Of the many Private Medicare Companies (not to be confused with Private Military Companies), Quik-Care is not even the worst.

  Sure, they may literally adjust their subscription prices weekly according to what injuries and diseases are more prevalent in each sector and your personal history.

  And they could also have different packages for various levels of visitation rights, but that’s just typical for medical care businesses, innit?

  Oh, sorry, I’m getting a message. Terribly sorry, but my supervisor is urgently summoning me. Maybe we can pick this up some time later!

  -Newly hired Quik-Care PR representative on a Meshcast-interview. The representative disappeared for a week before he was found dead in his London Independent Area apartment, apparently having committed suicide.

  Ellie carves her way through the stragglers in the next few hallways. She passes doors that have blown off their hinges. Smashed windows fill the floor with glass. As she nears the chem room, walls are knocked down completely.

  Ellie passes the now lukewarm room without a backwards glance.

  She finally reaches mister McAvoy’s body, and sees red. When the anger leaves her, exhausted, in front of the rickety, but intact blast doors, she looks down at the brutalized corpse of the Three that was dragging him away and grimaces.

  [Current points: 426]

  “Ilya, give me a sheet, please?” she says blankly. “And remind me to find… McAvoy’s daughter later.”

  [Purchased: Simple Sheet -1 point]

  [Current points: 425]

  The white sheet appears on the ground immaculately folded, and it feels alien on her fingers. It doesn’t soak with blood as she covers the man.

  I could assist you later using his name, face and occupation to search through local databases and the Cyberwarfare catalog. I think you have other plans for the time being, Ilya reminds her, not unkindly.

  “Of course.”

  Ellie nears the doors, and feeling foolish, knocks on it firmly with her prosthetic arm.

  A whirring noise makes her look up to a camera she hadn’t seen until now. There’s an electronic warble and a speaker comes to life somewhere in its plastic chassis.

  “You–!?” It’s the stiff guard from earlier. Now she notices his voice is kind of nasally. “Jesus Christ, how did you not— Actually, nevermind. I’m going to have to ask you to seek refuge somewhere else,” he says, quick to return to his bureaucrat voice.

  Ellie grits her teeth and seethes. She draws her sword slowly and activates the thagomizer, waving the blade threateningly.

  “I think you’ll let me in right now, actually.”

  The line is silent for a second before the guard reacts. “You— You’re a…”

  “A Samurai, yes. Now open up.”

  “Sorry, but policy states—“

  “Fuck you, Milton!” cuts in the voice of the other guard, the one she swiped the baton from. “We’re alive because of that lass—“ There’s some shuffling and struggling noises over the comms. Is the other guard wrestling Milton (pfft) away from the microphone?

  “ELLIE? Is that Ellie? Well, what are you muppets waiting for? Open the damn doors!”

  The newly christened Samurai slumps with relief. Yuki being alright, albeit pissing mad, is a weight off of her shoulders.

  “Oh god, Ellie! Please, you have to come inside, it’s Dad!”

  Anna’s hysterical sob zaps through her like lightning.

  “What? What happened to mister Manny?” she asks.

  “I don’t know! Seamus tried to help him, but without his equipment he couldn't do anything else!”

  The name is utterly meaningless to her, but Ellie can guess. Maybe it’s the young EMT?

  “Ellie, if you— If you’re a Samurai now, you can help him! Please, you have to let her in!” Anna wails.

  “Miss, I really can’t—“

  A sharp ka-chak rings out over the line, following Yuki’s deathly cold voice. Ellie raises her sword, poised to slash through the damn barrier entirely.

  “You’ll let her in this fucking instant or it’s your brains on the wall, Milton.”

  “Best listen to her, Milton! Or I’ll just cut my way in! You really don’t want that!”

  “Alright, alright, fuck! Fucking psycho…” he says.

  The doors finally slide open slowly, and Ellie sprints in after sheathing her sword.

  She runs through the lobby room of the shelter, and descends a concrete staircase. A crowd regards her in various states of distress and surprise. It looks austere, and nothing like what she imagined a shelter would look like. There are a few long benches along the walls and bare lights above. The two guards are standing in a corner where a control panel rests in the wall, and one turns his angry gaze to her. Milton, then.

  Two people separate from them and sprint at Ellie, hugging her tightly, and she exhales, winded by the embrace.

  “Ellie, oh my god, oh my god—“ Anna repeats between gasps.

  “Kid, thank fuck you’re alright,” Yuki sighs, stepping back to look her up and down. She stops short at her new arm. “What happened!?”

  Ellie blushes at the affection and then feels cold when both women gape at her replacement limbs. She’s… guilty? Embarrassed? Nauseous? Or maybe it’s finally sinking in that she lost two limbs permanently earlier.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I uh… Exploded some chem barrels to distract the Antithesis. Away from the shelter. With me in the room,” she says, voice lowering and lowering in volume as Anna’s eyes mist over with even more tears and Yuki’s face becomes stonier. “Bought some new ones, though?” she jokes weakly, and winces when Anna throws herself into her arms and Yuki closes her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “But you’re alright… you’re alright,” Anna whispers into her chest, and she hugs her back awkwardly. She jolts and straightens out of the crushing hug. “Oh god! Dad!”

  “Shit. Right. Where is he?” Ellie says, nerves tightening with worry.

  “Over there. He… he could really use some Samurai magic, Ellie,” Yuki says, recovering from her worryingly uncharacteristic silence. This is the most rattled Ellie has seen the woman. “Sorry to put this on you.”

  “Don’t be, miss Yuki. I would do anything for your family,” she says casually but confidently, not seeing the open-mouthed look the woman gives her as Anna jogs ahead them past the crowd.

  “Seamus!” calls Anna.

  Seamus is the EMT from earlier, then. Without his military-like helmet and visor, he looks really young, with a grave look that makes him look older. He holds a PDA in one hand as he monitors Manny.

  “He… he just lost consciousness,” he reports.

  The Vilanova patriarch looks even worse now. Under the harsh light of the shelter, his skin is almost gray-ish. His eyes are closed and his chest rises and falls with slow breaths. The bleeding wounds on his back don’t look like they’ve opened up, so…

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ellie asks. Nothing reveals itself to her inexpert eyes as she looks Manny over.

  “The… deep cuts and lacerations in his lower back started to scab over without issue,” Seamus rattles off nervously. Mimicking a routine report must calm him down. “Um, the problem is he’s showing signs of internal bleeding,” he says, pointing to the blooming bruises on Manny’s side and around his waist, peeking around the soaked bandages, “and unless there’s an actual hospital in this level, let alone this building,” Seamus continues, gaining confidence, “he might suffer from hypovolemic shock, or even septic shock if his kidneys were slashed. Which, uh, are obviously lethal.”

  The technical terms flew completely over Ellie’s head as the rest of the world fell away. She could only breathe heavily as she stared at the man.

  “Dad…” Anna whispers, steeping close and laying a hand gently on Manny’s clammy forehead. She looks at Ellie imploringly. “Ellie?” she says shakily. Ellie wills herself to calm down. It mostly works.

  “I know. Just thinking. He’ll— He’ll be alright, Anna,” she promises.

  ‘Ilya, what do you have?’ She subvocalizes.

  The AI’s voice is steely and concise. There’s no teasing or warm words, only facts to consider. You have a total of 425 points. Considering that, the patient, and your burgeoning interest in cybernetics and tangentially, bionics, I believe the Autonomous Cybersurgeon Gurney will help you save Manuel’s life. 130 points for peak Class I technology. Seamus’ assessment is correct, and maybe even graver. Thus, I recommend you leave some points to purchase whatever is required.

  ‘Go ahead. Don’t bother with cost. Whatever works to save him. Tell me at the end.’ She was happy Ilya was considering her future, but she just needed to save Manny now.

  Make some room.

  “Alright, back up!” Ellie hollered. The curious or nervous onlookers hurried to comply with the orders of a Samurai. “We need some space!”

  The point counter dropped in the corner of her vision and the contraption that appeared started quickly unfolding itself. At waist height, the chromed-out gurney stood on four flexible legs with spheres instead of wheels. The solid undercarriage contained countless vials, pumps and machinery Ellie couldn’t name, and articulated arms of all sizes tested their range of motion as the head of the gurney extended itself a few inches. A fold-out screen came to life at the foot of the thing, with a blank diagram of a human… well, humanoid body and rows of empty lines, ready to be filled.

  Everyone stared at the complicated piece of alien tech and Seamus, of all people, gathered his wits first.

  “Holy fucking hell…” he whispered in awe, reaching slowly with a hand towards what looked to Ellie like the crown jewel of medicine.

  “Oi!” she said to him. “Seamus, help me move him, please,” she ordered, though she was internally amused at his wonder. The young man stopped himself and nodded with a blush. Ellie turned towards Anna, but her friend was already moving to help.

  Adam Bronowski emerged from the crowd before Ellie could look for a fourth person. Ellie only regarded him with a slight twist of her lips. She recognized he had only been trying to mollify a pair of very young women of Manny’s condition, and wouldn’t actually know he wouldn’t be alright. Regardless. He seemed devastated, but determined.

  “I’ll get this corner, Miss Samurai.”

  Ellie nodded, previous grievances discarded, though she didn’t care too much for the honorific. With the two men at the head and the girls at Manny’s legs, the four of them grabbed the thin sheet of the Quik-Care stretcher and hauled Manny into the air. With a few grunts, they securely but gently put their arms under his body and shuffled to the Autosurgeon.

  They deposited him slowly on his unbruised side, and as soon as they were clear the arms of the machine descended on him. Some cut away the remains of his shredded overalls and uncovered his hastily wrapped wounds, others swept up and down his whole body with a scanning light, and a few took his vital signs with diodes and tubes.

  A tense silence permeated the cavernous shelter as the arms shifted whatever procedure they were following, prodding and poking in his lower back. A set of arms removed the respirator and replaced it with a fresh one from its storage, throwing the old one in a disposal unit that popped out of one side. In went the bloodied bandages as well, and a snaking tube expertly pierced a vein in his arm and pumped chemicals into his bloodstream as another clipped a pulse oximeter to his finger.

  A rapid beeping noise signaling Manny’s beating heart cut through the air, and with another final electronic sound, the screen flashed once and the arms fell still.

  Both Ellie and Seamus tilted their heads to catch whatever the machine had found. Ellie caught only a few words and symbols that made sense. Ruptured. Toxins. Complete renal failure. Awaiting suitable replacement.

  “Oh man,” Seamus muttered, getting the deeper gist of it quicker.

  Another receptacle folded out of the gurney.

  I think I get it, but… Ilya, what happened and what do I need to do? Ellie asked. Anna looked even paler as Seamus muttered under his breath.

  It’s prompting you to provide a replacement for Manny’s kidneys and confirm treatment. They were slashed by the shrapnel and he will die of shock either due to blood loss or poisoning unless they’re removed, replaced and the toxins extracted.

  Do you authorize me to make the optimal purchases for your situation and future endeavors?, her AI asked.

  Ellie would think about replacing even more of herself with machines after her… her foster father was cured. Go ahead, she nodded to Ilya.

  I can interface with the Autosurgeon to take the burden off your hands and maximize efficiency. Stand clear and watch.

  Another flash of light heralded the appearance of a… well, a kidney-shaped, brushed metal organ in the tray the gurney held out. It was wrapped in a plastic, vacuum-sealed bag, and several chrome tendrils poked out of its concave side.

  “Here we go,” Ellie declared as the machine beeped again, putting a hand each on Anna and Seamus’ shoulders, pulling them a step away.

  Like a mass of writhing snakes, the arms and tubes came to life, and even the strange mattress Manny was laying on shifted. Like rolling waves, it gently turned him over onto his front and made a hole for his face and the respirator in the gurney.

  Ellie dry-heaved quietly as the arms deftly opened the bag and Manny up. She caught a swooning Anna in her arms.

  Seamus was looking back and forth between the screen, Manny and Ellie with stars in his eyes. He looks entirely his early 20-something years.

  “Way to go, Nightingale.”

  Ellie stared at him.

  “…Who?”