I opened my left eye. The right one was stuck shut with something viscous—either blood or seawater mixed with sand.
The world was sideways. Gray sky, gray sand, and a piece of rusty metal sticking out of the ground a couple of meters from my nose.
[Status: 12%. Critical threshold.]
[Pain shock: Suppressed by 75%.]
[Warning: Right limb missing. Attempting recalibration… Error.]
"And why can't you just restore me? Piece of shit," I said mentally.
"Alive?"
"Yeah, 'never been better.'"
Zeno took a step toward the shore. His leg sank into the wet sand almost to the knee. He jerked; the hydraulics in the joint emitted a long screech, and he nearly fell face-first into the water.
"Get used to it." I tried to smirk, but my lip split.
He slowly clenched and unclenched his fist. Scritch-scritch. Metal on metal.
"This is... uncomfortable," he stated.
Ephraim. It seemed he had aged ten years in a single night. He was clutching a piece of board, looking at Zeno with terror.
"Kid... tell me... is it him?" Ephraim pointed a trembling finger at the steel giant. "That thing from your head?"
"It's him, Ephraim." I forced myself to sit up, using my left arm as a lever. "And yeah, of course I knew it and I'm not scared one bit."
Yeah, right, I said mentally.
"Alright, so we need fire," I said, leaning against a log. "Ephraim, bring everything dry you find. Zeno, don't just stand there. Come here. We need to solve the water problem."
"We have no pots. No fuel except this rotten wood," Zeno remarked, looking at the pile of branches.
I closed my eyes, feeling the "Will to Live" begin to pulse.
"Think with your head. Over there," I pointed at the pile of debris washed up on the shore with us. "Shards of Richter's chest plates. They’re concave. If you put one over the fire with seawater and cover it with another—on top, cooling it..."
"Distillation on an open fire without a sealed system," Zeno interrupted. "Losses will be..."
"I don't care about the losses!" I barked, and the shout turned into a cough. "Just do it."
His visor blinked twice. He stood up and walked to the debris. He took a steel plate a finger thick and bent it, shaping it into a crude bowl.
Meanwhile, Ephraim struggled with the campfire. There was no flint—he was trying to strike a spark with a knife against a stone. The result was pathetic.
"Allow me," Zeno boomed.
He approached the pit, leaned down, and extended his left hand. A frayed wire popped out of the wrist joint. A short flash, the crackle of an electric arc—and the dry moss under the branches burst into bright flames.
"Since you're a 'jack of all trades,' maybe you'll handle everything yourself?" Ephraim said irritably.
An hour later, we had our first cup of fresh water. It reeked of god knows what, but when the warm liquid touched my throat, I almost cried.
"We can't stay here," I said, passing the cup to Ephraim.
"They will track us down," Zeno agreed, looking toward the ocean. "My passive sensors are picking up vibrations. Six... no, eight objects. Approximately three kilometers to the east. Moving fast."
"Zeno. I need an arm."
"Your tissues haven't healed yet. Implanting an interface in these conditions..."
"I don't need an interface," I cut him off, looking at the scrap Zeno had brought from the shore. "I need a prosthesis. Design a system of levers for me so I can control the grip through the movement of my left shoulder blade."
"Iron." Zeno stepped closer. "Your body is at its limit. If I start attaching iron to your bones now, you might die."
"I don't care. If they catch us, we're dead anyway. This way at least there's a chance."
Zeno was silent for a long time. In the air hung only the crackle of the fire and the sound of the surf.
"Accepted," he finally said. Ephraim, heat up the knife made from one of the wreckage fragments. I'll need to make incisions."
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