Rad - Swimming pool

Jack woke up in a strange room where everything was white and lit by bright lights. For a few seconds, he thought he had died. Then he heard a woman's voice.

“Doctor, he's awake.”

Slowly, Jack's mind struggled out of its haze of confusion. He tried to remember what had happened. He remembered breaking through the glass window. And falling, falling.

Jack shifted his body in the bed and felt a strange pain that he'd never known before.

“What happened to me?” he called out, feeling weak and helpless.

A young nurse with soft gray eyes came to stand over him. She smoothed down the sheet that lay across his chest and arms.

“You'll be all right,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”

“I remember falling,” Jack said, hoping that she wouldn't walk away again. “It was twenty floors to the ground. What happened to me?”

The nurse smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

“You landed in the hotel swimming pool,” she said. “Fortunately, the deep end.”

A slow, crazy laugh rose from deep in Jack's throat. He remembered everything now. It had been a wild chance that he took, jumping out of the penthouse window. He had counted on falling into that swimming pool. And he had made it.

(...)

He threw the covers aside and tried again to lift himself up. His right arm still felt strange. For the first time, Joe looked down at it.

He felt a wave of shock followed by disbelief. His arm was gone! In its place was a finely molded piece of plastic.

“What did you do to me?” he shouted al the Captain in panic. “Where's my arm?”

The Captain stared at him with a steely gaze and didn't answer. Jack knew the Captain didn't like displays of irrational emotion in his spies. Well, that was tough! They had taken away his arm and replaced it with this fake. His career as a commando was over!

“Jack, listen to me,” the Captain said sternly. “You lost your arm in the fall in Buenos Aires. We think you were wounded by a shuriken we found at the bottom of the pool. Your arm was further damaged when you hit the water. We had no choice. We had to operate.”

Jack remembered the Ninja standing at the penthouse window with the shuriken in his hand. The shuriken must have hit him just before he blacked out.

Jack slowly raised the plastic arm in the air, studying it for the first time.

At first glance, it appeared to be real. The fingers and muscles looked just like those on his other arm. Jack ran the fingers of his left hand across the arm, feeling it respond to his touch.

“What is this thing, Captain?” he asked. He still felt repelled by the arm. But his horror was slowly giving way to curiosity.

“It's a bionic arm, Jack,” the Captain said with a tinge of pride in his voice. “Our scientists have been developing it in secret for years. I wish we could have asked your permission to give it to you, Jack. But time was important. And you were unconscious for days.”

***

Worlds of Power: Bionic Commando, Chapter 2