Chapter Text
It’s only the second breath that hurts. The first, you’re hardly conscious enough to realize you’re breathing in, drowning in the cryo shit; the third, your tank’s already been drained and anonymous hands are using anonymous objects to siphon off whatever hasn’t sublimated. If you’re lucky, by the fourth-fifth-sixth, you actually have some sensation in your extremities, or you actually have some control over closing your maw and ungluing your eyelids.
Arthur’s done this enough times, the preservative’s lost that invasive feeling even when he knows he should feel like he’s dying, suffocating, when really he just notes the faint tang of the nitrogen, smelling and tasting it. He twitches his fingers, also noting that the digits are still reacting on delay relative to his thoughts of move, fucking fingers, move already. Still, the fact that they were moving at all so soon means he’s been shoved into a better quality Gauntlet1 than the last.
Small consolation, really.
He takes a few shallow breaths and feels the skin of the Gauntlet blooming with goosebumps. The air he inhales is hot and damp; the air exhaled, icy and arid. A Gauntlet’s lungs, regardless of the Grade2, are always the last to achieve homeostasis. You’d think, with the exponential growth of innovations in qualo-cryogenics3, -compression4, and –dumping5, the cult of lab coat-wearing scientists-playing-god would’ve figured out how to make lungs heat up faster. There were hydrogen bombs before the close of the second millennium, after all.
“How long was I compressed?”
Arthur’s done this enough times, he can tell by the timbre of his new voice that he’s been qualodumped into a Briton-descended Gauntlet, probably near or just made twenty years. He asked because, even though he hasn’t bothered to open his eyes, he can sense—if only vaguely, and from a long distance away—a Squire6 hovering near the lower-half of his new body, probably making arbitrary checkmarks on a clipboard.
The Squire ignores him, answering instead with pinpricks to the soles of both Arthur’s feet. Arthur grunts, the sound almost elegant in his new voice, and wills his Gauntlet’s hands into fists. They’re reacting near real-time now. Small consolation. So Arthur asks again,
“How long have I been qualopressed?”
After several silent moments of more checkmarks and prods: “Twelve years, four months. Your Gauntlet’s been tanked for eighteen months—medical reasons.”
The voice, if you could call it that, was metallic, monotone. Arthur forces his eyes open to stare at the Squire, forces his new mouth into what he hopes looks like a wry grimace.
“The feds still have you fuckers wearing those helmets, I see.”
“Not much changes in a decade, I’m afraid,” is the droned reply.
Arthur gives a single, mirthless laugh. A few qualodumps back, Arthur untanked surrounded by half a dozen Squires, all of them in painfully white, Teflon-mesh coveralls and massive helmets complete with opaque visors and breathing masks. He found out later that it was the new qualocryo regulation to protect the Squires’ identities—age, gender, nationality, maybe sexual preference, too—when people were dumped and pulled from the tanks. Arthur distinctly remembers his response: ‘Anonymity is for cunts.’ For that, the post-qualodump-and-untanking shrink had him dosed with a benzo.
“So, am I allowed to know why I’ve been DUT’d two-and-a-half years early?”
Of course, he is. A person can’t be dumped and untanked without being debriefed immediately after the fact. That would be immoral and unethical, otherwise.
“You’ve been commissioned.”
Well, that isn’t new. Arthur can count on one hand—no matter whose it once was—the number of times he’s been dumped for a non-mercenary purpose.
“By whom?”
He lets his eyes drift shut, tries flexing his Gauntlet’s legs. He isn’t particularly interested in which corrupt leader’s hired him to clean up a black market scuffle.
“Uther Pendragon, to find the whereabouts of his niece and her abductors.”
Also not new.
“Sounds like a nice break from qualopress oblivion,” he says, more to himself than his attendant. Then, opening his eyes to watch himself raise the Gauntlet’s arms and test the still-stiff elbow joints, he adds, “So, who am I?”
Out of context, that question would sound ridiculous, but the Squire knows what he’s asking. Still, Arthur notices the hesitation before the answer,
“Your Gauntlet is Pendragon’s son, Arthur.”