Porcelyn Cracked- rough 1st edit

Chapter 13

13

Artemis sat at Seth's makeshift shop behind in the manor, he was tinkering with the readings from Artemis's brain and electrodes, making sure there was no permanent damage to the unit. Raye had beaten him up and cracked his skin in several places, Seth had watched the security footage from the house to see exactly what had been done, but the camera had been knocked off angle during the fight and all he saw at the end was Raye bend down to mess with Artemis's head.

At the moment, all he could see was some information was removed from the unit but had been placed back in (rather hastily it seemed) and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the unit now that it had been slightly repaired. Seth knew that if Artemis was going to protect Jamie in the jail cell, he needed to make sure he wasn't sending in a reprogrammed unit that could be a killer instead of a servant. He rubbed his eyes as he looked over the readouts again, making sure everything was within parameters, and most things were, the only thing was that the Nano count was slightly different than it was supposed to be, but perhaps in the scuffle with Raye, Artemis could have lost some fluids if the injury had been enough to puncture his body.

He tapped a small button on the tablets screen, and another diagnostic started to run on the idle unit now sitting in the room. Across the table sat another heap of parts that had once been Jamie's lookalike. Seth had pulled every string he had at the factory to get that rush ordered, it was a new part of the program that very few people knew about. You could replicate the looks of a person, dead or alive, so long as you had an accurate scan of the person's face and body. Seth had lied and told the program manager that he needed it for a presentation to Lord Robin to show him the new unit so that he could possibly grant money towards the project. Needless to say, when he had informed them that the unit was damaged from Raye, they quickly pulled his clearance and blocked his messages. Lord Robin would have to intercede with the people who ran the program (as a shareholder he had some pull yet) and see if Seth could at least be reinstated somewhat, there were still so many things he had to research and check on. His guilt racked him every moment, waking and sleeping, if he had just repaired her and sent her back, or just sent her to be destroyed, then none of this, no deaths, would be on his hands.

The second diagnostic would take a few hours, so Seth rubbed his weary eyes once more and then decided that the morning would be time enough to look over the readouts. He stood up from his table and turned off the small green lamp that had been his main source of light for some time now. He needed rest, he wasn't fully recovered from his last enforced work binge under Anh and then Raye. He walked towards the door, with a quick glance at Artemis before leaving the room and closing the door. There was a guard posted outside of the door in case something had gone wrong with Artemis after Raye had messed with his brain. Seth had tried to reassure Lord Robin, but he agreed at this point the precaution was better than not doing anything.

Seth reached his small room down the hall, Lord Robin and Evangeline must have already turned in for the night, as they were nowhere to be seen, it was well after midnight already and in Evangeline's condition, she needed rest like Seth did. He opened the door to his room and clicked on a small light on the nightstand once he reached the bed. He sat there for a moment, staring at his hands, with one thought racing through his mind.