There is a saying that goes, “Pain makes you think,” which was true. Despite the insectile like trilling in my aching head and the persistent tugging that was shaking my lower body, I thought through the haze that I must have been on a serious bender last night.

“You need to open your eyes and get moving, Kate,” a voice called to me from what felt like very far away.

“Leave me alone, Nurse Ratchet,” I groaned and buried my face in the crook of my elbow.

I’d never understood why the veterans’ center had wake-up calls, even on the weekends. We were all disabled vets. Hell, I couldn’t walk or move my legs, it wasn’t like I had anywhere to go. Almost all the residents here were living an unremarkable life with no timetables, except a few appointments.

“I’m afraid this cannot wait, Kate. It’s important that you get up,” the toneless voice was closer now, clearer, and more insistent.

Wait, did I have an appointment?

She tugged my leg again, and made an odd sound, like a high-pitched whining noise, so I kicked at her. “I said leave off you prune faced hag! I’ll reschedule after I’ve had my coffee,” I grouched.

“Very well, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she laughed in a fake girlish manner that was annoying as hell. How did she manage to make the same sounds repeatedly?

Tee hee hee

Tee hee hee

Tee hee hee

Sleep was returning when I felt the tug again. Then a flare of red-hot pain in my left calf sent me reeling back and I shot to my feet. In front of me, an insectile like drone hovered with tools on the ends of long spindly legs.

“What the unholy hell?” I pulled myself up against the back of my bed. and glanced around, but what greeted my vision wasn’t the VC bedroom. It was more like a dimly lit junk warehouse. My bed wasn’t a bed at all. It was a clear plastic chamber with the lid ripped off.

[Unit OCT2097: Coordinating element failure in progress.]

[Unit OCT2097: Vital components are recoverable. Reclamation Drone dispatched.]

[Unit OCT2097: Unit designated for disassembly.]

The words scrolled across my vision, but everywhere some light flashed, or status bar hung. It was a chaotic blur, but I recognized an electronic was voice, saying the same words that swam in my vision.

“What the hell?” I said again with more hostility and realized I was crawling out of the chamber and trying to back away, but the words just continued to hover, and the drone closed the distance. A thin proboscis snapped up, a light flashing from its tip. A pain seared my leg as a lance of red fiery light flashed out at me.

My scream tore at the back of my throat but ended high pitched and confused.

“I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so,” said the now familiar female voice.

Turning to run, I found that my bare back was against a broken pipe or building. There was nowhere to go. Another searing pain stuck my bare upper right shoulder.

“Who are you, why are you attacking me?” I yelled again, but the pain was also making me mad.

I went to turn and was thrown off balance. Like I’d accidentally put too much force into my movements. Putting that down to adrenaline, I scrambled to get to my feet, but nothing wanted to work like it was supposed to.

It was like I was drunk, but my head was pumping with the red emotions of fear, anger, and confusion, not alcohol.

My hand came to rest on something cold and hard, a steel bar with a heavy end. With a glance, I noted the bar was about three feet long. Where a coupling once secured it to a wall, a jagged edge protruded, making it a great makeshift weapon.

I felt a grin tugged at the end of my lip. It was time to teach that metal pest a lesson.

“I’m not attacking you. The Reclamation Drone is attempting to recover your frame,” she paused, then added, “Would it help if you could see me?”

It rushed forward, and I swung as hard as I could and got rewarded with a satisfying crunch. The drone careened to one side, then tried to recover. But I was ready for that. Rather than fighting the inertial energy, I went with it and completed my rotation.

“Take this, you…” Whatever the hell it was. I had no idea.

“Would you like a male or female avatar?” It inquired, not that I had time for questions.

With strength behind the momentum, I nailed it again and sent it into a busted hydronic for a heavy loader or something. Instead of merely crunching this time, it blew in a shower of sparks and hit the ground in a heap.

“Don’t mess with me before I’ve had my coffee,” I roared at the ruined metal as the adrenalin poured through me. Rage was coloring my vision red, and the lights and scrolling text weren’t helping.

“examples of a male voice could include,

English/ British

American/ Southerner

American/ Northern”

“Stop that,” I commanded and held my hands to my ears. The voices she was using was messing with my head, “I don’t need complications right now, just use a normal girl’s voice,” I said, but I was still confused who was talking.

[System Notice: You have destroyed one Reclamation Drone. Type: Cutter/Stripper. Recover power coupling for vital repairs of your system.]

I stumbled, then tried to find a place to sit down. My legs throbbed from the Cutter’s attempts to reclaim my parts, and I had to work out what was going on with my vision.

That is when she made herself seen. Appearing to my left, a young girl who I guessed was in her later teenage years appeared. Of course, I did the only rational thing and leapt to my feet once more and immediately stumbled over my makeshift mace and fell back to the ground.

“Careful! I just fixed those legs,” the figure whined and bit the inside of her cheek as she watched me.

“Wait, my legs?” I glanced down at my fallen form and realized for the first time that I’d been standing! Someone affixed a heavy frame exo-skeleton to my legs, back and arms.

“I can feel my legs,” I said as glee, joy like I’ve never known spiked through me.

The tech industry had come a long way, reversing blindness through augmentations, hearing, even some pretty advanced prosthetics, but I could feel my legs! Nerve damage repair at that level had never been accomplished, well, not that I knew of.

“I’ve made them work again for now. But there’s other damage I can’t fix,” the teenage hologram said with a clinical look on her face.

On my exposed flesh I could see the steel blue conductive inlays and remembered that I was supposed to have the surgery. Somehow, I couldn’t member anything since I rolled in the door.

“What damage? What and who are you?” I was looking asked cautiously and tried to back away from her.

“I am the subsidized intelligence components of you think of as Yōkai-tech. Though, let’s not get into that right now,” she said and looked around like a scout on the move. Which was how she was dressed.

Why I had a teenage infantry scout who looked like she came out of a young adult war drama was beyond me, but she looked good doing it. Included with the tan and pastel fatigues she had on a patrol cap, a cargo belt, adorned with the standard kit, and soft lavender hair. To say she was button cute was an understatement.

Across my vision scrolled a holographic message. The surprise of it sent me stumbling back before I could focus on what it said.

[War-Frame: Scout Sapper type

歩兵タイプ

Hohei Taipu]

[Current status: CMCE failure in progress.]

[Mission: Make contact with Vision Dynamic forces and assume command of Alpha Squad, Incorporated Defense Force and defend Ur against Scavenger attack's, while maintaining population submission protocols.]

[Mission Update: New mission return to your Command Pod to receive repairs.]

"Population submission..." I pondered the unfamiliar orders but nothing came clearly to me. How I had come here, why, and when was completely hazy. But at least I could walk.

“Yeah, you can walk, but you might have noticed that your CMCE is warning you of a failure in progress. If it goes, I can’t help you. It would leave me out of sync with your nervous system,” she said, her voice still sounding cold and clinical.

Excitement surged through me. I hadn’t been able to walk since the IED blast from the provinces destroyed my lower back. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist for nearly two years, but now I could feel it all. The pain, the fatigue, even the sharp pain in my bladder as my increased blood pressure was trying to force my bladder to void reminded me of how amazing it was to feel!

Then I remembered Vision Dynamics. I’d made a deal. The technology to give me back the function of my legs for service as a corporate mercenary. Hell, I was step above being a common Street Samurai, or even Corpo-security. I was an honest to god combat cyborg!

“I need to sit down. Where the hell am I?” I released a shaking breath and let myself plop down onto an old irrigation pipe.

“You are in a desert known as Atacama. The only known site where the mineral Vermillion can be found. Your current elevation is-”

“That doesn’t help,” I said louder than I wanted to, as the voice started to overwhelm me. The last thing I needed was interesting tidbits from an overly robotic travel guide.

With a glance, I knew my vision was too narrow, my focus was all over the place. Being scattered could lead to disaster. I needed to calm down and sort all of this out. “Sit rep, Emerson,” I said to focus myself, but my pulse was pounding in my head.

“Get it together! Sit Rep, Emerson report!”

“Preparing a situational report,” The ghost of the Yōkai-tech said abashed.

“NO! Leave me alone your inhuman pest,” I shouted and the girl, Yōkai, whatever, actually flinched back, and I could have been mistaken, but could have sworn her lip quivered.

The situation report was always a good way to put things into perspective. With my military training, I knew that the first I needed to do was to understand the situation. I needed to assess for current dangers, then take stock of my resources before developing a plan.

“Sorry, I just need to focus! Go away,” I snarled, and the image nodded, but paused.

“Lieutenant, there are important aspects of your system and frame that you will need to learn and become accustomed to. If you ignore them, you will lose the effective use of your limbs,” she pleaded me. Then, as I glared at her, she nodded once timidly before vanishing.

I was in what appeared to be in a junk storage warehouse. How I got there, and what the current threat level remained unknown, which was concerning. I’d come under attack by a small, somewhat frail drone, but it was armed. I’d crushed it with two strikes, but there was no way of knowing what else was out there.

Glancing around again, I realized the chamber I’d been in had struck the ground, not been placed there. Upon inspecting the ceiling, I could see a hole and realized that chamber I’d been in had slammed into this building. The place might not have been a junk yard before I got here.

“Worry about that later. Right now, get it together.” I thought “Okay, first an ACE report.”

ACE reports are common for military minded people. Ammo, Causalities, Equipment, the important info you need to know post combat when you aren’t sure what’s coming. It also was one hell of a good way to get my head space right.

I didn’t have a gun, so there was no ammo to worry about, but I had a makeshift weapon. The whole thing was about thirty inches long, about the size and weight of a kid’s baseball bat. That meant it wasn’t at all balanced, but blunt force trauma isn’t without merits.

But that was about all I had. I was dressed in only a bra and panties, under that frame, and the frame left little to the imagination. “Good thing Rooker isn’t here, he’d be drooling over my tits right now,” I scoffed then a slightly unhinged laugh escaped my lips.

As for my casualties… I growled and began a self-assessment when a light pulsed unexpectedly, and new text started rolling across my vision.

[ You were hit with a cutting laser on the left leg for .5% damage. Seek first aid.]

[ You were hit with a cutting laser on the right shoulder for .5% damage. Seek first aid.]

[ You were hit with a cutting laser on the left calf for 1% damage. Seek first aid.]

[ You took 2% damage to your overall health. Without proper wound care and infection could result. Seek First Aid]

In the upper right corner of my vision, a small green bar labeled, [current health status], had a sliver of angry red at the end.

“Well, that’s useful, if exceptionally annoying. I can’t have text just popping up in front of my eyes, it’s going to get me killed. How do I shut this thing off?” I thought, when more text came into view.

[Notification Alerts: Current status-Automatic.]

[Options: Automatic, Prompt Icon, Turn off while in Combat Mode/ Manual]

[Would you like to configure your system dashboard? Yes/No]

“I just don’t want to see it all the time, for fuck’s sake,” I said out loud, then felt silly.

[Prompt Icon activated]

The text and information disappeared from my vision, but in the upper left a small red dot appeared. I focused on it, and a text popped up at the bottom of my field of vision.

[Do you wish to read your notifications? Yes/ No]

“I see. If I focus on it, it clicks on. Well, that’s fucking easy,” I thought, feeling a little self-satisfied until I heard the whirring of drone turbines.

“Yeah, focus Emerson, this isn’t the time to configure your character sheet,” I grunted.

Focusing on the word,

“No,”

made the text go away, so I went back to trying to get coherent enough to finish my ACE report.

The burns were superficial and cauterized. They could use some antiseptic and a bandage, but for now they would have to be okay.

“Equipment?” I muttered and looked at my makeshift mace. I also had storage pouches on a belt at my waist. One held what I presumed to be water, the other contained some nutrient bars and basic survival tools, including a small folding Karambit knife.

“Yeah, not so much,” I thought as the whirring grew louder, even as I examined what I could of the exo-frame.

In my vision, a status screen popped into existence where a human shaped image was in the what I knew to be the medical establishment’s Standard Anatomical Position. The body standing up straight and facing forward, with arms by the sides of the body and palms facing forward. The legs are straight, and the feet are apart from one another and turned outward slightly. Attached to it was the frame, exactly as it was on my body.

My body was bare in the image except for skin tight panties and a light gray sports bra. Outside of that was a frame that I covered my feet in what appeared to be mechanical enhancements, attached to a frame that ran up my outer thigh to my waist. There it attached to a harness that covered most of my back and upper chest.

“Who ever designed this HUD was generous with physical attributes,” I sighed, but felt a little better as my normal snark set in.

The frame was also attached to my arms at the forearm and biceps. Which looked kind of cool with the shoulder yoke and back module. Unfortunately, anywhere additional armor could be attached was marked empty.

“I look like a Satyr in hockey pads.” I laughed. But as the screen rotated for a back view, I nearly huffed in annoyance. Clearly a man designed the display because the ass and waist on that diagram I would have killed for. What I was missing was a helmet and any sort of practical weapon.

To the right, information scrolled down the screen.

[Yōkai-Frame: Scout Sapper type

歩兵タイプ

Hohei Taipu}

War Frame Strength: Level one.

War Frame Reflex Response: Level one

War Frame Armor: No Armor found

Weapons Array: 0/5

Frame will remain operational for 360 minutes.

One space in the head’s diagram pulsed with text and an orange light.

[Core Module Coordinating Element (CMCE) Failure In Progress]

The metal was cool and dull silver, like titanium, with a Damascus like pattern that shimmered lightly. The pieces let my movement unincumbered, but added obvious power and reflex increases.

I could still recall the briefing prior to the interview.

“A human brain processes around 10 quadrillion instructions per second, which was jaw dropping in the 2040s in terms of a computer’s speed, and it was something we couldn’t come close to. But with the Yōkai -Tech nanites, powered War frames can become as fluid and natural to move in as an unencumbered soldier, but many times more powerful,” I remembered

“Well, this isn’t a very natural movement,” I complained, knowing it would take a lot of hard to work to get used to the frame’s power levels. But it was labor that was mixed with a blessing. I could walk, which was better than sitting around. I would just be a bit clumsy for a while.

[Attempting to synchronize: Attempt failed.]

[Synchronization: Is at 5% ]

The downside was that I could feel pain, like the burning scorch marks on my legs. I could also feel the pressure on the bladder relaxing as I got my blood pressure under control. This was way beyond that Vision Dynamics had advertised. But how did I end up here?

Around me appeared to be nothing but devastation. The ground was a mixture of oil polluted dirt and concrete slabs. There were pieces of several kinds of machines, from transport cars to what I took for lab equipment. It was like a warehouse filled with cast off ruined and twisted junk. Briefly, I wondered if it resulted from a bomb, another terrorist attack, but most of the ruins weren’t new.

The warehouse wasn’t silent either. The cutting torches sizzled and popped, and from the other side of the structure a grinding wheel screamed while throwing sparks into the sky. Oddest among them was a high chittering sound. It reminded me of bamboo ominously dragging over glass.

It was a sound I’d heard before. Though I couldn’t identify it, it sent a shiver up my spine.

The drone flew into vision. It was far enough away for me to make a better assessment of the threat.

It was the same in configuration as the previous drone, insectile and utilitarian, clearly not intended for combat. As I watched, it hovered near something and started cutting away components, but the way it moved reminded me of a carrion creature.

“They’re not as dangerous as I first thought, but they’re still something to avoid,” I decided. Then added, “Death by a million laser burns isn’t exactly an ideal way to die.”

I withdrew as silently as I could. But the real question was where to go? Should I go North, South, East or West? “I need a map.

I thought, and suddenly a display popped up in the top center of my vision. “Well, that’s handy. I wonder if I can find a McDonald’s around here somewhere?”

The map was the 3d topographical type. It displayed the open bay that was around the size of a football field, showing the exits. The rest was a mystery that had been grayed out.

“I need to figure what my disposition is and get out of here.” I groaned and tried to decide which exit to use. Ahead of me was the Drone, and based on the flashes of light I could see in several areas ahead, I would wager that more were close by. The warehouse seemed to be where they processed the junk.

“So which way to go?” I mumbled, and instantly a new message Icon appeared. Sighing, I focused on it.

[For Repairs and Resupply, (RR) return to your Operations Pod.]

On the map, a small red dot appeared, with a tiny “OP” clearly marked in the middle of a field of red and gray. Unfortunately, I realized as I looked at it, that would mean going through toward the Cutter Drone.

“Well, I guess that gives me a direction at least.” I thought and cast a glance back down to where the drone I’d wreaked lay.

[Destroyed Reclamation Drone. Type: Cutter/Stripper. Recover power coupling for vital repairs of your system.]

I knelt down and rolled the remains over. Immediately, an overlay flickered into existence with instructions.

[For power coupling access, remove the access panel at the base of the unit. Disconnect wires from the power matrix, and store in an electro-static resistant container for transport.]

I did as it instructed, while keeping my eyes on the distant drone. The piece came out easily enough. It was like disconnecting a battery.

[Inferior power coupler: This item can restore minimal power to your Core Module Coordinating Element (CMCE). Return to any operations hub for repairs and replacements.]

“This is going to get old,” I decided the entire system was like a video game, not the IVR-CST or the Interactive Virtual Reality Combat Simulation Trainer, I was used to working with either. More like an old fashion first-person shooter.

It was annoying, but I couldn’t complain about feeling my legs again. One thing was obvious. However, if I wanted to keep walking, I needed to get to an operations pod.

“Great, I have a quest,” I mumbled and looked for a way around the other drone.

Not seeing one, I made a stealthy approach and tried to work my way up behind it. Like the other Cutter, it had an insectile like appearance, but I could see the utility of its design.

The object it was working on looked mechanical at first. Until I realized it was a man in a war frame like mine. Unlike me, this one was long dead, and the unit was working to extract the frame from the host.

A spike of rage pulsed into me, and I lashed out with my makeshift mace, but not blindly. My inspection of the first one had let me know where the weak spot was, and I aimed for the compartment where the power coupler was located.

The strike yielded instant success, and the drone put up a shower of sparks, then hit the ground dead.