Inside the room, lights were focused on haphazardly arranged tables. There were cages of metal ribs lining the room. Phyrexians of various sizes were moving between the tables.
They were chrome-type Phyrexians like Tezzeret’s. One had a chrome breast and head, and unnaturally high shoulders. Each of its huge claws was festooned with blades and needles, and both of these claws were inside the cracked-open chest of a human lying on a table. The human was jerking and writhing as the surgeon pulled parts out and looked at them. A huge Phyrexian with a tiny skeletal head and patched-together arms as long as its legs held the humans down. As they watched in stunned silence, the blade-handed surgeon took out the human’s liver and dropped it unceremoniously on the table with a splat. Another Phyrexian, with strips of discolored iron wrapped around its body, poked at the liver with its sharpened finger lances, while its other hand, shaped like scissors, snipped bits off.
Elspeth screamed.
It was a sound like none Venser had ever heard-a primal, rage-filled shriek. She ran forward and cut the first Phyrexian she met, leaving two hewn parts to slip to the floor. Her sword moved like a blur and two more Phyrexians fell. Elspeth’s face was a grim mask and her blows were harder and less focused than normal-more wild hacking than anything else. She bellowed in a language Venser couldn’t identify as she butchered every Phyrexian in the room.
Some of the chrome Phyrexians behind Venser twitched, but Tezzeret looked at them once and they stopped moving.
When Elspeth reached the nearest surgery, the large orderly Phyrexian raised his meaty arms from the patient and had them severed neatly at the forearm. The next flurried cut came fast on the heels of the first, and the Phyrexian’s body slid apart in seven places. The surgeon pulled a syringed claw from the muck in the human’s body but was cut down in place, still with one claw in the human’s thorax. The Phyrexian doctor that had sliced up the liver looked from Elspeth to its chrome brethren at the doorway. The frantic knight’s sword swept down with an overhead strike that split its head and shoulders from each other.
Elspeth turned and hacked at the side of the next Phyrexians, tears running down her cheeks, and strings of drool coming from the corners of her mouth.
There were perhaps twelve Phyrexians when they entered, but they were soon dispatched. Elspeth sunk to the bloody, reeking floor, still holding her sword, and began to cry in wrenching sobs. Venser walked toward her. Unexpectedly, the person who had been on the table sat up. With no orderly, the human tried to stand, its stomach open. It fell on the floor. As Venser passed the cages, the beings within began to moan. They reached from between the rib bars and clutched at his clothes with weak, white fingers.
Venser reached Elspeth and bent down and put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away. He glanced at her sword before speaking.
“What is this place?” Venser said. He walked back toward Tezzeret. Koth was standing off to the side with eyes wider than Venser had ever seen. The Vulshok’s vents at his ribs were wide and red. Venser could almost see the steam coming out of his ears.
“This is an experimentation chamber,” Tezzeret said calmly, looking at his fingernails. Clearly the sight of all the carnage did not bother him in the least.
“And this does not affect you?” Venser said.
“This arm,” Tezzeret said. “Is made of etherium, as you know. I had to collect it painstakingly over time, from bodies sometimes. I found them anywhere I could. I pulled them dead out of gutters after bar fights.”
Venser stared at the beast standing before him.
“From filth and weak flesh,” Tezzeret said, “to this purity.” He flexed his shining arm. “Phyrexians strive to have flesh, to be of flesh. They fail to see that flesh is what makes them dirty and weak.”
Elspeth’s sobs continued. Suddenly Venser was very tired and he felt as though he might be sick. Sick from what Tezzeret was telling him. Sick from what he had just seen. No, there was a level he would not pass. You could offer him four etherium limbs and he would not take them if the metal had to be extracted from bodies. “Why did you bring us here?” Venser said wearily.
Tezzeret raised his etherium arm and pointed. “For her.”
Tezzeret’s finger pointed to a cage on the far wall. Koth was closer, and he moved toward it, stepping carefully over the lumped bodies of the Phyrexians. It took Venser longer to reach the cage. Koth was already peering in by the time he arrived. Venser looked at the cage’s lock, which resembled nothing so much as a human heart of pocked metal. The artificer whispered words of power, moving mana to his hands from his head, and put his fingers into the lock’s suddenly pliable metal. He moved his fingers around until the door swung open. Inside, a figure lay on the floor. Koth walked into the cage. Soon he came out with the female human. She was dressed in leather, an unusual material to use for clothes on Mirrodin, Venser knew. Must be from another plane, he thought. Aside from that she appeared a normal human, except she needed a good scrubbing.
Venser turned to Tezzeret.
“Do you notice anything about her?” Tezzeret said.
Elspeth stopped crying. She looked at the human.
“No,” Venser said. “A human from somewhere else.”
“Is she from somewhere else?”
“She’s not Mirran,” Koth said.
“No?” Tezzeret said.
“She’s got no metal,” Koth said, looking at the human with barely hidden disgust.
“Ahhh,” Tezzeret said.
“What is your name?” Venser said.
The woman did not answer. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.
“Do you have a name?” Koth said.
“Leave her be,” Elspeth said thickly. “Can you not see she is shocked to be free? Unlock the other cages. Let the wretches out.”
“I would not do that,” Tezzeret said.
“Why?” Venser said.
“They are mostly Phyrexian. They would strive to kill you. This place studies Phyrexian transformation.”
“But she has no phyresis,” Koth said, staring at the woman. “Not any that I can see.”
Tezzeret nodded. His little smile reappeared. “Exactly.”
Venser looked back at the woman. All flesh and no infection, he thought. As he watched, she teetered and then sat down abruptly.
Tezzeret gestured to the woman. “They have been looking at this fleshling for some time. She does not succumb to the oil that spreads their infection. That is why she is not mangled. They pour the oil on her. They inject it under her skin. Still she defies infection. Nobody knows why.”
“She is the key to fighting their vile spread,” Elspeth said.
Tezzeret nodded.
“And how are you not infected?” Koth said.
“I have certain other advantages,” Tezzeret said. “Leading among these is my facility with etherium.”
“But look at her,” Koth said. “What I see here is something made to slow us down. This thing cannot travel with us.”
The fleshling’s head was weaving.
“Is that blood?” Elspeth said.
They rushed over to where the fleshling was sitting. Blood was running freely around her on the metal floor. Venser walked around her looking for the wound. The leather rags she was wearing were sodden on her back. He carefully pulled the leather back, and saw a yawning incision barely held together with crude, pocked staples.
“I am inclined to agree with Koth,” Venser said. “How can we move quickly with such a wounded one?”
“Have you seen nothing, artificer?” Tezzeret challenged. “This one is not infected by the plague. That does not interest you?”
“What interests me is your motivation for giving us this being.”
Tezzeret smiled. “And what a gift.”
Elspeth hurried around behind the fleshling. Just then a shiver went through the muscle of the room’s flesh wall. At the far end of the room a single eye snapped open and the golden iris dilated as it took in the light. It
