Up From The Deep by Vaughn Jackson (highly recommended books txt) 📕

The doctor didn’t seem shocked at the callousness of the statement. “Understood. Nurse, wheel the patient to my laboratory if you please.”

The nurse ran a horrified glance back and forth between the two men. “Yes, of course,” she said finally.

“Do you mind terribly if I watch?” Kurtis asked.

“Watch? You’re going to help me,” the doctor said with a manic grin. “This way.”

Kurtis followed, silently wishing he’d not started this chain of events, but curious to see where it led.

The laboratory looked like something out of a modern Frankenstein movie, cluttered, grimy, and ionized with the occasional electrical malfunction sparking somewhere overhead. Kurtis pulled on a pair of gloves with a snap.

“Now, coma patients can feel pain, as I’m sure you know,” Dr. Felding started.

Kurtis nodded.

“This will be extremely painful. Perhaps the most painful thing a human being could possibly endure.”

“Just tell me what I need to do,” Kurtis said.

Felding pointed to a screen. “That’s his brain scan in real time, whenever this image lights up red, hit the button to your left to flood his body with morphine. Hold it until the orange starts to dissipate.”

“How much?”

“Potentially all of it. He’s likely to die from overdose, but if we don’t manage his pain, he could die from that as well.” The doctor shrugged. “I could spend an entire day listing all the ways he could die, honestly.”

“Pass. I’ll hit the button as needed.”

Felding smiled, reached up and pulled a helmet-like apparatus down from just over his head. Tubes, wires, and cables snaked their way up and beyond where Kurtis could see. He fixed the device to Ivan Cole’s head and cranked a lever on the side until there was a pneumatic hiss followed by a dull thunk. Ivan’s body twitched violently, then settled once more.

“Like an iron maiden for the brain,” the doctor mumbled as he spun around and assessed a screen of, presumably, the patient’s vitals. “Last chance to back out,” he added.

“Do I seem like a person who backs out once a decision is made?”

“Fair enough. Geronimo.” He threw a lever and the whole lab rumbled to life. Through the clear tubes affixed to the helmet, Kurtis watched a flood of grey descend into Ivan Cole’s motionless skull. The grey material leaked from his nose and tinged the corners of his mouth.

“The morphine!”

Kurtis had been so entranced by the process that he’d neglected to watch the scan. “Shit,” he said, slamming the button. The brain scan went from flashing an angry red back to its original blue color. He returned the doctor’s irritated stare with an equal measure of defiance. “Continue.”

The doctor rolled his eyes before returning his attention to the scans. “It seems like we’ve introduced enough of the nanodevices to create a large enough synaptic shock to wake him up, theoretically.” He glanced over at Kurtis. “I suggest you back away from him. The initial response will almost definitely be violent.”

Kurtis wheeled two arm lengths away from the massive slumbering man.

“Synaptic shock, now.”

The helmet crackled as if struck by lightning, and Ivan Cole bolted upright with a guttural scream. Every muscle in his body contracted and bulged beneath the surface of his skin as he writhed in agony.

“Ending trial one,” Dr. Felding shouted.

The lightning subsided and Ivan collapsed back on the cot.

“Did it work?” Kurtis asked.

“Well his brain activity is certainly maintaining levels that would indicate consciousness.” The doctor craned his neck to observe Ivan. “Call his name.”

“Ivan Cole,” Kurtis said in a raised voice. “Answer me.”

The mercenary’s eyes flickered open. He didn’t speak as he sat up. The doctor came over and removed the helmet carefully. Cole’s bald head retained the pinprick pattern from the needles in the headpiece. He rubbed absent-mindedly at the wounds, smearing blood on the top of his head. While doing that he looked down to his left, noticing for the first time that his left hand was missing. A stump wrapped in stained cloth rested in its place.

“Grenade,” he said.

“Yes,” Kurtis said, “I heard you took a grenade point blank.”

“Dead?”

“No, you are alive.”

“Not me.”

Kurtis looked at the doctor with a cocked eyebrow.

“I believe I was told that the grenade was attached to him directly by one of the people in the military base at the time of the invasion. Perhaps he is asking about that?”

Kurtis thought for a moment before speaking. “No, I’m afraid he is still alive.”

The doctor gave him a puzzled look, which Kurtis shot down with a look of his own.

Ivan’s face contorted into a grim mask of rage. “Alive?” His one fist clenched tight. “I kill him.”

Kurtis smiled to himself. “That’s fine big guy, we’ll make sure you get the chance. For now, the nice nurse is going to wheel you back to the medical wing and give you a check-up.” He motioned for the nurse to take him and go.

When the gurney was out of sight, the doctor turned to him and asked, “How do you know his assailant survived?”

“I don’t, but revenge is a great motivator, especially for a thing that seems to only have a one-track mind at the moment.”

“I see.”

“You disapprove?”

“I simply wonder what the ramifications may be in the future,” the doctor said with a shrug. “That’s all.”

Kurtis shrugged.

#

“We are not launching another attack on them,” Jia Ming said. “We lost too many men and walked away with basically nothing the last time.”

“Yes, yes, I understand, but this isn’t an attack,” Kurtis said. “I want to send in one operative—”

“To kidnap the girl who watched you shoot her best friend?”

“Well when you put it like that…yes.”

“You got us Ivan back, in some fashion, so thanks for that, but as the person presumably still in charge of whatever this clusterfuck mission is supposed to be, I am not wasting that resource on your puppy love.”

“Not many people would talk to me that way, you know,” Kurtis said coldly.

“If you or any other of the Hands of Fate were going to kill me, you’d have done it by now, but you haven’t