Under the Knife(111)

Spencer stopped and frowned. The dark-haired guy was clutching a small circular object in his right hand. As Spencer watched, he threw it down and ground it into the floor with the heel of his boot.

“Wireless connection reestablished. Operative systems online,” the robot said.

What?

Spencer whipped around. The red light on the robot’s central cylinder, which had been flashing red a moment ago, was now green.

Spencer’s hand flew to his right ear.

The EEG patch was gone.

His hand came away bloody. The dark haired guy had ripped it off his skin while riding his back. He was so jacked up, he hadn’t noticed.

“Resuming laparoscopic appendectomy protocol.”

Two beeps sounded, and gears whirred ominously from within the arm holding the scalpel to Rita’s abdomen.

The scalpel resting on her skin.

No!

Spencer launched himself toward the fail-safe, but his injured knee (damn, but it was really starting to hurt) slowed him down, and the button seemed so far …





RITA


What the hell is going on?

Rita had heard Delores shut down and felt a surge of elation. Then she’d listened, confused, as Finney and Sebastian conferred, had felt Sebastian examine her body (so meticulous and practiced, like a doctor) and remove the EEG patch Spencer had given her from behind her ear (what has that got to do with anything?).

She’d listened as Delores had started back up, and then, mercifully, shut back down. Then she’d heard grunts and scuffling.

She perceived the metal of Delores’s blade, pressed up against her abdomen, in alternating tactile waves timed with her breathing: sharp, but without enough pressure to break the skin, as the ventilator forced her abdomen up into it, dull as her lungs pushed her abdomen back down.

Sharp. Dull. Sharp. Dull.

“Resuming laparoscopic appendectomy protocol,” Delores said.

Oh God.

It was crueler that she should anticipate deliverance, only to have it stripped away. Maybe that’s what Finney had intended all along.

Two beeps, and gears whirred from within the arm holding the scalpel to Rita’s abdomen.

It’s happening Oh God it’s really happening I’m getting operated on DELORES IS OPERATING ON ME …

The scalpel bore down and slid across her abdomen, and her skin began to part in its wake, like fiery red lips opening.

Finney had been right.

She wanted to scream.

But she couldn’t.





SPENCER


… and then Spencer slammed the red button on the side of the robot with the heel of his palm.

“Emergency stop initiated. Systems shutting down.”

With a gratifying mechanical hiss, the scalpel retracted away from Rita’s belly, leaving only a small, superficial incision above her navel, from which streamed a slim rivulet of blood.

Relieved, Spencer glanced at the sandy-haired guy, prone and still, lying in the same spot on which he’d dropped, his chest falling and rising slowly. Meanwhile, the dark-haired guy, his face a bloodied mess, was watching him from the floor on the other side of the dimly lit room.

Something about this guy made him nervous.

Without taking his eyes off the dark-haired guy, he reached back and grabbed the Swiss Army with the scalpel: wrapped his enormous catcher’s mitt hands around the slender robot arm and yanked as hard as he could.

Dolores protested with a shriek of tearing metal. The arm broke off at its thinnest part.

Spencer now held it up in front of himself as if he were some medieval knight, wielding the scalpel-tipped metallic tube like a sword. A few red-colored and yellow-colored wires dangled from the end opposite the scalpel.

Then the arm made a grinding sound that set his teeth on edge. There was a loud pop, and he smelled smoke.

The scalpel disappeared …

… and was replaced by a bright blue, flyswatter-shaped retractor.

Spencer looked at it, shrugged, and advanced toward the dark-haired man, swinging the robot arm in front of him.

His right knee now throbbed with pain.





SEBASTIAN


From his spot on the ground, Sebastian wiped the blood from his eyes and observed Cameron advance toward him, holding the robot arm.

The guy was big.

There was, Sebastian realized, a part of him grateful that Cameron had stopped the robot. He didn’t care what Finney thought Wu had done to his wife—nobody deserved that shit.

But he had to get the hell out.

And Cameron was in his way.

Sebastian rose to a squat. He’d fought plenty of big guys, most of them big and stupid. This guy was big as they came—but not, he sensed, so stupid. He acted like he’d been in some honest-to-God bare-knuckle brawls. He’d boxed, probably, judging both by the efficient pounding he’d given Sebastian and his stance as he approached, clutching the robot arm with its ridiculous blue flyswatter. He seemed comfortable grappling in close quarters and knew how to use his size.

Still, he no longer had surprise on his side, and Sebastian had his weapon, tucked into its holster over the small of his back. Sebastian would have to wear him down, or find a weak spot. Or both. Something that would give him the chance to use the conduction gun. He would sooner die than spend the rest of his life in prison.

“Look. I don’t want any more trouble,” Sebastian said. It hurt to talk. His nose felt swollen to the size of a grapefruit.