Hardcore - 03 (20 page)

She remembered the ecstasy of her dream. It had been a false pleasure. A drug orgasm.

"Shit."

She turned left, saw only a whitewashed wall containing... oxygen tubes, and a set of strange metal pipes running up into the ceiling. She glanced right, and blinked. Betezh lay, strapped to an alloy trolley, his shirt and suit ripped open and a large red circle drawn on his chest. Pippa glanced down. She, too, had her WarSuit open revealing her pale breasts and flat belly. From her sternum to lower abdomen, somebody had drawn a large, red circle.

"That's not good," she muttered. "Betezh?" She raised her voice a little. "Betezh!"

"Urh."

"Wake up, dickhead!"

"Urh. What did I drink? I feel like I drank an ocean of bad whisky."

"No, you were injected by tiny flying insects. What needs to worry you right
now
, is that we seem to be in an operating theatre with our shirts open and large red circles drawn on our bodies. So open your bloody eyes and help me think of a way to escape."

Betezh licked his lips several times, and tried to sit up, struggled for a moment, then lay still. "Ahh," he said. "Ahh. It's like that, is it?"

"Yes. What can you see to your right?"

Betezh glanced. "It's a trolley. Full of, um, nice shiny medical equipment."

"Like scalpel-type shiny medical equipment?"

"Yeah. And those hooks they use to pulls things out, and forceps to keeps things open, and long thick needles for injecting." There came a long, long silence. "You don't think they're going to use them on us, do you, Pippa?"

"Well, let me think for a moment now. Of course I fucking do! Can you reach something sharp? Something we can attack these straps with?"

Betezh strained. "No."

"Damn. Can you move
anything?"

"No Pippa. Not even a testicle."

"Not funny, Betezh. This situation is starting to make me sweat."

"Ahh yes," said a voice, from beyond both soldiers' field of vision. "That could possibly be because we are about to remove your internal organs."

There came a period of contemplative silence.

Betezh coughed. "Did you just say that, Pippa? In that kind of comedy educated voice that only posh people on TV use?"

"No," said Pippa gently, eyes glinting, "I think it came from our captor."

"Yes, that would be correct. Forgive my lack of manners, and allow me to introduce myself." A figure moved into their line of sight, standing between the two trolleys and resting a hand reassuringly against both patients' feet. "I am Dr. Bleasedale." A face smiled, and Pippa squinted, unsure whether the figure was a man or a woman.

There was a
clang,
and the buzzing sound increased. Intense triple-halogen theatre lights sprang into life, filling the operating theatre with a brightness that dazzled Pippa and Betezh. They squinted, and slowly watched Bleasedale swim into focus.

She was modestly small, with short curly brown hair and a large purple burn scar covering half her face in a wide crescent. Her eyes twinkled, like a mischievous child. She wore a starched white doctor's uniform, a small white peaked cap, and high black leather boots. She carried a short black stick in one hand. She seemed a curious mix of scarred doctor and Nazi imitator.

"Why," said Pippa, speaking slowly and moistening her lips, partly because of the expired drugs, partly due to a fast-growing avalanche of fear, "why would you want to remove our internal organs?"

"I thought that concept would be obvious, daarling," said Dr. Bleasedale.

"Not to me," said Pippa, in a small voice.

"Because," said Bleasedale, twitching her stick so that it struck Pippa's lower leg, "we have a shortage of internal organs here at the Kludek Institute, ya?"

"The Kludek Institute?" said Pippa.

"Ya. Here, we pride ourselves with the finest of medical and surgical procedures, stringent aftercare, and the rehabilitation of patients in need of generous rest and respite. It's all in our policy documents and aftercare procedures. They're quite extensive. I wrote them, daarling. You should see the Health and Safety Policy! It's full of health. Lots of health. And lots of safety." She smiled.

Betezh gave a moan. "I kind of like my internal organs," he said, close to tears. "I mean, I like, I kinda need, I kinda
want
them. They're mine. They're what, you know, keeps me alive and digesting food and all that stuff."

"Mere formalities," snapped Dr. Bleasedale impatiently. "You will be recompensed for your loss, and given temporary replacements." She smiled then, and her androgynous scarred face split into nothing less than an Evil Dictator Grin, the sort of arrogant smile found on all high-ranking individuals who abuse their positions of power and are not afraid to trample on the Little People in their stampede for more. More of what? Hell, more of
everything
.

"Don't we have to sign a consent form, or something?" muttered Betezh.

"Already signed and sealed. Whilst you were unconscious. Don't worry yourself about such trivialities. Soon, you'll be the proud owners of Hecker and Guttenberg Ersatz Mechanical Organs, the finest in the business!"

Dr. Bleasedale's stick rested on Pippa's leg, close to her right hand.
If she could just stretch a little bit, just manage to...
Pippa lunged for the stick, but Bleasedale was surprisingly quick. The stick moved, swept back, and slammed across Pippa's cheek with a
snap
that made her gasp, and left a long welting mark against her fair skin.

Pippa, whose head had dropped with the blow, lifted her chin, and in her eyes shone a dark light of murder. Her eyes watered, but they weren't tears of pain or fear, it was an outburst of sheer rage-filled animal frustration.

"I'm going to fuck you up," snarled Pippa.

"Unlikely, daarling," said Dr. Bleasedale, turning her back on the two captives and moving towards the trolley filled with instruments. She started to busy herself, readying tiny machines and trailing wires to the two Combat-K squaddies. She attached pads to faces and chests, and soon the operating theatre was filled with
blips
and
beeps
signalling blood pressure, respiration, heart rate and brain activity.

Dr. Bleasedale turned back and, with a smile, placed her stick on the trolley. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and they were quite the most ominous pair of rubber gloves either Pippa or Betezh had ever seen.

"Now lie back," said Bleasedale. "You won't feel a thing."

She smiled grimly.

"Actually," she said, "you will feel quite a lot. All of it, in fact. We call it
open cavity surgery,
aha. Ha ha. But then, that's what the Great VOLOS would want. It's all part of the Sacrifice, and it's the Sacrifice that counts."

"Wait!" squealed Betezh like a pig with a spear up its arse. "Don't do this! Kill her, her over there, the pretty lady with the funny bob."

"Betezh!" hissed Pippa, eyes wide.

"I'll do anything, tell you anything, just don't kill me, please!"

There followed a long, embarrassed silence.

"Dickhead," spat Pippa.

Dr. Bleasedale held up her stick. In her other rubber-gloved appendage, she held a syringe. "Betezh. Thanks to your whining, your pleading, and your willingness to sell out your fellow Combat-K operative, I am willing to change my plans for you."

"Thank
you
," breathed Betezh, going limp against his straps.

"Bring out the decapus!" shouted Bleasedale. Almost instantly, double doors were whammed open and a trolley wheeled in by shuffling zombified nurses. Their skin was green, hanging off their bones, and each visible orifice - and there were many - oozed a treacly brown pus. The trolley contained a decapus. It was big, caged, and had a bulbous rubberised black body, with ten tentacles curling and whipping from its core in obvious agitation, if not downright enraged hostility. There came a steady
clang
as a limb bounced off the bars. Occasionally, one would curl between the bars and wave madly around, as if seeking an enemy. Amidst the black blubbery flesh, somewhere deep within folds, were many tiny black eyes and a yellow beak. In all, it was a seafaring monstrosity that would have probably benefited from being left in the sea.

"What," said Betezh, "are you going to do with that?"

Even as he spoke, a tentacle curled out, caught one of the green-flesh nurses (still peroxide-blonde, still cherry lipped), and started to repeatedly bang her against the cage bars, first dislocating limbs with crunches of stressed bone, then ripping her (it?) limb from limb in a scatter of rancid putrefied flesh. Betezh nearly gagged. Pippa smiled grimly.

Bleasedale seemed oblivious to the carnage going on behind her jackboots. She smiled down at Betezh with her best Nazi leer, and said, "This, daarling, is my decapus. I have been searching for subjects for some time, in order to experiment with transplant surgery."

"Transplant surgery?" queried Betezh, in a toddler voice.

"Ya, we cut off your arms and legs, and transplant the decapus tentacles in an attempt at cross-surgery and combined genetic misplacement." She had moved closer, was leaning against Pippa's trolley. Pippa's eye fell to the syringe, which dripped a clear, viscous fluid with a slow, steady
tick
.

"I don't want bloody octopus limbs!" howled Betezh.

"Decapus," corrected Bleasedale, pedantically.

Pippa's boot suddenly lashed out, catching the syringe and flicking it upwards. It spun, and landed in Pippa's outstretched hand. She smiled grimly, and Bleasedale, taking several steps back, shrugged. "You think that will do you some good, ya daarling? It is a pain enhancer, simply injected to enable you to suffer all the more."

"Good," snapped Pippa, and with unerring accuracy, flicked the hypodermic at Bleasedale who moved, too late. The long thin needle embedded in her eyeball and she gave a shriek multiplied by ten as the pain enhancer went immediately to work, injecto-brain. Clawing at her dart-stuck face, Bleasedale staggered back - straight into the tentacles of the decapus, which picked her up like a flopping ragdoll and starting waving the doctor around, squealing and wailing, before tossing her with awesome force against the wall, where she crunched, crumpled, and hit the ground.

"Great," snapped Betezh. "And how does that help our situation exactly?"

"Oh please don't hurt me nasty wasty doctor lady, I'm just sooo afraid of dying," mocked Pippa as she struggled with her bonds. "You fucking back-stabbing little Judas."

"Hey, Pippa, girl, chick, it was all a ruse, right? I was just buying us some time until you found a way for us to escape..."

Pippa cursed. Somehow, she had made her bonds tighter. "I'm wrapped tighter than Franco's bondage gag. Can you get out of your straps, Betezh?"

"Oh yeah," hissed Betezh, "like I didn't think of that one before, oh no, I thought I'd just lie here during the whole crazy crazy peepshow and not even, like, get a hand free and grab a scalpel and attack the bitch, or something."

"Betezh, shut up."

At that moment, there came a terrible bone-crumbling roar, and the decapus opened the bars of its cage like a key opening a sardine can. Pippa and Betezh glanced at one another as the decapus crawled free, and extended its black blubbery body, brushing the ceiling a good fifteen feet above, tentacles whirling like tensioned steel cables as they whipped and snapped about.

"Um, I don't think our situation has improved," said Betezh.

"Shut up!" Pippa struggled with the ferocity of her nature.

The decapus picked up the two remaining green-flesh nurses, and tossed them aside with contempt. One struck a wall, crumbling into a ball of compressed rotten flesh; the other struck the medical utensil trolley, splitting in half with a
crunch
so that two body sections spun away in different directions and toppled the trolley. There came a church-bell series of chimes as implements scattered across the floor.

The decapus roared again, and fixed its many beady eyes on the two patients strapped to their trolleys. Its beak clacked, and to Pippa's panicked mind, it seemed as if the creature was laughing.

"Oh no!" squeaked Betezh, as the decapus pulled its tentacles together and in a strange, accelerated, crab-like whirling dervish of betentacled squidgy motion, charged at the helpless Combat-K victims...

Music slurred, a mix of sax and piano, languorous and sleazy, but classy at the same time. Franco leant on the doorbell, and as the door opened he hitched his thumbs in his belt and grinned, showing his missing tuff.

"Hey baby," he said, "I'm here to fix your Indigo5000 Super Deluxe Helix Washing Machine. I've brought all my tools."

The woman who'd answered had yellow-scaled skin, long black panther hair, and was looking kinda sexy. She wore a skimpy see-through negligee, her breasts were cupped in silver pointed containers (with tassels), and her horned one-toed feet poked from furry slippers.

"Hi handsome," she said, purring, "There's only one tool you'll be needing in my hot bitch kitchen." She grabbed Franco's dungarees and pulled him inside, her mouth clamping limp-like to his, her tongue probing into his mouth and searching his many chrome fillings with slurping desire.