Become one.”
The ex-soldier smiled, showing off the great lacerations in his cheeks. “Let me introduce my boss, Miss Yalda Danan.”
He stepped out of Hellequin’s sightline, allowing a new figure to move into view. The woman was Sirinese, her hair tucked up under a blood-stained bandana. Wisps of it escaped to frame her face, like shreds of clothhod fleece caught on barbed wire. Her nose was hooked, the nostrils large and flared – holes into her soul. She was crumpled with age, the necklace of small, bird-like bones around her neck betraying witch doctor inclinations. Smiling, she showed off the dull black stubs of her teeth.
“Good morning, Sir. Yes, it is indeed morning, although an hour or so short of sunrise. Never mind though, you and I, we have our work to do, wouldn’t you say?” She tried for familiarity and kindness; the range of surgical instruments she examined under the weak gaslight as she spoke suggested she was anything but.
Hellequin bucked against his restraints. His heart pulsed behind his ribs. “I’ve been rearranged enough for one lifetime,” he muttered and thrashed his head side to side... Only to be terrified anew when he saw another figure stretchered on a second table. Nim’s luxuriant red hair flowed around a steaming gas mask. Her entire face was covered by the mask, a black rubber and glass arrangement with a protruding snout and a great many mechanical buckles fastening it in place. Hellequin could hear the bubble of steam, alongside the draw and ebb of gas fed into the mask. Nim was anaesthetised – at least he prayed she was with every last trace of religious principle he possessed. She had been disrobed and cut open, a mess of bloody wires protruding from one arm.
“I will tear out your throat, bitch,” he told the surgeon through gritted teeth.
“Oh, there now. No need to be unpleasant. We each have our jobs to do and, well, since your Daxware requires you to protect those you serve with, it seems you didn’t do your job very well when it comes to the little lady. Then again, as Lars tells it, you never were quite wired right in that regard.” The wizen witch shook her head as she held up the long needle of a surgical suture. “Leaving a soldier behind? It’s a sin the Saints themselves could not forgive. And all that talk of protocol? Just a glitch in your Daxware. I’d stake my professional reputation on it.”
“What are you hurting Nim for?” Hellequin fought against the leather straps securing him, his knuckles going white.
“I’m not hurting her. I’m fixing her. After all, I was the one responsible for installing her wiring in the first place. Mister D’Angelus thought it would make her a unique proposition for his clientele. As it turned out, that same difference made her such an unusual act with the circus. But any fool can see her wiring needs a little attention. Added to which, the dust handlers who pass through here have suggested D’Angelus wants his main attraction back.” The surgeon squinted at the needle. “Quite the generous financial settlement for whoever returns her in one fully-functioning piece. And I’m not just going to repair her. I’m going to improve her.”
“Without her permission!” Hellequin lifted his head as much as he was able. His vision swam until he focused on the restraints holding him down. The belted straps restrained him at the wrist, upper arms, hips and ankles. His head dropped back again.
“Well, I’m inclined to think the least of my worries is whether the whore gives permission. No, I am concerned purely with restoring her biomorph functions and pleasing Mister D’Angelus, who is one of my very best customers.” The surgeon knocked against her black front teeth with the tip of a scalpel. “A sweet tooth for sugar root ensured Mister D’Angelus had a mouthful of rotters. Luckily we encountered one another and I was able to form him a new set.” Miss Yalda Danan looked pleased with herself, adding, “The teeth are bolted into the jaw, you know.”
“And pulled from the mouths of dead men as the dust handlers tell it.”
The woman shrugged. “Most of them were dead when I embarked on the extractions.” Her eyes grew wide like a child’s in wonderment. “And now I have my own HawkEye to study into the bargain. A live one this time.” Over a shoulder, she said, “Well done, Lars. Very well done indeed.”
“My pleasure,” Hellequin heard his ex-comrade mutter from the far side of the room.
“Two hundred dollars I believe we agreed,” murmured the surgeon, bringing the scalpel to bear on the amber lens of Hellequin’s eyepiece. She placed the tip onto the uppermost ring; the eye tried to retract in on itself, whirring like an angry fly as it was prevented from doing so. “You’ll find the money roll on the table. Under the spare parts cabinet.”
She left his eyepiece alone and gave her attention to the tray of surgical instruments. Hellequin twisted his head to one side and stared over at the cabinet. His HawkEye focused in on jars of organs pickled in formaldehyde – a pair of pink lungs gilled like an unusual fungus, a heart pinned in place to form a fleshy pincushion, myriad eyes crammed into one large bottle, and numerous other horrors. Boxes were stacked on top of one another and labelled with such macabre titles as ‘fingers’, ‘tongues’, ‘horns’, ‘marsupial tails’, ‘assorted scales’ and ‘wings.’
Hellequin shifted his head to stare the other way. The opposite side of the room resembled a tinker’s workshop. Spools of wiring nestled between circuit boards, transformers, brackets and a great many stainless steel mechanisms.
Bile washed up into Hellequin’s mouth. The decision to leave Lars behind all those years before had been a dark one, even with his emotions stilted by his implant. But now it struck him as an even greater imposition on the world since he had abandoned a soldier and, in so doing, unleashed a monster. How many men, women and children had Lars lured to that sterile torture chamber? And while he had to admit Nim was all the more exquisite for her light system, how many abominations had the surgeon created alongside?
“Aren’t you going to stitch her up?” he shot sideways at the surgeon.
“Dust. It gets everywhere,” murmured the woman distractedly. She breathed on the blade of a small hacksaw and rubbed it carefully against the sleeve of her dark grey pinafore. She laid it down again, and, seeming to remember Lar’s presence, twisted around on what Hellequin took to be the stool she perched on. “You can leave us now, Lars, if you like. I’m just going to have a poke around the thing.” She used a fine metal skewer to gesture loosely towards Hellequin’s eyepiece.
“If it’s all the same with you, I’d like to stay and watch you gouge out that unnatural eye,” Lars shot back. Hellequin lifted his head. Lars stood over by the door, one leg resting up against the frame, hands in his pockets.
The ex-soldier batted a hand off his eyebrow in salute.
“Oh, it’s not so much a question of removing it as establishing its make up,” said the surgeon, pulling on a pair of thin clothhod leather gloves. “I am eager to dissect the arrangement of wires into the brain. The memory is affected some say while, of course, it’s common knowledge the emotions get short-circuited.” She fitted a circle of magnified glass to her eye and leant in, examining Hellequin’s steel attachment with intensity. “The funny thing is that this particular individual seems to have emotional attachment to the whore. Which could be the first signs of the cognitive weakening which eventually drove all HawkEye quite mad. Or it could indicate a reduction in the efficiency of the Daxware hardwiring. In which case, if we are to say this specimen
“Yeah, well the feeling’s definitely mutual,” said Lars from his spot over by the door.
Hellequin was in no way defensive of his actions or offended. All he knew was Nim was broken, and properly so, and needed putting back together.
“Finish your work on Nim first,” he hissed as the surgeon hovered a second gas mask near his face.
“You see, Lars. Real affection. Or at least an admirable attempt at it. Notice how the natural eye is teary, how the skin strains over the bone ridges at the brow. Talking of which, I may begin with those. Slice back the skin and dig around a little. The pioneers of Daxware made two incisions in the skull, fed the wires in through the brain that way, then re-grafted the bone. These horn-like growths are the result.” The surgeon shook her head in amused amazement.
Hellequin swallowed a mouthful of bile. His flesh ran hot then cold. “I’m not going to ask you again,” he whispered so quietly the surgeon was forced to bring her ear close to his mouth. “Put Nim back together again or I shall rip your heart out.”
“Scary little soldier.” Miss Yalda Danan laughed, her face a leathered knot.
Hellequin saw sweat at the surgeon’s forehead though. He’d worried her; any second she would go for the gas mask and seal him in. Sensing Lars move slightly, alerted to some noise beyond the room, he butted his eyepiece up into the surgeon’s face. There was a millisecond of a different view – of skin cells pressing through to
