Metal Deep 2: Something Beautiful (5 page)

THE NEW GUY

Weeks later…

I had been taken to a white sand beach somewhere well off the beaten path. I stayed in something of a lone harbor house that stood as repeating boxes on pylons that went a couple of stories high. I had a room on the top floor, but I had spent almost every hour down in an underwater basement that ran deep through the surf beneath the building. I had been told little about what it was for or why we were there; the only impressions I had gotten is that it was new, and judging from the sprawling size of the stacked cubes that shaped the structure, they were expecting more company.

Down in the lab I met two friends of Maeve’s. They were actual Amalgam Elves. They were not transformed, they were born with the Elvish gene, but as was the case with ninety-nine percent of Amalgams conceived of two parents, they had human ancestors “mucking up” the family tree. Therefore they were still considered Amalgams and not Puries. I had always wondered what an Elf might look like, and while there had been many incarnations I had seen over the years on television, I was disappointed by the fact that they were not short, they did not have pointed ears, nor did they speak in some ethereal language of eternal enlightenment. Believe it or not, they were socialite party queens who seemed to be as good at downing vodka body shots as they were at re-sequencing DNA. Would you call them, Party Elves?

  I thought they were sisters, they acted like they were. For a while I would refer to Kata as the “Blonde One” or the “Nice One.” I think everything she owned was pink. This included the pink highlights in her platinum hair. Her beyond-cold hands were the first things I could ever feel through my new metal skin that actually made me shiver. Those things were
ice.

Sway, the other one, was the opposite. That girl was a Gothic Princess, but in an elegant kind of way. She had raven hair,
purple
streaks, leather and fishnet everything, and I called her the “Mean One,” just not to her face. She was completely in love with her own voice, and demanded that everyone else be too. Unlike Kata’s ice, Sway had some heat going on when she touched me. It felt good through my muffled sense of touch in that hot-stone-massage kind of way. It was beyond me how sweet-Kata could spend so much time with her, but like some kind of Amalgam Yin-Yang they worked and played like a team that was unbeatable.

Thankfully, having spent most of the days knocked out, I had little contact with Sway. Most mornings they would swoop in from a night of partying still smelling like smoke, beer, and God knows what else, and I would go happily to sleep so they could use their genius mojo-enhanced-IQ on me. They had to put me under anesthesia, because of pain, and there I rested comfortably, more or less. When I was out, it wasn’t as bad as what I felt during my Viper treatments. Sway was obnoxious, but she wasn’t cruel, at least not physically. Verbally? Well that’s a whole other issue. But they never pushed me too far in one day. I always had time to adjust and recover from whatever small procedure they performed.

 After I came-to they would shove off to another party in the evening with hardly a word. I don’t think they slept. Though all three girls had rooms there at the harbor house, I got the distinct impression that nobody actually lived there. It was kind of like an Amalgam clubhouse on steroids.

The last day of procedure had finally arrived, and it was a long one, and a little harder than the rest. I remember seeing flashes of my dad. I would see the metal that covered my skin jump from me and form into a shapeless beast with a horrible howl. It leapt onto Dad, and turned him into what I had been. I watched this happen about three times, and each time he would embrace the monster with a smile at me before falling backwards into the floor which was actually made of oil. With a black gloopy splash he was gone, and I was left alone screaming.

We were down in the lab. You couldn’t see the water above, but you could just feel that you were deep under it. The fog of sedation lingered as I came around. Maeve’s accent was the first thing I heard. It was always the first thing I heard when I came back to the land of the mostly-living. “It’s okay,” she said, “It’s all finally over.”

I had no idea how metal could process touch, be sore, or even hurt, but it did. Every night when I woke up, excruciating pulses of pain rippled over every minute crevice of my body. At first I was worried about what they were doing to me, but I had lost the will to question. Maeve promised the procedures would help, and she said eventually the daily recovery would get easier. As we progressed, I found that she was right. I now trusted her without question. Maybe it was a mistake, but she was the only person I had in my life since Dad died. If she told me right then she was there to turn me into a circus act, I would have grabbed a pair of tights. I had one friend in the entire world. Every day it caused a coin toss of emotion, because at one moment I would brim over with contentment as we bonded and grew closer together, but then at other times I would retreat into emptiness as I knew Dad would love her, but never get to meet her.

Perhaps it was the excitement of finally seeing their work finished, but I was able to shake off the procedural hangover quickly this time. I jumped up from the table as Kata’s icy hands removed the last of those painful sticky things they use to connect their medical wires to my chest. Maeve held my hand, and Sway actually seemed uncharacteristically giddy, as she clipped across the floor in her black heels, silver-laced fishnets, and white lab coat. She wheeled over a full length mirror and pushed me in front of it, eager to see my reaction.

“What do you think?” Kata asked? The best way I knew to describe Kata, was that she was Valley girl too smart to be from “the Valley,” wherever the hell that was. She was sweet, cute, athletic, and the things you’d expect to see in a cheerleader, but apparently she had a brain that would make Steve Jobs’ surviving think-tank look like a classroom of kindergartners.

“You better love it.” Sway said with a smile, “No returns on worn merchandise.”

Whatever you say, you she-witch. “With you in charge, how could I not?” I pandered.

I’ve never had a makeover before. I’ve seen shows where people get made-over, and I always thought I would love the feeling. You know what? I did. I take back the she-witch thing.

I was a cyborg. There was no changing that. I was dealing with it. Some moments were better than others, but as I looked at the mirror, I had to say I was having a pretty good moment. The girls used the info I took from Drake to genetically, and cosmetically, mend me… mostly. The final outcome was more than I could have hoped for.

My scrub pants hung a little low. I was shirtless, and I ran a hand down the front of my chest. All the black grimy pieces from the front of my torso were gone. I was now all flesh there, and not only that, but somehow they had worked some kind of mojo that gave me a six pack and pecks to die for. I had never lifted weights in my life, but I looked like I tossed around dumbbells for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I shot a curious glance over to the girls as my metal finger circled one of my six showing abdominal muscles.

“That was my idea.” Sway said proudly. “If you’re going to hang with us, then you needed to be sexier. Because that plain squishy thing you had going on was no good for me.”

Good, because it hadn’t been good for me either.

What caught my attention next had nothing to do with my bionic arms and face. I skipped right up to my hair. It had been cut and colored during this last procedure. No longer did I have just a boring brown center-part cut. My hair had been trimmed short and gelled up into Kata-platinum spikes that had bright green highlights. Add to that, they pierced each of my ears leaving an inscribed silver loop earring in each one. I smiled. I had secretly always wanted earrings, but had been too afraid to get them.

“That was me.” Kata said through a squeal as she raised her hand.

I guess everybody in the house gets their own rainbow-color of hair dye? It would take some getting used to, but I nodded approvingly. I really liked it.

The main course was really what had me excited. I touched my face. It had been mostly fixed. My eyes were still machines, but they had managed to take away everything save the silver and now-green machine-eyes. I couldn’t complain. All the ugly brown and grease stained scraps were gone. They resembled more of a human look, save the glow of my new bright green color that matched my hair. Leave it to a woman to accessorize my cyborg eyes with my hair.

“Green?” I asked. I took another hard stare at my new irises. I felt like a spotlight. I wondered if there was a lens switch that would let
me
play with the colors.

“My fault,” Maeve admitted, “And so was this.” She squeezed my hand once more, and my heart skipped a beat. I had been so preoccupied with my looks I hadn’t noticed before. The ugly patchwork that had once been my arms had been turned into a smooth sculpted physique of glossy black finish. I thought at first I was going to have to get used to the saying, “Resistance if Futile,” as ugly as I had been, but my amazing makeover team changed all that. They made my arms defined and even with a stopping point that ran uniformly just above the joints where my shoulders and chest met.  I had been changed into something sleek and fierce.

 But more than that, I realized what Maeve was talking about… I could
feel
again. I felt Maeve’s hand. And not like some kind of numb sensation that searched through layers of lifeless coverings to process a heavy touch. I felt the warmth of her fingers on mine as if I had my own flesh back. The small nuances of her folding of skin that bent and stretched as her thumb moved over the top of my hand demonstrated how much things had changed. It made me want to sing, but I doubt even Kata and Sway could fix that.

I had only mentioned to Maeve once how I was having issues feeling touch. I really didn’t think that was something that could have been remedied. I guess she listened and had the girls work on that too. What a woman she was. I placed each of my hands on hers and savored how she felt. Game, set, match! We had a winner.

I walked around, stretched, and got used to the new me. I took in the whole picture as Maeve, Kata, and Sway looked on approvingly. I stood there wearing only a black pair of medical scrub pants and stared at a cyborg in the mirror next to them. I was not a monster, but something different. Something the girls had managed to make kind of beautiful… if I do say so myself.

I still couldn’t cry. I wanted to, tears of joy this time. The best I could do was whisper, “Thank you.”

After we had all taken in the full sight of my new look, Sway put the mirror away as she teased, “And that’s just the outside. Wait till you get a load of the rest.” Then she turned back into herself, the Mean One, “Which is more than someone like you deserves. You can’t imagine how much this all costs.”

Kata rolled her eyes and tossed me my shirt. I tossed it back at her. I was okay without it. I wanted to admire what I had become. I caught Maeve’s smile perking up after I had. I guess she wanted to as well.

Then a man’s voice cut in from the shadows of the back part of the lab, “You may want it, that beach breeze can get nippy.”

I about jumped out of my scrubs when I heard him speak. My ears and eyes were more attuned than ever, but somehow I missed a person hiding out in shadows? I turned toward the corner that led to the elevator as an older man with a short salt and pepper beard, grey eyes, and a narrow nose appeared. He wore a very expensive looking wine colored suit. I was starting to wonder if every Amalgam in the world was obnoxiously rich, because I certainly wanted to get in on that. He held a silver box in one hand and a pipe in the other. It wasn’t lit, but he put it in his mouth and then mumbled around the pipe as he introduced himself as “Largo.”

Kata and Sway gave him a friendly hug as he congratulated them both on jobs well done. Maeve waved which he returned with a sincere how-do-you-do smile. Instantly a fatherly vibe entered the room that eased all the tension I was feeling over his sudden appearance. “I brought pizza and ale from the Dwarven stalls outside Zyn. I thought we could celebrate.”