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Ryan woke up tasting copper and something sharper, like burnt plastic. His left arm buzzed, not the usual backfire buzz but something else. Something steady. He tried to move and his shoulder screamed, the kind of scream that meant tissue damage, not just a pulled muscle.
The ceiling above him was industrial white, stained yellow around the edges. Not his place. He turned his head and his neck cracked. The room smelled like antiseptic and old blood. Clinic. Natasha's clinic.
He tried to sit up. His neural port throbbed, a hot pulse behind his right ear, and for a second his vision doubled. When it cleared he saw Natasha leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, watching him like he was a lab rat that might bite.
"You've been out six hours," she said. No greeting. No concern. Just a fact.
Ryan pushed himself up on his elbows. The buzzing in his arm got louder. He looked down. His left forearm was wrapped in smart-bandage, the kind that cost more than his rent. Under it he could see faint blue lines threading up toward his elbow. New lines. He hadn't had those before.
"What the hell did you do?"
Natasha pushed off the wall and walked over. She moved like someone used to being in charge. "I stabilized you. You were going into shock when you collapsed outside. Your regulator was cooking your nervous system from the inside out."
"I didn't ask you to—"
"You didn't ask me not to either." She stopped at the foot of the gurney. "And you signed the consent form last night. Before you passed out."
Ryan didn't remember signing anything. He didn't remember much after the cage door opened and the crowd noise hit him like a wall. He reached up to touch his neural port and Natasha grabbed his wrist.
"Don't. It's still integrating."
"What's integrating?"
She let go of his wrist. "The cooling protocol. I told you last night. You need it or your rig's going to fry you the next time you spike."
Ryan stared at her. The buzzing in his arm synced with his heartbeat now, a double-thump rhythm that made his skin crawl. "You put something in me."
"I put something in your port. A regulator patch. It monitors your bioelectric output and dumps the overflow before it backfires through your system." She said it like she was explaining how to change a tire. "It's temporary. Until I finish the full rebuild."
"I didn't agree to a full rebuild."
Natasha's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "You agreed to let me use your burnout data. The patch records everything. Voltage spikes, neural bleed, current distribution. I need that data to finish the contract."
Ryan's hand went back to his port. This time she didn't stop him. He felt the raised edge of new hardware, a flat disc about the size of a coin, warm against his skin. His fingers came away sticky. Blood, or something like it.
"What contract?"
"Not your problem." Natasha turned and walked to the counter. She picked up a glass vial, held it up to the light. The liquid inside was amber, thick. "Your problem is that you've got maybe two weeks before your original regulator fails completely. When that happens, the next time you discharge you'll cook yourself from the inside out. No warning. No second chance."
Ryan swung his legs off the gurney. His boots hit the floor and the impact rattled up through his spine. The buzzing in his arm flared, then settled. "So I'm supposed to trust you? Let you turn me into a walking data farm?"
"You're supposed to stay alive long enough for me to finish the rebuild. After that, you walk away with a working rig. Better than the military-grade junk you had before." She set the vial down. "Or you can leave now. See how far you get."
Ryan stood up. His legs held. Barely. The room tilted for a second, then righted itself. He took a step toward the door and his port flared hot, a sharp spike of pain that dropped him to one knee.
Natasha didn't move. "That's the patch. It's reading your stress response. You push too hard, it pushes back."
"You put a leash in my head."
"I put a safety in your head. There's a difference." She walked over and crouched down next to him. Her eyes were pale grey, the kind of grey that didn't give anything away. "You want to be angry, fine. Be angry. But you're alive because I pulled you off the street and patched you up. You don't have to like it."
Ryan looked at her. She didn't blink. Didn't back down. He hated that.
The door behind them opened. Ryan turned his head, too fast, and his port throbbed again. Derek stood in the doorway, holding a bag of something that smelled like fried synth-meat. He saw Ryan on the floor and stopped.
"Shit. You're awake."
Ryan pushed himself up. Natasha stood and stepped back, giving him space. Derek didn't come any closer. He just stood there, holding the bag, looking everywhere except at Ryan's face.
That hit harder than the volts.
"You knew," Ryan said.
Derek opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "I didn't know she was going to—"
"You knew she'd want my data. You knew she'd hook me up to something." Ryan took a step forward. His legs held this time. "You set me up."
"I didn't set you up, man. I just—" Derek finally looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot, ringed with dark circles. "I owed her. A lot. She said if I brought you in, she'd clear half of it. I didn't think—"
"You didn't think I'd say yes, so you made sure I didn't have a choice."
Derek's jaw tightened. "You were going to die anyway. Your rig was shot. I saw you after that extraction job, Ryan. You couldn't walk straight for three days. How long were you planning to keep going like that?"
Ryan didn't answer. Because Derek was right. He'd been running on borrowed time since the day his regulator fried, and they both knew it.
Natasha cleared her throat. "If you two are done, I've got another client in twenty minutes. Ryan, you're cleared to leave as long as you don't do anything stupid. No heavy lifting, no electrical work, no fights. The patch needs forty-eight hours to calibrate."
Ryan turned to look at her. "And then what?"
"And then you come back. We run diagnostics. I pull the data. You go home." She picked up a tablet from the counter and handed it to him. "You'll need to check in every three days. Miss an appointment and the patch locks down. You won't be able to discharge at all."
Ryan took the tablet. The screen showed a map with a single red pin, Natasha's clinic, and a countdown timer. Seventy-one hours. He wanted to throw it against the wall. Instead he shoved it in his jacket pocket.
Derek stepped aside as Ryan walked past. He didn't say anything. Ryan didn't either. There wasn't much left to say.
He made it to the street before his port buzzed again, a sharp triple-pulse that made his teeth ache. He leaned against the alley wall and pulled out the tablet. The map was gone. In its place was a single line of text:
Diagnostic override detected. Source trace active.
Below it, a set of coordinates.
Ryan stared at the screen. He hadn't touched anything. Hadn't opened any files. The patch was running its own program. And it was showing him something Natasha hadn't mentioned.
His port pulsed again. The coordinates blinked twice, then locked in place.
Ryan looked back at the clinic door. The lights were still on. Natasha was still inside. He could go back. Ask her what the hell this was. Demand answers.
Or he could follow the coordinates and find out himself.
His hand was already moving, pulling up the route map, before he made the choice.