[Permanent Midnight] Chapter 4 - "Nature Will Fight Back"

Reice's new eyes let her see more than she expects, and Zamira's workshop gets some surprise visitors.

This one's a fun chapter, I think. It starts to set more than a few things moving forward that we'll see over the course of the story. I had initially planned on limiting the initial public chapters to 3, but decided to get more out there to grab a bigger reader base before doing early-access to new ones.

So be sure to tell your friends, and enjoy!

Chapter 4 - "Nature Will Fight Back"

The surgery is a success. Obviously. Z doesn't fuck that kind of thing up. When I wake up, the world is back to its normal color palette. No longer is everything filtered by some shade of green.

I also feel good. Zamira must have given me some of those top-shelf meds to get me back on my feet.

As I look around the workshop, things look…clearer. The world is sharper, brighter. Everything is a little more defined. Brighter colors, higher contrast, higher res. Apparently, you can increase the resolution of the real world. Damn.

For just a second, maybe less than that, something flashes at the edge of my vision. Like if I were wearing glasses with a slight crack at the edge. Then the KnightVisions adjust, and it's gone.

Zamira must hear me shuffling and steps out behind a partition that hides whatever she's working on from the view of anyone who just happens to wander in from the street.

"You're looking well," she says. "Have a nice nap?"

"How long was I out?"

"Overnight. I gave you the good stuff. It's about noon now, though, so it's a good thing you're waking up on your own. I was almost afraid I'd given you too much."

"You're better than that."

She winks. "I am, I know. I wasn't worried at all. You just needed the rest after the beating you took." She plops down on a stool and wheels herself over beside me. "Lean back, let me have a look at my handiwork, would ya?"

She shines a bright light from overhead directly into my pupils, tells me to relax and just let my eyes unfocus. It's hard to do when something that bright feels like it's piercing your brain. But I manage to survive.

"These things are nice as fuck, Reice. Weird, but nice," Zamira says, shutting off the light, scooting back a few feet.

"Well, that's so wonderful to hear. What did you do to me?"

"Well, I know what I did, and I know what it looks like I did."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what I did was install a pair of CyTek KnightVision ocular implants."

"Yes, I know."

"What it looks like I did was install your old, organic eyeballs."

"What the shit?"

"It's fine. It's a masking mechanism some high-end oculars have. Nanites incorporate a very small part of your DNA to create a membrane that covers certain elements of the implant with tissue that appears organic unless they're inspected really closely. Like a streetdoc getting all up in there closely."

"So they won't show up as being chromed on scanners?"

"I'd say so, yeah.

"Nice."

Bester's a loud city. Incredibly loud. It never shuts the fuck up. Machine noises, horns, sirens, arguments, advertisements, announcements, and even gunshots (in certain areas, this one included) are normal at most times of the day and night.

Before we can discuss my new mods any further, the constant cacophony of Bester's streets gets louder. Shouts, cries, and cheers sound like they're coming from just outside Zamira's shop. Z and I make eye contact, our eyebrows cocking upward and mirroring one another simultaneously.

I hop out of the chair as Zamira stands up and sends the stool spinning across the room. Unconsciously, my eyes follow it unconsciously, and I see that crack again, only this time closer to the center of my vision. I'll have to tell Z about that soon.

We approach the door together, but I get there first. Because of the nature of her business, the workshop doesn't have any windows to the street, not even in the door. The shouting is getting louder, and one voice stands out above the rest of the shouts and murmurs.

"This barely feels like a world at all after everything you've done to it!" I don't have to hear what this person was saying before to know exactly what was going on and what kind of thing this was.

"You treat the world like you treat your bodies, ripping out the parts you don't like and replacing them with something you do."

"Been a while since I've had any protesters."

"I'll clear 'em out. Give me a couple."

If it were anywhere but outside Zamira's, I might even join in and listen to the guy. I'm the kind of girl who adores technology, but I'm not a big fan of mods. Something about replacing good, natural meat with cold metal that needs so much upkeep gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Agree with 'em or not, I won't let anyone give Zamira a hard time. Protests like this can get out of hand quick.

The door slides open in front of me, revealing a fairly squat orc standing on a raised platform in front of a crowd of at least twenty-five people. Maybe thirty. They wear similar dress—brown cloth shirts, tattered green pants, and worn sandals. Even for the Unders, these people look worse for wear.

"You have to constantly repair and replace and patch and update things just to keep chugging along, just to keep surviving," the orc preaches. The crowd responds with shouts of agreement.

Makes sense. They obviously follow the guy. He's dressed like them. Plus, he has a good point. A lot of people replace meat parts with metal. Not everyone can afford a lot of it, but a lot of people can afford small enhancements. Others go into irreconcilable debt or even indenture themselves to a guild like Araketh or CyTek to get a life-changing (or life-saving) mod, like a new organ or limb.

"The idea of thriving never crossed your minds," the orc continues. "It's like you didn't even know it was an option."

The crowd shouts.

"They," and he gestures at the sign above Zamira's that projects a holo that simply says Doc Z, "won't let you! They don't want you to thrive!" His voice gets even louder.

The crowd cheers. They love it.

"People like this Doc Z only want to control you! Break you down!" The orc's voice gets angrier, faster, more agitated.

His followers are getting agitated along with him.

As I watch, working through a plan to get them to leave without making even more of a scene than I have to, I realize the only weapon I have on me is the broken CyTek hilt I took from Marv's Shit Show stall. Lot of good that will do me.

That's when a yellow outline blinks into existence around the orc. I lose the thread of whatever he's talking about as I stare at it. It looks like some kind of targeting aura from a game in the matrix. Except that I'm not in the matrix.

This must be my new KnightVisions.

That thought is interrupted when the orc raises his hands above his head, and the yellow outline turns red. He yells, "Nature will fight back!" His hands glow with green and yellow energy. Something about it tells me it's not a holo or projection.

Is that…magic? No. No. Magic is dead gone. We haven't been able to access that kind of power for centuries.

The ground rumbles. The crowd is going crazy for the show. I scan across them, and yellow outlines appear around all of them.

At first, that's all that happens. Some rumbling and a light show. Then, cracks start to appear in the Duracrete™ sidewalk. They quickly widen, grow longer, start to bulge.

People in the crowd still shout, but there's definitely some confusion mixed in now. Hell, count me in with them. I don't know what's going on. I can't get my mind off the orc using actual magic. If he's not, then I haven't ever seen tech like he's got.

I feel mesmerized by it, even though I know I ought to do something to stop whatever he's doing.

But what if it is magic? Are we fucked here? Should I go get Z and just high-tail it? I haven't seen Arimaz since I got here, so I figure he's out taking care of himself.

I should be close enough to connect wirelessly to make an easy run and knock the orc out. Sensing what I wanted, the KnightVision pops up an interface into my field of vision and tries to connect my dataport to his. This is usually the kind of thing I have to use goggles or some kind of deck for.

Having it just float into my field of view without having to toggle or configure anything is pretty slick. Maybe there was something to being modded out. The red outline around the orc thickens momentarily before rapidly flashing as a text box pops up in the lower third of my vision:

//:NO_COMPATIBLE_DEVICES_IN_RANGE

There goes that plan. I'm also going to assume that means none of the others have mods I can connect to and overload.

My thoughts are turned back to "how can I fight magic?" as hints of that same green and yellow energy pulses from the cracks. Enormous vines erupt from below, tearing the sidewalk apart, throwing me and at least half the throng of people off-balance.

The orc still stands on his platform, his hands held high. He yells again, this time his voice amplified when he wasn't before, "NATURE WILL FIGHT BACK!"

The vines push through the cracks, verdant and green and stark in contrast to the metal and plastic all around. The biggest are as thick as a person's waist, and they snake up the sides Zamira's workshop.

They entangle the holoprojector that still projects her Doc Z logo, and without any seeming effort at all, the orc slams his hands down and the vines bring the large holo crashing down to the Duracrete™ at the same time.

Seeing Zamira's property being smashed into a lump of metal knocks me out of whatever stupor I was in. It doesn't matter if the fucker is magic. He's fucking with Zamira. Nobody fucks with Zamira.

I rush him, jump over a meter-wide hole in the sidewalk, and push myself off a thick vine that feels tacky underfoot as I launch myself off of it.

The orc is still in the middle of rising from the climax of his performance, and I slam into him with as much force as I can muster. He flies from his platform, and I don't lose a second. He's on his stomach, and I don't even try to turn him over.

Straddling him while he's prone and dazed, I grab the sides of his head, pull back, and slam his face into the Duracrete™. Twice.

That's all it takes. Engorged vines slowly begin to slink back underground. Green and yellow energy dissipates from the orc. Red blood pools beneath him.

I stand up and dust myself off. Zamira is standing in the door to her workshop, eyes wide and hands cupped over her mouth.

"Holy shit, Reice. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Prodding the unconscious orc with my toe, I say, "I don't think he is, though."

Zamira easily hops around the holes in the ground and over the debris of her destroyed sign to check the orc's vitals. Bless her. This asshole tried to smash her and Arimaz's place, and she goes and checks his vitals. Maybe save him.

We don't deserve her. We being people in general.