Heart of Steel Read Free

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