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- He remembered some of it now. Not a distinct chronology of events, not
- second by second, but flashes of action disconnected from one another. A
- random pattern of blinding, painful moments held together like pearls on a
- string.
- The shrieking of tortured metal under the impact of a colossal volume of
- polar ocean. The wild screams of the mad and the dying. The thunder of his
- fading heartbeat. Lances of light through glassy, shifting waters. And a
- terrible knowing, a certainty that he would die out there and nothing would
- stop that from happening.
- I should be dead. The thought grew, sharp and diamond-hard.
- His artificial eyes adjusted steadily, the color tone of the room shifting as
- it gained greater definition. Digging deep, he reached past the fear and
- found the steel that had never left him. Took it, held on to it.
- The next breath was rough, but it was controlled. By force of will, he
- moderated his ragged breathing and concentrated on calming his racing
- pulse. In the corner of his vision, a softly blinking warning icon faded to
- nothing as the hammering of his heart subsided. Sweat beaded on his flesh,
- and he swallowed hard.
- “I remember the sea.” They were the first words he had spoken in
- months. “The cold.”
- “You’re very lucky to be alive,” said another voice. A man, this one, the
- accent behind it a firm northwestern burr while the woman had sounded
- more like a southerner. Those facts emerged in his thoughts automatically,
- some ingrained means in his mind immediately sifting their words for data,
- for clues.
- He blinked again and now he could see them better. The woman, of
- average height with a dark face framed by a white headscarf; the man pale
- and fatigued. Both of them wore doctor’s coats and cradled digital pads in
- their hands. At their shoulders, a small monitor drone the size of a softball
- floated on a cluster of whispering impellers, patiently framing everything in
- the room with a blue-tinted lens.
- The woman tried on a practiced smile. “You were clinically deceased
- when they plucked you out of the ocean. But a combination of the chill and
- the actions of your Sentinel implant kept you from going beyond our reach.
- They were able to pull you back.”
- - Deus Ex: Black Light, Chapter 1 pgs. 7-8
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