Out of My League

"Clear!"

The massive jolt of electricity from the defibrillator slammed into Erica's charred chest. Her body violently arched off the emergency room table. Her spine bowed. Her ribs groaned under the force.

On the monitor, the green line remained a dead, flat stretch. A continuous, high-pitched beep drilled into the sterile air.

Dr. Aris Fletcher wiped a thick layer of sweat from his forehead. He ripped his surgical mask down, his chest heaving. He looked at the wall clock. He opened his mouth to call the time of death.

A piercing ring exploded deep inside Erica's brain stem.

It wasn't a sound from the room. It was the violent, agonizing sensation of a future special ops commander's consciousness being brutally shoved into a shattered, dying vessel.

Three years of prison torture. The crushing impact of a speeding car. The memories of the original host tore through Erica's nerve endings like serrated knives. Her subconscious violently rejected the foreign data. Her throat constricted. Her lungs burned for oxygen they couldn't process.

Host vital signs failing. Emergency override protocol initiated.

The cold, mechanical voice of the ORACLE System vibrated against the base of her skull.

Blue, microscopic light flooded her veins. Millions of nanobots surged through her depleted bloodstream. The flat, collapsed veins on her arms suddenly bulged against her pale skin. The pain of cellular reconstruction was a blinding, white-hot fire.

Deep inside her chest, shattered ribs emitted a sickening, wet crunch. The jagged edges of bone forced themselves together, grinding and fusing in direct violation of basic physics.

Dr. Fletcher turned his back to the table. He reached for the death certificate clipboard.

Out of the corner of his eye, the monitor flashed. The flatline jerked. It spiked into a massive peak, triggering a shrill, frantic alarm.

The assisting nurse let out a blood-curdling scream. She pointed a trembling finger at the bed.

The massive, gaping wound on Erica's chest was sealing itself. The torn flesh knit together, the bleeding stopping as thick scabs formed in seconds.

Erica's eyes snapped open.

They were not the eyes of a broken ex-convict. They were the dead, cold eyes of a commander who had walked over mountains of corpses. They held zero warmth. Only calculating, predatory stillness.

She tried to sit up. The room spun violently. The nanobots hadn't finished fusing her cervical vertebrae. Nausea punched her in the stomach. She collapsed back onto the blood-soaked sheets, her breathing shallow and rapid.

Dr. Fletcher rushed back to the bed. His face was pale with shock. He clicked on a penlight and reached down to check her pupil dilation.

Erica's hand shot up. Her cold, blood-crusted fingers clamped around his wrist like a steel vice.

The ORACLE System scanned the room. A pale blue, three-dimensional grid projected onto her retinas. The heart rates, body temperatures, and skeletal structures of everyone in the room overlaid her vision.

No immediate lethal threats detected.

She released the doctor's wrist. Her throat felt like it was lined with broken glass.

"Water," she rasped. The host's vocal cords felt stiff, unused to her own commanding tone. The word came out rougher than intended, scraping against her raw throat.