Machine Man (serial)

Cassandra Cautery was waiting for me in a small, dark observation room above an operating theater. She was a tiny, suited silhouette. When Carl wheeled me in, she glanced at me, then returned her attention to the green-cloaked figures revolving around the operating table. Carl closed the door. Before he could get his hands on my wheelchair again, I found the grips and pushed myself up to the glass.

Lola Banks was on the table. I knew this because I could see one arm poking out from beneath an ocean of green cloth. It was the only piece of her I could see, but that was enough. A surgeon stood with his back to me, his shoulders working. It felt very wrong, her lying there while a man she didn’t know dug into her chest.

“I think Miss Banks must have got herself into a trial,” said Cassandra Cautery. “The heart is a SynCardia model, but not one our people recognize.”

I could see it. The top, at least. It sat in a steel bowl on a tray to a surgeon’s right, a red-stained chunk of plastic and metal. It looked strange, but then I suppose it had been deformed by two close-range impacts from Carl’s not-quite-lethal ammunition. Also, I didn’t really know what artificial hearts were supposed to look like. I wasn’t up to that yet.

“Unusual, to have steel components,” she said. “Very unusual. Please ask her about that, when she wakes up.”

I said nothing. I wasn’t talking to Cassandra Cautery. I had decided this in the wheelchair, as Carl pushed me through corridors that smelt oddly of fresh paint. I wasn’t talking to any of these people until Lola was okay.

“Fortunately, we have a replacement for her. A little custom model of our own. And the facilities to install it.” She looked at me. “This room didn’t exist until two weeks ago. We just finished construction. You believe in luck, Charlie?”

I kept my mouth shut.

“Me neither,” she said. “Someone’s looking out for your girl, that’s what I think. Someone upstairs.”

At first I thought she meant God. Then I thought she meant management. Then I wasn’t sure.

“We built this place for you, you know. To help your project.”

“I don’t think I want to continue the project.” It broke my vow of silence. But I couldn’t let her keep talking like we were on the same side.

Cassandra Cautery said nothing for a while. “All right, Charlie. Whatever you want.” She didn’t believe me. I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t sure I believed myself.

We watched the surgery. After a while, the surgeon with his back to us moved aside. Lola’s chest was a pit. It gaped at me, red and wet.

“As long as we’ve got her open,” Cassandra Cautery said, almost to herself, “I wonder if we should put anything else in there.” I looked at her, furious, but also embarrassed, because I had been thinking the same thing.

47.