Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

07 - Anomalies Are Bad for Business

You were born with them.

Piper felt like she'd been frozen solid. For a moment she couldn't move; couldn't think. Couldn't even process what Doctor Carstairs had just said to her. That was impossible. She stared at him, but the grizzled physician just stared right back, taking a deep drag from his cigarette. In desperation she looked up at Odiye and Toran.

At least they seemed just as dumbstruck.

They exchanged baffled looks, even Toran's breezy demeanour evaporating in an instant. Clearly this was more than either of them had expected.

The senior operative, Demir, looked very, very angry.

"Doctor," he said quietly. "I'd like you to repeat that. Slowly."

"I said, she was born with her implants," Carstairs replied, puffing out smoke as he pivoted back to face the AmpCore agent.

"That is impossible."

"That's what I thought, until about thirty seconds ago."

Piper pressed her hands over her eyes, taking a deep breath. The voices of the AmpCore academy faded into mush as she ordered her thoughts. Implants. Illegal implants. But it couldn't just be that, oh no – couldn't just be that some black market hack had done this to her. She could have gotten her head around that.

You couldn't be born with implants.

"How could that happen?" she asked eventually, dragging her hands down from her face and looking at them. "How could I have these things?"

"Well, that's the big question isn't it?"

"Doc," Toran interjected quietly. "I think you're going to need to explain."

Carstairs held his cigarette between his lips as he puffed, swivelling back to the computer screens, fingers dancing with expert speed across the keyboard.

"Look here," he said. Piper looked with the rest, following his pointing finger to a zoomed in portion of her ribcage. A splurge of annotations ran down the screen beside it, meaning absolutely nothing to her.

"There are none of the fixed-point attachments across the bones that you'd expect with a standard AmpCore graft," the doctor told them, finger tapping across the holographic display. "If this had been done at the normal time you'd be able to see where the metal had been fixed to the bone. In fact, there are no attachment points at all. And these darker sections here, and here-," more pointing, "in these sections the bone and metal have actually intertwined – almost merged. You'd never see that in a standard graft. The body is too far along in its development so the grafts have to skate along the surface. Here..." Carstairs gave a defeated shrug. "The only explanation is that these have been in her body a lot longer. For as long as she's had a skeleton, in fact."

Demir's jaw worked back and forth as he stared at the display. The thundercloud of his expression had not abated in the slightest. His eyes flashed to her with an expression of such malevolence that she thought he might rip out his wand and atomise her there and then.

"I will need to speak to the Academy Board," he spat out, casting a black look at Odiye. "Your pet is going to cause quite a shitstorm, Mr Tambo."

Too far. With every insane revelation that had just been dumped on her, she needed some kind of release. The AmpCore agent lit the fuse, and Piper exploded off the bed.

In a single leap she cleared the space between them and punched him in the face.

There was a crack of breaking cartilage as her clenched fist smashed into his nose, sending the man toppling backwards with a strangled howl of surprise. Carstairs wheeled his chair back out of the firing line, eyes wide as she lunged, trying to land another blow.