A gigantic robotic eye, filled with smaller gleaming eyes, stared down at Alida. She tentatively reached out towards it.
‘You back with us?’ Bryce said.
Alida withdrew her hand and turned her head too quickly. Her sinuses burnt and her temples pounded.
‘Is it done? Is it in there?’
Bryce removed the shade strip from her eyes. ‘Yes. All done and only nine minutes unconscious. We may even meet our installation targets.’
Zonking out while the worst was done was definitely the way to go. Tiny little red dots, where they’d injected her with nanites, covered the whole of her tight-fitting white suit. She was very glad she’d been out for that.
Bryce pushed Alida’s seat upright. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I feel like my head’s been whacked with a hammer.’
‘That’s normal. You may also experience some muscle aches and lethargy as your body adjusts.’ Bryce filled a syringe from a glass vial. ‘Because you’re a LeaderCorp employee I’ll give you a painkiller and an energy booster. You’ll have to tell all the other patients to lie down until the installation flu passes.’ Bryce pinched her upper arm and jabbed her with the syringe. ‘When the implant has calibrated with your brain chemistry and made the necessary neural connections, an interface panel will appear in your vision. It’ll guide you through set-up. Feel free to experiment – there are fail-safes built in. If you have any further questions, refer to the tutorial tubes listed in the reading material you were given.’
Bryce helped her stand. Her pain had retreated to a lingering threat. Graycie stood beside Dr Kimani at the desk. The cuffs and collar of Graycie’s white suit were dark and crinkled where she had been munching them.
‘I expect you’re a little woozy right now – nevertheless, we must discuss Graycie’s situation.’ Dr Kimani patted Graycie on the head. ‘Bryce, please take this little lady into the waiting room and give her the spare OmniScreen to play with.’
Bryce hustled Graycie through the door.
‘Take a seat, Alida.’ The doctor pointed to a stool by her desk.
‘What did you find? I heard something about an immune deficiency thingy.’ Alida leaned against the edge of the stool, too anxious to sit all the way down.
‘That’s part of it. She has a compromised immune system. It makes her vulnerable to all sorts of infections.’
That made sense. Graycie was regularly covered in weeping sores and crouched over the dunny bucket with a brown waterfall coming out of her.
‘What about all the super viruses though – how come they haven’t killed her?’
‘Well, for one thing, these kind of immune dysfunctions usually make individuals more susceptible to bacteria rather than viruses. It also seems she may have received extensive vaccinations, immune boosters and nanite injections in her first couple of years of life. The protection she gets from those will fade as she ages, however.’
Alida wrinkled her nose. That made zero sense. Those treatments were expensive. ‘What the hell? How’s that possible?’
Dr Kimani squeezed her lips together. ‘It’s apparent Graycie’s not a blood relative of yours.’
‘No, she’s not blood, but she’s my family.’
‘Your affection for Graycie’s not in question. I simply need to know how she came into your life.’
Alida lowered herself onto the stool. Citizens were tactless jerks; they couldn’t help it. ‘Well, my mum and I found her about two years ago, naked and slurping rainwater out of a ditch. We guessed she was about two or three then.’
‘Do you know her origin?’
Alida shrugged. ‘She didn’t have a wrist chip, so we asked around. No one knew her and no one claimed her.’
Graycie had lain in their shack, with Alida sponging spew and shit off her, for days after they’d found her. Mum hadn’t fancied keeping her, but there was no authority to hand over abandoned littlies to in the Demi-Settlements. If they had turfed her out of the shack she would’ve carked it for sure.
‘Hmm. Graycie’s brain scan showed something … interesting.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alida wiped her suddenly wet palms along the legs of her white suit, causing the red dots to streak her legs with pink.
‘She already has an implant.’
‘That’s … that’s not possible,’ Alida said, but the truth was she had no clue where Graycie had been or what had happened to her before they had taken her in.
‘Well, it’s definitely there. I did a more detailed scan and attempted interfacing – unfortunately, it’s been neglected for so long it’ll require the kind of work we aren’t equipped to provide in a hub.’
‘Okay. But why would she have an implant?’ It was too loopy for her to buy if someone else didn’t say it out loud.
‘Graycie was once a Citizen.’
Alida let out a held breath. ‘How do you even know that?’
‘There’s a match for Graycie’s genome in the lapsed citizens register.’
‘What?’ Part of Alida had suspected it all along. The lack of a wrist chip and her warm-honey skin shade all screamed Citizen. ‘So she has a family in the city?’
‘Not exactly. These are confidential details – nevertheless, as you’re her guardian I’ve been authorised to inform you.’ Dr Kimani leaned towards Alida, her voice lowered. ‘Graycie’s mother committed suicide after a string of mandatory abortions for genetically flawed conceptions.’
‘I have no clue what that means.’ Alida stood and paced across the small room.
‘All her foetuses were deformed and she was forced to terminate them before birth.’
‘Ah.’ Harsh. Mum had always said the slick lives of the plasticfaces were pricey. They reckoned they had the better deal, but they were controlled in every way until almost zero individuality remained.
‘Graycie’s father was then reported as suffering from an intractable mental illness and was stripped of his citizenship. As his dependent, and with no other family, Graycie was also stripped of citizenship. Both of them would have had their implants blocked and wiped before being expelled from the city.’
‘Hell. So where’s her dad now?’ Would she have to hand Graycie over to her real family? The thought of life without Graycie made her feel sick. Graycie had been Alida’s from the very first second, someone to pour all her love into while Mum was busy working to keep them fed.
‘LeaderCorp keeps no records or tracking information on non-Citizens.’
‘So Graycie has no family in the city?’ Alida’s shoulders lowered. The grief of losing Graycie so soon after losing Mum would have been too much. She couldn’t even guess what would happen when she reached too much. She hadn’t been there yet.
‘It seems not. As it stands now, Graycie is a Demi-Citizen with a non-functional implant requiring citizen-level repair work. There’s not much else we can do for her.’
‘So she won’t have a functional implant?’ Here she was stressing about losing Graycie to plastic-land when the real bad news was Graycie’s shitty health situation.
Dr Kimani shook her head. ‘I can prescribe a weekly immune booster and a course of vaccinations from the dispensary. There will be costs involved, I’m afraid.’
Alida buried her face in her hands. She’d pinned all her hopes on Graycie getting an implant. It always circled back to Graycie’s health. It would be the thing that ruined them.
Dr Kimani stood and clapped her hands together. ‘We’ve got a lot of work to do today. We best be getting on. Let’s get you into a uniform and get you out there.’ She put a hand on Alida’s elbow and showed her to the door.