Chapter 49: Chapter 43

He was a metal machine. Wohali knew this for a fact and did not allow himself to be bothered by the scared faces of the other doctors. His body was twice the size of a normal person's and fashioned after a patchwork doll. Only the patches on his body were made of solid metal plates, hiding countless wires within. He made his eyes be and look elegant, with two nimble moving lenses. His steel arms were working on the patient’s body, his elongated fingers were busy stopping the bleeding coming from the artery.

He was of the Bento Tribe, a member of the group within the tribe that were responsible for performing the most difficult operation, the making people one with a machine. When Wohali himself was subjected to such an operation, the frontal lobe of his brain was partially removed and replaced with the steel terminal, which was responsible for the stable working of the machines within the rest of his brain. Wohali lost some memories during the operation, mostly short-term memories. But it was all worth it to gain eidetic memory and the ability to perform even the most difficult calculations within his brain with ease.

Take this patient, for example. This man was one of the Reclaimers, captured during the retreat from the city. An explosion from a tank shell had shattered his leg and steel shards tore an artery within his left leg. Annoying to admit, but most field doctors of the Regulators and Bento tribe would have simply taken the leg away. Some even argued that he should be left without medical care because he was, well, an enemy. Wohali always dismissed such fools. Throw good in the water and expect nothing in return, that was his life motto. Thus, upon arriving at this sad excuse of a refugee camp, he began treating the most severe patients, performing operations that would require a whole team of trained professionals all alone.

His colleagues here were surprised to see that a flesh carver of the Bento tribe knows how to treat the injuries of others. This was understandable behavior, his people were famous for becoming one with steel, not for mending the flesh. Alas, his colleagues were missing the point. Not everyone in the tribe desired to become one with the steel, and traders and travelers from distant lands were also visiting their lands. Sure, it would be easier to rip out a faulty lung, for example, and replace it with an air processor. Better in the long run for the patient too. But not all were willing to be subjected to this. Thus, Wohali, like all flesh carvers, learned how to treat flesh and ensure its survival and thriving.

He stepped back, looking at his work. The leg was repaired, the blood loss was stopped, and the artery was repaired. This patient will live and, if given time, care and rest, will walk again. Some side effects will remain, sure, Wohali was not a miracle maker, but a humble worker. Scars would remain, and the man would most likely limp slightly, but overall, Wohali was proud of his work. The patient was still sleeping under the effects of the sedatives. It was mostly his fault. Upon seeing Wohali, the man started screaming and thrashing around in fear, forcing Wohali to put him to sleep in order to operate in peace. This was annoying, they had a precious little number of sedatives here. Wohali promised himself that once this stupid war was over, he will find a cheap and efficient way for the locals to manufacture medicaments en masse.

"Ensure his rehabilitation. Personnel will answer with their heads if any of my patients perish. Come back in three minutes for the next one." He said to a nurse in a static voice, repeating the same mantra that he had already said at least thirty times by now. Repetition is the mother of teaching. Many medics here lost a friend or relative in the city. Better to keep them focused on healing rather than to let them linger on thoughts of vengeance.

As the nurse left, a door into the makeshift operation room opened, and it walked in, moving with the grace of a predator. For a brief moment, Wohali felt sadness that Chochmingwu was not here with him, not watching his back as in years before. He found the stupid girl, her body one big tumor, shortly after she fell into a chemical waste. Her skin was swollen and cracked with each move, flesh was falling off her fingers. It annoyed Wohali to admit it, but not even his skills could have preserved her flesh body. Despite her not being of the Bento Tribe, Wohali treated her like one, giving her a body of steel and even a name, after the girl admitted that she wanted to leave her former life behind. Through careful questioning, Wohali learned that her family was killed by a skinwalker. For ten years, she loyally served him until the war broke out. They were both sad at this departure, but Wohali knew that deep down the girl had her own darkness that she could not overcome. He had given Chochmingwu’s steel body the best precognition programs he was able to make, and yet still some Reclaimer gunned her down. Wohali would like to know who it was. Not for vengeance, such folly was a waste of time. Chochmingwu made her choices, and he is making his. No, Wohali merely wanted to learn how it happened, so he could improve the precognition protocols.

"What a shithole this place is." Eight said, looking around, wiping out the blood coming from its nostril. Its eyes were crimson in color, the mind scan was banned for use even within the Bento tribe for a reason. The chances of survival after its usage on a living being were miniscule. The fact that this being could still walk was a testament to the wonders of its body.

"And yet it is too good for a creature like you." Wohali replied, working on the patient, a soultaker of all people. This injury was a light one, a minor concussion. He only had to clean the wound and stitch it, putting clean bandages to prevent any possible infection. The soultaker should wake up just fine in a few hours.

Wohali was unafraid of Eight, merely annoyed at its presence here. Alas he had to try and send it away peacefully, any direct confrontation with it and its kin will undoubtedly take a toll on the patients and will take away his precious time.

"No one here deserves someone with your skills. Don’t you feel even a little insulted at being here, being forced to do manual labor like a serf?" Wohali ignored its goading, their exchange was complete. He was busy washing his fingers and sterilizing the steel anew before the examination. The artificial in a human flesh suit walked to a sleeping woman by the wall. Annoyed as it was for Wohali, they had precious little space here to store potentially dangerous prisoners. As a result, he kept them close by, ready to knock them out cold if they awoke and became violent, "Ah… Abnormal. We lost quite a few of our kind. She is from the Reclaimers, am I right? Oh, I see that you have several here. Do you mind if I borrow just one..." Eight reached out with its hand toward the woman but stopped in place the moment Wohali opened his back. The steel patches of his body slid to the side, and the wires shot out from his back, aiming laser cutters into the creature’s face. Wohali no longer had any need for a skeleton, the crude façade of his outer body was only meant to contain the writhing swarm of wires and tendrils that were connected to the braincase that stored his brain floating in nutrient solution. The only reason the flesh carver even bothered with a human form was because it was easier for others to communicate with him that way. Eight stepped back, raising its arms, "You could have just said no."

"What do you want? I am in the middle of something." Wohali asked, looking at his fingers, making sure to remove both blood and flesh from the gleaming steel.

"Merely wanted to ask if you would come with us. Reclaimers will…"

"Will win, yes," Wohali finished for it, disgusted to allow this creature even to breathe in his presence, "Once the Regulators fall, the cease fire will be in the making. I have no idea what King will give, but the Bento tribe will be fine," Wohali lifted his arm up, unleashing a scalpel from a finger. He smiled with the steel lips, a foolish face feature that was suited only to let him bask in his ego, upon seeing that the blade was pristine clear, "Run away, toy of a dead man."

"We have much to offer…" Eight said in an annoyed tone, the dead creature that pulled its string was getting angry.

"I doubt it," Wohali responded, allowing the scalpel to slid back. He went to prepare new syringes with painkillers and sedatives for the doctors who will work in this room soon, "Your group was kicked out of the lands of Oathtakers. Now Reclaimers are busy kicking you out of here, and you are running like beaten dogs back to Iterna. You have nothing of value left. And above all else," He turned to face it. He could see the shadow of the man behind the mocking eyes, someone who had unwillingly or willingly become a slave to the parasite, "If you dare to stand between me and my research, I will vivisect you instead. Our exchange is complete. Leave. Now."

He was speaking of the wonderful steel wolfkin, of course. His drones had located her when she was flying toward the hospital. Soon after, Eight contacted Wohali, promising him firsthand information on this being in exchange for a safe haven. Wohali accepted its offer, against his better judgement, and saved these things from Lord Steward. It was a calculated risk. He made sure to funnel Eight and its merry group back to Iterna, even preparing some of his best students to track them. If Eight and its fellows decided to play false, Wohali had the means in place to dispose of them. If the numbers hold on to the end of their bargain, one day Iterna will root them out, Wohali had little doubt in this. In exchange for this, Eight provided its memories, allowing Wohali to scan its mind. Debauchery of the dead being aside, the steel wolfkin was a thing of wonder. She was capable of so much more, yet, and it was just a theory, her fear held her down. Flesh was a weakness to the steel, as it always happens. No matter. Her body was far too important to let it go to waste. Wohali obtained new knowledge, tearing it from Eight’s mind, and the Bento tribe will grow ever stronger through this. All for the union of steel and flesh. Perhaps Wohali will even come closer to solving the problem of entering the digital realm for good. The real world was done for, it was enough to look outside to see it. Only by migrating to the other realm can humanity, or their offspring, survive.

He "heard" how the door closed when Eight left the room. Wohali no longer had ears, but the sensors installed in his body were able to catch even the tiniest vibrations in the air, transmitting them into signals that his brain recognized as "sounds". The machinery within his body connected his brain to the systems of his guards, who were spread evenly around the facility, listening and watching through his eyes. This facility was in a dire state, the leader of the Regulators ran, abandoning his people and leaving behind far too few soldiers willing to guard the wounded. The commander promised to return back with help, yet everyone knew that he was leaving them behind to escape. Wohali could hear the moaning, screaming, and begging of the patients, as well as the quiet curses of the doctors. Only a few tanks and a few heavy artillery pieces were left in the area, and the soldiers here were subpar. The facility itself was nothing more than a series of dirty shacks, the wounded here were just as likely to die from infection as they were likely to die from lack of treatment. The doctors and nurses were overworked. Alas, it was impossible to move the wounded away safely. The officer in charge expected that reclaimers would descend upon the facility at any time, killing anyone. Hope was bleak.

That is, until Wohali arrived with his guards, claiming one of the operation rooms for himself. They were at the very border with Iterna, and Wohali contacted their dear neighbors, explaining the situation. In exchange for laying down their arms, Iterna claimed this place as a refugee camp, and soon their troops will arrive and Wohali will leave. Unlike the locals, his fight wasn’t over. Meanwhile, he had to endure the greedy and curious eyes of reclaimers nearby, who were waiting for iternians' arrival to retrieve their wounded soldiers.

Still trailing Numbers through the eyes of his followers, Wohali greeted rested doctors and walked out of the operational room, coming to a place that the Regulators designated as a morgue. The sensors that were responsible for the interpretation of smells transmitted a stream of data into his brain, indicating that some of the bodies had begun decomposing. It was of no concern, he walked toward a crate standing in the corner of the room, pressing a code and making the crate unfold like a metal flower before his lens. A stream of cold air was unleashed from within, the ice on the inner sides of the container quickly started to melt upon being exposed to the overheated temperature of the Ravaged Lands.

Within the crate lay the dead body of a wolfkin. During the fall of Belaz, his followers attacked one of the packs at the edge of the city, disposing of most of the soldiers and bringing him the deceased bulk of one of their leaders, a wolf hag, if his information was up to date. She was still locked in the newly looking black power armor, armor joints provided almost no weak points for the armor piercing weapons, forcing his followers to use brute force and overwhelming firepower to destroy this pack. No sign of decay was visible on her body, the cryo capsule perfectly kept her body intact.

Tendrils came from his back, carrying the dead body to the investigation slab. The helmet of the deceased person had an opening for the mouth, allowing the wolfkin to wield her fangs at her leisure. One of his tendrils slipped into the mouth, probing the fangs and tearing out one. It didn’t come out easily, Wohali had to apply a mechanic's cutter to carefully extract the fang. Compared to the bodies that he investigated earlier, this specimen had stronger fangs, ones that could easily leave a mark even on his frame. Curious. Are they getting stronger with age, perhaps?

The steel tendrils came in full from the slices that opened on his back, wielding plasma cutters and removing the power armor off the dead body piece by piece, lifting the removed armor before his eyes and allowing him to examine it. He had seen such armor once before, when Soultakers gracefully sent him the armor belonging to a prisoner. Wohali was still angry that they let the prisoner go. To defeat the enemy, one must understand the enemy. He needed to obtain a living specimen as soon as possible.

Beneath the armor was a soft fabric of the underarmor, a special fabric that was meant to provide better control over the power armor. Surprisingly, these crude wolfkins and other reclaimers were seemingly against installing implants inside their bodies to form a union between flesh and armor. Jekaterina also used the same method, but at least in her case, she literally could not keep the implants in her body. Why the enemy state would choose such an expensive method was beyond Wohali's understanding. But then again, he reminded himself, the people outside of the tribe were weird.

He turned off the plasma cutters, using simple blades to cut through the fabric. He found that the body beneath was covered with a few bullet holes, much to Wohali’s displeasure. He asked his students to bring the specimen back intact. But the fierce struggle left them with no choice.

Leaving the specimen naked, he looked her over, noting that the blood was clotting and even wounds tried to close, despite the death of the brain. Her snout was proportionally longer in comparison to her body than the snouts of those on whom he performed the autopsy earlier. Perhaps they become more animalistic with age?

His fingers reached one of the wounds, burying into the flesh. He frowned upon finding something hardy above the muscles and allowed his tendrils to help his effort by cutting the flesh around the wound. The flesh carver noticed with surprise that the specimen had a subdermal plating inside her body, a thin but incredibly tough bone plating meant to protect her organs. None of the previous specimens had this.

Wohali worked for half an hour, taking out organs and marveling at their pristine condition. According to gathered reports, which were somewhat confirmed by the sheer number of scars on the specimen’s body, the wolfkins lived in a very harsh, matriarchal society, where females dominated each other and suppressed most males. Fights were common, but there was no sign of lasting internal damage.

The specimen's skull was hardened to the point that even non-armor-piercing bullets would not be able to penetrate it in any reasonable amount of time. His mechanical cutter stopped dead at the skull, and Wohali decided to move on for now. He found exo-skeleton shielding in the shoulder, mighty bone plates that covered the entire shoulder beneath the skin without limiting mobility. Opening the arm of the specimen, he found that the muscle tissue was far larger and greater than the ones in the previous specimens. It was also partially resisted to cutting, forcing the flesh carver to push the mechanical cutters slightly until they reached the bone.

Wohali moved on to the specimen’s chest, cutting it open and finding, with a small surprise, that the wolfkin had a rudimentary third lung. It was far too small to work for such a huge body, leaving him to wonder if it was meant to grow to its full size sometime later in life. Digestive fluids within the wolfkin’s stomach left corroded marks on his instruments.

"Wohali." A voice said from behind him. Wohali ignored the newcomer, too eager to find the heart. The man behind him loudly tapped on the ground, sending small tremors.

"If you cause me to make a misstep, you will be the next on this slab, Camaxtli." Wohali finally addressed him.

Flesh carver Camaxtli was a bulky figure, resembling a square-shaped walking armored closet on two column-like legs. His arms were utterly missing, instead two gusts of armored tentacles and metallic whips were coming from the area where his shoulders were supposed to be. Camaxtli had no head, his brain was well hidden within the frame of his body, ever shifting around. Like Wohali, Camaxtli saw little reason to paint his armored form of steel, leaving black dots of sensors as the only color on his body.

"I knew you'd be avoiding work at some point. I came to collect you, you made me work on these useless peons and now you dare to leave me alone!" Camaxtli’s voice boomed with rage. This flesh carver believed in the natural voice and worked hard to allow his speakers to perfectly imitate the emotions that he felt.

"It was your turn, that’s all," Wohali finally found a heart and was planning to carefully extract it, "I hope that our guests are all alive?"

"Who do you take me for?" Camaxtli said with disgust, "I have pride in my work. I saved their miserable lives, making the process as painful as possible to remind the prisoners of their place. But my results are far better than yours, old man! My patients won’t even have scars when their flesh regrows!"

"Congratulations," Wohali said with a dry voice, turning off emotional modulators in his dynamics, "How many medicaments did you waste on this vanity? And while we are at it, would you also like to explain to me why the teleportation device was not delivered to the elders?"

"None of your business," Camaxtli hissed, stomping closer to Wohali and making the deceased bodies slightly jump in their body bags. The specimen before Wohali trembled as well, but Wohali’s tendrils worked with the accuracy of a machine, adapting to ever changing circumstances in less than a second. He once performed heart surgery on a burning train, and the subject, Katriana Vincent, was still alive and well ever since, "King offered you a place in a new order. You refused. Now eat the scraps that are given to you and be content."

You are reading story Duty, empty dreams and trying not to become a monster. at novel35.com

Wohali kept extracting the heart, wondering if it would be worthwhile to cut open Camaxtli and read his memories. The young fool, like several other flesh carvers and some other fools from the Resistance, flocked to the King’s banner, believing that Resistance should not be disbanded even after the war and that King instead should be ruler over all the Ravaged Lands. And he fed them, never fully taking their side but throwing them scraps like the teleportation device.

Wohali paid no thought to the rudeness of his colleagues. Camaxtli came to him, wanting to take him to try and repair the teleportation device. After just two uses, this "genius" broke it. The device was apparently meant to be used once a day, but these "geniuses" overheated it. No, Camaxtli was just a useful tool for King, ready to be discarded at a moment's notice. Even now, he tried to bully Wohali into submission, ignorant that Wohali’s students were already converging on this place, eager to help their master. Wohali decided against putting the fool in his place. He too was a fool once, nearly buying into a plot to kill Jekaterina and Tlaltzin to preserve the old way of life. Given time, Camaxtli might grow into a decent person. Wohali raised the heart, inspecting it.

The heart looked not like a lump of flesh but had the form of a perfect square. What's more, the heart's shape and internal systems clearly were designed to withstand and even recover from straight piercing, even if the hit landed clearly in the direct center of a mass. A typical heart has two upper and two lower chambers. This heart, based on Wohali’s rough examination, had eight chambers. The heart was also shifted further to the left side of the body than the hearts of the other specimens. None of the wolfkins, whom he cut open, before had such a strange internal system, in fact, the form of this heart looked like something that was manufactured and perfected in a laboratory rather than being created ordinarily. The heart and internal organs of these species change with age to better supply the increased mass of a body?

"Wonderful," Wohali finally said, admitting the marvel of nature, "If only we had a living specimen to learn more of their culture and way of life…"

"Well, you can walk out of the building and ask," Camaxtli grumbled, and a metal tube with a microscope at the end came from within his body, examining the heart in detail first through a scanning lens, then shifting to an oil immersion type of lens, "But I have a better idea. The brain is seemingly intact, let’s have a bit of fun."

A steel needle came from the bottom of Camaxtli’s frame, carried by a tendril that nimbly evaded Wohali’s hand and pierced the skin of the deceased person, injecting something from within. Wohali felt how the heart was pulled away from his tendrils, arteries aimed to return the flesh back into the body. He allowed it to slip from his heart upon seeing how the heart made a beat. The low groan came from the lips of the specimen, while wounds on the deceased body spit blood anew, the ice-cold body twitched.

"What is this lunacy? The specimen was dead for days, even while kept in the cryo capsule, the brain damage was far too severe to try and resurrect the patient now." Wohali demanded to know, noticing how the hands of the woman unleashed claws and twitched.

"Just something that I found in the ruins," Camaxtli answered, all cameras on his body filming the twitching of the body, "According to the description, it should return the specimen approximately to the same level that she had before. The majority of her memories will be wiped out, however, and some changes will be irreversible. All in all, it should be a new person, an infant in mind while not in body. Maybe I will raise this doggie as a proper dog, ha!"

Wohali ignored his last words, calling his students closer. He wanted to deny it, but whatever nanomachines Camaxtli injected into this husk were working. The dead person was coming back to life. Her wounds were closing, the organs were straightening themselves, the cut arteries and bones were being restored before his very eyes, peeled away skin was moving back, all while nanomachines were sending jolt after jolt into the heart, bringing the specimen closer to being reborn.

Should the specimen wake up, Wohali will not give her up. It would be interesting, from the academic point of view, if nothing else, if he could nurture a dead person back to perfect mental health and turn her into a stable human.

The body jerked, and a single note "AAAAA" came from the recently deceased body's mouth. The fur came from her body, falling on the ground in a shower, showing tanned skin, two large breasts, and several smaller tits. The patient’s body moved up, held in the air by her limbs, while her back strained to a point of snapping, all the while a single note was coming from her mouth. Wohali moved to keep her down when the woman’s pupil moved, focusing on him and her mouth smiled.

The patient’s skin turned milky white, her claws tore through her fingers, while her limbs and body became swollen. The jawbone pushed through the skin, extending the snout and allowing a second row of teeth to appear in her mouth. The eyes became projectors of light, legs and arms elongated with the sound of gunfire, looking almost thin for a moment, before flesh and new muscles filled the emptiness.

Wohali’s sensors screamed, notifying him that the subject had endured a genetical reconstruction. Rather than a simple regeneration, something else was happening to her. The muscles of her arms and legs increased several times, the sheer body mass was continuously increasing moment by moment, while she was molding into…

The body jumped off the examination slab, landing on the floor and cracking concrete. The specimen stood up, her face hideously looking. Her nostrils moved all the way up to her eyes, while her snout was the size of a human arm. Two new sets of fangs looked like they could easily chump through metal. Her claws became the size of a human leg. She towered over both flesh carvers, looking around the room confusedly and quietly saying "AAAAAA" over and over. Drool came from her mouth, running down the body that no longer bore any scars or openings from the recent autopsy. Her amber eyes betrayed a dull state of her mind. She raised her left arm and made a punch in the empty air. The wind created by her punch moved toward the stone wall, slamming against it and leaving a crack in it.

"Now then, let us begin the training session. Sit!" Camaxtli said, and the creature looked at him, "Poor thing, don’t know what words are. When I say something, you sit, or pain follows!"

Before Wohali could stop him, Camaxtli swung nerve whips from both of his arms. They struck at her, sturdy metal whips that could slice through armored plate, leaving just small cuts on her oversized body. The whips wrapped around her and Camaxtli unleashed the pain injectors. The methods behind his whips were relatively simple. It sends false impulses to the brain of a victim, stimulating intense pain that could easily kill a normal person. Each whip can cause so much pain that a human's heart will stop on its own, unable to bear it. And Camaxtli used all of his whips.

The creature only looked at him, and for a moment, Wohali thought that maybe it couldn’t feel pain. But then it smiled, grabbing the whips and pushing them into her mouth, chomping on them like a curious and happy kid would chomp on a treat.

"How dare you!" Camaxtli shouted, seeing how one of his pride and joy weapons fell on the ground before his eyes, the creature was busy slowly chewing up the metal remains in her mouth. Seeing the angry shout, the being showed a gigantic tongue to the flesh carver and swallowed the remains in a deliberately slow way, enjoying every second and prompting Camaxtli to roar in anger.

Camaxtli advanced on the being, raising his tendrils and unleashing metal cutters and syringes filled with potent enough sedatives to drop entire villages asleep for weeks, something that was utterly not allowed to be used on any patients, safe for ones from the Bento tribe, due to how dangerous they were. The bloody fool still had no idea just what was before them. He thought of her as a usual genetic freak, one of so many in the Ravaged Lands. Some lived side by side with Bento and were good friends and neighbors, some attacked them and were wiped out. But this right here. This was…

"A skinwalker in the facility. Requesting aid from the reclaimers. All forces, prepare to defend the patients." Wohali said calmly, while Camaxtli flew past him, the metal frame that weighed a good fourteen tons was sent flying by a flick of the skinwalker’s wrist, crashing into the wall behind him with a thunderous sound. Wohali quickly summoned the map of the facility. The room was the furthest from the operation area and the patients’ "rooms". He could wield his weaponry with ease here.

Wohali threw up his arm, transforming his left arm into the plasma cannon and unleashing a single burst into the creature, burning a hole in her left side and making her fall on one knee. While the creature looked with genuine curiosity at her own damaged body, two of his students, both in the frames of the heavy assault team, broke in, swinging maces down on her head. Two energy shots came from the breaches in the wall, piercing the creature’s neck. The tips of maces ruined the ceiling, allowing one more student, in a slim metallic body the size of a human, to jump. His arms were changed to blades, and now he slashed forward, aiming to bling the creature. The rest of his students retreated, either busy evacuating patients or ready to support him from afar. Wohali cursed the fact that his best students were busy overseeing the numbers. But even still, the plasma shot pierced the bones of the skinwalker’s neck, she must at least…

Two spiked maces closed on the skinwalker. The energy ran by the tips of the blades, and the force with which his students swung it was enough to leave even a hover tank utterly broken. The creature moved at the last moment, one mace crashed against her left shoulder, failing to break the bones, while another was cut by the palm of her hand. The student who jumped through the ceiling made his slash, landing before the creature and finding his arms missing, swallowed by the skinwalker’s jaws. The wound in her neck closed and she looked at the skin of her palm that was being fried before her very eyes. Skinwalker smiled anew, pushing back both maces with ease and grabbing both students in a hug. Wohali heard the metal screaming, where her immense force began to bend their frames. He fired at her left leg, but the creature simply moved it out of the way, shattering the mechanical spines of both bentos and throwing them into the holes from which they came, forcing the snipers to retreat and the armless student to leap away from her, running for his life. All the while, she kept saying "AAAAA" and drooling like an idiot.

"You dare!" Camaxtli stumped forward, fully unharmed but missing his tendrils.

"This is the skinwalker, you fool!" Wohali told him, "Keep your distance."

"Be calm, old man. I remember your lessons about creation well," Something clicked within the metal frame and the sound stopped coming from the skinwalker’s mouth, "Never create something you can’t destroy. The very thing that brought her back will take her apart."

The sudden confusion and pain appeared in the eyes of the skinwalker when her heart no longer beat, no air any longer came into her lungs, and her insides started to turn into mush by the nanomachines. She fell on her knees, looking incredulously at the laughing Camaxtli. His laughter was cut short the moment the creature raised her arms behind herself, clenching her fist and rapidly throwing them down, forming half circles before her breasts, like a bodybuilder who would like to show off by ripping off his shirt.

Only instead of a shirt, her skin was torn up, releasing thin streams of blood from the back of her head, from the shoulders and neck, from her chest… Her entire body became a fountain of blood. And with these streams of blood, she was expunging the nanomachines out of her body.

Too dangerous. Wohali felt anger, seeing such missed opportunity. His entire life, he heard stories about skinwalkers, the horrors of the Ravaged Lands. The beasts mostly kept to themselves, though some did help a village or two by saving them from raiders... before devouring the entire village if their mood changed. Some met traders and would let them go in exchange for a song or would make them dance until people died of exhaustion. These were the creatures who lost their minds, and out of scientific interest, Wohali was curious if he could help such a creature regain sanity. Would it be able to move on after all the sins it committed? He was actually thankful to Camaxtli, now he knew the potential source of the skinwalkers’ origin. All knowledge was sacred, but not all ways toward it were allowed.

But right now, he had no way to contain it, so instead he changed the form of his arm, the plasma cannon gave way to a dart launcher, allowing Wohali to fire a single dart at the creature. The armor-piercing needle pierced the skin beneath the heart, and the skinwalker stopped when her skin color rapidly started turning grey, spreading in full circle from the infected area. The gray skin cracked and showered on the floor in a stream of dust.

This was a flesh-eating virus that Wohali developed as a means to combat sand reapers. The oversized monsters were a danger to everyone in the Ravaged Lands. Wohali had never tested his weapon in the field, but in the lab, he discovered that the virus would absorb all meat in a single organism, even if it was a twenty-meter-tall lump of flesh. Upon removing the flesh, the virus was proven to be incapable of jumping on a nearby hosts.

A smile reappeared on the skinwalker’s lips, and the circle of gray death stopped. She tore the destroyed flesh on her body, revealing the working heart beneath. A thin membrane like skin ran over the gaping wound, closing her body the same way distorted water in a pool calms up, leaving not even a scar behind to see for a shocked Wohali. Her immune system killed the virus that was meant to overcome any and all immune systems recorded in the data banks of the Bento tribe with ease,

"Never will flesh match the perfection of the machine! No way, no how!" Camaxtli shouted, while countless cannons within his body open fire at the skinwalker, throwing her into the wall and pushing her outside in a shower of fire. Energy shots, armor-piercing bullets, and shotgun shots, the flesh carver employed all his impressive weaponry, creating holes in the enemy’s body and evaporating the blood before it could even appear. The skinwalker yelped, when the firepower pushed her outside of the building, "Now writhe, scream, and die in agony for daring to raise your mutated hand at the superior being!"

His next shots missed the mark, when the skinwalker shifted her bulk, throwing her arms up in a dramatic gesture, reaching for countless cuts and bullet holes in her body with her claws, collecting blood and carrying it to her mouth.

"Whatfun!" She exclaimed in a young voice, so unfit for such a hideous beast, before advancing on the flesh carver and dodging the incoming shots. Wohali felt uneasy seeing the sheer speed with which her eyes moved. Camaxtli used no less than twenty different weapons, all firing at irregular intervals to confuse even a prediction system. However, this… creature, timed her advance perfectly, partly by guessing the patter of fire and partly by using her eyesight to dodge in advance. When Camaxtli tried to retreat, she closed the distance between them with ease, landing a wide kick against the frame that broke much of his intricate framework of weapons and sending the massive form of the flesh carver into the wall behind Wohali. The wolfkin raised her leg all the way to her snout, lovingly kissing her own ankle, before slamming her leg back into the ground and collapsing the morgue’s walls in a shower of stone. Like a madwoman, the skinwalker clapped her paws together, jumping in place like a kid, while her wounds were closing all around her body, "Playsomemore! More! More! More!"

The head above the left eye of the creature disappeared, leading to all the sentience that had just burned a moment ago in another eye dying out. The skinwalker’s legs gave in and her body began to topple forward. She nearly touched the ground before her toe tips arrested her fall. Blood and bone poured from a wound in her head, and in a blur, the skinwalker pushed herself upright once more, smiling, despite missing a quarter of her head.

"More playmates!" She said the first cohesive and easy-to-understand words in a clear voice. She turned around, seeing the reclaimers in the distance. The skinwalker was making a step toward them when an artillery shell hit her.

"Bestest day evar!" The skinwalker said, catching the shell between her palms, while newly grown bone reshaped her head back to its original form and the white of an eye reappeared in her eye socket, soon followed by the amber light.

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