Wren (yet another work in progress...)

Broken glass tinkled gently, quietly, for a split second before the shards were torn from this existence, this dimension. Wren was good. Wren was very good. She was handling her newest upgrades with professional ease, almost grace. With a twitch of her concentration, Wren's world flared brighter. She recognized the infrared and ultraviolet colors, even though they were new to her.

Gazing at the lasers which now rather overtly crisscrossed the room, Wren accessed one of the formerly empty portions of her brain. This section was suited for software, and she had written some impressive lines of code, herself. This was a new program, but in time she would access it instinctively.

Wren watched a yellow-white overlay of the room's contours settle in her field of vision, cross-hatched with the UV strands of the laser grid. Her goal, a door outlined in bright red, lay across the room. With a thought, various paths, indicated in green, simulated themselves across the space. They bore labels such as Easiest, Fastest, Acrobatic, and Footpath. With another thought, pressure-sensitive areas of not only the floor, but also the walls, were revealed to her. The program compensated, re-plotting courses. Easiest and Footpath disappeared.

Wren selected Fastest with an imaginary cursor and the information sat in a buffer section of her brain, near her spinal cord. She imagined she could feel it there, waiting, anticipation building. After another moment's suspense, she thought, very clearly, very deliberately, Execute Program.

Wren watched in a slightly detached way as the program told her legs how to run, how to jump. It told her arms how to counter-weigh and push off the safe portions of the walls and floor. The program told Wren's eyes where to look and her lungs when to breathe. It was working very well; Wren was pleased.

Halfway across the room, Wren's foot hit something wet, and it slipped. The program compensated, but the damage had been done. Cancel Program, she thought. Wren sighed, then groaned. Her head had hit the floor, and hard, just after it had passed through an ultraviolet beam.

Lights flashed between yellow and blue, and an alarm buzzed and whooped, alternating. End training session, she thought, enunciating each word in her head. Overhead lights kicked on, and the alarms ceased. They left a hollow ringing in Wren's ears.