James Axler – Stoneface

Lurching to his feet, Bob stumbled toward Ryan. The echoes of his footfalls resounded hollowly within the stone vault.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Ryan snapped. “Don’t move.”

He didn’t seem to hear or care. Clumsily he rushed at Ryan. Sidestepping quickly, the one-eyed warrior delivered a roundhouse kick to his belly. The man didn’t cry out or even gasp as he folded over Ryan’s leg. With the back of Bob’s head exposed, Ryan brought down the barrel of his blaster against his skull.

Bob slid limply down Ryan’s leg and fell face first to the stone floor. He made no movement afterward. As Ryan kneeled beside the man, he was joined by Mildred. She peeled off a glove and pressed two fingers against the man’s carotid artery.

“He’s alive, but his pulse is weird,” she said. “Very fast and irregular. His body temperature seems unusually low, too. Turn him over, will you?”

Ryan obliged so Mildred could examine the stump of the shoulder. Within a raw orifice, color-coded wires intertwined and a complex network of circuitry glistened wetly.

Touching a fractured cylinder protruding several inches from the stump, Mildred said, “Looks like a Teflon socket.”

A small transparent plastic tube corkscrewed within the hollow socket. A pale greenish liquid dripped from it to the floor, crawling across the stone. Ryan touched it, rubbing the fluid between thumb and forefinger. It was oily and viscous.

“This isn’t blood,” he said. “A lubricant, mebbe.”

Frowning, Mildred dipped a finger into the spreading puddle, brought it to her nose and sniffed. Then, tentatively, she touched the tip of her tongue to her finger. Quickly she turned her head and spit.

“A sort of sweetish taste,” she said, still spitting. “I think it might be some kind of coolant.”

Ryan’s eyebrows rose. “A coolant?”

“Yeah. Like Freon or something.”

Mildred undid the man’s shirt, tossing his tie aside. His flesh was very pale, an unhealthy mushroom shade. A five-inch pink scar ran down his clavicle, marked on either side by a saddle-stitched pattern.

She grunted. “He’s one of the zipper club.”

“What’s that?”

“Old medical slang. Means he either had open-heart surgery, like a bypass operation, or he’s had a heart transplant. See if you can get his mouth open.”

Mystified, Ryan did as she said, squeezing the hinges of the man’s jaw until his mouth gaped open. To his surprise, Mildred stuck a finger inside Bob’s mouth, under his saliva-slick tongue. After a moment she withdrew it, wiping her finger on her jacket.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded.

“Testing his body temperature. If it was normal, his mouth would be hot even if his epidermis isn’t.”

“Well’s it hot or not?”

“Not,” she replied. “Very cool. In fact, probably not over seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. It’s almost as if the poor bastard is walking around in a constant state of hypothermia.”

The doctor straightened and went to retrieve Bob’s arm. Ryan studied the badge pinned to the man’s lapel. It bore very little information beyond his picture, his name and a red dot about a quarter of an inch in diameter. The dot looked as if it had been affixed to the card somehow, and it bore an odd reflective sheen.

Mildred returned with the arm. Holding the limb by the wrist and the bicep, she bent the elbow back and forth. “This is extraordinary, Ryan.”

“How so?”

“It’s a bionic prosthesis, but it’s about ten years beyond anything in use before the holocaust. Touch the hand.”

Ryan poked the hand, pinched it and shrugged. “Feels like skin.”

Nodding, Mildred said, “Exactly. Not latex or rubber, but a synthetic, organic equivalent of flesh. Perfect in every detail, right down to the texture and implanted hair follicles, which is pretty amazing, considering a human hair is only sixty microns wide.”

“You doctors didn’t have this in predark days?”

“We had something like it, used mainly to speed the healing process of burn victims, and it was hardly the best solution. This stuff is almost indistinguishable from normal epidermal tissue.”

“How’s it made?” Ryan asked.

“In my day, we used a form of silicon gel and plasma. A synthetic skin this close to the original has to be developed by genetic engineering, maybe through a form of cloning.”