It seemed at some point they had contacted Crystal through an underground network. It wasn’t an unfamiliar place for them, considering Hesopher used it all the time to contact and hire mercenaries to retrieve materials for Eutoli as a whole that Cerah and Andaopos weren’t supplying for them. It was through working with those clients that they had learned about Crystal, and her ‘rumoured’ time spent helping people with cybernetic parts. However, whether it was because of their stance to remain under alias, or some other reason, Crystal was proving to be unwilling to fully work with them. It had been a rough few days, something had been concerning Hesopher enough to hinder their progress on developing their own method for cybernetic surgery. It was currently late at night, and Hesopher had unintentionally fallen asleep where he had been cuddling Midas. He was fourteen now, and couldn’t sleep because of the usual full body ache from his bones and faulty blood. And that, plus the state his father was in had put him in a sour mood.
He had his father’s laptop on his stomach, staring at the most recent conversation between Crystal and Hesopher. Neither of them were using real names, and Hesopher had been fairly secretive about everything about them and their situation. He didn’t want to be traced back. Yet something about being sleep deprived and irritated made Midas reach out instead of leaving it to his dad as he had been doing.
‘You’re being really annoying, you know? We’re not asking for much. Just a name of a book we can look into about the problem or something.’
He hadn’t been expecting a response, and shortly after he’d sent it he considered deleting it. His dad would scold him for being rude once he saw it, and they didn’t need to piss off their contact to the point of blocking them. But to his surprise a response came back quickly.
Oh, she recognized it wasn’t Hesopher really quickly. Smart lady.
‘The son,’ Midas typed back quickly, blinking hazily in his sleepless daze.
The next response took longer to show up, but it seemed to be both because of length and because Crystal had taken a moment to consider or rewrite her words.
‘Look kid. Being a cyborg is not a good life. People don’t like cyborgs, it’s hard to maintain the equipment, and resources aren’t plentiful. Stop chasing a fairytale, and go live your life.’
It was sensible. Any healthy person would look at the prejudice cyborgs had to deal with, and the resources and potential risks they had, and would turn the option down without a moment’s hesitation. And Crystal was rather noble for trying to keep people away from falling into the darker parts of society, where other city’s laws made living risky.
But Midas wasn’t healthy, and they were out of options.
So after an annoyed huff Midas opened the camera app and snapped a picture from the camera facing him and his exhausted dad. And for good measure he stuck his tongue out and held his middle finger up to it as well. The picture was then sent along with a short response.
He didn’t wait for an answer, the budding migraine suddenly making itself fully known and causing his head to throb and the light from the laptop to stab at his eyes. With a soft groan, Midas clapped the laptop’s lid closed and shoved it aside, rolling to bury his face into his dad’s chest. As soon as the light was gone the pain in his head subsided considerably, and he drew a steadying breath and let it out slowly. The pain wasn’t gone, it never truly was. But after a few minutes of complete darkness it dropped back down to a state he could manage. Enough that he ended up falling into a half sleep for several hours.
The next morning they had woken up to a response from Crystal.
‘Your son seems to know when it’s time to pull the empathy card.’
With the responses came a compressed file holding two complete documents containing the research notes on full body cyborgs from one of the original scientists of the past. And through his tears of relief and laughter, Hesopher still made Midas apologize to Crystal for the rude gesture.
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This one is pretty short compared to some of the others, but the next part is too different and long X'D I really had fun drawing this one too