EarthFall

Chap 16. Gamble

Ok. Maybe not forever... He thought as he later, slowly drifted back down into the lower echelons of sanity.

How long had it been though, really? Minutes or hours? He was about to ask when he realized He couldn't talk. Was there a gag bundled in his mouth? He opened his eyes and saw Tucker and Brianna weren't looking at him. They held his hands by the bed, but their eyes were downcast.

Tucker looked sick.

Brianna's face was white. Did they think he was dead?

"How long was I out?" Carson managed to spit out his gag and asked them. Cornelius screamed.

"What the honest to god fuck Carson!? You gouged out one of your eyes! We had to hold you down!" He was breathing heavily. "Are you even still human!?"

Carson put his hand to his face. It was bloody, but there was no pain. He wiped his face off with a rag. He had both eyes. What were they talking about?

"Roger that, Cornelius... Still human."

"Are you sure?" Brianna whispered.

He felt amazing. Well, he didn't feel any pain and that was amazing. He ran his tongue across his teeth. Shit. The chip in his tooth was gone?

"Why do you ask?" Carson asked innocently.

She held up a small mirror, the backside of a physical compass. It was from his surveying gear. Carson stared into the mirror. Was he still human?? He did a short mental check. He felt human, but his eyes... what happened to his eyes?!

"Because your left eye used to be brown... and now it's blue...." Brianna finished, as if he couldn't see the mirror right in front of his face.

There was a line of faint freckles across his eyebrow and cheek that hadn't been there before...

Gaia sat motionless, patiently quiet. Carson sat up.

"What did you do?" He asked the bot.

"I injected you with the Serum. You damaged your eye in a fit of pain by accident, and the Nanites simply repaired it. No need to fear though... they worked off the genetic code they read, directly from your DNA.... A newly formed human eye is not gifted with pigment immediately. Therefore the eyeball is typically blue, until the body develops enough Melanin to cover the iris. It will return to normal in a few weeks... I'm sure."

He felt his side. He needed to see it.

He was still in his blue jumper undergarments, the pants at least. They had removed his dead exo-suit and torn the shirt of his jumper off at the waste. He ripped off the bandages. Everyone began to tell him to stop, to lay back down, to slow down, but it was too late. In a few swift motions he ripped them off and felt the skin on his side.

It was.... unbroken. He wiped away the blood with a rag. Instead of a scar, it looked like a thick, blurry line of dark freckles, dozens and dozens of them piled onto each other in close proximity. But it was smooth. Healthy.

He looked up at Gaia.

"So that was your voice in the ravine? Right before Abel gutted me? I didn't see you anywhere"

"The biofactory has many unseen... speakers and cameras in the... unlikely event someone would like... a tour... I utilized them."
Carson couldn't even process that right now.

"Why didn't you stop us from destroying your... bio-factory then?" Carson asked.

"That's exactly what I was trying to do." It was Abel, who spoke.