Seventh Read Online Free

the next five- to six-hundred years to live out your life the way you wanted to, and the military med facilities would be open to you any time you needed them.   Otherwise, you had to pay for Vigor treatments out of pocket, and not many people could hope to afford that.  Seventy years of life without Vigor, or a hundred years of service for almost ten times that?  The answer was simple for most people. 
                "Do we have your consent to perform the procedure?"  The doctor asked, and I knew she'd phrased it that way so that Odyssey would store a record of my answer in the ship's log.  Medical consent for military covered procedures had to be recorded. 
                "Yes."  I answered, and a sense of relief flooded through me.  Soon I would be alright, and I wouldn't even remember the madness I'd been involved since waking up in my bunk. 
                "Good, now we're going to restrain you for the procedure, but I don't want you to panic.  This is just in case you lapse back into DSD before the rebuild is complete.  We don't want you to hurt yourself or anyone else."
                I nodded and the attending nurses went about fastening small black cuffs around my arms, legs and neck.  I'd been cuffed before, for my Vigor treatments, so I was familiar with sensation of numbing relaxation that spread through my body as the restraints took effect.  It felt like drifting into sleep, but somehow infinitely more comfortable.  I even managed a slight smile.  The stretcher I was on rounded a corner and we entered the medical facility.
                I couldn't see much from where I was laying, but I did momentarily glimpse another occupied stretcher with a restrained patient.  The voices around me were becoming blurry and difficult to follow.  The full effects of the restraints were kicking in.  When I woke back up again I would be fine. 
                I closed my eyes.
                "James."  A voice whispered close to my ear, and my eyes shot open.  My vision was blurry, unfocused from the medical restraints, but I could just make out the outline of the doctor leaning over me. 
                "I just want you to know, James, that I'm going to cut you apart while you're under.  I'm going to use my laser scalpel to flay the flesh from your body, and then I'm going to wake you up while me and my assistants pull out your insides and look for the darkness you're hiding.  Do you understand, Jimmy?  We can smell it in your guts, and we want it."
                I tried to shake my head, to open my mouth in protest, but the inhibitors restraining my motion had settled into full effect.  It must be the DSD.  The chemical balancer they'd given me was wearing off.  That's what I was seeing.  
                "Oh, but you look worried?  There is no point in worrying now.  Just lay back and enjoy the experience.  Just imagine the wonderful things we will do to you, and when we're done with you, we'll get your family next."  A grin split the doctor’s face, contorting her features from the caring parental appearance I'd first associated with her, into some twisted caricature of what it had once been.  It seemed as though her features had been gouged into a hunk of round flesh with an oil soaked scalpel.  Black swallowed her eyes, red tears seeped from their glistening corners, and her mouth was a void torn across her face ending in jagged, torn flesh. 
                She leaned in closer, until her face was just inches from my own.  Up close I could see that her teeth were filed to needle sharp points, and at the center of her deep black eyes was a burning green light.  "You think you understand what is happening, James Wright, but you can't begin to understand us.  We will destroy everything you love so completely that you won't recognize the remnants."
                It has to be