CyberGene: Anyone need a Cyberhand?

Chapter 36: The Arm that is a Finger

Lt. Jacob Grazhe’s personal notes on known Crimson Finger: Cannonarm.

I… don’t even know where to start with this one. Both of his arms are massive weapons of destruction, one armed with a Shardgun and the other installed with a grenade launcher. Clearly, he isn’t the type to be peaceful yet…

All of my intel from my source tells me he is apparently a kind, family-oriented man. Does charity service at orphanages, donates half of his blood money to veteran aid groups, and even participates in a soup kitchen for the homeless every so often. He just happens to have a kill-switch for cops. Yeah, I’m going to tread lightly with this one, he’s not the most active Finger of the Crimson Soul but he’s an effective killer when he needs to be.

I mean, I do know where his family lives. A wife and two daughters, and while I’ve crossed that line before I don’t think it’s worth doing for him. He’d probably storm the police headquarters and even make good progress with those augments of his. So yeah, unless he becomes a nuisance, I think it’s better to just leave him be.

8:41 PM June 24th

Diana

Three barrels pointed down at me, muzzle flashes exploding as a rattle of their ammunition tracked down my quick zips around the room until I was secure behind another steel pillar. I’d finally seen the man behind this deal, Cannonarm, a Crimson Finger.

A Tier Two killer.

Tall and wide, he was a man with two mountains of steel on both arms. Half of his head looked like it’d been scrapped together from trash in a junkyard, a large red goggle on his right eye replacing the Crimson eyes found on most of their gang members.

“You assholes!” His left arm raised high, a Bronze trickle running through it before sprinting out in the form of a small sphere the size of my fist, it hurtled in the direction of Choirmen and the others by him. “I told Kenza I wouldn’t be killing any cops these next two months!”

A sniper shot exploded the grenade mid-air, Risham’s quick aim saving the day once more. But not nearly shooting fast enough for it to make a major difference. Choirmen bunkered up with several others behind containers and whatever rest of the warehouse had that could give them cover.

I was the only one behind enemy lines.

Pushing my innate sense of electromagnetic fields to its limits, I noticed a flick of attention away from me as one of the grunts turned his weapon towards Choirmen’s group. My Braceshocker pulsed into action, the bolt sparking through his back and sending him to the floor as a spasming mess.

He should have been out of it, but then he raised his pistol back in my direction, along with covering fire from another person shifting to flank me. Any single bullet could end me if it hit a vital organ, I wasn’t sure my healing or toughened skin could compensate for that.

Especially not in the reduced output I had right now. As precise shots and return fire echoed from all sides in the room, once again I managed to piece out the exact moment a gun shifted to reload from one of the men firing at me. My Braceshocker whirred to action as I let myself out of the protective haven for the briefest moment.

I’d been wrong. He wasn’t reloading, his arm outstretched as bony spurs grew over until claws extended out of each fingernails like scythes carved of ivory. A Tier One SIM, and his ally whose body sparked with Iron embers was a BUG user, Tier 0 like myself if I was lucky.

Before I could squeeze the trigger, a rushing quintuplet of bony knives struck out, driving me out from cover that my body spurned into a dash as predictive shots ran inches ahead of my face. I turned, pushing myself back and keeping the Mutant in between me and the shooter.

He kicked, punched, clawed. All like an animal. His crimson eyes rolled back into his head until bloodshot eyes were all that remained. I danced on my feet through it all, just weaving below death with each glancing blow, until my eyesight gave me the insight I needed.

Mutation: Iron-Grade Reactive Sight has reached 100% Development. Additional Meta-Mutation has occurred; Adapter has increased reaction to threats registered visually.

A claw grazed just my shoulder as he launched himself at me, small streaks of my blood spraying around his bony protrusions which had broken through my Skin Hardening. But he failed to gouge through. It was just the moment I needed, his momentum pushing into me, I kicked with all my might through my Elastic Muscles into his abdomen. I felt the squish and crunch of ribs under my knee as he collapsed into grueling mess.

Now I would be an open target to the shooter, but I reacted a moment sooner. My gun burst up to the shooter’s eyes, burning their circuits before he even realized his ally was crumpled on the floor. Then I unloaded the rest of my clip on the, still-struggling, bony Mutant, he resisted it better than most could — given the outgrowths protecting him.

“What are you guys doing?!” Cannonarm’s yell boomed through the large warehouse. “Take the fucking weapons we’re supposed to sell and kill them! Deal’s off anyway!”

All at once the remaining Crimson Souls members shuffled and ran towards a stockpile of various open chests and containers, Cannonarm himself picked up some large disk that had living wires dig into his grenade-launcher, locking firmly into the steel-bulging forearm.

We all moved to intercept them, I shot out a barrage of blue bolts while Choirmen’s blood bullets smacked into the heads of one of the gang members who’d just pried out a light machine gun, his head exploded into mist. Another few were shot down before they could even stick ammo into their new weaponry.

We were making progress, but we were still outnumbered - and as the rest of the gang members all took cover with new weapons — and now outgunned. The new hailstorm of weapons shot out in a rainbow of colors.

I was too slow to take cover, a searing ray of heat boiling through my hip bone mid-movement. Burnt cloth clung to the blistering flesh, I was sure my only saving grace was that my increased skin integrity was enough of a buffer to protect the muscle and bone beneath it.

The wound’s agony sprawled through my legs and up my torso like nasty spiders chewing through me, the searing adrenaline in my blood pumping to keep me focused.

Mutation: Iron-Grade Mental-Fatigue Recovery has reached 100% development. Additional Meta-Mutation has occured; increased neural threshold to pain.

It was enough of a coolness that I could take sight of the ones who were moving to flank me. Most of them still focused on Choirmen’s group, leaving just two of their members to intercept me.

I had the advantage though, whereas I was moving and sliding behind the various containers out of their sight, the powerful radiation of their new weapons was a bonfire to my senses. Creeping and pouncing from one secretive container to another, I had the opportunity to survey the scene of Choirmen’s fight.

They were losing, amidst the storm of bullets and rays of light there were several bodies of the reinforcements. Two officers from the looks of it and one uniform of an Investigator in the Second Rank. I hadn’t even known their names. Choirmen was also bleeding from various wounds, but his blood Mutations kept him standing.

I bit my lip, stuffing the guilt and anger down as I returned to the two engagers looking to ambush me. I was behind both of them. Fully charged, I shot out two bursts of my weapon into the back of one of them until my weapon needed to reload. Not wanting to give the second of them an opportunity, I dove forward with the remaining stores of energy in my body.

My hardened knuckles crumpled the nose, but a retaliatory fist took me by surprise. A thick assault rifle stared down my aching figure, and at this range it was a sure shot. Fuck- I was dead.

I would have been, had his eyes not enlarged as though a drug flooded his brain. With trembling hands, the gun dropped out of his hands as though he was trying to wrestle between ending me or not.

“Take him out…” Indra’s voice permeated my head. “I-I’ve hacked into him through the mainframe.”

Not one to waste an opportunity, I slammed my fist into the BUG Adapter’s face once more, not ending until a slam into a wall ended his struggle for good.

“Shit, shit!” One of the gang members taking cover by the stockpile of goods shouted, his own hands trembling along with several others. “They’re in our system! For god's sake! Take out whoever’s in the mainframe!”

Choirmen took the chance to shoot one of them dead, bullet holes in their chest dripping fresh blood. Another one’s head was pierced by the echoing sound of a sniper shot. Just four left. Cannonarm grumbled, his right arm reconfiguring until an oval shot straight for the room Indra was in.

My body burned every inch of energy left in it, even drawing upon the fat storage until I felt like I’d been sunburned to a crisp. Stretching out my left arm, I acted about as recklessly as I could by swatting the grenade mid-trajectory just a few meters between me and the entrance. It bounced onto a nearby wall, the resounding blast was a sphere of engulfing flame and shrapnel, and it certainly had its effects on me.

My left sleeve ablaze and the rest of my body left aching by the shrapnel that failed to pierce my skin. Feeling like a torn piece of cloth, I stumbled into Indra’s position. Taking that moment to really acknowledge my Mutations’ graces… I would have died without them right now. I tore off the burning cloth on my arm, my left arm was a scorched and shattered mess of torn skin and stiff muscle. Pain-staking steps carried me to the warehouse’s main electrical unit, and placing my healthier arm on it... I fed.

I’d never really run out of my internal Warp Energy storage, not even with Tonguelasher. But now? What I once thought of as an inferno in my chest was just a sputtering cinder devouring the breeze of my resilience to keep alight. The endless stream of sparks wreathed through my body, pushing Pacemaker’s regenerative capabilities to the maximum.

“C-choirmen?!” I speared my thoughts into the Neuralink. “How’s it looking on your end?”

“Like s-s-shit! I thought we lost you Jo-nes! Bad… C-Cannonarm’s strapped some shie-ld onto his arm, firing-g at us with a fucking Sh-ardgun! T-there’s three of us left-t.”

A Shardgun? So that was what his left arm was, I distracted myself from the pain by thinking of any way to beat that thing. They were expensive to both use and maintain, rather than bullets, it used actual Shards as a weapon. Literally feeding money into it to launch out deadly streams of shrapnel.

I thought it through, I wasn’t an expert in Shardware but I knew the reason that you couldn’t just turn any normal gun into a Shardgun was because it required the conscious input of your own Warp Energy to stabilize the Energy in the Shards. If we could disrupt that flow…

The muscle on my left arm reemerged as electricity knit it together. The swaths of skin built up from a raw pink to the pale tone on the rest of my body.

Mutation: Iron-Grade Skin Hardening has reached 100% Development. Additional Meta-Mutation has occurred; Hardening of external limbs is now significantly more effective.

Mutation: Iron-Grade Increased Keratin Integrity (77%) has had a Meta-Mutation; Increased Keratin density on nails and hands.

Mutation: Iron-Grade Electrical Lipids (82%) has had a Meta-Mutation; Specialized storage of lipids located within hands and feet can now store significantly more electricity.

I had just been under 50% for both of those today, but now they were climbing faster than any other gene in my body ever had. It had to be because of the gene-limiters and this fight, I could… I could push through into Tier One by today’s end?

No, that’s not what’s important. Letting go of the literal power bank, I let myself adjust as the world spun into place around my unsteady limbs. Taking a dizzy look at Indra, her eyes were bloodshot and blood spilled from the corners of her mask. She was still hooked into the mainframe that Rorsche was prying into.

Choirmen's voice shook with panic into my head. “J-Jones? There are three T-Tier Ones all hiding behind Cannonarm’s shield, think you can attack them from behind?”

“I can. Just… give me a moment.” I said quietly, leaning onto Indra, my hands hovering up above the chords binding her to the warehouse’s computer. "Rorsche, can you get into Cannonarm's systems?"

“There’s another shackle.” Rorsche’s voice came from her slunk head. “Use it on the guy and I can try.”

I bit my lip, staring at the slowly depreciating state of my friend. “Can Indra handle it?”

“A Tier Two? Not likely, but you’ll likely die without it. Another squad is enroute, they’ll handle things from here, but chances are we’ll fail before that.” His voice was cold, calculating.

My fists clenched tight, I took the remaining shackle — a ring instead of a plate — from the briefcase. Rorsche spoke again. “Place it on one of his arms.”

“J-Jones! We need you!” Choirmen’s voice yelled, but I’d already left the room. In a blurring streak of motion, I abandoned all thoughts and rationality, pushing myself into the midst of the enemy lines.

One, two, three of them. All cradled behind a towering shimmer of blue-gray that emerged from a central disk in Cannonarm’s right arm, his left was transfigured into a massive gun that unleashed a hailstorm of Iron pellets that shredded containers and concrete to dust.

The first one died on impact, a thrust from my palm into his Neuroframe left an all to dead thud in the chaos. The remaining two reacted too slow to their ally’s death, a second jab of sparks dove into another Tier One like a swarm of hungry wasps, the third one held their gun at me, finger on the trigger.

I shot first with a flurry of sharp zaps. One into the the gun which fried it’s internal mechanisms, the second pierced his neck and the third stopped his heart. The Cannonarm turned on me, his shield slamming into me like a wrecking ball that sent me hurtling towards a container.

My skin hardened, and I took the blow that tore through my spine with pain. A stream of electricity rallied my legs to motion as a river of Iron pellets shredded the container into chips of metal. Not staying still for a moment, my muscles burned with action as I ran, duck and slid behind cover that disintegrated in seconds.

But it had worked, Choirmen and another two Investigators opened fire on Cannonarm’s back. The metallic shell of his back and arms sinking as bullet after bullet sparked off him until he was shrouded in a cloak of embers.

A shot from Rashim’s sniper dug into his leg, the brief stumble leaving me free of fire. Several more shots clawed above into his torso, all of them shattering into shrapnel as they failed to get through

“Bastard has Bronze-grade Dermachrome.” Rashim commented. “Can’t pierce through into his vital organs.”

I leaped before he could start shooting again, Choirmen and the others all repositioning to encircle the Finger. Now in close range, Choirmen’s fists hardened as blood drew under his skin, making them look like scarlet rocks.

Their pebbles exploded like a shotgun, piercing into the corpses around Cannonarm. The pebbles ignited at the smallest droplet of blood, each body convulsing as their mass bloated and detonated.

Bones and blood exploded into a wall of fine mist, the Finger untested by the attack as hellfire drew from behind the scarlet curtains while his shield protected him from the shooting to his side. Skirting into an angle where his bullets weren’t shooting, I chewed my bile down my throat as I saw Choirmen’s cover break apart and bullets tear down his chest.

Pushing off the wall, I dove into the cloud of settling crimson, sinking right under the massive shield and launching directly towards the Shardgun. The metallic ring of Rorsche’s shackle snapped open, hooking around the Shardware as he snarled from right above me.

“Bitch! How the hell are you still alive?!” His other arm whacked me off then gun, big enough that it caved in my ribs and arm, bones crunching even if my skin was hardened. That moment of contact though, was just what I needed. All at once, every spark of electricity in my body shivered into the shield.

As I flew back with a shattered body, the overloaded shield exploded his grenade launching arm into fragments. Fatigued and broken, my eyes were the only bits of my body I could find in me to move. Cannonarm picked himself up, staring at the remnants of his broken arm, rage glazing over his one remaining eye.

“YOU BITCH! You have any idea how much that cost!” His shardgun pointed at my body, it’s internal glow crackling as something else overcame it. Rorsche. The joints bent, his arm moving out of his control as the arm raised higher and pointed at something else instead of me. His own head.

The first few bullets didn’t make it through, it was only after a few seconds of constant fire, shrapnel falling like rain, that blood, bones and brain drizzled out…

And as I lay there, broken and tired, there was only one thing that got me to push my body up…

Indra.

Was she okay? The subdermal layering of fat in my body was miniscule now, and my internal energy was nothing but scattered embers… but it would have to do.

I couldn’t even walk, I basically crawled my way back to the room with Indra. She had collapsed, a pool of blood around her body. Reaching her, the metal organs of her arms were searing hot and her entire body was a heavy statue devoid of breath.

“Indra?” My voice came weakly.

There was a difference in Indra’s stare now, instead of a hollow gaze it was more… muted, like even that emptiness could fade away now. Placing my hand against her chest, I felt nothing. Pushing until I could feel her ribcage, there was still no heartbeat.

Settling my body up, I got in the position to perform CPR, but even the weight of my own body was too much for me to handle. “Indra?!”

Summoning wisps of electricity, maybe I could start her heart back up? I clamored around, placing my fingers where I thought the heart would be located. How much electricity was needed to start a heart back up?… Probably the amount needed to end it?

Please. I searched through my body for anything, but the scattered embers I had in me didn’t even let me wrap a single finger in electricity, why did I limit my Mutations?

Her body convulsed. Jumping open as her limbs weakly curled around my stretched arm, the voice behind her mask was weak, barely there. “Diana…? Why are you feeling up my tits?”

A choked sentence left me. “Your heart stopped.”

“Ah… that? Don’t worry about it.” She didn’t look all too fazed by it. “Happens sometimes. Got an Internal Heart-Jumpstarter installed cus of it.”

“This… it’s regular?” I stared wide-eyed as she nonchalantly hooked herself out of the briefcase connecting her to Rorsche.

“About a… 5, maybe 10% chance of happen-“ Before she could finish speaking, her body fell down like it’d been made of lead, my weak arms keeping her from tumbling too badly.

I switched from my Neuralink to a standard radio comms, urging my voice out. “Hey, anyone?! Indra- Harmony needs help!”

A few seconds later, Choirmen stumbled in, his hands pressing against his abdomen which was dripping down blood everywhere. “Pipe down, Jones. She just needs a blood transfusion, maybe an AdStim. She’s handled worse.”

“Worse?!” It was hard not to raise my voice. “She almost died! How on earth… don’t tell me this is a regular thing.”

“Indra only goes out on the field when Rorsche babysits her, otherwise she’s parked in with the analysts. So yeah, if Rorsche is available, it’s regular.” He leaned against a wall, the steady stream of blood dribbling lighter as a Bronze glow seeped into the red.

“I- you don’t see how this is a problem?”

“They saved our lives, didn’t they? Harmony makes good use of herself, a Network Feature alone isn’t that good in this day and age against those with DataShields. Rorsche is just acting out in the way that puts him in the least amount of danger.”

“Harmony isn’t.”

He was stiff despite my pleading words. “She’d be sitting on a desk with the analysts otherwise.”

“That’s better than dying!”

“Maybe, but I’m not going to ask her to stay out of these missions. She’s saved my life multiple times by bringing Rorsche into action.” He said with a tinge of annoyance baring out now.

I wasn’t sure who to direct my emotions at, all I knew was that fury drenched my bones, flesh and skin. “Then why doesn’t Rorsche just join up himself?!”

“Ask him yourself.” He said bitterly, at first. “Besides, Rorsche doesn’t have a Network Feature, only Dataweaving and Integration. He can execute all sorts of fancy code, but can’t delve deep enough for it to matter, not unless he acts through Harmony.”

I just sighed, it was useless. All of this was useless.

So I just stayed by her side, even when Choirmen left. Even when paramedics and reinforcements took care of Indra. I stayed by her side. All through the ambulance, all through the hospital stay.

I stayed by her side.

———

12:57 AM June 25th

I woke up to the sound of the hospital door opening, my face still stuck to the metal railing of Indra’s bed with tears, snot and saliva. The doctors had done their checkups on me. I was stable, and after dosing me up with some emergency Medical Nanites that didn’t do a thing, they let me go.

I was stable.

But now they might have to check my blood pressure, because I was ready to knock Kendrick Rorsche’s teeth out the second his face came through that door.

“Leave.” I left no choice in my voice. “Before you end up having to stay the night here as well.”

He raised his arms defensively, a smile plastered all over his smug face. “Relax, I’m just here to drop off a get-well-soon gift.”

He shook a small picnic basket in his grip, a few flowers sticking out. “Daffodils.” He smirked. “Her favorite.”

My words spat out. “Then leave them and go.”

“Hold on, I can’t take a moment to care for my favorite rookie?” He placed them on a nearby table, taking a seat on the couch opposite Indra’s bed.

“You almost killed her.” I tried to keep my voice quiet, I failed.

“But I didn’t, she’ll back in three days tops. With a healthy bonus.”

I chortled. “So that’s how you got her to agree to that fucked up procedure? Money?”

“Nope.” His lips puckered up as he said it. “Offered it to her one week into being an Investigator, jumped at the opportunity. You know, she even asks for our minds to… merge sometimes when we get intimate.”

The last few words riled me out of the chair. “Bullshit!”

“You don’t know her at all.” He rolled one of the flowers in his fingers, staring at it fondly. “She is special to me, the fact that she’s not my type by being chromed up didn’t change the fact that I saw something in her. She’s beautiful, in and out, someone with a dark past but still tries to keep the light in everyone’s eyes.”

“You still tried to kill her!”

“Did I?” He leaned forward, the flower dropping to the floor. “No, I didn’t. I just saved your life by disrupting half of their members and got Cannonarm killed, remember that. If I didn’t do it, who's to say it wouldn’t be you in that bed, or Choirmen? The tanky bastard that he is. Maybe there’d even be a funeral.”

“You’re acting like it’s-“

“Like it’s your fault? Oh no, hardly. We all had duties, Indra Harmony is the messenger that carries my will, she may be shot at, blown up, or mauled. But that’s her duty. She agreed to it, and if she wants it to stop by tomorrow, I’ll end it. In fact…

“Good job to you!” He clapped. “Took down… what? Eight of them all by yourself?! Supreme work, honestly speaking, you didn’t even need me to pull your ass out of there. You know, I was honestly trying to get Indra in a position where she’d be out of commission for at least a week, maybe so that she’d develop a stutter again. It would've been a good reminder, but you actually pulled her through it to my surprise.”

I could only heave heavy breaths, afraid that words would drive into actions. My nails were sharper than ever now.

He continued. “Consider this a lesson, that your comrades don’t get killed if you’re strong enough to keep them out of shitty situations. Some exceptions withstanding — you need to know who to protect. There’s a reason I didn’t send in a full-man team, there would be deaths on our end. I knew that, so it’s why we had reinforcements come in. People not important to us.”

“Not important?!” My teeth bared at him, sparks brought to my eyes by pure rage.

He just laughed. “You’re a scary one aren’t you? Guess I’ll need to act quicker. Won’t be long, I give it another three years and you’ll be a First-Rank. Until then, you’re stuck with me.”

He got up, giving me one handy wave as it opened. “You know, you can pull her out of this. Just call for a private meeting any day now. I’ll be waiting. Oh, and you have the next three days with paid time off for recovery, you deserve it. Have a while to think it over.”

Leaving the door, I cradled my head as everything in it tried to pull me apart. Rorsche…

I was going to end his career.

One way or another… maybe my father could… no. If I take one step in that direction, it would be enough leeway for me to take the whole mile. I had to do this without him.

Rorsche may have been full of bullshit, but there was one thing he was right about. Power. I needed that power to protect myself from him, and to protect others as well.

———

2:32 AM

It was only a nurse’s behest that I called a cab to take me home. One look in the mirror confirmed why. It didn't matter how good your genes were, you looked like shit if you felt like shit. Even a quick shower didn’t drain anything out of my system, was every big mission just going to end up like this? Bodies and death? Blood and steel?

On a factual basis, I knew that… the City was twisted. That the men and women from the top and bottom tore into eachother like wolves. One could say this city had people who were mentally hardened, the truth was we were all just desensitized and fueled with one distractive substance or the other. Perhaps a century or two in the past, policies about non-lethal arrests would have been more enforced, but with the Swarm approaching…

All sides were getting desperate to have that edge.

At this rate, I’d need a mutation that made me resilient to all of this stress. There were some, actually quite a few, available to the police. How I felt wasn't unique to me, alone, but I had something few others had. A Gold Implant.

Pushing the desire to sleep away with my nerves, I carried myself to the washroom with a mechanic’s pliers, a whole lot of starchy food, and an old sweatshirt. Before starting though, I gulped down one of Missy’s Silver-Grade Gene-limiters.

The Electrical Lipids was the easy bit to develop, just stuff myself full of the surplus of unhealthy food available in the market and charge electricity into the metabolic fat I gained from it.

An hour after stuffing myself and a whole lot of shooting myself with my taser, I’d done it.

Mutation: Electrical Lipids has reached 100% development. Additional Meta-Mutation has occurred; Lipids specialized in electrical production are now multilocular, significantly improving efficiency and storage.

A quick search on the net led me to discover that multilocular adipocytes were what was known as ‘baby fat’. A type of fat known for thermogenesis so they didn’t get cold, but I supposed I was repurposing them for electrogenesis.

A quick checkup on my Convergence and… 97%.

In other words, I needed to push Increased Keratin Stability to the maximum now. Something I was dreading. The main way it developed was through the passive shedding of my skin and hair and producing a more stable version with each new permutation.

Thing is, skin wasn’t as keratin dense as hair. But I wasn’t going to rip my scalp out, instead I jumbled up the cloth of a sweatshirt and stuffed it in my mouth as I lined up a pair of pliers around my fingernail. The quickest way to pump up the gene was by regenerating something made entirely out of keratin.

Taking deep breaths through my nose, my jaw clamped around the cloth the same time the pliers had around my nail.

I’d do what was necessary to get rid of bastards like Rorsche.

It was terrible, my teeth digging deep enough into the cloth that drool dripped down after the first nail was done and clacked onto the blood stained ceramic of my bathtub. The electricity within me replaced the tear-drenching pain with a more manageable one, but then I got onto the next nail.

Then the next. Until all five on my right hand were out, their shells being drowned by a rainfall of crimson from my trembling hand.

Regenerating all five took around ten minutes with my current flow, I had a hypothesis that slower regeneration gave the cellular reproduction more time to ‘think things through’ and make more meaningful changes. Maybe it was stupid, I wouldn’t be able to notice the difference anyway.

But minute by minute, the numbers ticked upwards. And I knew it wouldn’t be enough as small shinier plates, almost ivory in color sat at the ends of my right fingers. So then I tried again, this time the nail requiring me to actually lean into my strength-augmenting Pacemaker to yank it out.

I was a tearful, sobbing mess by the time my pliers fell to the floor. All I could do was just hug my knees, cradle myself deep with the comfort of Golden warmth, begging it to take the pain away.

All of the pain.

“Please…”

And then it ticked up twice more a few minutes later.

Mutation: Increased Keratin Stability has reached 100% development. Additional Meta-Mutation has occurred; Significant increase in Keratin density and integrity of the Adapter’s nail beds.

Not the most useful Meta-Mutation, but the next time Rorsche pissed me off, my nails would be a death sentence.

Convergence has reached 100%… Recalibrating.

My heart pounded.

Adapter is now in Tier I: Foundation; the initial Mutations have stabilized within your body, and are now recombining and diverging into a new set of Mutations to form your Foundation.

Grade calibrated… Gold I

Integrity calibrated… Iron III

Energy calibrated… Iron III

Capacity calibrated… Iron VIII

Tendency Calibrated… [Requirements not met]

Compatibility calibrating… 99.9%

Tier 0 Mutations have been fully integrated into your genetics.

Total Tier 0 Gene Capacity = 10

Gold Gene Capacittance multiplier per Tier = 4 (Gold Standard)

Current Mutational Capacitance = 10+32 = 42

Calculating SIM Stability…

SIM is currently reorganizing Mutational Development based on parameters, estimated time is five hours.

Five hours? As much as my excitement was telling me to stay up. I really needed to put that Mental-Fatigue Recovery Mutation to use.

Today had been… heavy.

Settling onto my pillows, I couldn’t even pull the blanket up before dense darkness engulfed my eyes.

Parameter testing complete…

Lacking… Range; Emotional Stability; Bone Density; Skin Durability…

Moderate…. Electrical Storage; Pain Tolerance; Reflexes; Baseline Strength…

Exceeding… Electrical Output; Physical Recovery; Speed; Strength Usage…

SIM is adjusting Mutations…

Error: Mutation: Unstable Biology is affecting Mutation Development…

Mutation: Unstable Biology has diverged into Tier One Gold-Grade Mutation: [G] Mutational Synergy; allows the intake of multiple Mutagenic resources at once, either altering current Mutations or spawning new Mutations. All Mutations derived from Mutational Synergy are at the Grade of the Adapter. [1 Gene Capacity] [Alteration]

Mutational Synergy is altering Mutation Development according to its function…

Tier I Mutations are developing…

[G] Pacemaker + [I] Mental-Fatigue Resilience = [G] Electrical Neurogenesis [6 G.C] [Cognition]

[I] Elastic Muscles + [I] Skin Hardening = [G] Compact Tissues [8 G.C] [Alteration]

[I] Increased Keratin Stability = [G] Mineral Assimilation [12 G.C] [Integrity]

[G] Electrical Conduction + [I] Electrical Lipids = [G] Bioelectrogenesis [6 G.C] [Energy/Metabolism]

[I] Reactive Sight + [G] Electromagnetic Sense = [G] Electromagnetic Vision [6 G.C] [Cognition]

Mutational Capacitance = 39/42

Integrity: Iron III

Energy: Iron V

Capacity: Iron VIII

Grade: Gold I

Tendency: NA