The Legendary Junkmaster

Chapter 138: ANT-V (3)

Jason's eyes flickered open to find himself in a strange room. His body felt weak as he glanced around to see curtains around the unfamiliar bed he was lying in. He could slightly hear other voices in the room which confused him. 'Did Sentinel get us out of there?' Jason ran a hand across his forehead, only for it to come away covered in sweat. 

His mind felt fuzzy as he recalled his strange dream. He was dragged through a battlefield and forced to watch as those closest to him were killed by unknown invaders. 'What the hell was that all about...' 

"Finally! My internal clock shows that we've been shut down for several weeks! What the hell did you do?" Syssie sounded mad but concerned at the same time as she glanced over Jason's body. Not that it was necessary, as she was currently scanning his body from the inside out to get an idea of what was going on.

"I'm fine... It's nothing to worry about..." Jason groaned as he tried to get out of bed.

"Don't!" Syssie screeched, startling Jason in the process.

"What?" Jason was confused until he realised that something was wrong. "I... can't feel my legs..."

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Jason frowned as he looked at two lines in the blanket covering him. A sense of fear washed over him. His hand trembled as he reached for the edge of the blanket. Syssie bit her lower lip as he pulled the blanket aside...

Jason was too shocked to even react to what he saw. His legs, or what was left of them, were heavily bandaged. From what he could see, it looked like they had withered away to nothing but bones. 'Is this... The price for using that serum?' Hot tears appeared in the edges of his eyes as he stared at the bandages. 

Syssie shook her with a grim expression. 'His muscles in his legs have wasted away. It'll take months to recover from this. That's time that we don't have...' Jason let out a small sob which seemed to attract the attention of whoever else was in the room beyond the curtains. The curtains were pulled back and an older man with grey streaks through his short brown hair peered at him through his glasses. 

"Call Lord Sentinel! Quickly!" The man shouted over his shoulder before closing the curtain behind him. "How do you feel? Any pain? What's the last thing that you remember?"

The man pressed Jason for answers to a bunch of questions before he could come to terms with what had happened to his body. He answered like an emotionless robot as he continued to stare at his legs throughout what felt like an interrogation. The man slowly shook his head when he understood that Jason had been mentally traumatised. 

"They're not too far gone you know..." The man said with some warmth in his voice. "They'll recover with time and effort..."

Jason regained some light to his eyes when he heard that, but still could not bring himself to answer. 'I need to find a way to speed it up...' Jason's mind had already started to think of ways to make his legs recover faster. The only reason he had not started thinking about it before was the shock and that he thought that they were too far gone.

The man sighed when he saw that Jason was unresponsive before he left Jason alone with his thoughts. Jason continued to sit in silence until he heard heavy footsteps moving about outside. As the footsteps grew close he could not help but stare at the curtain. Moments later, they were torn down to reveal Sentinel staring back at him!

"Ok, you've rested long enough. Let's go." Sentinel marched over to the bed and lifted Jason into a princess carry. His legs dangled like a pair of wet noodles as he protested. "Quit your whining. You can't be trying to tell me you'd rather be stuck here than fixing the problem."

Jason immediately became quiet at those words as Sentinel turned around. When he did so, Jason could finally see the wheelchair that Sentinel had brought along. His eyes went wide as he looked at it. It was nothing special but it sparked a few ideas in his mind. Images flashed through his brain about the dream he had. 

'If I remove the wheels and turn it into an exoskeleton, I could give it mechanically controlled legs...' The idea was a long way from what he had produced in his dream. But it was a start. Sentinel nodded when he saw that Jason had a fire in his eyes.

'Good, he hasn't given up. I'll have to help him with whatever he wants to do for now. Until his legs recover anyway...' Sentinel gave Jason a sideways look as he placed him in the chair. 'It seems like he already has something in mind.' The strange pair walked through the halls of the compound as Sentinel brought Jason back to their private area. 

'I'll wait awhile before I let him know that he'll be going back to Highrise for his recovery. If I tell him now it would seem like I'm kicking him to the curb because he's useless...' Sentinel sighed as he shook his head. 'Which is far from the truth...'

Sentinel could not help but think of the progress that the researchers had made with the reports. It was looking to be promising. Plus, they had seized the unbroken vials of serum that Jason still had on him which helped to advance the research quickly. 'Hopefully, Rust can recover the whale's body. It would be interesting to see what kind of serum we can get from that beast.'

Sentinel's cybernetic eye flashed as he calculated the possibilities. Each one would increase the Empire's combat capability by a large margin. 'Maybe we can finally turn our attention outwards instead of fighting internally all of the time...'

Jason paid no attention to Sentinel, who was lost in his thoughts. As soon as they entered the hall, he wheeled his way over to the junk piles as he started picking the things that he would need. 'It just needs to be a working smaller version of the ANT-V...'