A Blink

It felt like it had just been seconds. And yet, the clock had advanced ten days. One moment you are in the plains, bullets flying around you and explosions shattering the area and the next you are in the clinic. It comes with a shock: death.
It wasn't the first. It won't be the last. That doesn't make it any easier.

You can't stop pondering on the blink itself. The last thing you remember is the battle. Yes, that's true. An easy explanation would be that one of those bullets had sent you here, to this new body. And yet, why was there a ten day lapse in the middle? You had been implanted like all the rest, your ego should have been farcasted back instantly the moment you died so you could report to your superiors on the tactical situations and be debriefed. Maybe even sent back into combat if there was another Fury available.
But it hadn't happened so. Ten complete fucking days.
What had happened? Had something gone wrong? Had they put you in cold storage these days? Or had you just died and your memory had been edited? If so, what if you weren't yourself? You can't recall your death, unlike the other times, which is turning out to be only a mixed blessing. Transhuman minds weren't made to remember some things... still, not remembering only made it worse. What was it you could not pin?
-Sargeant Kelly?- the voice interrupted your train of thoughts.
The man that had just entered the room was slender and tall, probably had never been on places with high gravity in his whole morph's life. Or maybe he had been engineered this way since the start. In any case, his hair was thick and his eyes fierce, full of determination. He seemed tense, agressive. Had they captured you? Had they somehow intercepted the transmission of your cortical stack and kidnapped you? You replied to his question with silence.
-I see you don't want to cooperate. Don't worry. I'm here on behalf of Echo Nine.-
Echo Nine? The name didn't ring a bell. And yet, he said it as if you should have known what he was talking about. He even seemed surprised at your reaction.
-Are you alright?- he didn't sound worried, more like concerned about an investment that he wasn't sure would pay off as much as he'd like.
-I know nothing of that Echo Nine- you reply, at last, when the silence has been too long to bear.
-I see. You remember meeting me on thursday?-
Thursday. That was the first day missing. The beginning of the blink. Had they done something to you then? Who were they?
-You don't. Do you remember Zack? Dorothy? No? Damn, that makes you useless.-
Useless. The sound of those words was exactly the same a death sentence. If you were worthless to them, they'd dispose of you. And you didn't even know if you had a cortical stack anymore. You had to find a way to make yourself useful somehow without betraying everything. To buy time for a possible rescue, if such existed.
-Let us enter your brain- he said bluntly.
-Never!-
You replied even before you had a chance to think. They'd find out about your superior, your mission... and whoever those Echo Nine were, they weren't supposed to know. That wasn't a possibility, death before that. What if Echo Nine was just a facade? A mask for the enemy, pretending to pose as something different in order to obtain your secrets. No, you wouldn't let them.
A woman entered the room, quite pretty actually but in an odd and exotic way. She might have been your kind, if you weren't in such a situation. She brought up her own ecto and typed some orders in silence.
-We will open you forcefully if you don't colaborate, Kelly. It's just a matter of time. And time is something neither of us have. We need that information to stop the exsurgents!-
He seemed angry, a cold anger deep from within. But, if they were fighting the exsurgents as well, they were allies. The enemy of my enemy is my ally, right? And yet, why did something sound off in the whole thing?
The surroundings flickered for a second. Or had you imagined it? It all seemed like it was, didn't it? But there it was again, a second flicker. They didn't seem aware of it, or ignored it, you didn't know. And, for a second, it all seemed... what? What was it? What was the word? Wrong, it all seemed wrong.
There it was again. And it happened just when the woman had dialed something in her ecto. Was this simulspace? Were you in cold storage? Was this whole thing fake, a trick to interrogate you, a psychotorture?
-Damn it, once more in the same place!- the man said as he noticed your train of thought, and hit the table before him.
It felt like it had just been seconds. And yet, the clock had advanced eleven days. One moment you are in the plains, bullets flying around you and explosions shattering the area and the next you are in the clinic. It comes with a shock: death.