Atlas: Infinity Verge Trilogy: Book II Read Online Free PDF Page A

Abel remembered the plasma tearing into the back of his calve searing and burning his flesh. The nerves were dead almost immediately, but he remembered the smell. It was an acrid smoky smell, the smell of burned flesh.
    It was the smell that still disturbed him. It was so similar to a steak on the grill - with just a hint of burning hair. Abel flexed the muscle in his upper left thigh causing his robotic leg to respond. The flexing caused the knee to jerk just as it would in a reflex test. For all intents, the robotic leg made him whole, even if he didn’t feel it. Abel could still feel the ghost limb even when he could look and see that it was gone. The mechanical leg helped, but it wasn’t the same. He focused on his leg as if this was the cause of his incompleteness, but he knew that was a lie.
    Abel stood and dressed, pulling a pair of baggy cargo pants over his legs and up to his waist. He stood and buckled his belt and plasma pistols holster on. The holsters were too light. He had yet to replace the missing pistols after Quintar VII - when he had been arrested. The New Exodus Law Enforcement Division - who called themselves NE LED - had not been kind. His weapons, as well as his pride, had been stolen from him. Abel remembered the dank pit and the shock collar like it was yesterday. A year had passed and he still felt the sting.
    Abel stared at himself in the mirror. His five o’clock shadow dominated the majority of his jawline and chin. The rough brown stubble across his scalp was getting longer.
    I’ll need to cut it soon, he thought.
    Abel stared at his own eyes in the reflection, hazel brown with hints of green creeping in around the outer iris. He considered the phenomenon of the nanites’ effect on human eyes. It seemed a simple thing, but every human with nanites he had met bore the same marking around the outer iris of their eyes. Sometimes it was green other times blue, but there was always a hint of glow around the iris.
    Human nanites had been designed to improve thought process, metabolism, and body synergy. In Abel’s body, a host of Quintarran nanites also flowed. The Quintarrans had taken their technology much further than humans. The alien nanites affected muscle tissue and bone density primarily, but there was a slight increase in thought process as well. The nanites were one of the reasons most EXOs were so difficult to kill. The same Quintarran nanites still flowed through their blood and enhanced them beyond human capability.
    The effect the Quintarran nanites had on Abel Cain was long lasting. He still woke some mornings with sore muscles and fatigue as if he had been drained to sustain the nanites. Abel knew it was foolish, but the thoughts that he was no longer human still crept in. The fatigue he felt each morning reinforced his fears. Abel often felt as if he had been hollowed out and replaced by something else. Rather than face his fears he blamed the fatigue on his recurring nightmares. The nightmares - the loss of Zee and the Kodiak - were easier to understand than any sort of barrier he’d crossed in using the Quintarran nanites.
    Abel understood his dreams and their meanings, but another part of him still feared the nanites were irrevocably changing him. Abel had always been unique, but the nanites from his human lineage and those from Zee had merged and complemented each other. The nanites had changed him. Whether that change was for better or worse, he couldn’t say.
    Abel tried not to think of Zee. He stopped staring into the reflection of his eyes - into his past and his soul. Instead, he examined his upper torso and arms. Abel thought about his time in the EFNF, before the EXOs and the EXO Prime. He still bore the tattoos from his time in Exodus Fleet. Upon his left breast lay the spread wings of a raven. The tattoo marked him as one of the few elite RAVEN-S pilots. Later, when he had joined the fight on the ground, he had obtained a tattoo of the mythical satyr. The dwarfish