“Open your eyes.” A familiar voice commanded impatiently through the fog in Darius's head. He remembered this voice. He feared this voice. It was Del Peck, his father’s business partner. A man whose countenance was always imbued with impatient disdain towards him.

Darius pushed himself to alertness; some shadow of memory began to turn within him.

His eyes were shut tightly with the pulsing thickness of their swell. He pressed his brows higher, allowing him to gain a brief glimpse of light through a watery haze. He could feel a rough crust in the corners of his eyelids. He saw no cybernetic HUD, no text, no clarity.

His face was bloated and blistered, pressed against the cold metal of a surgical table. His strength failed, and he closed his eyes again; a new piercing pain fired behind them.

None of the cybernetics would move. It was dead and heavy metal, pressing him to the table. He could only control his flesh, but it would not cooperate with him. Not without the chrome spine ready to acknowledge his commands. A catastrophic surge of agony raged throughout his body, urging him to give up. To sleep. To die. Darius gritted his teeth instead.

“Open your eyes!” Del growled, snapping his fingers. Thick metallic hands roughly pried the swollen eyes open. Blisters popped and oozed from the force, inspiring a soft airy scream from Darius's dry and damaged throat.

With metal holding his eyes wide, he saw Del sitting in a chair only three feet from his face. Darius was back in the operating room. The muscular hands of a P-Sec officer held his eyelids back. Another musclebound P-Sec stood next to Del. The massive cybernetic bulk of a borg stood behind.

Del had a slight build, more body mod than man beneath his suit. He was in his seventies now with a face that had been stretched taut over his skull to make him look much younger. There was no threat of age that he hadn’t defeated with the help of his surgeons and his money. He rest back into his chair, maintaining an unnatural and unblinking eye contact.

“Darius Byun,” Del said flatly. “Son of the late Gradius Byun.”

Late? Darius's mind clung to the word.

Del leaned closer. “You stole from the company. You and your father, both.” He gestured a hand over Darius's body. “Why do you think he would do that? He and I had a good thing going,” his voice was measured, nearly monotone.

He leaned back in his chair. “Why… why do you think he would sign the company over to me, and then steal from the company by implanting all this dusty warehouse prototype tech into you?” His eyes fell onto the arms, and his expression changed. A flicker of partial understanding crossed his face. “He never could let go of his sentimental nature. He was a fool to the end.”

Darius forced a grunt from his throat. “E-end?”

“Oh. Right. You wouldn’t know.” Del pulled a phone from his pocket, tapping the screen to show Darius the live video feed of his father’s pulverized body, splattered over the pavement outside of the building. Armored guards stood around the body. “Seventy-seven stories will do that to a man,” he muttered coldly. “Suicide, most likely.” A hint of a mocking tone whispered within his words and Darius didn’t know whether to believe him or not.

“Y-ou… killed… him?” Darius choked the words out, his grief trembling within him, shaking him to the depths of his soul.

“No, no. He did this to himself,” Del spoke matter-of-factly. Then he looked at Darius's arms again.

Darius's eyes filled with tears. The P-Sec forced them to open wider.

“This tech. It belongs to the company.” A seething bitterness burned beneath the words. Then his expression became artificially soft. “But you’ve been through a lot. Keep it. All of it. It was destined for the trash anyway.”

Darius was overcome with drowsiness, but was able to push past his horror and his grief to ask one final question. “W-hy?”

“Why do I let you live? Because you serve no purpose to me alive or dead. And because SOLA will probably take care of you all on its own. It won’t take much for them to spot those prototype cybernetics you’re bearing. You’ll be harvested within the week.” Del looked to the giant metal man behind him. “Geracht. Let’s be sporting. Shock his cybernetics back to life, and drop him off somewhere in the city… somewhere… far from here.”

Geracht stepped forward and the P-Sec released Darius's eyes. The massive borg clasped Darius by the head with one arm, and reached his other arm to touch the metal spine. Then he unleashed a shattering pulse of electricity through it. Darius was overcome with a heaviness that he couldn’t resist, and the world went dark once again.

Del stood up, turned his back on Darius's unconscious body and hesitated for a fraction of a second before leaving the room. The two P-Sec officers followed, but Geracht remained. He thought about just killing the boy. Tearing him apart and tossing the pieces into a dumpster somewhere. A cool soothing sensation passed over his brain at the thought. It would be simple, pleasurable, and final. His armored fingertips began to press tighter against Darius's scalp, but he stopped himself with grit teeth and the pain of discipline. Del might ask him for proof of “delivery”. Pressing against the desire to disassemble, his better judgement prevailed.

He grabbed Darius by the legs and tossed him back first over a shoulder like a wet towel. Darius's metal spine clanged densely against Geracht’s plating. It had been a satisfying night. A productive night. This was the only loose end, and it bothered him. Then the augmented muscle of his face brimmed into a smile. Geracht had the perfect place in mind to leave this stupid boy. It would help scratch the itch a little, but he would have to release his aggression in other ways.