Turncoat: Turncoat Trilogy Book 1

Chapter 13.4

I woke up laying on my bed in a propped up position. I drew deep gasps of air. Vicki sat next to me, holding a shattered photo holoscreen. So that's what shattered.

"Hey," I said.

Her head snapped up and she smiled. "Welcome back," she said with a smile. "Don't try to over exert yourself, the drug is just wearing off. Thankfully, the first bionic it's releasing is your lung."

"What was that projecting?" I asked, motioning to the broken screen in her hand.

"A picture of me and my parents the day I was accepted into the Dead Heads, a picture of our unit, and then a picture of you before your accident," she said. "They were the only copies I had of the pictures."

I held my hand out for the broken device. "May I?" I asked.

She handed it over and I fiddled around with the bottom of the device before managing to pop a cover off and reveal the small microchip inside. "Can you grab a computer for me and my tool belt?"

She nodded and left for a moment, returning with the things I requested. I connected the two devices and set to work, typing out lines of code and extracting the data from the broken device. The files slowly siphoned off, some of the lines came out corrupted but slowly the images reconstructed themselves on the computer display.

"Do you have something I could save copies to?" I asked.

When she didn't respond, I turned to look at her only turn into her arms wrapping around me. "Thank you, thank you so much," she whispered.

Before I could return her embrace, she pushed back away from me and wiped the tears from her eyes. "Let me get a save chip," she said and ran out of the room once more. I flipped through the three images, taking in the moments Vicki treasured the most.

The picture of her with her parents on the day of her dead head acceptance filled my screen first. Her uniform looked immaculate and she couldn't have been more than sixteen, the smile in her eyes surprised me. Now...the light was gone, the happiness, she looked dead inside. I think we all did.

The next picture in the reel was the unit picture, all twelve of us in our uniforms. It wasn't much of a picture, but I remembered that day. The day after I joined, one of the other women on the unit wanted a group picture so she could remember everyone the way they were before everything went to hell. I felt a tear well up as I looked at myself standing in the front row wearing the straight cut dress uniform. The skirt stopped at my knees, revealing toned calves and smooth skin. I was the first person on that picture to get disfigured by the war, though I definitely wasn't the last.

The third picture was Vicki and me during one of the training jumps. With all of our gear on and our visors pushed back, I could only see our eyes but you could tell we were smiling. Two gloved thumbs up were just in frame, ready to go. The jump suits seemed bulkier than normal. I remember this picture, this was taken the day of...why did you keep this, Vicki? The picture of my last minutes as a Dead Head soldier.

A soft ding brought me out of my trance as a box popped up in the bottom corner of the screen.

File restoration complete.

What? Vicki said there were only three files. I opened it up and my breath caught in my throat. Whomever took the photo had been in the hospital after my accident. Tubes ran all over my body, several stuck out of my chest, one out of my neck and one out of my mouth. Wires were as numerous as the tubes and bandages. Bandages swathed whatever skin I had left: arms, chest, neck, forehead and the stumps of my legs. Vicki sat in the chair next to the bed, her hand wrapped in mine and her head resting on the mattress.

I felt my lip begin to quiver as I saw what I looked like that day. Even all cleaned up and bandaged, the damage couldn't be concealed. Several bandages were stained red as my blood soaked through. The untouched skin on my face looked pale and waxy, my lips were blue, whether from cold or lack of oxygen, I don't know. So close to dying, I shouldn't have survived. That was obvious. The mangled body of a fifteen year old Feral drafted into a military to fight for a cause she didn't believe in.

I heard the door open and looked up to see Vicki. Her face fell and she looked away. "You weren't supposed to see that," she whispered.

"Why do you have it?" I asked.

"Because, it reminds me what I caused, what I could have prevented," she said.

"Vicki, please, it wasn't your fault," I said. "If only I could just prove it to you."

Vicki handed over the memory chip and I stuck it into the reader. "All of them, please."

I transferred all four files, saving copies to my wrist interface for safe keeping. "I wish I could somehow prove it to you that it wasn't your fault," I said.

"What would you need?" Kai asked.

I looked up at him, my mouth hanging open wide. "Uh...access to the investigation report, all of the HAJ suit investigative files and maybe a look at the suit itself. Chances are it was destroyed beyond use when they cut it off but there can be signs of physical tampering."

"Rest and recover, be ready to move by tomorrow night," Kai said. "And Tawny, I do mean rest. I want you to sleep tonight."

I nodded and Vicki stood. "Wait, Vicki, please, stay."

Vicki looked at the ground. "Big brother is watching," she said. "I'm sorry."