The operating theater of the Vance Manor was a study in absolute, photorealistic clarity. The 8k holographic displays projected the grim reality of Edward Vance’s failing biology in razor-sharp, agonizing detail. The flatline tone of the electrocardiogram was a continuous, piercing shriek that clawed at the walls, but inside my mind, the room was entirely silent.
I stood over the patriarch, my senses bypassing the crude mechanical data of the monitors and tapping directly into the bio-electric currents of his body. To the doctors, Edward was a corpse. To me, he was a complex circuit board where the power supply had been forcibly severed, the residual energy slowly bleeding out into the ether.
I didn't have minutes. I had seconds.
I pulled the first obsidian needle from the velvet roll.
