531

My Turn

Chan Yi took the elevator down into the Piles as the afternoon began to turn to evening. Yi loved the bright neons of the Piles at night. The food vendors filled the air with heavenly aromas and their hawker's voices carried through the lower levels. The Piles was always busy, but it came to life at night. While the Skylines had its curfew and the streets crawled with cleaning machines to keep it spotless, and the Builds closed shop and shuddered their windows against the night's winds, the Piles thrived.

Yi would love to walk the alleys and sky-walks tonight, but his arm needed to be repaired and there was just one place to go. The third level had a number of specialty markets and services. Yi strode past them and took a turn down an alley between shops. At the end of the alley was a building that could barely claim the title. It had four walls and a roof, but inside was a single large room, divided with plastic sheets and disinfecting light arrays.

He walked through the front door and swept into the front lobby without preamble. Dr. Atieno Obuo looked up from her desk, ocular implants whirling as they adjusted to see him better.

"This isn't a great time." She looked down at the piece of biotech she was working on and set down her tools. "What are you doing here?"

"I had some trouble. The minigun."

"What is it with you and the damn minigun?" she asked as she waved him over.

He took a seat across from her desk and unwrapped his arm to show her. "I got shot. It was the arm or my head."

"You're too pretty. You should have taken the headshot. You could use a scar or two," she said as she picked up a scalpel and poked around at the broken skin and mangled flesh. "What caused this?"

"I told you, I got shot. The minigun took the brunt of the bullet, but it didn't take it well." She stared at him, and he sighed. "They took my extra gun. The ammunition is meant to stop someone like me."

"Why do you have something like that?"

"They'll find me someday, and who knows what they'll send?"

She studied his face a moment before she shook her head and looked back at his arm. "This is going to take a while, 531."

"Don't call me that."

She looked up at him, then back at his arm. "We need to go in the back. Close the shop and follow me back."

Dr. Obuo walked through a split in a sheet of plastic that made up the front wall and disappeared into the back of the store. Yi went to the front and flipped the door sign to closed before he followed her.

The store was sectioned into different rooms with the same plastic that had made the wall in the front. It was empty today thought he'd been there before when every room had a patient recovering from a procedure. She was worth every credit he paid her. She was the best at what she did.

He knew her from before; when her offices had been within the pristine halls of Mariner Tech. He never knew why she was forced out but finding her in the Piles had saved his life. She was one of his final designers and she understood his body and brain better than anyone. And she was damn good with a knife.

Mariner Tech had to be keeping tabs on her, but Yi had yet to find any signs of it. It's why he preferred to do his own maintenance. He could only do so much though.

He entered the last room and sat on a stool. Dr. Obuo had her tools stretched out in a tray beside her. The table between them was as sterile as anything that had been at her old office. The rest of the place might be falling apart, but Obuo made sure her patients got the best care possible.

"This is going to hurt," she warned him as she pulled on a pair of gloves.

"I'll manage it." He was wired like a human, to process pain the same way. As much as he wished he could stop the pain, he wasn't wired that way. Even with the processes muted though, he hissed as she began poking around, pulling flesh from metal.