[Worm]

Seven Opal

Seven was covered in blood. It trickled down his arm and pooled onto his table. His other arm was propped up, holding a laser pen and scrawling into his other. It was time for an upgrade. He bit down on an old t-shirt, so used to the pain of these upgrades, that he rarely needed any anesthetic. The arm performing the surgery was completely robotic. This was his first installment. It was due to a military injury, which shoved him out of the front lines. Luckily military soldiers were the first to receive these upgrades, free of charge. He'd always had interest in cybernetics, but it wasn't until he started tweaking his own parts, that he discovered an innate talent with them.

He zoomed in now with his goggles, focusing on a single wire that ran down near his wrist. The blood in that area was especially thick. He sealed the vein shut with a simple run of his pen. The blood slowly stopped. His face was a bright white, when it would normally be a soft olive color. With one final move, he was able to reattach a new wire and his new software was installed. He wiped his forehead with the free, metal arm, not making much of a difference. "There." He said to himself. He pulled a flap of metal from the other side of the exposed musculature and robotics and sealed it over. He had to scale off some extra skin to make sure it fit properly.

When it closed, he took a deep breath, pressed one of the buttons on the top side of his arm and the music in his ears stopped. That meant it worked. He smiled, leaning back in his chair. The blood on his table would be cleaned up by his helper bot, as per usual in his cybernetics shop. It was dark outside now, which meant the shop was closed to walk-ins. With no appointments, it meant it was his own upgrade time. He stood, legs wobbly from blood loss and found himself a big bottle of whiskey and took a swig. The sting of alcohol helped numb the pulsating, radiating pain in his arm.