Kingfisher

Rinako sat in the waiting area, her hands nestled in her lap. Her head was still swimming from whatever was in that drink she’d been given. She’d have tipped it into the frigid ocean in the mural behind her if she’d had a moment without someone’s eyes on her. The women draped around Tanto had watched her like a pair of sleepy tigers. She was relieved when one of the guards appeared from the door at the back, bowed briefly and escorted her back with him.

The metal-walled corridors stretched further than she’d imagined. Despite her woozy head, she had counted the doors and memorised the turnings as she passed through them, following all the time behind the wardrobe like back of the guard, his bald head atop a few rolls of fat on the back of his neck, a black wire snaking up to one ear. She had noted the cameras on the ceiling dotted along every corridor, swivelling silently as they passed.

The waiting room was unexpectedly civilised. There was no table stacked with housekeeping magazines but a few plants sat in the corners, with one seated area set back and a display showing a stream of adverts up on the wall opposite. The only signs of it being something other than a standard waiting room were the dull metal walls and that the reception cubicle was protected by bulletproof glass - although she knew even this wasn’t unusual in some of the clinics in the poorer wards nowadays.

‘Oh, don’t worry about that.’ The guard had said on seeing her eyes linger on the glass (though she had actually been assessing the ‘nurse’ leaning on a surface, reading a magazine behind it). ‘We get all sorts here.’ He had left her alone at some point after getting another call on his earpiece.

After four or five minutes staring at twinkling AR cities and beautiful women sipping from glasses of wine on the display, another guard entered from the room beyond and gestured for her to enter. The woman at reception remained engrossed in her magazine throughout. The guard was much smaller than the first with a pencil thin beard at the edges of his face, and a slanted little moustache like the end of a pitched roof. His suit was several sizes too big for him. He smiled as she passed him, remaining in the doorway so that she had to squeeze her body against his to get by. He didn’t make much of an effort to disguise where he was looking as she did.

The heavy door shut behind her and he gestured to a padded brown seat in the center of the small room, this one with large arm and leg rests and set at an angle so that when she laid back in it she was staring at the ceiling, a large fan spinning above her.

She suddenly became acutely aware of her isolation. The smaller guard had taken up a position somewhere behind her, and only now she noticed the noise of the club had disappeared.

Doors must be soundproofed.

The fan span above her, and seemed to draw her eyes in. It’s slow wup-wup-wup sent her mind back to the blades of the extraction-boats, the silhouette of the woman walking from brilliantly lit clouds of dust, the long pause before she left Kurama. She watched the blades flashing by, and her attention slowly shifted to the black space behind them, where between the passing of the blades she could make out the detail of some sort of mechanism, and beside it, flashing every ten or so seconds, a single blue light.

A door at the far side of the room burst open breaking her concentration. A balding man with wisps of grey hair and a large pair of glasses strode out in a long white coat (—finally, a lab coat—). He had in his hand a large wired hypodermic and called out behind him through the doorway from which he had just come, ‘… yes, it does make a difference. Nanograms. N-G. 30 ng, not mg.’

‘Idiots.’ He said, under his breath. ‘This is what comes from working outside the grid.’ He drew a long breath and exhaled slowly, then turned to face her, adjusting his glasses. His eyes were obscured by the great white reflections that swam in them.

He smiled. ‘I’m sorry about that. How can I be of help to you? I understand you brought payment.’ He looked for a moment at where she guessed the guard was standing behind her then back at her.

‘I - uh… ’ It felt so awkward trying to talk while on her back, straining to lift her head. ‘It’s just—my friend—she told me it would be ok—and-and-she knew someone at work who had it done too, you know, the—’ She looked up as though pointing with her eyes toward her brain. ‘They can’t pick you up anymore right?’

As she spoke he sat on a stool beside the chair, nodding and interjecting ‘Mhhmm... mhhmmm,’ every now and then. He took measurements with a timer at several points of her body, tapping here and there, then holding her wrist while observing some sort of readings on a small hairbrush shaped data pad. She had planned to monitor carefully everything he did, to avoid taking any risks, but he moved so quickly. Plans were all well and good on paper, when nothing was in motion. He let go of her wrist and tapped on the data pad.

‘I mean, I tried the clinic but who can afford that, right, so I just—if you can help. I mean, I didn’t know what else to do.’

After she’d finished and he’d spent some time looking down his nose, where his glasses rested, at the data pad, he said. ‘Well. First of all, let me assure you that none of our procedures are traceable by any known countermeasure. If you decide to go ahead, any previous topological record you may have had will be completely decoupled. Like it never happened.’

She let her head fall back as though in relief. No known countermeasure. Definitely something to let the lab guys know…

‘And secondly: your friend is perfectly correct. We do a lot of these types of upgrades, and it’s a very safe and popular procedure.’ He smiled again.

She wasn’t sure if he’d truly listened to what she said or if this was mostly a script that he read to everyone who came. ‘Ok. Ok, thank you. I’m sorry to ask so many questions. Just nervous, I guess.’

‘No, you’re quite right to be cautious. There are a lot of unscrupulous people out there.’ He held his hands up, then span on the stool and walked across the room, where he hung the data pad in a recess on the side of a large grey panel on the wall and tapped at it a few times.

‘Well.’ He looked back at her. ‘It seems you came to the right place.’ His friendly expression changed to an apologetic one and he gestured toward the door to the waiting room. ‘I’ll be one moment.’

She nodded and laid back again.

He went out into the waiting area and she heard him speaking to who she assumed must have been the woman at reception.

Ok. Piece of cake. Nothing to worry about at all. Her heart was still racing but she felt somewhat more relaxed about things. A lot more relaxed in fact.

She heard the click of a comm receiver, then a door opening and closing a couple of times from the waiting room. She closed her eyes.

Just have to lay back and wait. Up to you now, Chizuru.

She thought she felt the presence of the guard behind her, then realised she hadn’t noticed if he’d remained or left the room with the doctor. Not wanting to look round, she opened her eyes and squinted at the wall, searching for his reflectoon in its dull metallic surface. There was something long and dark, possibly a suit, next to the brown shape of the chair.

She tried to lift her head. But she couldn’t. It was like the muscles weren’t connected anymore. And it wasn’t just her head. She realised that she had no sensation at all anywhere from her neck down.

All she could do was stare at the fan spinning on the ceiling above her.

After a few seconds, a little blue light flashed behind it.