Chapter Text
“Goddamnit Ortega, I don’t need you following me around this whole city,” Kovacs growled lowly as he peered around a corner. He shut his eyes and concentrated and rooted out no immediate dangers.
“Yeah, well every time I turn my fucking back, someone’s dead or on fire,” she shot back equally as venomous, and if looks could kill, Kovacs knew he’d be dead by her dark eyes a thousand times over and then some. Then he tensed. The scream that echoed through the building sent a shiver down Ortega’s spine, something that happened once in a blue fucking moon.
The room was clean and white and smelled of antiseptic to the point of burning one’s nose and was almost too big for the simple pieces of equipment. A padded and adjustable chair used for check-ups and simple procedures, a desk, two computer consoles, an operating robot, and a piece of equipment that was unrecognizable. That too had a console on the top and the lower half stored the rest of the cables and wires that would be utilized later. You were strapped to the medical chair by multiple restraints though, at this point, they were hardly needed. You were struggling to focus on your breathing through the haze of drugs.
“Please,” you gasped as you tried to reach out to them, two lab assistants milling about and ignoring you. “Please…” The one to the left of you was a young man named David and he was worried more about what he was going to eat for lunch right now, you felt it in the cloud of his mind. The other man was preparing something though he was focusing on trying to look rich to impress the higher-ups.
You squeezed your eyes and reached though, in your state, your ability was limited. You caught a whisper of something on the wind of consciousness that flowed from the men, from the distant rivers of people unaware of experiments going on under their noses. Or maybe they did know and just didn’t care if the vapid minds of the lab assistants were anything to go by. ‘Sure glad that’s not going in my fuckin’ head,’ David thought and your blood turned to ice in your veins, heartbeat picking up.”You don’t have to do this, “ you whispered, struggled against the large metal cuff keeping your head still, picked up a letter T seemingly from nowhere. ‘Help me please, make it stop,’ you begged the trickle of life that was moving around somewhere in the facility. T...a? Someone’s initials or the first two letters of a name? Two Ks, who or what-
The pain of a long sharp object piercing the side of your head, just about two inches past your temple, which could kill you, interrupted that particular train of thought. The scream sounded foreign to your own ears, aching and razor-sharp agony ripping through your skin and permeating your skull. “The bone...it's ruined,” you muttered deliriously as you thought the pain must somehow be rotting the very bone. ‘Squamous temporal’ you picked up from the other lab assistant. Oh goody. ‘This is how a god was born,’ was thought vaguely. How Zeus had his skull split open using a spike to alleviate his pain and thus, Athena sprang from him fully formed. There were no gods. Only the Meths.
You gave a spastic twitch, another wretched moan.
“C’mon David, can’t we sedate her?” Travis whined and for a second you pretended it was out of sympathy and not an annoyance on having to hear you cry out in fucking pain. “Already told you dipshit, she’s got to be conscious for this part of the procedure.”
You knew that two clean white double doors lead into this very room.
“Oh….that’s not good. He’s pissed,” you muttered and sank into exhaustion. The outside anger permeated your preternatural senses like a thin sheen of sweat that didn’t dry, only got worse with humidity. Those two double doors with translucent windows became splattered with crimson as two gunshots ripped apart the silence that had swelled back into the gap after your scream, the red sea slamming back into one. David and Travis trembled and nearly pissed themselves, swore no one would know that (you did), and looked at each other.
There was nowhere to hide, not behind the computers or under the chair you were strapped too. The doors were kicked in and your desperate mind picked up the disbelief, the disgust.
“What the fuck…” an accented voice whispered, female. One of the Ks. “Don’t fucking move!” The woman snarled and you stayed where you were with little say in the matter. “Anyone care to explain what the fuck is going on?” A man growled and you couldn’t pry your eyes open again, hurting too much, too tired.
“Help,” you whispered feebly, your whole body visibly shaking now and oh, how wonderful it would be to succumb to the darkness kissing your eyelids.
“Here’s the deal. One of you fuckfaces is going to take that fucking fire poker out of her head, and whoever does that puts me in a slightly better mood,” the man shouted.
“ I need to take them in, Kovacs,” the woman reminded darkly.
“Not if I blow out their fucking stacks first,” he muttered. David was a trembling mess as he made his way over to you and pressed a small button on the node of whatever was sticking out of your head. “Okay,” he said in a wavering voice, “1..2..3,” he said and the needle retracted back into its home, wrenching it free of your head and thus pulling another scream from you, sending you into darkness.