Heart of Steel (2 page)

As he was placing the fresh core into the empty socket, a soft chime attracted his attention.

he said, communicating mentally with the network as he continued working.

a pleasant tenor of a male voice spoke via the same digital link. Its owner, Arthur, was an artificial intelligence that Mechanus had fine-tuned over the course of the past ten years to serve partly to run the automated processes of the lair, and partly as a conversational partner. Of late, they’d run out of topics, though, and he considered that he would need to find some solution to this. And he would, he resolved—he would find a solution to this as surely as his name was Alistair Mechanus.

Mechanus said,

Arthur said.

Mechanus grimaced.

The power core connected with a muffled
click
and started to glow pink. Mechanus shut the access panel as the robot whirred back to life. It resembled a large fat fly with a propeller rather than wings, and its optical sensors flickered on, glowing soft aquamarine. Its propeller started up with a high-pitched whir, and the robot flew away.

Mechanus said as he cleaned up his work area.

Mechanus nodded. Living tissue lasted so much longer than dead tissue.

The laboratory wing was huge and complex, currently populated by various experiments and surgical procedures in progress. Mechanus was quite proud of the techniques he’d pioneered out here, since he didn’t have to answer to things like an ethics committee or a medical board. After all, how does one make progress if one does not push the limits of the possible?

A hulking, seven-and-a-half-foot-tall shark-man loomed in one of the antechambers that marked the intersection between corridors, his nose bearing an old scar. While Scarface was amphibious, he was distinctly uncomfortable out of the water, and about as agile as a drunken elephant. Put him in water, though, and he turned into an aquatic ninja. Mechanus

was quite proud of his creations, this one most of all, but sometimes certain ones just lacked finesse. Right now, though, Scarface’s bullet-shaped head hung between his sloping shoulders in an effective mimicry of contrition, even though his flat black eyes didn’t otherwise seem capable of such an emotion.

“Scarface, do you know what you did wrong?” Mechanus asked him, immediately displeased by the raspy, disused quality of his voice. He seldom had anyone to talk to, at least out loud, but felt it was important to address this matter face-to-face. He cleared his throat and adjusted the modulation of his artificial larynx.

“Not gentle enough, Master,” the shark-man gurgled.

“That’s right.” There; his voice sounded much better that time. “And do you know what happens when you’re not gentle enough?”

“Things get damaged. Damaged things can’t be used.”

“That’s right. Now, how do you propose avoiding this in the future?”

                     Scarface considered this at length. “Use grabby tool.” The grabby tool in question was a set of utility pincers usually used by less resilient employees for collecting materials that were dangerous if touched. Here, though, the reverse was the case. Mechanus nodded in approval.

“Very good, Scarface. Do you know where to find the utility pincers? No? Very well, have Spike show you. And next time, be more careful. Now go on, Master’s busy.”

He rubbed Scarface affectionately on the snout, and the shark-man turned and left.

Mechanus sighed in good-natured irritation. Good help was hard to make sometimes. He turned and made his way to the laboratories where his test subjects had been taken. When he reached them, he peered into the viewing window of Laboratory 8.

The contents of this sterile white room had definitely seen better days. Most people would be inclined to call the man a mess, considering that he’d been bisected just above the pelvis and his left arm was torn off at the elbow. The stump of the severed limb was now threaded with several lengths of tubing that kept the major blood vessels circulating, and his ragged abbreviation of a torso had been connected to a number of machines that had taken over the basic functions of his damaged internal organs. He glanced over and saw the severed lower half floating in a tank of transparent green fluid. At least Scarface had the presence of mind to bring as much as he could. Good boy.

“Status report,” he said aloud.

“Extreme trauma to nearly all organs of the abdominal cavity,” Arthur informed him, likewise audibly, “Liver is too damaged to salvage. Several feet of small intestine lost, along with the entirety of the large intestine and bladder. Likelihood of meaningful recovery, 0.0%.”

Mechanus frowned in thought. “All right. Continue to maintain his tissues.” Aside from his abrupt encounter with Scarface, the man looked like he’d been healthy and fit—the perfect base for further creations. He turned and walked to the observation window of Laboratory 9. He looked in—and froze.

The blonde woman lying on her back inside this lab was a vision. In fact, for a few stunned seconds, the  idea  of  using  her  for  a  test  subject never even

crossed his mind. She was unconscious and nude, and he could see the pale skin where the sun had not touched her, in the exact shape of a one-piece swimsuit. She had the sleek, athletic build of a swimmer, with muscular legs, the left truncated at the knee, and a nearly-flat abdomen. The soft orbs of her breasts—according to an unfamiliar portion of his mind that had been heretofore silent these past ten years—appeared to be just the right size to fit comfortably in one of his hands. But the whole was greater than the sum of her parts, and for a few moments he simply forgot to inhale.

He had no heart, but his cardiac pump skipped a cycle. The corresponding sensation in his chest felt almost exactly like
thud
. He clutched at the center of his chest.

On the heels of this, though, he got a mental flash, a shard of memory from a life he no longer properly recalled.

A smile. The slow blink of blue eyes. A lock of blonde hair, caught in the wind. The touch of slender fingertips, the gentle nip of a cool breeze.

A wave of dizziness hit him, and he staggered, putting a hand against the viewing window to steady himself. He felt like the floor had suddenly dropped from under him. His lungs felt tight, and he had to stop to catch his breath. He clutched his temples, squeezing his eyes shut as the dizziness gradually abated. He grasped at the fading memory, but it scattered like fall leaves.

“Sir?” Arthur prodded.

Mechanus opened his eyes and again gazed at the nameless beauty that his machines were maintaining. The  mechanical  lens  that  had  replaced  his  left eye

focused in closer on her face, and then scanned down the smooth curves of her naked torso…

“Sir, what do you wish done with her?”

Mechanus blinked, suddenly feeling like a pervert, and dropped his gaze to a point on the floor between his feet. He was, after all, staring at an unconscious nude woman. That she was breathtakingly beautiful had nothing at all to do with it. Nothing at all.

Once he’d regained command of himself, he looked her over again with a more clinical eye. She had dark circles under her eyes, suggesting that she was suffering from sleep deprivation, and she had a thin, white scar on the left side of her neck, just over the carotid artery. It was about three inches long, but well-healed. The scar fascinated him, and as he stared at it he reached up and touched the left side of his jaw, near where the overlapping metal plates that dominated that side of his face gave way to old scar tissue. He wanted to touch her scar—but going in there and fondling her while she was unconscious would just be
creepy
. He wanted to make a good impression, after all. He tore his eyes away from her throat, and his gaze settled on the ragged flesh just below her left knee. As with the male, her stump had been threaded with tubes that kept the blood circulating through what remained of the limb.

Here, at least, he could make a good impression. Fortunately, he had detailed files on anatomy, so this should be simplicity itself.

“Repair her,” he instructed, “Restore her to prime functioning—biological means only. Then take her to one of the guest rooms to recover, and see that she is given clothing. I will not be a poor host.” Never mind

the fact that he never had any real guests there any-

way. He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Did they have any belongings?”

“Scuba gear, swimsuits, a waterproof camera, and each had a mesh bag containing an assortment of seashells. In addition, the male had a wrist pouch containing a folded note on waterproof paper.”

Mechanus raised his eyebrow. “A note? What did the note say?”

“‘All the mermaids of the sea would be jealous. Julia, will you marry me?’”

Mechanus frowned in thought. On the bright side, he now knew the name of this beautiful angel that Scarface had collected for him. On the other hand… He glanced back at the man in Laboratory 8.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, sir,” Arthur assured him, “To borrow a handy turn of phrase, he’s half the man you are.”

This startled a snort of laughter out of Mechanus. “Always the quick wit, Arthur. I need to be careful these days.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Mechanus headed off, initiating a number of seldom-used processes that he was certain would make his beautiful guest happy.

Chapter

TWO

Julia’s mind barreled up through nightmares of shark-monsters, and she surfaced to wakefulness with a shriek of fright. As she lay there, her breath coming in gasps and her heart hammering in her chest like a panicked rabbit, she stared up at the ceiling at first, trying to convince herself that she was safe. There were no shark-monsters, and that it had all been a nightmare.

Then she realized that she was in an unfamiliar room. It wasn’t the sort of comforting unfamiliarity that generally came with staying in a hotel—this wasn’t even her hotel room in Hawaii. There was a slightly metallic smell to the air, and an oppressive, mechanical thrum filled the lower registers of her hearing. The bed appeared to be a twin, and the only one in the room. She tried to move, but then her entire body complained painfully, in a way that reminded her of the attack again. The pain was especially bad in her left knee, though she could wiggle her toes okay.

Moving brought her attention to the fact that she was naked. She
never
slept naked. Granted, she was snug-gled between clean linen sheets, but
still
. Somebody had undressed her and put her in this bed for some reason.

The idea made her skin crawl.

She sat up slowly, her head gently spinning with a wave of vertigo, and swung her legs over the edge of her bed. She glanced around, looking for Jim—who would almost certainly be close by if she’d been injured and was in a hospital—but he was nowhere to be seen. The air was cool against her skin, and she shivered and broke out into goose bumps. She glanced down at her legs and found, to her surprise, that they were both still there. She had a flash of memory about a shark monster yanking on her leg, and felt certain that she should be missing at least some soft tissue.

There was something odd about her left leg, though. She looked closer and saw a line of stitches around her leg just below the knee, and a distinct change in complexion below this border. The line was clean enough that the use of surgical adhesive was also likely.

What the
hell.

Her blood ran cold, and she looked herself over for any other oddities. She found precise, rectangular patches of similar, lighter-colored skin across the right side of her ribs and on her right shoulder, likewise held in place with tidy, small sutures. When she poked at the one on her shoulder she felt the touch, but it seemed a bit distant. She reached down towards the pale lower leg…

A crackle of static near the ceiling made her yelp in fright and instinctively wrap her hands protectively

across her bare breasts. Her head whipped in that dir-

ection and she saw a speaker mounted on the wall, accented by a tiny red LED.

“I do apologize,” said an unfamiliar male voice in a cultured baritone, “I know you must be feeling very disoriented and afraid right now, but I assure you that I mean you no harm.”

“Who are you?” she demanded, lowering her hands in the apparent absence of a security camera.

“My name is Doctor Alistair Mechanus, and this is my island. You and your… companion are currently my guests here.”

“Is… is Jim okay? Can I see him?” If Jim was okay, she thought, then maybe everything else would work out fine as well. He had a way of getting out of sticky situations—it was that sort of luck that made him a daredevil. It also made him accustomed to getting what he wanted.

“He’s, uh, here with me,” Dr. Mechanus told her, and then paused for an interval that seemed—somehow—to sound guilty, “In a manner of speaking, anyway. My people are very good at what they do.” He paused. “As for seeing him, why don’t you get dressed first—you will find a bundle of clean clothing on top of the dresser near you. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel odd talking to a nude woman.”

Julia’s hands leapt up to shield her breasts again, her face flushing red. Of
course
there would be a camera in here. She’d seen enough James Bond movies to know that the sort of person who owned an island in the middle of the South Pacific was also the sort of person who had no sense of privacy. After all, who would complain about the surveillance? His neighbors? He probably didn’t have any. They were almost literally in the middle of nowhere, on an island

that the natives all said was haunted and probably wouldn’t land on if you put a gun to their heads, in the clutches of someone who probably wasn’t all that happy by their intrusion.

There was no way that this was going to end well.

She pulled the top blanket free of the mattress and wrapped it around herself before standing up, putting most of her weight on her right leg and leaning against the nightstand. She didn’t dare test out her left leg just yet. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been there—though the odds were good that their boat home was long gone. In any case, she knew that leg surgery of any type took weeks of recovery under the best of circumstances. Especially if she actually did lose her leg and Dr. Mechanus either reattached it or replaced it—major surgery no matter how you approached it.

The implications of either scenario sent a chill up her spine.

The dresser was quite ornate, and appeared to be crafted out of mahogany or a similarly expensive wood. On top of the dresser was, as promised, a bundle of simple folded clothing: a shirt, a pair of pants, an unadorned bra, and a pair of panties. No shoes or socks, but the carpet was soft and thick, almost swallowing her feet. A little experimentation proved that each item fit her perfectly, leaving her feeling ambivalent about the whole thing. On one hand, it meant that she wouldn’t have to fashion something out of the linens in this room, but on the other hand it meant that this guy took the time to determine  what  size  she  was.  Even in underwear.

Meanwhile, all she knew about him was his name and his voice. She didn’t even know what he looked like,

and that bothered the hell out of her. She got dressed, and then turned back to the speaker. She studied it for several minutes, biting her lip. Was he still there? Probably.

“Um. Hello?” she called.

“Yes?” Dr. Mechanus replied immediately—a bit eagerly, she thought.
Creep
.

“I’m dressed now. You want to tell me why you already have clothing that fits me?”

“I had your body scanned into a computer while you were unconscious. From there it was a simple matter to fashion clothing for you. I hope you like it.”

She looked down at herself. “It’s... a bit plain, but it works. How long have we been here?”

“Somewhat less than a day.”

Julia heard her stomach growl in unhappy confirmation. She hoped that this man at least intended to feed her, but she couldn’t be sure how far she could trust him just yet.

“How’s your new leg feeling?”

She glanced at the foreign leg attached to her knee. “It... seems to work.” That was really all she could say about it. In all her years of medical schooling she’d heard of limb transplants, but never legs, and never ones that looked so... clean. Especially after one day.

“Why aren’t you trying it out?”

“Trying it out?” she echoed incredulously, “You just replaced my
leg
. I can’t just... walk on something like this after a few hours. It’s a load-bearing extremity, and the blood vessels need to be connected just so, and the nerves have to be joined for full sensation... and why the hell doesn’t it even hurt?

These things take months to heal—and what about immunosuppressive drugs? Tissue rejection? Main-

taining circulation during healing?” She stopped short, clamping a hand over her mouth as she realized she was lecturing her own kidnapper. Julia didn’t dig in her heels on many topics, but medicine was her passion, and the idea of someone dancing blithely all over the basic physiological limitations of something like tissue transplantation just went against everything she’d been taught.
If
what he said was true, and
if
he messed up anywhere, she could lose the limb anyway, or die from infection.

The speaker was silent for a long while.

“Well,” he said finally, and there was a note of fresh interest in his voice. “It seems you know a thing or two about medicine yourself, am I right?”

“I... do,” she said cautiously.

“What field?”

“Emergency medicine.” That covered a wide range of fields, of course, but listing them off in response to a casual inquiry wouldn’t be productive right now.

“Ah. As intelligent as you are beautiful,” he remarked quietly, as though talking to himself.

She grimaced at the speaker. He really
was
laying it on thick.

“To answer your earlier question regarding your leg,” he continued, “No. I’ve already taken care of that, and the color will adapt to match your own skin tone in time.”

Okay. One question answered, and about a thousand left hanging there. Already taken care of that? What did that even mean? She had so many questions for him, but decided that she wasn’t going to get anything settled like this. She would have to put on her big girl panties and take the reins a bit. Her stomach  twisted  nervously  at  the  idea,  but she

plunged ahead. She took a deep breath and steeled herself.

“Look,” she said. “I’m sure you’re a marvelous conversationalist, but I don’t like talking to disembodied voices, and I want to see Jim. So you… you need to send somebody down here to take me to wherever you have him, and we can talk face-to-face. Deal?”

The speaker was silent for a long time.

“Well?” Julia prompted. Her stomach churned.

“This can be arranged,” Mechanus finally said. “I will send Arthur to collect you. Do try to put your weight on your new limb. I assure you it will support you.”

There was a muffled click from the speaker. Julia let out a breath.
God
, he was weird. She glanced down at her replaced leg, and then flexed her knee, balancing on one leg. He might have been weird, but if he said was true, then he just leapfrogged over years of transplantation research. Negating the need for anti-rejection drugs would be a windfall for the medical community—so why the hell was he way out here on an island in the middle of the South Pacific?

Encouraged by the lack of pain, but skittish about the lack of pins or other supports, Julia gingerly put her weight on her left leg. It held—and without as much as a twinge of pain. What the hell. She slowly lifted her right leg, holding onto the dresser in case her new leg suddenly folded under her. It continued to hold. She considered it unlikely that the bones had been severed or broken with the amputation, but he still would have had to reattach any number of tendons, muscles, nerves, blood vessels...

A few minutes later, her speculations were interrupted when the door slid open to admit a hover-

ing, whirring mechanical device about the size of a small dog. It was roughly ovoid in shape, with four or five multi-jointed arms dangling from its underside, each one tipped with a three-fingered claw. On its front the thing sported a monitor displaying a simplified happy face. She backed away from it cautiously, and it turned to face her.

“Good day, Miss Julia,” said the drone in a pleasant and very human-sounding tenor. “My name is Arthur. I am to take you to the laboratory where Dr. Mechanus is currently keeping your companion. Please follow me.” With that the device turned and started floating out, at a comfortable walking pace.

Okay. So he had robots. And his name was Dr. Mechanus. It made a weird sort of sense, all things considered. Insofar as anything here made sense, anyway. Well, if this thing was to be her guide, she might as well follow the metal football. She followed the drone.

She took a single step outside and reflexively flinched back when her bare foot touched the cold, polished metal floor of the hallway. She stopped and peered out, looking along the hallway in both directions. The walls and ceiling were white and featureless, giving the whole corridor a cold, institutional feel, like being back at the hospital—only this time she felt more like a patient than one of the staff. Once her mind made this comparison, her throat wanted to close. She stopped and closed her eyes, resting her hand against a nearby wall.

“Hold on a second,” she rasped. The whirring sound of the drone’s travel abated to a low hum.

“Is there something wrong, Miss?” it asked.

“Just… give me a moment,” she said, and breathed in slowly, forcing herself into her deep breathing exercises.

Breathe in for a slow count of four. Hold it for a slow count of four. Breathe out for a slow count of four. Hold it for a slow count of four.

The instructions were so ingrained from her therapy sessions that they came automatically, and after a few cycles of this her throat started to unclench.

“Miss?” the drone asked.

“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay. I’m okay.” She carefully opened her eyes. “I’m okay.” Finally she glanced up at the drone, who regarded her with a simplified, flat-mouthed neutral face on its monitor. “I’m okay,” she said aloud.