Ghost Chrysalis: A Cyberpunk LitRPG (Cyber Dreams Book 2) by Plum Parrot

Author:Plum Parrot [Parrot, Plum]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Published: 2023-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

24

SCIENCE FICTION

Juliet couldn’t feel the drill when it started on her skull, and it was so brief that she almost thought she’d imagined the whirring sound and the echoing, grinding noises. She knew better, though—the autosurgeon was just precise and fast. The noise stopped, she felt some strange pressure above her left ear, and then the agony began.

When Juliet was younger, during her teen years, she’d suffered from regular migraines. They’d come less and less frequently as the years passed, and she couldn’t remember the last true migraine she’d had. Sure, she had headaches, but nothing like those—the migraines had been different. Their harbinger were weird spiral sparkles in her vision; then, as her vision cleared and returned to normal, the pain would roll in, and nothing would help short of going to bed.

Whatever Violet and Dr. Vance were doing was worse; Juliet felt like her skull was splitting and that something was squeezing her brain into a pulp. She wanted to scream, wanted to thrash and grab her head, but she couldn’t move, and that made it worse—if she could devise the worst torture to put someone through, she felt like the hell she was experiencing would be on the list.

Despite the paralytic agent they’d given her, Juliet felt her body begin to vibrate, found her breathing growing ragged, and realized she could no longer focus, couldn’t really see anything, and she knew her eyes had rolled back in their sockets.

“Juliet! I’m going to try to regulate your respirations and heart rate—I’m worried you’ll suffer a cardiac event!” Angel sounded hysterical, but Juliet could barely hear her, barely register her voice. It sounded to her like she was submerged in water and a massive propeller was revving up nearby. The agony rose to a crescendo, and then, blissfully, she lost consciousness.

“… yes, the structure is far more robust; tens of thousands of branches.” Juliet didn’t open her eyes when she heard the voice; it sounded like Violet.

“And the nanites are all inert? They’ve finished?” The second voice was new to her, another woman, older sounding.

“That’s right. The array’s been constructed, and the leftovers have all passed through the blood-brain barrier; she’ll void them within forty-eight hours.”

While she tried to make sense of the words, Juliet took stock of herself. The pain was gone; she felt pretty good and wanted to open her eyes, but something told her to keep them closed, to keep her respirations slow and even. With her eyes closed, her AUI was vivid against the black. Angel hadn’t gone offline, but Juliet didn’t want to give herself away by subvocalizing, afraid they were monitoring her too closely.

“When can we start the assessment?” the second woman asked.

“When she wakes—there shouldn’t be any lingering effects. The latticework branches are nearly microscopic, and now that the extra nanites are out of her meninges and neural pathways, the debilitating pain should be gone.”

“Can we go ahead and wake her? I have three visitors from the executive suites who are interested in your progress.

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