Vera Marcovic was asleep when it all started. A 16-hour-shift at the clinic, then a drive home, and then it had felt like she had only just shut her eyes when her complant woke her with a call from Sarif. It was one of the earlier models and slightly mis-calibrated to her nervous system, a subdermal implant that stimulated the nerves with something like a mild electrical shock. She had fancier ones now, the ones that did require Neuropozyne and interfaced directly with her nervous system, but at the time she hadn't liked the idea of having to take pills for the rest of her life just for a glorified phone. She almost regretted the decision now: there was a slight synesthesia every time she received a call which wouldn't happen with the newer models. The static-shock discomfort of the complant's buzzer would register as a greenish color on the edge of her vision for a minute or so.

She sighed, rising into a fetal position sitting on the bed with her head curled over her knees, rubbing her eyelids. "Yes?"

"Vera, it's David. I need you down in DMC, pronto."

There was a ragged-edged stress in the voice which she had come to associate with worried relatives and friends just outside ER doors. "David, what's wrong?"

Wry laughter. "It's all over the news. Didn't wake you, did I?"

"I." She was already moving, pulling her work clothes back on from where she'd discarded them. Time check on her internal clock: 2 hours since she'd fallen asleep. "I had just finished my shift at the clinic. I've had rather a long day."

"Yeah. Well, it's gonna get longer. I've got a patient for you. Can you take charts on this thing?"

"Send it over."

Vera was almost used it now: the frenzied sensation of data being piped into her mind, registering almost as an extended muscular spasm that radiated itchingly from the implant and up her neck. PEDOT circuitry, newer brain-machine interface models that embedded themselves into her brain tissue almost like cactus spines, parsed and interpreted for her. The data trickled down into her like rainwater along a drain pipe, and it took until she was getting the car started for the upload to finish.

It took a few seconds for her to take it all in.

Trauma injury to the brain. Gunshot wound. Severe hematoma around the site.

Endless series of trauma to his back. Glass fragments embedded in chest cavity, extensive damage to pretty much all internal organs except the heart, what looked like a metal beam protruding through his right shoulder. The spinal cord was probably severed in a dozen places.

Shattered humerus, fractures in ulna and radius of left arm.

Even below that, a slew of soft tissue injuries. Cuts and bruises, sprained and torn ligaments and muscles littered across the wreck of his body.

She'd been doing this long enough that something automated took over. She mulled it all over as her body drove towards the Detroit Medical Center.

"David, I think you have the wrong number. You should call a mortician."

"Not funny."

"There are three different injuries, at the minimum, which will almost certainly kill him within a few hours at most. Internal organ damage, most notably throughout his lungs, will be causing severe bleeding. There is no way he has less than three breaks in his spinal cord, and neurogenic shock will already have set in. And then, of course, there is the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead."

"Look, the docs here told me all that already. He's going into the ICU, they'll have their work cut out for him just keeping him stable. I'm not calling you to do the hospital's job. All they're gonna do is keep him alive while you do yours."

Vera sighed. "David, I hardly thought you of all people would need to hear this from me. Cybernetic prostheses can do miracles now, but there is a reason we implant them long after the patient has stabilized. Provoking an immune response from the body while it is already dealing with the trauma of injury will hardly increase this 'Jensen's' odds of survival."

"Well, we don't have a lot of choices here, Doc. I'll give you the tools and the augments. You plug 'em in, replace the damage before it kills him." Vera had known David for years, and he had a way of overriding people with a mix of charm and bullish bluntness that she still wasn't able to sidestep. He talked over the beginnings of her protests. "You'll have the best technology to work with, I promise you. Give me a dossier of whoever else you want in the operating room with you, I'll make sure you get 'em. Sarif's 100 percent behind our boy in here."

"He is going to die, David. There isn't enough money in the world to bribe Death."

"Bet you a handsome donation to LIMB that you're wrong."

Vera rolled her eyes, but hit the accelerator. The city lights around her began to blur. "I suppose you can afford a speeding ticket, as well?"

"Of course. Whatever it takes."

"Then I'll see you in a few minutes, Mr. Sarif."

"Good. And your team?"

Vera thought for a moment. "I think your team from Sarif will do fine, David. Barring any personal attachments getting in the way of-"

"They're not." David had to start again, tiredly. "That's not possible, Vera."

"I see." She decided not to push the subject. "In that case, I suppose Dr Yan, at the hospital, is the only surgeon I would trust with this operation. I will handle the machine-body interactions. That leaves proper selection and engineering of the implants."

"I'll do it."

"David, you haven't explained what happened to Sarif but it hardly sounds like you have the time."

"I'll do it. I owe him that."

Not to mention, Vera didn't say, that it's possible that the only one you can trust right now is you.

"We're en route to the hospital as we speak," said David. "I'll get Yan on the job, and I'll meet you there."

Adam Jensen looked worse in person. As Vera hurried down through corridors at the behest of her implants, she nearly ran into the pack of doctors coming the other way with her patient. Jensen was bloody and limp, his body barely visible beneath a pile of sterile plastic tubes and bandages soaked with red. There was a ventilator over his mouth already. Vera saw Yan in the middle of them. "CT probe shows the bullet caused severe hematoma," one of the doctors was saying. "We need to repair that artery!" She stood at the side of the corridor and let them rush past her. Behind them trailed David Sarif.

He looked more haggard than she'd ever seen him. The veneer of slick CEO smoothness that he normally secreted reflexively was completely absent, and in his eyes there was something like desperation. At least he didn't look injured, at or not physically. But she could see flecks of red on his robotic hand, long dried. He moved shellshocked, and didn't seem to recognize her until she walked up to him and touched his shoulder. David actually jumped very slightly, twisted to look at her.

"Vera," he said, shaking her hand. "It's good to have you here."

"David, what happened?" In front of them the doctors continued their mad rush towards an ER room with Jensen. Vera had to hold Sarif back to stop him from following at the same pace. "As you said earlier, David, the doctors here have their jobs to do. I won't be needed for several minutes yet."

"But I am," said Sarif. Momentarily the David she knew came back, gave her a sly grin. "Engineering side always takes the longest to get its act together, right? Gotta get the team back home moving. Gotta get Jensen's new parts ready for you to implant them." He patted her on the shoulder and disappeared into the augmented confines of his own head, communing with his company.

They walked down the worn hallway together, the gridded LED lights above uncomfortably bright, David Sarif present but absent. The ER room doors slid open for them at a wave of Vera's card, much to her surprise. David managing to clear her for hospital work in a matter of a couple hours was an almost miraculous display of hospital bureaucracy. Brief passage through a sterilization airlock and a few moments spent putting on smocks before they entered, during which time David came back mentally from wherever he'd gone.

They'd picked the right room for Jenson. It was equipped with a robotic surgeon, and Vera recognized the model as a relatively versatile one meant for emergency surgery and cybernetic augmentation. It hung above Adam Jensen, spiderlike, waiting.

"Come on, Adam," said David Sarif. Most of his face was hidden behind the smock. "Stay with us."