Pins and Needles

//One of the pilots, who wanted to stay anonymous, gave me this report to broadcast.//

The light is yellow. I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, the light turns red.

"This is Central Command. We have confirmation of EMF activity. Code Vetr."

I sit up from my bed. Code Vetr means that I'm up. It's my turn.

I hop out of bed and pull on my pants, the right leg already rolled up to the thigh. Then I put the liner over my stump and then the prosthetic. It goes right under the knee. It still feels weird walking with it, but I'm used to it. It's carbon-fiber and custom made. It's a better prosthetic then I would have been able to afford had I not worked here. I will give them that -- the pay is good.

As I walk down the hallway towards my Gear Chamber, I can feel my missing leg. I can feel it as if it's still there. It's tingling with pins and needles, as if it just fell asleep and wasn't cut off a year ago. Sometimes I can feel it burning, the skin peeling. Sometimes it itches and I reach down to scratch it, but I realize there's nothing there.

I would rather I feel nothing than feel those sensations.

The light above the Gear Chamber is red. I wait outside it until the intercom crackles and Central Command announces, "SLUG DES Icebreaker is in play. The Gears are turning. Please enter the Gear Chamber. Good luck."

The light turns green. The Chamber door opens and I enter. Inside is a chair with over a dozen cables branching out from the back. There are gloves and things that attached to my legs and something to put in front of my eyes so I can see through Icebreaker.

I sit and go about connecting all the different devices. It takes a little less than five minutes, but the clock is ticking and I've got less than a hour to take care of Vetr. It's my fourth time out in Icebreaker, not counting training sessions, and I've yet to actually hurt the fucker.

I strap a device to my right thigh and suddenly I can feel my missing leg even better. It's there, I know it, I just can't see or touch it. I don't know how the Gear Chamber does it, I don't know how anything in the Chamber works -- and I'm not alone, most of the pilots have no idea how it works -- but somehow it gives me back my leg. Not physically, but mentally, it's still there and it works perfectly.

My legs are how I can control the Icebreaker's legs. My arms and hands control its arms and hands. I thought it would be like playing a video game, but it's so much more.

The gloves curl around my hands like they're alive and the HUD appears above it. There we are. The Icebreaker is on site and ready to fight.

The location is a lake. I don't recognize the surroundings, but then again, I wouldn't: everything is covered in a layer of snow, the lake itself frozen over. This would be unusual since it's July, but I know what we're dealing with. I know what it does.

I can see children ice skating across the lake. The HUD immediately zooms in and I can see their black eyes. They are taunting me, telling me to go out into the lake to get them. I stay at the edge of the lake. I don't know how thin the ice is -- just the weight of one SLUG could crack it.

But the cold children don't realize that I don't have to come near them to fight. I press a button and a grenade shoots from my hand, then another. Two grenades, tossed out onto the frozen lake. The children stare at them passively. I press another button and the grenades explode. The lake cracks and the children spill into the water below. I drop an electric charge in there. It won't kill them, just piss them off.

I wait until they rushing out from the lake, their mouths open wide, their teeth like sharks. That's when I activate the blades, rotating blades on the edges of each arm. They rush the SLUG and I twist it around, catching each of them where their neck meets their head. One, two, snicker, snack.

After ten minutes, I'm left with a pile of bodies and a pile of heads. I look at one of them. Children. I've been killing children.

Snap out of it. Whatever they were, it was twisted and twisted until it wasn't human anymore.

I walk around the lake, trying to catch a glimpse, to see if Vetr is out here somewhere. The boys in R&D have tried outfitting some different weapons on Icebreaker and I want to test them out, but it looks like Vetr is nowhere in sight. He let loose his black-eyed children and then left.

I want to stay some more. I want to use both my legs for as long as I can, but the ten minute light is flashing. I disconnect from Icebreaker and remove all the cables. I can feel my leg and then I can't. It's back to being pins and needles.

I leave the Gear Chamber. There is a dull throb behind my eyes. I know the side-effects of the Gear Chamber, I know what it can do to you. But right now, I just want that feeling again. The feeling of being whole.