DROP FOURTEEN
Hector put his face in his palms. “What am I doing?” he mumbled.
The woman was unconscious on his bed. At some point she might have been pretty. It was impossible to tell any more. Underneath the scars and the bruises, there were calluses on most of her body. Half her face was a cyber replacement, her right arm was one as well, from the hand up to the elbow. A knee was completely replaced with titanium and plastic, ankles were reinforced with some sort of protection to avoid injury, and the ribcage was encased in overlapping plates of armour.
Hector checked out the handiwork, trailing his fingertips along the edges of the armour. It wasn’t skeevy, but a pure, professional appreciation, the way he’d check out the bronze chestplate of a hoplite soldier in a museum.
“She’s a
