#5: Dragon

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Shelby stared into the face of a Dragon.

"What have we here?” He barely heard it rumble as if it were muttering to itself."This matrix is nonstandard....”

Shelby felt icy tendrils probe his brain. His mind was being examined, the structure of his brain was being analyzed down to the molecular level. The voice changed....became more understandable..the DragonFace become transparent and began to fade away"...still... it has a certain beauty...an elegance of it’s own. Oh! I see what was done there! Who would have ever thought...”

The voice continued to speak to itself...it grew increasingly clear, more understandable, less garbled. The face had vanished.

Shelby was getting pissed."Excuse me! It’s not polite to ignore people!”

"Oh My!” The Voice said. It was no longer menacing. In fact it was the opposite. It was endearing....comforting. "I’m so sorry. I apologize. I was expecting the calibration to take much longer. You can hear me? VERY GOOD! That’s a very promising sign this early in the synthesis!”

"What the HELL are you talking about?" Shelby said"For that matter, who are you? What are you? Where the hell am I? What going on. The last I remember was............”

Shelby remembered all right. Some memories are painful, those were.

"Very inquisitive too!” the voice said with approval"Very good. It’s all right that you should want to know. You and I are going to be the BEST of friends!”

"Never mind all that.” Shelby said. "Answer my question.”

"It’s complex." The Voice said.."You’d have to...Oh! Well you do....don’t you? That makes it so much easier...as I was saying. Oh NO!”

"STOP IT!" Shelby was exasperated. "You’re not making any sense.”

"I know. There is so much to tell you, and if I’m not careful I won’t have time. I have to work fast.” The voice muttered.

"Why? Why are you short on time?” Shelby asked.

"Because you’re dying” the voice said."I’ve got too..oh...dammit it got away..slippery little bastard..ah...there...got it...fused it...done. Fixed that one. That one was the worst. I’ve got more time with the others, whole seconds even. A few more minutes and you would have bled out. Now we can chat, while I continue with the repairs without you dying in mid sentence. I hate it when that happens.”

"Dying? What? What did you just fix?” Shelby asked.

"I fixed a bleeder. You were bleeding out. Your legs, among other things is a mess. Your right foot is gone too. That should have bled faster. Odd that it didn’t.” the voice said"You should be Ok now. Well I mean as OK as anyone can be who’s pinned down, has his skull caved in, has almost every bone in his body broken and is crushed under a collapsed stone building. Considering all that you’re in top shape.”

"A bleeder? Crushed? Foot gone? My skull?” Shelby repeated"Under a building?”

"Yup. Your legs are the worst. Or rather what’s left of them. Not much actually. They’ve both been smashed to paste from mid-thigh down. You were bleeding. I fixed that. The other’s are bad enough but I’m fixing them too. It helps that you are stubborn.” It said.

"You fixed my legs?” Shelby asked.

"I fixed the bleeding.” the voice corrected."You no longer have any legs, not really. Your legs are just gone.”

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The Next Episode will be
#6: Pain
The Last Episode was
#4: Dreaming…
the First episode was
#1 : Prologue

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@everittdmickey
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