Rejected Material
The surgeon offered Mara a choice of which arm to lose.
“Left,” she said.
She needed her right hand to kill him.
Doctor Veyr marked her wrist with a blue pencil. He had already removed her heart, which made his concern for her preferences somewhat difficult to appreciate.
Mara lay on a steel table with a strap across her waist. Her left arm was pinned beneath a clamp. Her right had been left loose so she could sign the consent form.
She had signed it.
Then she had palmed the pencil sharpener.
It wasn’t much of a weapon. Unfortunately, Veyr kept his scalpels on the other side of the table, and she hadn’t found an opportunity to ask him to rearrange them.
She couldn’t feel a heartbeat. She could feel the lump he had put in its place.
Something inside it was moving.
“Subject retains speech,” Veyr told his assistant. “Proceeding with the secondary graft.”
The assistant opened a glass jar. Inside, a fat black worm circled a scrap of meat.
Mara knew the creature. Blood leech. Marsh scavenger. Poisonous enough to kill a horse, and popular with rich old men who wanted their wounds to close faster.
She had treated graft patients at the clinic in Greyhaven. The ones who could still afford treatment.
Three months ago, something had swallowed Greyhaven.
Mara had been on a supply barge outside the walls. She had watched the towers fold inward, taking the streets and the people with them. The clinic’s painted hand turned palm-up as its whole street slid beneath the black water. Her mother had been on duty there.
Mara had borrowed money for search crews. None had found a way back into the city.
Six days ago, her lender had sold the debt to House Veyr.
If she died on this table, her mother’s last chance of rescue would die with her. She tightened her fingers around the sharpener.
“Hold her hand open.”
The assistant approached her right side.
Mara loosened her fingers. The sharpener lay against her wrist, hidden beneath the edge of the sheet.
Veyr slit her palm. The cut hurt, which was encouraging. She had been worried he had done something to her nerves as well.
He tipped the leech into the wound.
It bit.
Then something bit back.
The cut in Mara’s palm opened wider. Small black teeth caught the worm and dragged it inside.
Mara stared.
So did the assistant.
Gold lettering appeared across her vision.
BLOOD LEECH CONSUMED
Trait acquired: Venom Filter
Foreign toxins may be broken down into usable nourishment.
The lettering vanished. A pleasant warmth ran up her arm, and the wound closed.
Veyr went very still.
Mara kept her face equally blank.
She had a mouth in her hand.
It could eat monsters.
Eating one had given her a useful ability.
She could panic about the first part after trying the other two again.
“Rejection?” the assistant asked.
Veyr seized Mara’s wrist and turned it under the light. The palm looked ordinary now. He pressed hard enough to hurt.
“Open it.”
Mara flexed her hand.
Nothing.
She pictured the little mouth opening. A black seam appeared across her palm.
She immediately closed it.
Good. Voluntary control.
“I don’t know how,” she said.
Veyr released her wrist. He took a remote from his pocket and pressed the red button.
The collar around her neck clicked. A needle pricked her skin.
Mara’s throat burned.
She had seen a debtor die from one of those collars on the day she arrived. It had taken less than a minute.
She stopped breathing.
The burning became warmth. Then it became hunger.
TOXIN PROCESSED
Mara let her head roll sideways and went limp.
Veyr checked the collar, frowned, and pressed the button again.
More warmth.
This was considerably better than the meals they had been serving her.
“Mark it as rejection,” he said. “Incinerate the body. Don’t recover the primary organ.”
The assistant looked at Mara’s chest.
“The organ cost…”
“I know what it cost.”
Veyr put away the remote. “Destroy the notes as well.”
Mara listened to his footsteps cross the room.
He wasn’t disappointed. He was frightened.
That made two of them, but she was beginning to like her chances.
The door shut.
The assistant undid the clamp on her left arm, then the strap across her waist. He bent down to lower the table’s wheels.
Under the sheet, Mara had worked the sharpener’s small screw loose with her thumbnail. Now she opened her eyes and drove the freed blade into his forearm.
He shouted. She grabbed his collar, pulled his head against the table, and did it again when he tried to reach the alarm.
He dropped.
Mara rolled off the table. Her knees nearly folded. She caught the edge, took two breaths, and discovered that her legs worked perfectly well once she actually put her weight on them.
Six days in a cell had left her expecting weakness.
The new organ apparently disagreed.
She took the assistant’s coat, key ring, and surgical shears. Then she cut through the collar’s leather backing and dropped it on the floor.
It clicked three times as it emptied its remaining poison into the tiles.
A shame. She almost picked it up.
Footsteps stopped outside.
“You all right in there?”
Mara recognized the voice. Rusk, the guard who had broken a man’s fingers for stealing bread.
She moved beside the door.
“Help,” she said, in the assistant’s general direction.
Rusk came in carrying a short iron baton. His gaze found the man on the floor before it found Mara.
She drove the shears into his neck.
The points bent.
Gray plates rose beneath his skin.
Rusk grinned.
“Wrong one, girl.”
His fist caught her in the ribs and threw her against a trolley. Instruments scattered. Mara landed badly, her shoulder striking the tiles. A broken tray scraped the skin from her left forearm.
So the new body could still hurt.
Worth remembering.
Rusk stalked toward her, skin thickening across his jaw. Mara had helped dress wounds around grafts like his. Stoneback boar. Cheap, reliable protection, provided the surgeon seated it properly.
Steam curled from his right armpit. The shirt there was dark with moisture.
Mara picked up the trolley and shoved it at him.
It rolled three feet, caught on a fallen tray, and stopped.
Rusk laughed and kicked it aside.
That was fine. She had needed him looking down.
Mara scooped up a bottle of surgical spirit and threw it against his shoulder. Glass burst. He raised an arm to protect his eyes.
She lunged beneath it and clamped her right hand over the hot patch under his arm.
Open.
The mouth in her palm opened.
Something hard and round caught between its teeth.
Rusk screamed and struck her back with the baton. Mara’s grip slipped. She wrapped her left arm around his waist and hung on while the little mouth pulled.
The next blow broke something near her shoulder.
She bit down harder.
A lump the size of a plum tore free beneath her hand. It dissolved against her palm before she could see it clearly.
The gray plates on Rusk’s face crumbled.
STONEBACK CORE CONSUMED
Trait acquired: Ironhide
Harden the skin against cutting and impact.
Rusk hit her again.
The baton struck a black plate and bounced out of his hand.
Mara straightened.
For a moment they both looked at the weapon on the floor.
Then she punched him.
Rusk went backward into the steel cabinet. The door buckled under his weight, and he slid down without getting up.
Mara looked at her fist.
Black armor covered the knuckles. It was smoother than Rusk’s gray plating and had formed only where the baton had been about to land.
She thought about releasing it. The armor sank beneath her skin.
She raised it again, this time over her left shoulder.
The broken bone still hurt, but the scrape on her forearm was gone. Twice now, feeding had closed a wound. A broken shoulder was apparently a bigger job.
The armor was a separate benefit. It had already saved her from another blow.
She wanted to test both properly.
Somewhere farther down the corridor, a bell began ringing.
Later would have to do.
Mara took Rusk’s baton and checked the corridor. Empty to the left. To the right, a maid was running toward the stairs.
The exit lay beyond those stairs. Six days ago, two guards had dragged her down them while she tried to hold on to the banister.
She could leave now.
Or she could take the door opposite the theatre.
VIABLE GRAFTS: AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.
Mara tried the assistant’s keys.
The second one worked.
Inside were refrigerated cabinets, each shelf lined with sealed jars. A price tag hung beneath every specimen.
A clerk stood behind the counter, clutching a telephone.
“Put that down,” Mara said.
He looked at the blood on her coat and obeyed.
She locked the door behind her.
“Which of these stops bullets?”
The clerk swallowed. “Depends on the bullet.”
An honest professional. Promising.
Mara pulled open the nearest cabinet. A jar marked CAVERN MOTH: SENSORY GRAFT sat at eye level. She unscrewed the lid and pressed her palm over the pale organ inside.
The little mouth took it in one bite.
Trait acquired: Night Sight
The unlit shelves at the back of the cabinet became sharply visible. She could even read the labels.
Mara took a second blood leech.
Trait already acquired. Biomass assimilated.
No second Venom Filter. But the ache in her shoulder eased.
She took the clerk’s satchel and began filling it with sealed jars. Then she saw the packing slip beneath the last tray.
SOURCE: GREYHAVEN.
The dispatch date was three days ago.
Mara stopped. She checked the date again, then scanned the sheet. Organ weights, storage temperatures, donor numbers. Halfway down was a name.
ADA LANE. Retain alive for subsequent harvest.
Her mother.
Alive three days ago, in a city nobody had been able to find for three months.
Mara looked at the clerk.
“Who brings these in?”
“Collection crews. The doctor keeps the routes. I only check the stock.”
She folded the slip and put it in the coat’s inside pocket. There was a route. Veyr had been using it while she paid men to search an empty river.
Mara put Rusk’s baton on the counter.
“What’s better than a stoneback?”
His gaze moved from the baton to the black plate she raised across her hand.
“That’s not stoneback.”
“It was a minute ago.”
The clerk stepped back.
Mara pointed at the cabinets.
“Something that stops bullets. Or something that makes the person holding the gun reconsider. Quickly.”
He pointed toward a red door at the back.
“Furnace drake. Grade Three. But it’s a complete specimen. You’d need a surgical team to harvest the…”
Mara held out her hand.
The little mouth opened. It had more teeth now.
“I brought my own.”
The clerk sat down.
She took his keys and opened the red door.
Beyond it, a chained reptile lay in a stone pit. Its head was as large as her chest. Orange light shone between the scales along its throat.
A second door stood opposite hers. The heavy collection grate above it was raised, and a wheeled transport cage waited on the other side.
House Veyr had been expecting a buyer.
The drake lifted its head.
Mara shut her door before it finished drawing breath.
Heat punched through the wood. She stepped away as the paint blistered.
All right. She wasn’t going to wrestle that.
She looked through the wired window. The drake was chained by its hind legs, with plenty of reach toward the collection door. Beside her own door was a brass wheel marked TRANSFER GRATE.
Mara turned it twice. Across the pit, the grate came down halfway.
The drake watched the moving metal and bared its teeth.
She stopped turning.
Then she picked up the telephone on the counter.
“Graft storage,” she told the operator. “Get Doctor Veyr. Tell him the primary organ is alive. I have the subject. Use the collection entrance. The theatre corridor isn’t secure.”
She hung up and checked the barred service window behind the clerk. It opened onto a delivery yard. A padlocked gate blocked the alley beyond it. The drake’s collection entrance opened onto the same yard.
Two locked exits and a drake between them.
That would do.
The clerk stared at her.
“You called him?”
“He has the shipping routes.”
“He’ll bring guards.”
“I know.”
Mara pushed a spare coat against the bottom of the red door, concealing the light beneath it. Then she wheeled an empty specimen cabinet behind the counter and crouched beside the brass wheel.
She had enough armor to survive a baton. She didn’t know whether it would survive a bullet. She wasn’t going to find out by standing in a corridor waiting for men with guns.
Let them come through the collection entrance.
Let the drake spend its fire on them.
When it put its head through the half-raised grate, she would drop the rest of the gate and see how much armor protected the underside of its neck.
Outside, a key scraped in the service gate.
Mara raised Ironhide over her injured shoulder and tightened her grip on the wheel.
The folded packing slip pressed against her chest as she leaned forward.
Three months of searching had got her nowhere. Now she had a record naming her mother alive three days ago, a shipment out of Greyhaven, and a man who knew the way in.
She needed the route, a way to survive it, and something strong enough to cut her city out of whatever had swallowed it.
Veyr could supply the first. His stockroom was already helping with the second.
She turned her palm toward the drake’s door.
The third would take more meals.
