It was raining when Celeste finished locking up. Josie sat inside her car, waiting for Celeste to wrap up. Their vehicles were the only two in the parking lot. Once Celeste was finished dumping the body in the back, some poor grunt who'd chosen the wrong crowd to cut deals with, she slipped into the passenger seat.
"What took you?" Josie asked. She double-checked her side and rearview mirrors. An old-fashioned map lay open in her lap. Beneath it, a laptop.
"Cleaning up the mess y'all left. And patching the hole in my hand," Celeste snapped.
Fortunately, the café had medical-strength antiseptic and gauze stored away. It shouldn't have surprised her, given that death and maiming her common occurrences. She'd tended to her fair share of wounds before leaving home, mostly Vik's, but doing so with her left hand had made progress slow and even more painful.
"Quit complaining," Josie said with such nonchalance, it made Celeste turn red. "You apply to be a janitor, you agree to mop up shit. Plus, you got a little tip from his wallet, I'm sure."
Celeste bit her tongue. Josie wasn't wrong. She'd plucked another $300 off tonight's departed soul. Enough to keep her until her first paycheck, if she was careful.
"Why'd you kill him?"
"Wasn't me," she said, pulling up the map. "This one was Angelo's work. But Morgan was going to do it anyway. He moved in first to prove a point." Her words were quick and succinct. The unsaid message was clear: the details were none of her business. She was just the janitor, after all. No need to know who shat or why, just needed to clean it up.
"Thought it might have been you,"Celeste said. "Someone slit his throat. ANd you seem to have a thing for knives."
Josie snorted. "You're not dead and you haven't lost any limbs. Quit holding grudges."
"Hard to hold anything with my hand like this," Celeste fired back, and was about to say more when she saw Josie's exasperated sigh. Complaining wouldn't solve anything. But she'd certainly never approach Josie the same way again.
"What's with the map?"
"Best we don't say some things out loud, if prying ears are as keen as what you've said." Josie gave her a pointed look as if to ask, Do you get what I mean?
Celeste nodded wordlessly. The less detailed they were, the better. Counterintuitive, and a bit funny, in a way.
An address had been written in red ink, and a neighborhood on the east side of town circled. The name BHASVAH MIZRAHI was written there.
Celeste took the map, folded it, and slipped it into her pocket. "Self-explanatory. What else?"
"Your implants. You need this done ASAP, so you don't have time to recover from surgery. You'll be using these babies instead." Josie pulled a small black box out of the armrest. It looked like a small holder/charger for earbuds at first. She handed it to Celeste. "Go on," she urged. "Open it."
Celeste did so. Inside were what appeared to be large, green contacts. Veins stretched out from their edges, creating cobweb patterns that reached toward the edges of the box. A warm LED light illuminated each vein, making them easy to spot.
Josie was all but bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement. "You ever seen anything like this?"
"Can't say they're common where I come from. I thought ocular implants replaced the whole eye?"
"They do. But like I said, we don't have time for that right now. These are BlueWatch contacts. They slide over your eyes just like real contacts, with special wires designed to connect to your nerves. They attach all their own, so all you need to do is drop them in!" Josie plucked the box from Celeste's hand, unable to resist holding it again.
God. She's like a child at a candy store…
"They enhance your vision up to 20/20, and can scan the immediate area based on voice commands. Not as good as normal optic augmentations, of course! Those do it based on thought. But these can be removed at will, and can transmit a recording to a nearby database of your choosing. You gotta connect and set that up yourself, though."
"It sounds amazing," Celeste said, "but will it be able to do everything we need it to? This is way beyond what we had back home, but it sounds kinda outdated compared to what's on the market now."
Josie rolled her eyes. "Yeah, it is, but that's not the point! Apparently, police violence and brutality was so bad back in the day that states started requiring officers to wear bodycams. But then they'd just turn the bodycams off before they did stuff, so they transitioned to these contacts. This is an updated model of one of the first real cybernetics in the world! And it's government tech, too!"
Now Celeste was beginning to understand. The gleam in Josie's eye, the way she spoke without a care. This wasn't entirely about the mission.
"This is a tech purist's wet dream," Celeste guessed, "ain't it?"
Josie beamed at her. Sitting here, seeing her like this, you could almost forget she was a criminal.
Almost. But the ache in Celeste's hand was a poignant reminder.
"It's worth looking at the past to guide the future," Josie said. "This way, I'll get to study it in action!"
"Study it in…wait. Are you usin' me as a guinea pig?!"
"Don't look at it that way. If we proceed with giving you implants, I can cook up something more suited to your biology based on how this trial run goes! Plus, it's a lot safer to use these. Today's tech is easy to reverse-engineer and create defenses against. But old tech is completely incompatible with new stuff. It'd be like trying to slot a VHS tape into a USB drive."
"A VH-what, now?"
"Exactly. Now, you'll want to take two of these painkillers." Josie pulled a nondescript white bottle out of her armrest, as well as a small silver flask. "Chase it down. That'll get 'em working quicker. These contacts are known to hurt the first few times."
Celeste reluctantly took the pills. Her hand throbbed, as though her body recognized the oncoming relief. "What is this, exactly?"
"One is a Schedule One painkiller. The other is a nerve blocker designed specifically to interact with the increased stimuli caused by implants. Then there's good ol' potato juice."
Celeste tossed the pills back and chased them down with the vodka. It felt like she'd plunged into a pool. Her head swam immediately. Her cheeks began to tingle. She reached up to touch them and felt the sensation of skin beneath her fingertips, but not the other way around. Her cheeks were already going numb.
"Good," Josie said. "Now recline your seat and open your eyes wide. This is still gonna hurt, so maybe hold on to something."
Easier said than done, she thought, and gripped the armrest with her one good hand. Josie plucked the strange devices out of their compartment and dangled one over her right eye, instructing her not to blink.
It felt like she was at the eye doctor's, getting an exam. The circular thing grew larger, closer…
Pain. Salt pouring into her eyes. A sharp needle digging behind it. Celeste gasped and jolted forward in surprise, but Josie held her back in her seat as the spider-like, mechanical creature attached itself to her body.
"Stay still! I gotta install the other one fast!"
"It hurts!"
"It'll hurt a lot more if half your brain's reading data and the other half isn't! Hold still!"
Celeste did the best she could, one eye closed. Thankfully, the surgeon made quick work of plopping the other device in. . The vein-like wires seemed to come alive, clutched to her face and ran behind her eye while wrapping around it. The process was quick, but far from painless.
"Keep your eyes closed," Josie instructed. "It takes a few minutes for your system to adjust. Brain's gotta read new wavelengths."
"Those wires run up to my brain?"
"No. Well…ugh, it's hard to explain. They would with a real implant. These just send rudimentary electrical signals, enough to give a good readout."
"I've got robots on my eyes." The sentence would have sounded funny in any other context. "God, it hurts! I'm not gonna go blind or anythin', am I? Like, they won't damage my eyes?"
Silence. Silence, in darkness.
"Josie?!"
"No." Josie's response was uncharacteristically firm. None of her usual irritation or flair — just a utilitarian response that left no room for questions. "I was a surgeon. I wouldn't lie to you about something like this. Now just relax. Around the time the stinging stops, you can open your eyes. It'll be easier to adjust since it's dark out."
She drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. It was shaky at first, like a leaf caught in the wind. But a few breaths more and the clamminess in her hands dried up, and the stinging began to lighten. Each one was more noticeable, more singular, but they were fewer. Rather than a hundred stings meshing together, she felt only a few dozen. And then, slowly, only a handful.
"My first baby step toward becoming a cyborg," Celeste said to fill the silence. "How'm I doing?"
"You whine and cry more than any patient I've ever had."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, doc."
Josie paused. "But I've never met anyone so ready to throw themselves into the deep end of the pool so quickly. What you're doing is something most people would think twice about. You adapt fast. You're malleable. That'll give you an edge in this place. Alright, now open your eyes — slowly!"
Darkness gave way to light. Pale yellow from the street lamps, growing brighter, darker. Shapes blurred as though beneath rippling water before redefining themselves in wonderful new forms. Her hand, her fingers, the fine creases there — all so visible. So defined. So orange.
"Everything's orange," Celeste said, trying to bite back to the panic rising in her chest.
"Hm. That happens sometimes. It's just the contacts picking up the wrong wavelengths. I'll adjust it. Let me know once things seem normal."
Typing away at keys. Slowly, the orange faded to yellow. Greens crept into the leaves on the trees in the median. Not quite right. And then neon, blinding. Celeste told Josie this was too bright, and she quickly corrected it.
It took several minutes until the colors were just right, if there was such a thing. Everything was more saturated. Clearer. Blacks were darker, whites were brighter. The definitions in outlines were sharper. It was as though she'd been viewing her entire life in low-res, and had gotten a high-resolution upgrade installed right into her eyes.
"Tech looks good on you."
"You think so?"
Josie hummed. "Think so about what?"
"You said tech looks good on me."
Josie laughed. "I didn't say that. Sorry, Cee, but you're not my type."
"Then your tech has me hearin' things."
"Not possible," Josie said nonchalantly. She jerked her head toward the pull-down mirror. "Take a look at yourself. We're gonna run a few tests."
Celeste pulled the mirror down. Something seemed…different. She couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. She looked…older? No, that wasn't it. More confident? Sure, but something in her actual facial structure had changed. What was it? Was she just imagining it?
"These are voice-activated," Josie reminded her. "I'm going to calibrate it to pick up your voice only, though. I'm going to say a few words. Wait three seconds, then repeat them. Turning the optics on…now. Time to test these babies out."
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