Cy-XI5: Incend | ON-HOLD ✘

Chapter 1 - The Cyborg

The Cyborg Arc: First chapter

Chapter 1 – The Cyborg

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"Your pulse rate, muscle aches, nerve over-usage, and constant activity are reflected through the scanner, you know." The voice sighed, and the unidentifiable background noises got the audio frequency on the screen skyrocketing. But the slight static did not obscure the honeylike voice hindered with a deep tone of concern. "Kae, please, rest. Okay? Promise me, okay? See you soon."

Once the intercepted message finished, the cyanic light of the visual, audio signal in the screen shut off. Only the pieces of rocks that slandered the outside view of the blue and green planet remained as a young woman's source of light in the room.

Kaelisa took a deep breath and bumped her head onto the metal frame of the thick glass windows, gaze glued to their planet tens of thousands of kilometers in the distance.

That message had probably been sent out more than a week ago. Whether her mother's health worsened or stayed the same over that week did nothing but load a new package of worry and dread.

A new light source brought the darkness of the room to the corner with a satisfying shift sound. Kaelisa turned to face the officer in charge of the small, private rooms for crew members to listen to messages delivered from Earth.

He tipped his hat, "Ms. Valet."

"Yes, sorry." Kaelisa nodded and walked past him. She stopped by the doorframe. "I'd like the message to be stored on my account, please."

"Alright."

Outside, multiple crew members stood in wait, some holding their task plates and making out different expressions upon sight of their task lists within the next six hundred thousand seconds. Some looked relieved, a few retained a serious face, and most cringed, perhaps in the awful lot of work left to do.

Kaelisa took a chip from her uniform's belt, one finger clicking on the button on its side. It unwrapped itself in her hands to form a rectangular dark gray plate. As it detects her fingerprints, a list of tasks in neon cyan colors appeared with a countdown set to 'hours' beside them.

"Think I should submit a rest tile after checking my son's message?" A woman leaning against the wall falling in line said out loud, her head tilting towards another person beside her.

The man wrinkled his nose. "You should. I'm sure Thomas is extremely worried." He pressed the side of his plate, which shrank to a chip. "I'll go with you. My husband is probably gonna ask me to take plenty of rest, too."

"I bet he would." The woman laughed. "Especially if he knew what the medics told you the last time you collapsed in the field!"

"Yeah." The man shook his head with a smile. "I'll have to take care of myself better."

A couple more people discussed the submission of a rest tile, the family and people they have back on Earth, and what the medics informed them on their last visit.

Kaelisa reformed her plate to a chip, slid it to its place on her belt, and then went straight to the tile room.

The words and tone of her mother from all the previous messages she'd sent the past months rang back in Kaelisa's mind. Then, there was her last visit to the medical department, where the head medic had warned her of knowing only how much her body could take.

She submitted three tiles earlier today regarding the three tasks she planned to finish within the next eighty thousand seconds. It shouldn't hurt to go back to the tile room and ask the handlers to add another tile.