Karl's eyes snapped open yet again, just like yesterday. It was dark in his large, spacious studio apartment.
His eyes glazed over his surroundings yet again, and the events of yesterday began to sink in. The bar fight, meeting FirePower, asking him to become her apprentice. Him saying yes.
Then watching her turn into a living nova.
The quiet ride back to base, him being installed with a sub-dermal microchip that would allow him in and out of various locations without the need for passes or even the concept of money. Anything he wanted all he had to do was pass his hand over the scanner, it would either give it to him or not.
FirePower had quickly taught him how to use C.L.A.I.R.E. Aka the Computer Linked Artificially Intelligent Reasoning Engram. CLAIRE's voice was soft, feminine and oddly a bit sensual. Once he unpacked FirePower confiscated his bottle of anti-inhibitor medication.
"You won't be needing this any more." She told him. "We need you at the top of your game."
Yet when he awoke, he was anything but the top of his game.
He could feel the crack of a molar where during the night he was grinding it so hard, the twitch in his face, and the spasm of his left arm. He knew what was coming, and didn't like it one bit.
He called to the empty air:
"Claire, are you there?"
The entire wall, once blank now vanished. On it was the enormous artificial visage of Claire, a disembodied female head. Rendered real-time, she looked like something out of a high-tech video game.
"I am here, Karl. Is there something I may do for you?" She prompted.
"Yeah, um, where does a guy go to get a drink around here?" He asked.
"The commissary has been open since oh-six-hundred hours. I will be more than happy to guide you to this location as you have not been there before."
Karl grunted. Still, any chance to get a drink.
He peeled off the clean linens, the cleanest he'd had since prison, and suddenly felt a little self conscious in his boxer shorts in front of a giant female head. He pulled on his ragged jeans and a t-shirt.
"So where do I go?" He asked Claire.
Her face became smaller. The screen split vertically, her head on the left, and a map on the right.
"Take the elevator to the first floor, turn north, which would be to your right if you are facing the elevator doors. Walk down the corridor until you reach a four-way intersection. Turn right again. Go to the end of the corridor, until you reach an intersection shaped like the letter 'T'. Turn right. There are double doors. Wave your right hand in front of the scanner and you will be admitted."
Karl's mind was fuzzy with all this, and he muttered to himself something about stupid computers and the military. He walked toward the door, but it had no handle on it, just a black square in the middle.
He put his hand to the black square and the door slid down, silently.
Every door in the place worked that way, and eventually the double doors of the commissary came into view. Karl noticed that his hands were shaking and he needed a drink, or his drugs, badly.
The commissary, a huge empty room held rows and rows of tables and against one wall was a stack of trays and something akin to a buffet line. Karl watched as a mountain of a man, easily seven feet tall was carrying a tub of gravy that was at least a square meter in volume. He put it on the steamer table with a resounding thunk.
Karl walked over to the tray stack, grabbed one, and found that the giant man was looming over him with a big smile.
"Hey you're new here, aren't you? I'm Rick, the cook." He offered a gargantuan hand.
Karl cocked and eyebrow and his trembling right hand shook. "Karl. Karl Lamphere. Just came in this morning."
"Welcome aboard. Where'd you transfer in from?" Rick asked.
"Um, well, I'm new. New new. As in just signed up a few hours ago." Karl said, his left lip now twitching a little as his molars ground together a little more.
Rick eyed him, curiously. "You okay man?" He asked.
"Um, I'm um, looking for a drink." Karl said, his eyes pleading.
"Yeah, I'm pretty useless without my coffee in the morning myself. The auto barista is up and running though." Rick pointed to a machine toward the end of the line. "Just tell it what you want."
What Karl wanted was a beer. He wrinkled his nose, and that wrinkle turned into a facial tic.
"Dude, you're not looking so good. You go sit down, and I'll bring you some Joe."
Karl's head trembled as he nodded in the affirmative. The tray in his hand clattered as he moved away and sat at one of the bench seats. Rick brought him the steaming mug, laden with cream and sugar and a glass of ice water.
Karl sipped at the coffee, it's taste conflicting with the pastiness in his mouth. His hand trembled again, spilling some of the milky liquid on him. Karl set the mug down, it clattering. A small arc of electricity came across his copper ringed fingers as his mind seized, followed soon by his body.
He hit the floor, convulsing.
Rippling waves of electricity snapped through his body, his mouth opened up, his eyes rolled up into his head, and the smoking smell of ozone filled the commissary.
Rick's eyes got wide, he knew better than to touch the man. Quickly he scanned the room and eyed a regular in one of the corners of the room.
"Cassie, I need a medic. Now!"
The Serithot's head snapped.
Cassie was a prime example of a beautiful serpentine female. On loan from The Cube until their primary medical officer had completed her transfer, she was, essentially a five meter long King Cobra. The Montana Winters were hell on her, and she only had taken the job on the condition of an additional bonus and no outside action.
Within three seconds she had sprung her coils and landed next to Karl, whose seizure was now running in the range of fifteen seconds, his body still rippling with electricity.
She hissed, "do not touch him. His powers will stun you. Summon a medical team." She slurred the letter es and pronounced 'his' like 'hiss'. She was one of the few Serithots that could actually speak English and not merely use telepathy.
She stuck her tongue out, tasting the air, her forked tongue flickering. Her nostrils inhaled Karl's scent, and then and only then did she look at him carefully.
"Karl," she said in her eerie whisper. "It's Cassie, do you remember me? I was at your release hearing."
Karl's only response was to seize again.
The marking on the hood of Cassie glowed as she invoked her telekinesis and lifted Karl bodily into the air. She closed her eyes as her telepathy probed into his mind. It was a dangerous move, but as a Nurse Practitioner she had little choice.
She winced as she felt the struggle between his mind and body, and then, probing deeper found the adrenal gland, exploding on overload. She had little choice.
She focused harder, and turned it off.
The medical team brought through the floor as she hissed at them, "withdrawal seizures, he got out of The Cube less than three months ago, and it looks like Denarian Tremens as well. Get a rubber room ready, I'll carry him. You cannot touch him, and find me the ass that didn't give him the blue pill."
"I'm on that," Rick said. He tromped back into the kitchen as Cassie slithered off, carrying him telekinetically.
Karl stopped seizing while she was en route to the the medical bay.
"Karl," she hissed, "can you hear me."
Karl was confused, wondered why he was floating in mid air, and then looked at Cassie. To him, a Serithot was a Serithot and he had little way of determining one from another. They were the primary guards at his old prison and he was terrified of them.
"It's okay, Karl. It's me, it's Cassie. I was at your release hearing."
Karl looked into her glittering, beady eyes. He recognized the name but he could not place her face, and with her hood inflamed she was still the same terrifying creature. She could smell his fear, and gently lowered him to the ground.
"Karl, I was at your release hearing. I prescribed your medications. It is only by luck that we meet again." She hissed.
Karl crumpled into the wall of the hallway, clearly terrified. The other orderlies surrounded him.
"Let him be." She hissed, then continued, "Karl, you are having major withdrawal symptoms. I need to take you to the infirmary to give you some medication that will take the edge off your symptoms."
Karl's eyes began to blink, and he seized again.
Cassie plucked him up into the air yet again with her telekinesis and made their way to a specially prepared room where he could detox himself from the drugs in a safe, secure environment.