There was a moment of hesitation from the medical computer. Which spoke volumes since that moment of hesitation on the part of a computer was the equivalent of an eternity for a mortal human whose mind ran at the speed of human thought.

Computers considered that to be one hell of a speed limit. I'd tried not to be too insulted whenever CORVAC brought that up. Or when he hit me with backhanded compliments about how I was the one human he'd ever worked with who could almost keep up with him.

I'd shown him. Thinking about blowing up one computer wasn't going to help me in dealing with my current medical computer problem though.

That hesitation indicated the AI could sense I was in a foul mood, and I'd griped about what I'd done to CORVAC often enough in front of the thing that it had to be wondering if it was next.

"Do you wish to hold off on treatment?" the medical computer finally asked.

I looked up at Fialux floating in the medbay. She looked like shit. As though she took every single fucking hit that got her while she was out there fighting today.

Which made sense. Dr. Lana had been hitting her with that beam for who knew how long. Not only would that mean slow response times, but her fighting style mostly involved wading into the middle of a fight and taking a beating she could take while dealing out a beating her opponents couldn't take. It was no wonder she'd taken a beating that was really fucking with her now.

That was sort of her whole fighting style. No finesse. I'd worried about that. Worried she'd go up against someone who could dish it out to her. I never said anything because it seemed pointless.

I sighed. There was no other alternative. It was entirely possible I was ordering her death by having the computer start repairs, but it's not like I could take her to any of the hospitals in the city.

No, that would be the same as advertising to the world that Fialux was no longer the invulnerable heroine the world thought she was.

The moment that happened would be the moment every cut rate second-string JV villain in this city decided to take a shot at the queen. Heck, maybe every cut rate second-string JV villain in the world, for that matter.

The world didn't know I was the one who'd ultimately defeated her with my Anti-Newtonian field. There was no need to crow to the heavens about that development once it became clear we were going to be… working together.

That meant nothing but work for me because I'd be obligated to reduce any idiot who decided to come at Fialux to their component atomic parts. Which I was totally down for doing if it became necessary, but once people started coming at you it was nothing but work all day long until enough people got vaporized that everyone else got the message.

I didn't need that kind of distraction when I had a big old distraction like Dr. Lana lurking out there.

"Do what you have to do to save her," I said.

There was another worry lurking in the back of my mind as I watched the medical computer go to work. There was always the risk that by saving her right now I could do something that would make it impossible to reverse whatever it was Dr. Lana had done to her with that strange pink ray.

Of course if she was dead it's not like there'd be much of a chance to reverse what Dr. Lana had done, so it was really one of those situations where you were damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Like a lapsed smoker who really needed a cigarette in a moment of weakness, I found myself wishing I had CORVAC around to bounce stuff of of.

I figured the option where I could save her now and potentially rob her of her powers permanently was the better of two shit options. Even if she might not ever forgive me for doing that to her.

Damn it. And things had finally been going so well.

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"Starting the repair process," the computer said.

Boy did it start the repair process. I'd never seen this from the outside because the only times I'd ever needed to use this thing was when I needed to use it on myself.

No one was allowed into the lab where I did my personal repairs. I didn't even let the other computers in my lab come near the medical computer, for that matter.

I had quietly shared the patent to some of the medbay technology so it would be freely available to anyone who wanted to riff on the idea. I probably could've made a fortune on the thing, but I figured this was one invention that would be better off out in the world if someone could ever figure out how to make it work outside my lab.

Though my understanding was my tech was currently being held down by lobbyists working on behalf of insurance companies who didn't want a market disruption like that hitting them. The same as every other health care innovation being held back in the good old U.S. of A.

The light was blindingly bright. We're talking it looked like staring straight into a laser or a fiber optic cable, and that was never a pleasant experience or something I'd recommend trying. I'd had a couple of trips to the medbay to repair my eyes after I accidentally caught the business end of something that would've otherwise permanently blinded me.

The only thing that kept me from having my vision fried away this time was I was still wearing my contacts, and they threw up light filters as soon as it detected that bright light. I could look directly at the sun with these babies and they'd automatically compensate, so it wasn't like I was ever in any real danger.

Unlike Fialux. I still had trouble believing the computer's assertion that she was completely human, but I'd run into stranger things over the years so I couldn't discount it entirely.

"Estimated time?" I asked.

"Several hours," the computer said. "Unable to provide more detail than that at this time."

I grunted. "You're worse than Windows Update."

I waited for a moment before I remembered that the medical computer wasn't like CORVAC. It didn't have any sense of smug superiority for me to tweak, and so comparing it to the operating system everyone loved to hate didn't do anything.

If CORVAC had been in the room he'd be doing the digital equivalent of sputtering in rage right about now. It was a pity he wasn't.

I really needed to stop with the whole missing CORVAC thing. I reminded myself the asshole had tried to kill me, after all, and I felt like I was in the living half of one hell of an abusive relationship with the way I kept pining for the prick.

Speaking of computers. I figured it was probably safe enough to leave this one running the automated medical process. It's not like it was something that could be screwed up, and I had even more failsafes than usual built into this thing to keep the computer from pulling a HAL on me and turning off the life support while I was getting fixed up.

I couldn't do anything about the computer trying to fly an EVA pod at me while I was in the thing, but there were a lot of doors between this room and the closest equivalent I had to an EVA pod. None of them were large enough for said pods to fit through, and on top of that the medical computer was airgapped from all the really fun non-medical toys, so I figured that was a minimal danger.

"I'm going to go do some tinkering while you're working on the medical bay," I said.

I had a lot of tinkering to do. I had a couple of those weapons I'd confiscated from Dr. Lana, and it was high time I broke them out and tried to figure out what the hell made them tick. I'd been avoiding that for far too long.

I took a step towards the exit and stopped. There was still the off chance she might wake up in that thing and have her powers restored. I wasn't going to hold my breath for something like that to happen, but I also hadn't made it this long in a career with a ridiculously low survival rate by taking chances.

One of the potential side effects of the medbays was temporary amnesia. It'd really messed with me a couple of times. I woke up thinking I'd been captured, or that CORVAC had tried to double cross me, and eventually we'd worked out a nice video I recorded to myself to let me know everything was going to be okay.

There wouldn't be anything like that for Fialux though. She could potentially wake up thinking things had gone terribly wrong depending on how far back the temporary amnesia went.

"Make sure you have a couple of Anti-Newtonian generators set up around the exit to the medbay in case she wakes up and gets a little punchy," I said. "Don't hurt her. Just slow he down long enough that she won't be able to do any damage if she wakes up with her powers intact."

I hoped I'd have that kind of problem, but something told me it wasn't in the cards. Still, a girl could dream.

"Affirmative," the medical computer said.

There really wasn't anything else I could do. I looked at Fialux one last time floating there looking so vulnerable in the medbay. Then I blushed as the computer used the teleporter to remove her clothing.

Nothing I hadn't seen before, of course, but there was something about it that felt wrong with her being in such a vulnerable state. Not to mention her clothing had always been as invulnerable as she was, somehow.

I made a mental note to study that shit while she was in the tank. Maybe I could figure out some way to translate that invulnerability back to her or something.

I forced myself to turn away and walked out of the room. It was time for me to get to work trying to figure out what the hell Dr. Lana had done to screw Fialux up.

Between Fialux in the medbay and those weapons to tinker with, I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

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