They changed the projection lenses in my eyes in a hundred and forty seconds a piece. After that, they cut into my chest, twelve minutes flat from first incision to full transplant. A new networking suite, haptics, biometrics, and a handful of stuff that NorCol tries not to advertise. Six minutes and thirty-three seconds later, they had all of my new wiring set and stitched into place without so much as a bruise.

For the most part, it was one-for-one. For everything the surgeons took out, they put something else back. My body had carried the standard ’ware for long enough, built up muscle and diverted arteries to fit. The company would have lost too much time on rehab if they’d carved out any more real estate, and so they gave me an upgrade instead. They pulled out the implants I’d worn since my early teens and replaced them with corporate gear.

There were a few exceptions, though.

They cut in just above and below each knee, made incisions on the outside of my thighs, right where it turns numb when you hit it on something. Another pair on each hip, right on the joint. Three more near the base of my spine. All just under the surface of my skin. NorCol’s surgeons traded out for engineers, who went to work embedding stainless plugs in every cut, and filling them with nanite strains, made to bond me to the metal.

They look a little like electrical connections: one socket-ring inside another, the connection itself about as wide as a hair. The surgeons came back and stapled the plugs down, treated them with something that would turn the broken skin into scar tissue.

After my

—crash, if that’s what you want to call it—

After I’d gotten myself arrested, while I was still locked into an infirmary cot, Internal Affairs brought a wetware tech into the room. I had both hands cuffed to the bedsides, already relieved of my weapons and network permissions, but the tech was there for the last of the company’s property. She locked each plug down with a metal cap that needed a certain kind of key. Then she shut me out of everything else, and buried half of my memories under a company cipher.

Last night, medical opened my ports again.

It wasn’t pretty. They had to take a scalpel around the edges, trimming back the places where the skin had grown across the ports. A medic cleaned them out afterwards, practised hands working like it was the kind of thing they did every day. The swabs came away with black blood, clear pus, and something that looked and felt like flakes of rust. I got a shot in the arm full of antiflam and antiseptic, but I don’t know how much it’s going to help. Now that I’m back in the saddle, my ports feel raw and swollen.