Post by Mouse on Sept 30, 2004 13:47:01 GMT
1:3
I shivered again. The frigidness of steel on bare skin coupled with the unsettling sensation of Cass messing around with my insides made it hard to stay still for any prolonged period of time. I’d been repressing the urge to sit up for at least the last twenty minutes, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take it.
Laid out almost naked on a chill workbench, with bright lights in my eyes, opened up like a can of sardines with someone poking around in places that by right should never even be exposed to air… definitely not my idea of fun. Vulnerability to the power of infinity, that’s what it was.
“Will you stop that?” Cass snapped. “I’m going to trip one of your essential microfibres if you keep squirming, and I tell you now you’d be dead before I could figure out how to re-route you.”<br>
Add to the discomfort of the situation a tekboy who was treating you like a piece of hardware and had a habit of telling you far more than you wanted to know.
“Wanna swap places and see if you can stay still?” I muttered, closing my eyes more tightly against the overhead light and resolving to act as pulseless as I was.
A few minutes later I felt him detaching the various wires he had plugged into me and closing my maintenance panel. I sat up immediately with a final shudder, reaching for my shirt. I just hoped it had been worth it.
Cass leant against the bench near my feet, taking stock of the data on his handheld interface. “So? What do you think?” I asked, sliding forward to peer over his shoulder at the screen.
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he stuck his stylus behind his ear and read off the interface. “Well. You sure have a lot of mek squished in there. Heart, lungs, liver, stomach… you’re pretty much running on a system that amps the naturally occurring electrical impulses of your muscles and brain. All major points of articulation replaced. Can’t tell for sure cos all the metal in there buggered my x-ray, but I’d almost bet your major bones have been replaced as well.” He turned to look at me with mossy green eyes. “Remind me to never get in a scrap with you… you’d be a bitch to take down.”<br>
I decided not to mention the fact that without the ability to actually fight, a tough-as-nails body wasn’t going to help very much.
But Cass wasn’t finished yet. “You’re also incomplete. It looks like the Doc was prepping you for a total transfer. There are markers inside you that would have helped finish mekking you up on the outside. I don’t think he was planning for there to be very much left of your organic body when he was done. Your right hand—”
“I know what’s wrong with my right hand,” I cut in. “Do you think you can help me or what?”<br>
He stared at me, startled. “You sure you don’t want to hear the rest?”<br>
“I’m sure.”<br>
“Okay then.” He carefully slid the cover over his interface. “All up, you’re looking pretty sound considering the amount of meshing between bio and mek you’ve got happening. If you’ll work for the parts, I can put in a few temporary partitions to slow down the bleed until I can figure out a way to stop it.”<br>
I slid off the bench, pacing to the other side of the shed. Then I turned back around. “You really think you can figure out a way to stop it?”<br>
Cass shrugged. “Give me enough time, and I can figure out anything.” He gestured widely at the walls of the workshop, adorned with their myriad bits of tek. Looking again, there was a pointedly high degree of robotics pieces, paraphernalia and tools. “Especially if it has to do with cyborgs or robots.”<br>
The glare of doom came to my face without need for conscience thought.
“Not that you’re a robot, or anything…”
The anxious amendment almost made me laugh. Almost. “What kind of work are we talking then?”<br>
“Guazo didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head, a deep feeling of apprehension settling where my stomach should have been. I didn’t much like the look on Cass’s face.
“It’s like this, you see…”
Uh-oh.
“I’m not exactly the biggest fish in the pond around here. The hotshot tekboys are always stealing my parts and snitching my designs and generally beating up on me—“
I threw up my hands in a defensive gesture. “Hang on. Please don’t tell me you agreed to help me out because you thought, being a Pet, that I’d be a good security guard slash impervious-to-physical-intimidation errands girl?” He nodded cautiously as I spoke. I shook my head. “I’d have trouble coming out on top of a blind two-legged canrat.”<br>
“Now you’re being stupid. I’ve seen your internals—“
A quiet, high pitched hum stopped him mid-sentence. He whipped out his interface, looked at it, then up at me. “Okay. Let’s just say you’re on probation for now and work out the details later.” He looked at the interface again. “Unsavoury company has come a-calling.”<br>
I am mod, hear me roar! 
