Malfunctioning Utopia

Chapter 7: Injury

"With great power comes great responsibility, right? You can’t expect me to go. At least you’re made of metal—you’re bulletproof," Sun Jack said earnestly to Tapai.

“Uncle my a**!” Tapai gripped his gun tightly. His reverse-jointed legs stomped hard against the ground, propelling him straight toward the group of people behind them.

Bullets from the front zipped toward Tapai’s figure, quickly sparking a furious exchange of gunfire between the two sides.

"Haha! It worked!" Sun Jack cheered, clenching his fist in excitement as chaos erupted between the two groups.

Then, with a sudden “squelch,” the grin froze on Sun Jack’s face.

He trembled as he looked down. A bloody, electric arc blade had pierced through his abdomen. As the blade was withdrawn, hot blood spurted out like a fountain.

Clutching his stomach, Sun Jack turned around to see who had attacked him. To his shock, there was no one behind him—only a bloodied blade floating in mid-air.

Under his horrified gaze, a bald man with prosthetic metal arms and an inverted cross branded on his neck sneered as he deactivated his camouflage and revealed himself. “Batard.”

But with a cold flash, it took only an instant for his right arm, rifle and all, to be severed into three pieces.

Time seemed to freeze as Sun Jack stared at the mid-air fragments of his arm, his marrow spilling out. In that moment, the crushing disparity between his human body and a fully augmented one hit him like a wave of despair. “Am I... going to die?”

The next moment, time resumed. Gunfire erupted, bullets flying from the left to suppress the bald man.

The attacker gave Sun Jack a mocking smirk before swiftly reactivating his camouflage and disappearing into thin air.

As Sun Jack began collapsing, Tapai dashed forward, grabbed him, and dragged him away from the firefight. Thanks to his earlier diversion, the two sides were now locked in battle and ignored them completely.

“Am I going to die?” The delayed pain surged through Sun Jack, and his consciousness began to fade as he muttered in fragments.

Tapai dragged Sun Jack to a shallow ditch, shielded from the hail of bullets. “You’re not dying!” he barked.

Reaching out, Tapai extended a fine fiber optic cable, the same one he used for hacking earlier. It burrowed into Sun Jack’s body and began stitching his ruptured blood vessels at an astonishing speed, rapidly reducing the bleeding.

But it wasn’t enough. Sun Jack was already slipping into hypovolemic shock.

Tapai quickly scanned Sun Jack’s blood type with a sensor line. Glancing around, he spotted a mangled corpse nearby. Yanking it back, he inserted the sensor line into the corpse’s veins. The once-transparent fiber optic line turned crimson as blood was drawn, and another line began transfusing it into Sun Jack.

“W-wait! I’m not dead yet!” Sun Jack gasped, forcing his eyes open.

Tapai’s response was a heavy punch to Sun Jack’s head, caving in his skull slightly. “You’re dead now,” he said coldly.

The warm blood flowing into Sun Jack gradually brought color back to his pallid face.

Tapai scanned the surroundings for anything useful. Finally, he retrieved a stimulant and painkiller from the corpse, injecting them into Sun Jack. Slowly, Sun Jack’s eyes fluttered open.

Staring up at the gray, rain-soaked sky, Sun Jack muttered a bitter curse. “Sh*t!”

For a brief moment, he was filled with overwhelming gratitude for bringing Tapai along. If it weren’t for his ancient robot companion, that last strike would have been the end of him.

“Let’s move. If we stay here, you’ll really die. I don’t have any anti-infection meds, and the acid rain’s already hit your wound. Without a doctor, you won’t last long,” Tapai said as he helped Sun Jack to his feet. ɽâΝÒᛒÈ𝘴

“Wait.” Sun Jack, gritting his teeth against the pain, turned to look at the corpse with the caved-in head.

The man appeared to be a mercenary as well. His black metal prosthetic arms had a high-tech look, but his tattered, bullet-riddled clothes gave him a wretched appearance.

On the left side of his face, a skull tattoo sprawled across his cheek. His messy dreadlocks and oversized nose rings made him look like trouble incarnate.

Sun Jack glanced at his own empty right arm, then at the corpse’s sleek metal prosthetic. “Can you attach it to me?” he asked.

The thought of the bald man who’d almost killed him moments ago still burned in Sun Jack’s mind. He couldn’t swallow the humiliation of being overpowered simply because he lacked prosthetics.

This wasn’t just a whim, either. For all he knew, the bald man might still be lurking nearby, cloaked and waiting to strike again. Sun Jack needed to regain his combat ability—fast.

“Too many prosthetics can lead to cyber psychosis,” Tapai cautioned.

“Look around, man. Is now really the time to be worrying about that? Let’s make it out of here alive first!” The gunfire and explosions around them left Sun Jack no room for hesitation. In a battlefield like this, losing an arm was as good as being dead weight.

“Alright, you’re the boss.” Tapai’s fingers morphed into tools, and he got to work dismantling the metal right arm from the corpse.

While the painkillers were still in effect, Tapai quickly cut through flesh and bone. In no time, the matte black metal arm was grafted onto Sun Jack’s body.

As a sharp jolt surged through his nervous system, Sun Jack realized he could move his right hand again. Holding it up, he slowly opened and closed his new metal fingers. It felt like his arm was back.

With a metallic “clang,” an electric arc blade sprang out from his forearm. The blade’s gleam reflected Sun Jack’s exhilarated expression.

A mechanical whir followed as the blade retracted. The metal fingers folded backward to reveal a dark cannon barrel spiraling out from his palm. This prosthetic wasn’t just an arm—it was a weaponized masterpiece, likely the source of several of the nearby explosions.

Feeling pain creeping back, Sun Jack grabbed a discarded syringe of stimulant painkillers from the ground and jabbed it into his thigh. As the drug hit, his pupils dilated, and a euphoric clarity washed over him.

“Looks like I struck gold.” Regaining his mobility, Sun Jack pocketed the last bit of the painkiller and gritted his teeth as he stood up.

Instead of retreating immediately, he made his way toward the site of the earlier firefight. Aiming at the group that had been chasing him, he fired off several explosive rounds with his new arm cannon.

Watching the distant flames and explosions, Sun Jack felt a wave of satisfaction—his wounds hurt a little less now.

“Let’s go!” Sun Jack barked, signaling Tapai to move out. But just as they were about to leave, a trembling hand grabbed Sun Jack’s left foot.

“W-wait!” a weak voice stammered.

Sun Jack looked down to see the original owner of his new metal arm—a man with a caved-in head and a missing right arm—lifting his battered face to look at him.