Unethical Practices

Experiment or Friend?

Despite Rey's assurances that he could save Cisco, it had been touch and go. He'd taken some assistance from other medical personnel, but none of them really understood the core technology like he did. Once they were reasonably certain that he would survive for now, the others left, while he remained, slumped over in a chair. He dozed off, and when he woke up, Chief stood over him with crossed arms. He straightened up but was unsure how to react to her presence.

"What are you waiting for?"

In her voice was a demand rather than a question.

"Sorry, what?" was all he could think of answering.

"Why aren't you fixing him?"

She motioned to Cisco, who was laying completely still, hooked up to various tubes and machines.

"What else is there to do? Right now, we can only hope he survives."

Chief scoffed and motioned at the missing limbs.

"You have the technology and the knowledge to fix him, give him back his limbs. And you're not doing that right now, for reasons I quite frankly can't imagine. Do you need me to give you an order as your boss? Because I will if it's what it takes."

Rey shot up from the chair, forcing Chief to deftly take a step back to avoid him accidentally smacking her in the face.

"You know how he feels about his prosthetic" he protested. "I'm not going to attach anything permanently to him."

"That's not what I was suggesting. I want you to regrow his limbs. You can do it. You already have all the necessary instructions in your pad. You don't have the right to refuse me. I'll simply have Mr Swann remove you from the Avalon project if you do and make Felicia do it once she wakes up. Your choice."

Without waiting for an answer, she turned to walk away, leaving Rey to look at his unconscious friend.

When Felicia woke up, she found Rey in the lab standing in front of one of the vats.With a smile, she approached him.

"I'd be disappointed that you weren't by my bed when I woke up, but we both know I would've been here too if the situation was reversed."

He looked up at her, and smiled faintly.

"Sorry, I've just had a lot going on."

Returning the smile, she sidled up to him to take a look in the tank.

"So, who's the new test... Cisco?"

"Did they catch you up?'"

"Yeah but... What is going on?"
"He lost an arm and a leg. I'm just fixing that."

She looked at Cisco, floating unconsciously, with a core attached to his chest. In turn, there were tubes and wires from that leading to the stumps on the legs and arm, where they could already see how they had begun to regrow.

Felicia looked over the data Rey provided her on Cisco's condition, and just shook her head.

"How? I mean, we worked on this together for ages, and never got anywhere close to this. How did you do it?"

Cisco shrugged.

"It was all in our research, ready to be used."

She shook her head while scrolling through the data before putting the pad away.

"By the way. The person who attacked us? She's awake now. We should be able to ask her some questions. I've cleared authorisation to experiment on her as well, if we want to see what we can learn from her usage of cores. I for one am very curious."