2018-12-20: Terminal Proscription

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Asher's fingers trembled ever so slightly. He had always had steady hands, but this project had its way of getting under his skin, setting his nerves to jumping. He'd have to recalibrate a thousand variables for this, ten thousand protocols...Would he even see Eliana again this month? Doubtful. "Damnable girl," he muttered, taking a moment to breathe before the double-doors into the infirmary where his charge was being treated. "You'll cost us everything with your antics," he muttered to the air.


And then one more breath, and he stepped crisply into the chamber. Some staff had unwisely pointed out once that it looked more like a prison for dangerous Ether adepts than an infirmary, and he found it hard to shake the connection as he saw Tabitha deVriese, divested of everything but a few token strips of cloth for modesty and spread-eagled on a rack attached to the wall. Her arms were plugged into heavy shackles, more powerful versions of the Graviton Shackles she'd worn for so long, intended to stifle her ether manifestations completely.


She was unconscious, of course. That would be the sedatives. It was fascinating how much more heavily her frame hung while she was truly unconscious and shackled. She used that ether to ease her weight so habitually that seeing her burdened by the standard one gravity everyone else abided by made something seem, well...heavier.


"Report," he called, as he stepped over to the rack to sync his slate to the room's outputs.


"Subject is thoroughly sedated and fully shackled. Ether response rating zero," called a male voice from the nearest terminal. Not really what he wanted to know, Asher thought, grimacing.


Fortunately, Celestine came to his rescue as always: "Both arms severed above the wrist by gravitational torsion while in conflict with Quarter Knight Siegfried and a martial artist Lamb on the POI list," she said, barely looking up from her work. "Multiple moderate to severe traumas related to open combat. Cracked ribs, dislocated left shoulder--"


"Gravitational torsion?" Asher asked, eyes slowly narrowing as he filtered over the data coming through to his own slate.


"Shackle black box says he punched her with a microsingularity while the Shackle was in released state," said the young man whose apparently only job was to read reports for him. "She appears to have attempted to, uhm, shuck it, sir."


"Shuck it?"


"Like an oyster, sir. Pull out the singularity."


Asher felt a shock run down his spine, eyes scanning up to his subject's pallid skin with a new concern. "Which is impossible."


"Yes, sir. Her hands were in contact with the object when she attempted to reveal the singularity. At this point continuum stress levels passed the red line, activating Terminal Proscription. Her hands went, uhm. Away."


Celestine jumped in again: "One was located thirteen miles away. Taken off cleanly by gravitational sheering. The cold kept the cells from decaying, too. It can be reattached."


"And the other?"


"Attachment sigma five four two."


Asher found it and soon found his mouth dry. "Replacement it is, then," he murmured. Celestine hummed an affirmative.


"Very well," Asher sighed, turned on his heels, system still feeding the data across open air to him. "I'll get a call going with her Etone handler, I'm sure they'll have some non-standard requests. Call if you--"


"Sir...a question."


Asher stopped, turned toward Celestine as his cool-headed associate gave him a searching look. "Why all this? It just seems..."


Asher pulled his gaze away. "Experimental protocol following Terminal Proscription is extremely clear."


"This was barely a Proscription, Asher," she said.


Asher focused his eyes on the door. He thought of his children. He thought of his wife. He thought of the woman behind him, normally so full of life and cheer, now near naked, her skin pallid from weakness and cold, pinned to the wall like a butterfly while people she didn't know studied everything her body did.


"...I wish to be very careful with my last....my only, daughter," Asher deVriese said, and strode away.

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