Evinrud - 15

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The Difference Between a Secret and a Lie
Part 2 of 5

So I’m sans air-motor and stalking the streets. It’s been my home for the past three years but it’s a new city to me. A different Beijing from the one I knew riding the airmotor or gazing out the window of a stretch or company vehicle.

The intensity surprises me. The smells, the sounds, the people, there’s an energy you can’t ignore, it’s right in your face.

‘Pretty boy walking’ the sheboys on Eighty-Eighth Street have started to call out whenever I get too close. They’re less than a block from my building and I didn’t even know they existed before this week.

Tomorrow it will be six weeks exactly from the date of the crash. Forty-two days since we rained hell on the outskirts of town.

They tell me that physically I’m pretty much healed. I’m training three hours a day with the physio, two hours with the kendo master. There’s a couple of nasty looking scars on my torso, which the company doc says I can have cosmetically faded in time. I think I’ll keep them as a reminder.

This extended ‘holiday’ is a result of my weakened mental state. The Doc says my thought processes have become too reliant on the Cy and that I need my mind to heal from the trauma of the crash alone.

First time in four years they’ve worried about that. Something stinks.

Last week they gave me two days in the pulse with Evinrud. The Doc and a couple of scientists poked around the whole time, testing us. But it was so routine it was suspicious.

We were fine. If anything we were better than fine…..stronger. The air-motor was pretty messed up in the crash. They completely replaced the panel work and both auxiliary engines, of course. But something else had changed. The white coats had altered the Cy, upgraded more than just his body.

Bin the crafty bugger started sprouting about hybrid genetic tissue adaptation and improved bioengineering. He knows I’m a dumb cluck, he likes to put me in my place by confusing me. The white coats said nothing.

Evinrud is the only one who could express it to me and he was holding back aswell. He was definitely faster than pre-crash and the connection felt tight almost immediately. It used to take us days training in the pulse to reach that level of physical harmony.

Then they took him away.

Now instead of Evinrud I’ve got a bloody colostomy bag thing connected to my intravenous legrope. Thank f*$% I only need to wear it when I sleep.
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