Empyrean Iris Story Collection

The Parasite

The light in the medical bay was dim tinted blue. All of the patients were asleep, the curtains were drawn. Light glinted gently on the metal implements, metal tables,

And the metal exoskeleton riveted to the Commander's back

Dr. Krill, Sunny and the ex admiral stood over hospital bed staring down at the figure who lay, unmoving, face down against the sheets. He looked eerie, almost ghostlike in the blue light

"Perhaps you.... Made a mistake."

"I don't make mistakes."

Sunny ignored the two and their conversation stepping up to the edge of the bed and placing her hand against his shoulder. It felt wrong, metal pressing against her hand, a poor substitute for real human warmth. His skin, blue in the overhead light was cold and damp with sweat. Where the spine of the machine was riveted onto his back, she could see rings of inflamed skin puckering up around the casings.

The machine bore down on him, like a parasitic infection sinking it's way into his body, an alien monster intent on consuming him from the outside working in. In contrast to his pallid skin, the creature was a black mass of metal bone and silver joints.

"Shouldn't he have woken up by now?" Someone wondered

"Maybe it's best ...if he doesn't."

Sunny turned, glowering down at the ex admiral golden eyes smoldering with anger. He closed his mouth and looked away shuffling his feet against the ground.

"You might want to at least block him off from the rest of the room. If he wakes up... well.... We don't want the other patients to wake up to that."

That was at least a fair point, no matter how much Sunny didn't want to admit it, so she stayed silent allowing them to do their work, as they grabbed the bed, and rolled it out of the room over to the next, vacant ward.

He still did not move, though his pulse was steady.

She sat with the others in silence listening to the beating of the heart monitor, and the quiet whirring over the ship's overhead ventilation.

The doors at the far end of the room hissed open once or twice to allow in one of the bridge crew giving reports about the battle below.

It seemed as if the suggestions from the advisement team were correct. With conn's help, they had managed to wheedle their way into the heads of their enemy, an enemy that knew full well it could win, with one single massive charge. They had made their base too close to the Gromm home city for overhead airships to intervene with the impending attack without destroying thousands of the Gromm and their own men in the process.

The more and more they looked, the more and more the commander's decision seemed to make sense.

Of course there were other exo suits on the market, they were used for heavy infantry and for industrial work in factories carrying large objects.However, The difference was in the wiring, the Steel eye suit was hooked straight onto the spine and nerve endings where other suits only responded to the muscular contractions of the wearer making them bulky, and slow, with a delay time that didn't allow them for more than big sweeping motions during a battle.

The steel eye suit, not only enhances one's strength and speed, but it did it on command amplifying the speed until the subject was more than a man and less than human.

Since operation steel eye became known to the scientific community, no one had attempted similar technology since.

And that is why they were here.

Because that suit could be their one salvation.

Sunny was just beginning to drift off to sleep carried downwards on the wings of exhaustion and her own disquieted thoughts when something pulled her up from the dredges of her own exhaustion.