“Why are you pulling my arm apart again Rook?” I asked, annoyed. “We did this a few months ago.”

“New Processor.”

“More like a new tracker.”

“Yes and no,” Rook said with a smile.

“This new processor will increase the sync ratio with your SMB so you won’t feel that delay you’d been battling whilst fighting. There was a delay? I mused not realising a difference.

“Are you expecting me to fight someone?”

“You’ve been fighting all your life Cypher, and this is the Waste Afterall…Mr Black doesn’t leave anything up to chance So yes, we want to increase our chances of success.”

“Duly noted.”

Rook strapped my cybernetic into his vice-grip, and began servicing it again. Dejavu I huffed to myself.

The last time we were here, the man unlocked my arm, which left me bewildered.

Rex and Jengo had their try at my Cybernetic arm, saying it couldn’t be hacked. Then, Rook gave me a firmware update.

Lo and behold a short sword with a heating modification was hidden within.

Not to mention, a detachable wrist which I could fire eleven meters accurately. Well, more like twenty-five meters now, after all the training Mr Black had me endure during those VR sessions.

“How’s your control with the wrist now?”

“Passable. My slethe still depletes too fast.”

“I see, maybe this new processor can help, mitigate the feedback between your SMB and cybernetics.”

“Right…” I grunted.

Rook laughed and smiled, tapping the side of his spectacles. “Sounds like you don’t have any faith in me.”

“I have faith Rook, it’s the tech I don’t trust.”

“Heh heh, understood.” Rook said.

After a long while, Rook pushed himself up from his workbench and unstrapped my arm as he got up. He walked on over to the kitchen area, picking up a wrench and a screwdriver in the process.

I stimulated my SMB to activate my detachable wrist. A feint throbbing sensation aroused the right side of my brain and the cameras around my cybernetic wrist came alive, sending images of the room from my wrist to a small window in the corner of my cybernetic eye.

My cybernetic wrist detached from my arm, and floated in the air for a moment, the silent thrusters roamed back and forth, trying to keep the arm from falling.

“Nice control,” Rook said with an approving nod. Rook raised the screwdriver above his head with his left hand and rolled his neck. “What’s your slethe level?”

I clenched my teeth, and the slethe levels popped up on the right side of my cybernetic eye.

Slethe Levels 89%

“89%,” I said,

“Noted.” Rook said, raising his right hand, pulling it free from his pocket, and showing a stopwatch in his hand.

“Start…”

The cameras from my cybernetic wrist switched, taking over the majority of my eyesight, leaving a small window for me to use.

I moved my wrist with my mind, feeling my SMB clutch my brain tighter.

I waft my wrist left to right in the air, testing the reaction speed. It was fluid, but it could be better.

My wrist shot through the air by my command then stopped right at the edge of the table. I forced it down, grabbing the edge of the table with it then slowly rose my wrist.

The SMB Clutched my brain, sending a jolting sensation down my neck, which made me kick out in pain.

Despite the jolt, the table tilted to me, and the tools slid down to me, then I released it, and then the pain dissipated back to the throbbing pain emanating at the back of my brain.

I released the table and a boom groan sang into the air, jingles from the tools matched the boom, making it seem as though my choir was ready to start a new hymn.

Slethe Levels 80%

I kept my natural eye on Rook, feeling as though my brain was working overtime, looking at two different things.

My wrist reached Rook, then I levelled it to the screwdriver. I slowly twisted it moving moved it forward as it did so.

The screwdriver was red and black around the handle and beamed silver at the point. I mentally pushed it slowly, grabbing it with my wrist.

Rook drop the damn screwdriver, leaving me to scramble. I dipped my wrist, following the path, trying to speed past it.

A thud hit the ground and my wrist barely missed the device. “Why the hell you did do that for?” I growled annoyed.

Slethe 67%

“What’s your slethe percentage?”

“67%”

“Hmmm…stress offsets the slethe balance. Good to know.”

Not really I mused.

“Is this even really needed?” I asked.

“Yes, Cypher. The possibility of you having to use it between small places for surveillance is a possibility.”

I huffed myself, clenching my right fist. This was new to me, using my wrist as some type of drone, also some type of retrieval tool, but I saw the benefits, the problem was, it only had a limited range of two hundred meters of flight, compared to firing wildly, which was now fifteen meters instead of eleven.

“I don’t care about the possibility, this shit fucks with my SMB too much, CRIMON, it feels as though it’s on fire whenever I try to manipulate my wrist like this way.”

“The new processors might fix the feedback problem.”

“Is that a guarantee?” I hissed.

“No.”

“Fine…what about the cyber-blackouts I told you about? Have you figured that out yet?”

“I checked your diagnostics and system data a million times,” Rook said, walking towards me. “Nothing's indicating you experienced any type of blackouts or cyber-blackouts as you like to call them.”

“It’s not about what the data says, Rook. It's about when I’m in a position the blackouts take place in high-stress situations!”

“You say that, but each time it happened, based on your explanation, you benefited, in some way.”

“Stop trying to make this sound simple Rook, I know you’re concerned too.”

“I am Cypher, if these blackouts take place this could fuck the mission!”

Right…the mission comes first I thought.

“Have you experienced these Cyber-blackouts since your encounter with Akatani?”

“I haven’t,” I said coldly

Rook planted himself next to me on his bench and thumbed his chin. He sat back and began to think.

The lad seemed as though he could figure it out based on his posture, but this wasn’t my first time seeing him sit down so studiously. Hopefully, this is my last I mused bitterly.

“I’ll do another diagnostic check, and reset everything. How does that sound?”

“Fine…let’s do that,” I said.

“Good.”

I strapped my cybernetic arm into the vice-grip this time, looking Rook through one eye. His glasses gleamed like a wine bottle from an angle.

The stubbles around his chin were growing, something I hadn’t noticed before. Above his stub of a nose, around his eyes, I saw blackened marks, probably from fatigue. The kid’s probably more tired than he’s letting on. I thought

Rook picked up his drill and began unfastening the screws around the armour plates for my arm.

Once he pried the armour plates off, he wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, placing each plate in order on the far side of the table, then he hunted for an off switch to turn off my cybernetics, something I did on my own to end his stress, but purposefully didn’t say anything because watching him struggle was my form of enjoyment right now.

“You already turned off your Cybernetics,” He complained after five minutes of trying.

“Yeah.”

“You could’ve said something.”

“Didn’t know you were hunting for the manual switch.”

“Liar…”

I would’ve shrugged, but with my cybernetic arm off, that certainly didn’t make sense, not by a long shot anyway.

Rook began removing the anti-corrosive plating, which was a lot more intricate than the armour plating.

It took him thirty minutes to completely remove the armour plating, which finally showed the hydraulic press which made up my bicep.

A stream of wires, flowed from it, right into the Ecin-Batteries slots, which were located in my shoulder, forearm below my wrist. Each battery has crafted those slots.

Originally, it was one battery, but after I agreed to take on this job for Mr Black, Rook gave me three new batteries, it’s funny how that worked out when I least expected it.

These batteries worked in unison, which mean, it’d take a lot to drain them, and for the past six months of training, only 90% of the batter had been drained, but that was because the training Mr Black subscribed me to, wasn’t physical, but mental.

The VR training I engaged in was mentally taxing. It was set up in a way to stress test. In high-stress situations such as quick-thinking and my ability to improvise, something I wasn’t good at in all honesty.

I was average at best, but I could get the job done, as I’m highly motivated, as they would like to say back in my training days back at Dawn Light.