Chapter 17 - The Philosophy of Throwing Hands

So he had motives, or at least motives relating to what they planned on doing with him if not what they wanted in general.

He shook off the stirrings of disappointment and envy. There was history there, with Old Uari and the Gravts, and it was clear that they wanted Old Uari back. If Old Uari was as attached to them as they were to him, it was likely that Old Uari would probably want to go back to them, too.

It was hard to consider them the same person. They might share the same body, but his identity as a Searcher and his wishes...New Uari felt oddly possessive of all of the things that made him who he was. Even if they were all fabricated, even if they all ultimately meant nothing. If they wiped his memories, he would cease to exist as a person. There would be a New Uari 2 who would carry out their mission, sans thumb drive, and then the trigger would restore Old Uari, who would accept New Uari 2's memories.

What of his current self, then? Was it his prerogative to respect what Old Uari might have wanted as the 'original owner' of their body and consciousness?

New Uari didn't want to die. He had a lot of money and a daughter that he was extremely attached to. He'd just had a taste of VIP treatment. He wanted to go back and hire Dituri.

He didn't want these feelings to become a backseat to whatever mission Old Uari was supposed to have done.

Io seemed to have become restless at his silence and stood up abruptly to leave with Glasses, pulling the door open with another painful screech. Uari winced but resolved himself.

"I won't go willingly."

Io paused at the doorway and looked back, his robes outlining the shape of yet another weapon at his hips. Just like Valen. It was likely that they always had weapons under their clothes, then. His eyes softened when he looked at Uari, all trussed up on the crappy mattress on the ground.

"I told you: it doesn't matter. We all want Uari back."

Io left with a dramatic flourish of robes, as all teenage boys were wont to do. Glasses lingered for a moment, watching as Io stepped away.

"Uari will be glad we returned his memories to him," Glasses said with conviction, yellow scarf and red earmuffs still glaringly funny despite the serious mood of the conversation. "No matter how much I dislike him—you—Uari is an essential part of the Gravts. He will return."

Uari said nothing because he would have disagreed, and that might have caused him to receive another injury. Glasses screeched the door closed, and Uari was once again left alone with his thoughts.

Dammit, they didn't let him go after all!

Unlike last time, Uari had no desire to escape. He still didn't have enough information about what they were trying to do or what they wanted from him, and his consciousness was in danger of being erased completely. He didn't want to die, and he needed to know what they were doing and who they were so he could avoid them later on when he had Iria with him.

He would be too exposed and too far away if he were to escape. He needed to stay, heal, and find some answers while avoiding being wiped. There was zero chance that he would be allowed to snoop around and an even lesser chance of anyone just answering his questions again. It was obvious that there was only one thing left to do:

Once again, he would need to resort to violence.

But first, his dramatic ass would need to release and heal himself. The chains were strong, but Uari had wiggled out of worse. The handcuffs and zip ties were a minor issue that he would address later. His broken leg was a major problem that he would need to deal with, but he hoped it didn't hinder his attempts at escaping.

He began by slowly pushing himself up against the wall; luckily for him, the mattress muffled any suspicious sounds he might have made on the concrete walls and floors. Once he was sitting up, he began to make minute moves to shift the chains around.

Glasses had been too easy on him and probably thought the handcuffs and zip ties were enough because the chains were heavy and big and weren't really tight enough around him to prevent him from wiggling them down his shoulders.

Each link was about the size of his palm, and while they were heavy—his leg was absolutely moaning in pain by now—they weren't much of a deterrent in terms of locking him down. Maybe it was just that they didn't have the good, smaller chains available. He'd give them the benefit of the doubt.

Once the chains were down around his waist, he began the excruciating task of extricating himself and his leg. Now that his arms were free, he had a little more leeway to manoeuvre but did his best to just move things along regardless of the pain. He could just heal later, and he really needed to get going lest Glasses or Uari returned.

He bit down on his lip hard and tasted blood as he successfully pulled his broken leg away from the mess of chains left on the mattress.

The next part would be equally as painful because it would require him to stand, and then squat, and his leg was broken.

He struggled and stood, putting all of his weight on one leg, and then dragged himself over to the walls and leaned heavily against a corner for support. There, he slowly began the blindingly painful process of removing his subspace storage.

Once released from the extremely uninteresting place of storage, he gathered it into shaking hands and opened it to summon several healing pills. Uari swallowed them promptly without water and was granted near-instantaneous relief from included anaesthesia as his body's healing factors accelerated to knit his bones back together.

It would still take him some time to be fully restored, even if those were the most expensive pills available on the market. Technology wasn't an end-all, be-all. He pulled out a set of clothes from the bag. They were the best the weapons store had to offer, marked for high defensiveness, and capable of taking shots from light tasers and sonic rings as well as other weapons. He pulled on the tighter underclothes, buckled his pants, and began the process of filling every possible pocket with weapons, charges, pills, and possible escape mechanisms. The subspace storage went right back to where it came from.

Once his leg's function was fully restored, he began to set up.