Chains of Loss Read Online Free Page A

much do you weigh?”
    “One thirty-five.”
    “No way.”  She circled him.  “Your size, and you weigh a hundred and thirty-five kilos?”
    “Sure.  Why?”
    “Scrawny as you are, I’dve guessed closer to ninety.  I realized you were heavy in the river, but your footprints…”  She stopped behind him and poked a finger into the soft ground.  “Your footprints are way too deep.”
    He looked back at the trail and did a quick calculation.  “Oh.  My suit weighs another hundred.”
    “That’s…that’s impossible.  How can you even move?”
    “It’s a power suit.  It lifts its own weight.”
    “Oh.  Huh.  Anyway.”  She was clearly struggling to get back to the topic on hand. 
    “You were cautioning me about stuff?  Be quiet when you say to?”
    “Yes.  Right.  You’re a cyborg.  We’ll probably have trouble; can you hold your own?”
    He shrugged.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’ll be fine.”
    She shook her head.  “A cyborg.  Huh.  What’s special about you?”
    He stared at her, mouth agape.  Why would she be so rude? 
    “Can you cut things with your hands?”  He shook his head.  The power suit could, but he couldn’t.  “Shoot fire from your eyes?  Fly?”
    “None of those, sorry.”
    “How strong are you?”
    “About average.”  It didn’t occur to him that his average was not her average.
    “So in short, as a cyborg, what can you do that’s actually superhuman?”
    He finally understood what she meant.  She hadn’t been trying to insult him; she just wanted to learn what his cybernetics could do for him.  For the most part, he only had the citizen package, plus a few extra augments he’d gotten when he’d dabbled in matter fabrication.  He struggled to remember exactly what everything did.  “Well...I can see in several spectra if I want to...”
    “What's that mean?”
    “I can see in the dark, or see through things, or-”
    She put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes, speaking slowly and deliberately.  “If you ever look through my clothing, I will feed you your own eyes.  Got it?”
    He nodded.  “Got it.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Well.  I heal fast.”  That was standard.
    “How fast?”
    He shrugged.  “Pretty fast.  I had several broken bones yesterday.”
    “Not bad, but not the best I've seen either.  You know how to fight?”
    Derek flinched.  “I don’t fight.”
    “You will if you want to survive.”
    He hesitated.  “Do you…fight?”
    She ran her hand across the mark on her face.  “What’s it look like?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Really.”  She pulled off her gloves, exposing her arms from the elbows down.  Her skin was oddly shiny and smooth.  “What about these?”
    He leaned in and studied her arms.  “That’s not normal.”  Definitely not.  Her skin seemed to have collagen deposits underneath it.
    “That’s all you have to say?  Not normal?”
    “Why?  What are they?”
    “Scars.”
    Derek slowed his perception of time and queried the mediceps.  He didn't know the word.  A half second of study later, he knew far more about scars than he had ever wanted to learn.
    “You…you were burned.”  His gloved fingers brushed against her arm.  “Years ago—you couldn’t have been more than a child.  What—and your eye.  That was more recent - something cut you?”
    “Someone.”
    “W-why?”
    “I have enemies.”  She spat.  “Don’t know which one or what set him off, but he had me jumped at a party.”
    “And…”  He traced the color that led away from her eyepatch.  He could see now that the strange purple dye had been on the implement that had destroyed Mycah's eye.  “He did this.  Do you want me to fix it?”
    It was her turn to pause in disbelief.  “How?  I mean, can you really do it?”
    “Sure.”  He thought furiously for a few fractions of a second.  She wasn’t augmented, which made it much harder, but there was still an easy way to do