Day 29

[from Cyborg Team Alpha]

It was almost 4am by the time Gumi was finished. She staggered out of the augmentation theatre into the brightly-lit corridor, letting out a loud yawn. "Finally…" she muttered. "Finally done…"

Ryuto was sat in the corridor, waiting for her. Unlike his companion, he did not look the least bit tired. "You didn't have to stay up all night to finish it, you know," he said.

"You didn't have to stay up all night waiting for me to finish," replied Gumi, rubbing her tired eyes.

"You know I don't have a choice," said Ryuto, adjusting the black hood pulled tight around his head. With the bandana drawn over his mouth, he more closely resembled the gangs he was out to stop than anything else. "So, have you rebooted her?"

Gumi yawned again and nodded. "Yeah… it'll take a few hours for her to regain consciousness, though. I want us t… to all be there when she does…"

Another loud yawn escaped from Gumi's mouth. Ryuto heaved a metallic-sounding sigh. "Go get some sleep, Gumi," he said. "I'll watch over her for now. If she starts to wake up, I'll let you know."

Gumi nodded, let out yet another yawn, then shuffled off towards the dormitory. Ryuto stood up, and entered the room she had just left, the door closing behind him with a pneumatic hiss.

Inside, the augmentation theatre was rather cluttered despite its large size. It was filled with all manner of machinery, electronics, and computers, many of which Ryuto did not know the function of. Several brightly-coloured displays set up around the room showed the status of the figure lying in the white hospital bed, in a clearing in the centre of the room. Only two were of importance to Ryuto. One was the heart rate monitor, which showed that her heart was beating at a slow, steady rate. The other was a touch-screen computer monitor, with a simple message displayed on a pop-up on the screen: "REBOOT COMPLETE".

Ryuto could see nothing of the girl apart from the left side of her face. The right half was swathed in bandages, an oxygen mask concealed beneath them, and the rest of her body was covered by the bedsheets . He did not know what lay beneath, but he knew that it would not be pretty. Judging from the time Gumi and the professor had spend augmenting her, and what he had heard when she had first been brought in, her injuries had been both horrific and extensive, no doubt even more so than his.

For a moment, Ryuto was tempted to pull away the sheets, to unravel the bandages, to see just what had been done to this poor girl and what Gumi had had to fix. Eventually, he decided against it. He did not want to disturb anything, lest he accidentally cause the poor girl any discomfort.

Pulling up a chair, Ryuto sat down by the girl's side and began his quiet vigil. Almost without realizing, he swept back the hood of his jacket and pulled down his bandana. Much of the left side of his face, and his lower jaw, had been replaced by metal plating. Where his left ear had been, there was now a bionic ear with ten times the capability of a normal human ear. This, in a way, was his gift. Not only had he been reborn, he had been enhanced, and now it was his solemn vow to use those enhancements, and the second chance at life he had been given, to protect the country. In a few hours, when she woke up, the girl would find herself perhaps not with the same enhancements as him, but with the same life, the same fate. And unlike him, she would have others like her there to help her come to terms with it. She would not be alone.

As Ryuto spoke, his metallic jaw did not move, creating an eerie effect despite the softness of his words. "Welcome back, Ichiko St-Clare."