTEGRATION: 27%
>> WARNING: PAIN THRESHOLD EXCEEDED
Megumi's vision tunneled. The last thing he saw before blacking out was Serena's panicked face.
---
Consciousness returned in flickers.
>> VITALS STABILIZED
>> NEURAL SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE
>> CARTRIDGE PORTS SEALED
The voice in his skull was a robotic version of himself.
Megumi blinked up at Serena's ceiling, slowly sitting up feeling quite drained.
"Welcome back." Serena's grin was strained. She held up a mirror in her left while passing his glasses with the other.
Three new ports gleamed on his body: two at the base of his neck, one above his right hip. The entry wound had healed into a smooth chrome disc etched with those same storm-patterns.
Serena tossed him a water bottle, "Are you okay"
"My body is burning-" his phone buzzed—a message from Zenith about working late, "Mom's working late."
Serena adjust his glasses, "Guess you're stuck with me for—"
The explosion hit like a freight train.
One second they were standing; the next, Megumi was embedded in the drywall, his new implant screaming:
>> CONCUSSION DETECTED
>> ADRENALINE ADMINISTERED
Through the smoke, black boots approached.
---
Cold concrete bit into Megumi's cheek as he woke. His HUD flickered:
>> LOCATION UNKNOWN
>> RESTRAINTS DETECTED: POLYCARBONATE CABLE
Across the warehouse, Serena hung by her wrists from a meat hook, blood dripping from her nose.
Behind her loomed a man in a pinstripe suit, his face obscured by a grinning clown mask.
"Ah! Sleeping beauty awakens!" The mask's voice modulator.
A blade extended from his sleeve, pressing under Serena's chin, "Your mom has been very stupid lately. First asking for ten of thousands credit, then choosing to ignore my calls and pretend we are not in a partnership. Naturally, it falls upon you to fix her miss before-" suddenly the walls of the warehouse break down.
All three of them turned and noticed the two figures standing there.
Miles reload his pistol while Sarah lean on his shoulder, "Yo Law, looks like you piss off the wrong people." Said Miles with a smile on his face.