The combination of smugness and anger playing over Amelia's face was almost funny. Her expression kept switching back and forth as she simultaneously fumed and celebrated the success of her 'cunning plan.'

I could have congratulated her, or kept my mouth shut. I didn't.

"So… we're killing him first, right? Violently?"

She beamed. Maybe I should have been a bit concerned by that. I wasn't.

"Of course we are! Ohhh, I hope he signs up as one of my first patients! I so hope he does! 'Protection', oooh, I'll show him…"

The grumbling continued as Amelia stalked out of the room to find Melania.

I watched her go for a second, enjoying the sight of her stomping away. It was cute in a slightly intimidating manner, and kind of hot…

I flushed and shook my head as I scrambled to follow her.

—

The mercs had demanded three cybernetic limb replacements: a left arm, a right leg, and a right arm. They'd also asked for two sets of eyes. Of course, they wanted everything 'discounted.'

Amelia's smile at this news was bright and malicious. Those shmucks didn't know what was waiting for them. Fuck, I didn't know what was waiting for them yet, but I couldn't wait to find out.

In the meantime, we discovered another reason why Yuri had sent Melania our way: her connections.

Apparently, when you spend as much time in the corpo ripper world as she had, you get to know people. Other rippers, nurses, and, yes, potential cybernetics suppliers.

Her reputation wasn't exactly stellar, but she still had enough pull at least to get in contact with people. And if there was one group of assholes willing to overlook nearly everything for profit, it was corpos.

Corpo merchants who supplied rippers were not an exception.

It cost a pretty credit, but we eventually had all the limbs and eyes ordered, and they even exceeded the specs requested by the mercs. Amelia had Melania send a message to the merc captain, telling him that they could have the cybernetics at a slightly above market price, but that she utterly refused to go any lower.

Considering the fact that rippers typically doubled the price when you bought cybernetics through them, the mercs were obviously thrilled to accept. The captain did try to weasel out more discounts, but finally seemed to decide it was best not to push.

That landed us an appointment for eight days later, a day after the cybernetics were scheduled to arrive. Amelia would spread the five different surgeries over the course of two days, with the understanding that if an emergency case was wheeled through her doors, there would be delays.

Interestingly, that was the point the mercs pushed back on the hardest. The words 'If a child on the brink of death is wheeled into my clinic, I'm not working on your sorry asses first' just didn't pull on their heartstrings. Probably because they didn't have hearts.

You know, on account of supplying Amelia's father with whatever experimental subjects he needed, including children.

Regardless, the appointment was set. All we had to do was plan, prep, and wait.

Or so I thought.

It wasn't even three days after their visit that Amelia's clinic was hit by a wave of patients, none of them in good condition. And all from our new neighborhood.

The madness started on a lazy, quiet morning. Amelia and I were enjoying some quality time in our apartment, free of appointments. Suddenly, from outside, we heard a sudden wail of fear that I swear rattled our windows. It was followed shortly by gunshots, more screams, and an explosion that sounded unnervingly close to us.

Amelia jumped up and rushed towards the nearest window. Then she had the audacity to grumble and swat at me when I tackled her to the floor.

"What do you think you are doing?!" I hissed.

"I'm checking what's happening!"

"Someone could have noticed you and started shooting!"

"Our windows are mirrors on the other end! No one could have seen me!"

"You don't know that! You don't know what cybernetic eyes are capable of nowadays."

"Yes I do!"

"No you don't!"

"I worked on cybernetics development!"

"And so do other people!"

In spite of the havoc outside, our argument was rapidly devolving into a wrestling match. So, when her eyes lit up with an incoming call, both of us froze like a couple teenagers caught pawing at each other.

Which, I mean, I suppose we were?

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Yes?" Amelia answered, finding it easier to actually talk than communicate entirely in her head. She'd only gotten her new eyes barely a month ago, so that was fair. "What do you mean? I — no! No, it's not an issue. I understand. Okay, we're coming down." Her eyes' glow faded, leaving a worried grimace behind.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"With the chaos going on outside, we're getting designated as an emergency response clinic. The peacekeepers asked for permission and even offered a very decent subsidy, so Melania wanted to accept. Fuck, we need to hurry. Might actually need her to work as a ripper too for once which… might complicate things a little, but…"

"No, I get it, you want to help," I cut in, seeing her hesitant expression. "Let's go. Anything I can do?"

"Might need you on knockout duty. If Melania can't manage it, I'll need you to. Because, well, still can't let them see me…"

"And I'm less likely to be recognized in the context of someone working at a clinic, I get it. Don't worry. I'd love to help."

She smiled. "And I love you for it."

I smiled back. We both just stood there for a second, looking at each other goofily, before reality reasserted itself with a distant explosion.

That sent us rushing downstairs, taking a route that bypassed the front desk and landed us directly in the clinic. We had barely enough time to change into something actually fit for surgery before patients started coming in.

It was… bad. Right from the start.

The very first person to be wheeled in by a harried-looking Tirgo was a woman in her late twenties. She was knocked out already, though whether that was thanks to our enterprising front desk employee or because she had arrived like that, I couldn't tell.

What I could tell was that the entire left half of her body was severely burned. Her skin was sloughing off. Exposed muscles glistened. There were several holes in her chest and stomach, just… gaping open amidst singed meat.

Somehow, this disturbed me infinitely more than anything I'd ever done to my own victims. I fought not to throw up.

Amelia simply approached the woman with a calm steadiness that I envied.

When she noticed I'd frozen up, a compassionate look passed over her face for a split second. Then her eyes grew steely, and she started barking orders at me. I jumped to obey, temporarily forgetting all about my horror in my need to hand her whatever she demanded. Spending so much time with her as she worked had taught me a thing or two, apparently.

The day just never seemed to end after that. People were brought in, one after another, with no pause in between.

I was terrified at the speed with which Amelia handled each patient. The abilities of her hands were pushed to the brim. She practically butchered entire pieces of people to 'clear up the area' she needed to work on. Then she rapidly cleaned their wounds, mended them, and applied synthetic skin or whatever else was required to stabilize them as much as she could.

What really struck me was the fact that she wasn't trying to fix them.

What she was doing was more like extremely advanced first aid. She allotted each patient just enough time and care to get them to a point where they could wait indefinitely for more intensive reconstruction or cyberware replacements.

Then came the worst challenge of the day so far.

A kid, definitely not older than nine or ten. Even under anesthetics, he was pale and trembling. And he looked absolutely savaged.

Fuck, his chest had been ripped open by someone or something, exposing all his internal organs. Chunks were missing out of those as well. It was a small mercy that the wound didn't extend far down his stomach. His guts had all stayed on the inside, which was probably the only reason he was still alive.

Alive and fading, because I could literally see his heart and lungs slowing down.

For once, I wasn't the only one who froze up. Amelia had a look of horror on her face that had thus far been reserved only for our talks about her father. Her eyes shone with a damp emptiness.

"I-I can't. He's… There's… What the fuck am I supposed to even do?"

It took me a second to find my voice. When I did manage to speak, the words tasted like ash on my tongue.

"Can't save them all."

Her head snapped up to look at me. Confusion and regret warred with anger in her expression for the briefest of moments. Then her green eyes went flat with determination.

"Maybe." She spoke like she was making a promise. "But I still have stuff to try."

Her focus fell on her hands. Hands which suddenly started to ripple much more violently than ever before.

When they stabilized again, I was surprised to see they had settled back on default finger appearance, albeit with a slight green glow to them. For a moment, I thought that whatever Amelia had attempted to do had failed. But then I spotted the look of utter concentration on her face.

When she suddenly thrust her arms forward, I downright flinched away from her. I tried to shout some wordless warning as her fingers plunged right into the kid's torn open chest. Except, instead of colliding with the flesh of his organs, her fingers passed right through. Her right hand embedded itself in the kid's left lung, and her right hand landed inside his heart.

The organs twitched and shuddered. Their flesh began to crawl, expelling any contaminants that had impaled them and sealing over all the minor wounds. I watched in both fascination and disgust for a while. Then, forcing my eyes away from the sight, I focused on Amelia's face.

She looked radiant. I had no better words for it. Her face was caught in an expression of pure awe, and there was a light to her eyes that —

Wait… that's literal light shining from her eyes there.

Her eyes were typically set to mimic her natural eye color, and did so exceptionally well. This time, though, the color had shifted, taking on a subtle glow that I could only compare to depictions of radioactive material I'd seen in educational videos. It was a sort of sickly green verging on yellow. The shudders it sent down my spine were not altogether pleasant.

Risking a glance down again, I got ensnared in the macabre sight.

Amelia's hands were dancing through flesh, pulling it along, shifting it, forcing mass to redistribute as the kid grew increasingly whole and gaunt at the same time. Her fingers kept stretching and shifting through a whole myriad of tools and shapes that helped her guide the changes.

It was only when the kid looked on the verge of going skeletal, and the hole in his chest was fully sealed over, that Amelia slumped to the side and closed her eyes. The intense atmosphere that had cloaked her fell away.

I immediately rushed to support her. The kid, to my shame, entirely vanished from my thoughts.

"Amelia? Please tell me you're alright."

The second my hands landed on her, the sensation filled me. Essence. It was rushing past me from the surrounding air, brushing across my skin, swirling into my girlfriend with the force of a swollen river. When she looked up at me, her expression contained no exhaustion.

"I did it."

My mouth twisted in a weird mix of a smile, a frown, and a sigh. "You did. Congratulations." I was sincere, too. "Now, what did you do to yourself?"

That question brought down the mood immediately.

"Nothing! I mean, urm, we'll talk about it later. I spent too much time on the kid. Need to let Tirgo know he can bring in the next patient quickly."

"Amelia —"

"Please? I-I promise we'll talk later."

"Okay, just… please wait to do that again until we can talk about it?"

Her lips twitched into an unhappy smile. "I can't do that. Not if I really need to help someone. That would just make me a liar."

I stared at her. She was tired, and sweaty, and looked like a rumpled mess. She was beautiful. And so, so very determined.

"Fine."

Her smile reappeared, blazing with all the power of a thousand burning suns.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.