“Yes, yes. You like lasers, I take it. Who doesn’t?” He laughed and looked at Marine. “So… hot.” He licked his lips. “Well, let’s get you into your wonderful new hand.”
I wasn’t even sure where to begin objecting. Lasers, though? Was I getting a laser hand? I started to get excited. He walked toward the far end of the room. The wall in the corner he was headed for showed deep scars and burns directly across from a stark black leather chair. One with straps.
He pointed absentmindedly to the seat, his attention mostly on the hand, which he placed on a small platform. “Sit, friend. Got to see that it works, you understand? Reputation’s everything among vultures like precious Marine.” He bit at the air in her direction clacking his teeth together while he typed. “Theeeere we go. Fusion intakes fine. Yep, yep, yep. Good.”
The platform rotated suddenly and pointed at the wall. A sharp whir sounded next to my head and in an instant a chunk of the wall exploded, rock melting around the edge.
“Satisfied?” He was asking Marine.
She kept the same hard expression. “Just put the fucking hand on him, Darvish.”
He picked up the hand, disappointed and came around to my front. I looked up at him wishing he had kidnapped a sexy nurse or had a blindfold or, really, anything that made me not have to look at him.
“So, do you… knock me out or what?”
He smiled, happy in a way that made me regret having asked. “Oh, no. You’ve got to be awake, friend. Got to have plenty of data for calibrations.” He paused. “Unlucky me.” Darvish was poking at my tissue stabilizer after he’d locked my wrist down under a thick leather strap. “Looks like someone’s already done the fun bits. Nothing to cut.”
He laughed and rubbed his hand down my arm a few times. He pressed his bony thumb into the stabilizer until it gave a quick three vibrations. He smiled wide again and ripped it free, taking a flap of dried blood with it. None of it hurt, so much as it felt incredibly strange.
“Oh… no scream.” He frowned and turned the hand over to size it up to my wrist. “Plenty of time for that.”
I will be honest. I hadn’t noticed the two rounded metal prongs that sat in the cuff just below what would have been the bend in the wrist of the prosthetic. Not until he was aiming them at my naked stump. He looked everything over, and nodded, satisfied. He turned and pulled open a small drawer bringing out a stained old hammer. Not a nice one. A cheap one. The words “Genuine Hickory” had been burned into the handle. He spun it around, looking it over.
“Well, time we get started.” He grinned, eyes darting back and forth across my face. “Remember, try to feel as much you can.”
He pressed the prosthetic against my stump and I felt the first pain from the wound that I had since before the visit to Doc. He bent the hand up at the wrist so that the butt of the palm was sitting flat against the extended arm of the chair.
“Ready? A-one-and-a-two—”
He swung the hammer and it made a dull thunk. I felt what had to be the metal prongs burrow only a short way into my marrow. My vision flushed red and I could barely hear myself scream over the blood that rushed around inside my ears. I hadn’t stopped screaming when he whacked the second time.
“Good, good.” I heard him say the words, but they meant nothing. “Just like that!”
He hammered the metal prongs in a millimeter at a time. Across more swings of a hammer than I would ever have been able to count. The muscles in my neck pulled themselves to pain and I had coughing fits when my throat could no longer stand to scream. When finally he was done, he went to his workstation and brought the hand to life. The prongs pushed dull spikes out into my bones until they passed through and hooked out at the far side, anchoring the hand to my arm. The edge of the wrist suctioned itself down. It felt like my arm had been set on fire from the inside. The muscles twitched wildly, spasming to try to escape the hurt. I shook in the chair as Darvish calmly went through his calibrations. Blood and fluids I couldn’t recognize leaked out onto the arm of the chair as the hand shifted itself through two dozen test orientations.
Finally when he was satisfied, he came and unhooked my limbs from the chair. I slumped, exhausted, and he put a hand on my back, rubbing it slowly.
“Wonderful data, just wonderful. A fine trade for the tea, isn’t it?” He laughed and walked back to his workstation. “Oh, but I forgot a test.”
I looked at him and he gave his insane smile.
“Point at the wall, if you would. Finger straight.”
I did, as best I could with my arm shaking wildly as it was. He pressed a few buttons and my new hand pulsed. The wall exploded again and the rock in it began to burn white-hot. There was a pressure in my arm from the force of the heat laser firing constantly. Instinctively, I closed my hand to a fist, realizing as I did that I was going to melt my abdomen in the process.
I winced away from the hand. Nothing happened.
The old fuck went into mad laughter for longer than seemed entirely appropriate. “The safety functions work just fine.” He looked at Marine and the nasal voice again turned to the evil growl. “Now leave.”
Chapter
TWELVE
As soon as we were outside of robot hearing distance, or what I assumed was robot hearing distance, Marine grabbed my wrist and started fawning over it, apologizing constantly. She was shaking her head.
“I didn’t know that’s what happened. I didn’t know he was just going to…” She swallowed. “I mean, with a hammer.”
“Yeah. Genuine hickory,
