Hazard eased his eyelids open, the rig moving just a few centimeters below his eyesight, burning the hair off his chin. He shifted his eyes to the physician who was waiting patiently with an amused smile, then gave his answer with two deliberately slow blinks.
"Alright," the physician said and crossed something down on the clipboard in his hands. "It should only be . . . about ten more minutes before this finishes, and I'd say three minutes for the implants, then we'll get you into your new uniform and you can head back up to the hangar."
And so hazard endured a few more minutes of the uncomfortable tingling spreading from left to right then back again across his body. He was particularly glad that the pants he still wore made the stinging more tolerable when the laser got to his midsection. About the same amount of time passed for the laser to finish with his legs as it did with his torso, after which he was finally instructed to sit up.
"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Michael said. "And we got a nice 3D image of your structure for the machines to assemble your suit to perfection. In fact, it should be done by now. But first, we'll get the neural implants installed."
Hazard popped his neck and scowled in annoyance.
"Relax, it's just an injection, really," the physician assured, messing around with the machine above the table. It looked like he was placing a transparent canister full of blue liquid into some receptacle on one of the devices. If Hazard would venture a guess, he'd say that was the colloid solution for the implants. The physician then moved around to stand in front of Hazard, reaching behind his head to guide one of the rigs to the left side of his head just in front of his ear. "Let me just place this in a good spot . . . calibrate the PSI for the correct depth . . . good. Now hold still because this might sting."
Lucky for the physician, Hazard wasn't the reactive type, because that was more than 'sting'. The loud 'ptsst' was followed by a pain that felt like a 2x4 giving him a solid whack across the temple and actually managed to make Hazard grimace, sucking a sharp breath in through clenched teeth.
"There, the pressure should dissipate shortly." Pressure meaning that which was giving Hazard one hell of a migraine. He felt like hooking the physician. Machines continued to buzz around Hazard's head, only a sort of magnetized scanner this time. No more lasers. True to Michael's words, the throbbing pain eventually ebbed away, the feeling almost tangible as it drained into nothing at the center. The next few minutes were spent with the physician looking over a portable monitor displaying the scanner's readout, and then he looked at Hazard and nodded in approval. "And we are done. I see no initial signs of rejection to the augmentations, so for the moment I'd chalk this up to a successful installation of the Daega Industries' CommLink Tool and Looking Glass System, that is until further observational field testing."
He treated this like it was a basic update to his personal computer. Still, he seemed diligent enough and quite knowledgable about the procedures, despite their apparent simplicity. Certainly, Hazard wouldn't have trusted himself to jab something into his own skull. In the end, gave a slanted smile with a thumbs up to show that he was good to go.
"I won't keep you here any longer," Michael smiled back, "though once you're clothed again, be sure to stop by the lab down the hall. The quartermaster of Sharp Edge is there to brief you on your new equipment. As for your augmentations, they won't be online until you are in the desert."
<><><><><><><><& #62;<><><><><><><><& #62;<><><><><><><><& #62;
Annika and Devin were still lounging inside the aircraft. The only sound emitted was the hum of the engines and not the music from before.
"The pilot is warming up the turbines. That means Hazard is on his way back down," Annika announced.
"Sweet," Devin replied, paying more attention to his liquid-crystal datacube. Something had caused the speakers of datacube's dock to malfunction and Devin was grumbling to himself as he carefully navigated the electrical guts of the thing to find whatever it was he managed to burn up. So, for the moment, Annika's ears were given a respite.
"Why do you even listen to that ancient music?" Annika asked.
"Because, it's good stuff," Devin answered simply. "What more do you need?"
Annika rolled her eyes. "Nine-thousand years of music industries and you can't find something closer to your generation."
Devin scoffed at the remark without breaking away from his task. "This generation, the music, is good, I guess. But if you have a good ear and open mind, you'd see that the trends from today have been around before, so I'd have a much larger variety of songs and artists to choose from by digging through the old albums."
"If that's true," Annika had to chuckled at the logic, "then I'm sure one of those 'comeback trends' catering to your music tastes would have shown up earlier than the 20th century. I mean, come on, those old digital files are so lossy they sound like white noise compared to today's mastering."
Devin yelped when he accidentally burned himself trying to solder one of several melted components in his dock. Probably due to over-amping the system for the volume.
"Yeah," he admitted as he sucked on his injured finger, "I did find a few decades of recurrence—some golden ages of rock 'n' roll throughout the millenia—but, I'd say it's good to start at the basics you know? Go from the start of music history and work my way up." He turned to grin at her with a playful wave, "And I have several years of my playlists duration to go through and I haven't listened to a single song twice, rather building my music taste chronologically. Besides, I want to make that 1900-2900 collection that I bought worth the purchase."
Annika shook her head in bemusement. "I hope Hazard can stand it."
Just then, as if on cue, Hazard's footsteps quickly approached. He was now in his new armor comprising the colors yellow and black. The quartermaster himself was favoring to call it a bumblebee color scheme. Only parts were yellow like the pads on the back of his fingerless gloves, the forearm guards, elbow pads, stripes down both shoulders, kneepads, the shin guards on his knee-high boots, and the helmet strapped to his belt. His vest was form fitting, only had tee sleeves, and was very light. It looked as of it were made of nylon woven in a hexagonal patterns broken by the fringes
and the loops that tied in with the loops of his black cargoes, combined with a belt buckling it all together with the Sharp Edge logo.
"Hiya, Haze!" Annika greeted the agent of Sharp Edge. He was right up to the craft within a few strides, throwing his pack inside before hauling himself up. "Ready to go? I'd say that was pretty quick, considering."
"Got it!" Devin cried in triumph as the tunes started to flow. "Just in time for take off."
Annika sighed in exasperation.
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