Strata 21: Love and Loss Book of Immersion V2 by Sarnia de la Mare #scifi #audiobook

All episodes at www.taletellerclub.com Welcome to Immersion, You have reached Strata 21. Strata 21: Love and Loss.

Love is not always a warm hand or a soothing voice. Sometimes love is as sharp as a samurai sword and it severs deep ties once longed for. It can lacerate the flesh of existence so deep it bleeds and spews all that a human has ever known.
As a mother cuts the cord, as a friend ends a lie, these ties once meant to bind are decimated. What remains when they are gone is loss in search of gain.
Love, in its truest form, does not always choose comfort, it chooses survival.
To lose love is to learn its weight. To survive it's loss is to grow something in its place. Its replacement is built from evolution, so deeply magnificent and important to all humans. But love does not need a host, it exists without a vessel, and it is sought.

Shabra’s hands were stained with blood.
The echo of Renyke’s cry still clung to the air. He had yelped like an animal as Shabra had pinned him down. Flex had gone, his wounded body dragged into the shadows by Redact’s *runners. 
Renyke lay still. He was breathing and regaining consciousness, opening his eyes to a bright sun and a sense of history repeating itself. Shabra leaned close, brushing hair from his temple.
"You're okay," she stated matter-of-factly, though she couldn't know for sure.
On the back of his neck was a wound, now stitched, cleaned and cauterised.
“I had to,” she told him. “She was overriding you. I couldn’t let her keep speaking through your mouth. You deserve to hear yourself, not her. *'Sides you need to let go of all that code shit, be a man."
He didn’t answer. His breathing was shallow but regular. 
The removal had gone technically well. The damage POS had done to his emotional regulators, less so.
“You’ll stabilise,” she murmured. “But you may not understand why it hurts. Change hurts. We move on.”
POS lay on a rock, immobilised, now without a host and devoid of her power. No flicker remained and this was death, thought Shabra, who was used to death in the *zones. Humans and machines do not last forever after all.
“You had your chance,” she had said as she pulled it ceremonially from Renyke's neck. “Now he gets his.”
Shabra let Renyke sleep for three hours, watching his silent mind as it readjusted to its new state. 
He blinked once. Twice. He was alive, a strong and handsome man born of code and now transformed.
He sat up too fast, then froze. 
"It feels so quiet, no buzz, no electricity.” he exclaimed, slightly confused as he recalled the circumstances of how he had got there.
“Has POS gone?” Renyke touched his neck and winced.
Shabra nodded.
“Yes.”
“She was part of your architecture Mr Renyke, It’ll feel strange. But you’ll adapt, we all gotta grow up sometime.”
But it was no time to get sentimental. 
“You’re safe for now, they can't trace you, not without POS, but we need to get moving soon. It's time to disappear. I have a feeling they'll want you dead or alive.” 


At Redact Flex is undergoing a serious grilling for losing POS and not killing Renyke.
He stood before the Cadre in silence. He wasn't used to failure and it showed.
"I didn't see it coming," he expained, "she came out of nowhere and put a gun to my head. That woman is a threat to anyone, ballsy and cold. Then she knocked me out."
Eventually, Cadre Dominia spoke. “We understand it was a difficult situation but you were careless. They are no doubt long gone by now.”
"We need to examine the experiment "said Cadre Angelique."We believe the POS has been removed and Renyke may be value to us. The experiment may have more revelations without the interference of his POS." 
Flex nodded in agreement. "I can find them, the zones are my grounds, no one c