Maria looked at me bored, dropped her bag and pulled out that cylinder again as it expanded into a Bo staff spinning in her hand.
"I promise you, you're not going to beat me here Jayden." Her voice dropped at my name as she darted forward and swung downwards with her staff while I sprung back and blocked it with my forearm, only for her to grab my throat with her other hand pulling back her staff and using it as a pivot to spin, slamming my body into the ground.
My bionic gripped around her ankle but she stabbed the extended blade of her staff between my palm and her ankle and pried me off as her foot came crushing down on my chest while she whipped my jaw with the other blunt end of her staff knocking me out.
I was here again, swimming in a dark void, my bionic gone, floating in nothingness. When I woke up, my eye shooting open, I was above her, one knee pressed against her side, the other on her stomach. Her right arm was pierced by her own staff, it extended form in her forearm and the ground holding it in place. My left hand strangling her and my right arm crossed over holding the broken bladed end of her staff a millimetre from, her eyeball. The rest of her body was bruised the right side of her face dripping down with blood that mixed into her hair.
her face of confusion and shock instantly switched when she locked eyes with mine, driving her knee up my stomach and pushing me off and pulling the staff out of her arm before crawling back.
i slowly staggered up clutching my own side but her voice made me pause "WAIT," she said in a single panted shout as I glanced up at her.
"Her eyes scanned across my face, not fear, not hatred, more so the eyes of an excited scientist as her hands twitched at her side, then her expression fell back to neutral as she pushed herself up with her staff and turned and limped towards her bag dragging it towards the injured man from before who was now fully passed out.
"Come then." her voice came out weak as she kept looking at the body while opening her bag, "you wanted to save him, no?"
I didn't know what the catch was or why she had changed her mind but I limped over, it was only then i realised how bad my body had been left, bleeding and bruised in multiple places as if I had been in a fight I wasn't aware of, which, was more or less what had happened, I thought at the time.
She pulled out her tablet and began scanning his body then typing.
"what are you doing," i spoke while glancing at her screen.
"Seeing what's wrong with him and if I can even fix it," her hand swiped over an array of numbers as simulations played on her screen before and error flash. "Great, even if I perform surgery on him, he'll die way before I'm done."
"So, you need to do it fast and precise, how fast."
"Doesn't matter, I can't physically move as fast as needed, you could with your super speed or whatever but I doubt you could learn to perform this type of surgery in what, five minutes." she said looking at her screen timer, the display counting down how long until the chance of survival became zero.
I looked at my hands as an idea formed in my head, and so I placed a single hand on her shoulder, "It's not speed, it's time." I spoke slowly as time around us slowed down by a fraction, just enough to where she could move fast enough to perform the surgery.
Marias eyes widened as she looked down at her tablet and began scanning while I removed my hand and stepped back a bit. "How long can you hold it."
"With all your stuff and you, about another minute."
She began cutting the body, "make it two."
I dropped down to my knees and clutched my side and focused as she began cutting, cleaning, stitching and fixing up the body. To her, she was working at a normal pace, to me, she was working at a normal pace, but if anyone else had been watching, to them Maria Kortez would be moving at a speed in which no medical professional has gone, hands blurring past organs and tissues fixing and closing pockets before blood even begun to consider leaking out.
***
I held out, with my injured body, with my depleted strength and powers. I held out for two minutes, and when I finally dropped forward with one hand keeping me steady on the floor, Maria had closed the last wound, tossing whatever was in her hands into her bag and leaning back flopping on her back panting.
"I want the deal back," she said between pants, "but this time, I want to study your brain and that arm."
I glanced at her, and then down at my arm, "I won't agree to it now, or probably ever, but you can test the arm, AFTER we get my friends body back and after we aren't on the verge of dying to each other or anyone else."
She sat up and scootched towards me and pushed me back down on my back, "Deal, now sit still while I patch you up, and then cover me when I do me in case someone or something comes."
I, didn't object.
***
My fingers wrapped around a chain as I gave it a firm pull causing the trap door above to unlock.
Climbing out, I turned and grabbed Maria's arm, pulling her up out of the hole before shutting the trapdoor over it and stepping back to view the room we were in. The chairs and table table were pushed to one side, on the floor was a rolled-up bit of tarp, a few bags, and a workbench at the end of the room.
Maria quickly ran to one end and up a set of stairs before coming back downstairs reading a note. Once done she crumpled it and tossed it on her workbench and sat at it crossing her legs and looking back at me.
"What now?" I ask taking a chair to sit on.
She reached over her bench and pulled open a curtain slightly and peaked outside, "you ever heard of Nexus?"
"Yea why."
"Since last year, they've been sneaking in down into the gambit and catching anyone on its outskirts and bringing them in for questioning. Your friends probably going to have his body parts displayed to show anyone else they capture 'what happens when you try and go against the law,' it's stupid really, they didn't kill him, only took his body right."
"Yea, so how do I get it back."
"Before that, how much about your powers do you really know, because it's going to be more confusing if I keep backtracking every time you seem confused." She said leaning back in her chair getting comfy.
"About as base line as possible, I remember being told I have the gene but not the limp for it to grow in I think."
"That's just, the absolute worst definition I've been told, it's not wrong per say but it's so dumbed down."
"and now you're going to enlighten me as to why."
"Shut up. Anyway yes, but the problem in that wording is it's not a gene that gives you powers, its two of them. Thousands of years ago one of the first people to research these genes was Dr. Diane Shaper, the best scientist of all time in my opinion. During her research she concluded that there are two genes in which she named the Xeon Genes after the first human recorded to have one, which was discovered in the man, Mar Xeon, who lived way before any kingdom existed. Using his bones and more recent corpses to her time as well as volunteer subjects, she discovered that the first gene, Xeon Alpha, was singular, and only found in one region of the body, arm, leg, liver, pancreases, etc. The key part being anyone who has one, only has one, not two, not one point five, one, only one power."
"So, the first gene gives the power, and the second one?"
"Well, it's more so that both give it. See the second gene Xeon beta, is everywhere, every cell of your body is a beta gene with a base power state of enhanced speed, strength, durability and all that, which the first thing they test for in newborns to see if they have Xeon Genes or not, and after the typical eight years, X-Alpha blooms and ignites into X-Beta all around it sharing its code. And that, is the simple but accurate way to explain how powers come about, two genes, one ignites the other after eight years and gives the person powers, also known as Xeon Abilities."
"For me it was slightly different, my Xeon Alpha as you called it was supposedly in my right arm, which never formed, so I had the blank base state, but not the power gene. This bionic was hooked up to me and my brain was probed and touched to convince it that i had an arm and that the cells need to bloom as you said."
Marias face lit up as she grabbed her tablet and began typing fast and editing her notes. She then locks eyes with me, "If what you said is true, then it means MY theory is true on my god."
For once I didn't see her annoyed, pissed, ticked off, this one time, Maria Kortez was happy with a smile on her face.
"And your theory is?"
The second those words left my mouth she jumped out of her seat and threw her tablet on the floor and it slid to the centre and lit up as a hologram of a human body formed while she walked over spreading her fingers causing it to respond and zoom in.