Heart of Steel Read Online Free PDF Page A

can get through this. Just breathe. Get through this, and find out what’s happened to Jim. You’re okay.
    She breathed slowly, trying to mentally force her jackrabbitting heart to slow the hell down already. In the rest of her mind, what the hell soon faded into background noise.
    Mechanus raised his remaining eyebrow. “You know,” he said gently, as though correcting a small child, “When someone introduces themselves to you, it’s considered polite to reciprocate.”
    Oh. Right. Apparently she should act like this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. It probably wasn’t for him, but what the hell all the same.
    Stay frosty, Julia...
    “I’m... Julia,” she choked out, still staring at the metal half of his face, “Julia Parker.” She was aware on some level that she was staring, but couldn’t quite tear her eyes away from what looked like nothing so much as a damaged cyborg. She forced herself to focus on the matter at hand. “You said that Jim was here?”
    He smiled. “Yes, of course. Here he is.” He gestured to the window.
    She looked—and clapped her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream when she saw what remained of her boyfriend. Her mind, well-practiced after years in the ER, slipped effortlessly into clinical mode.
    Extensive contusions across the face, neck, and upper right quarter of the torso. Traumatic amputation of the left arm just above the elbow; tissue damage indicates the limb was torn off rather than severed. Multiple lacerations across the chest and ribs. Traumatic transection just above the pelvic bone.
    A number of electrodes with trailing wires had been affixed to Jim’s chest and temples, and a few more wires had apparently been inserted into his chest cavity around his breastbone, sketching out a set of parentheses around his heart. She also saw a series of tubes and catheters threaded into strategic areas of the ruin, with fluids pumping in and out. The tubes threaded into the stump of his arm seemed to be circulating blood, while those coming from his torn lower half seemed to carry several types of bodily fluids. However, the items that brought the whole bizarre scene together lurked in the far corner: a tank of sickly green, transparent fluid containing Jim’s naked legs and pelvis. Nearby, a heart monitor and oxygen pump indicated that for all that had happened to him, Jim still lived. Correction—Jim was still being kept alive.
    She found herself remembering when she’d first met Jim, who had landed in the emergency room with his leg broken in three places from a skiing accident. She’d been a resident at the time, but she’d been able to calm him down just by talking to him, even while
    he was being triaged and checked for spinal injuries. He’d been surrounded by more machinery, and didn’t look half as horrifying as he did now.
    Her clinical mind could only tolerate so much; the injuries alone would have been fine, but the measures being taken to keep him alive seemed cruel and unusual. Who the hell was this guy, some sort of mad surgeon? Granted, he did replace her leg with one that seemed to work just about as well, but did he use similar techniques to create that shark-thing that attacked her and Jim? And how—
    She jumped with a squeak of surprise as Mechanus placed a hand on her shoulder.
    “The human body is quite resilient,” he said, “It wants to live, no matter what.”
    “That I’ll grant,” she said numbly, “But still, how… how the hell is he still alive?”
    “Science,” Mechanus said brightly. “As you can see, I’ve mastered the techniques of tissue manipulation to improve upon nature. For his own sake, I’m keeping him in a medical coma, but he’s alive—and, if you like, I can repair him.”
    “Repair him? How?” Julia turned to face her host, and took a step back when she saw how close he was standing. He didn’t seem to notice, smiling at her like they had just been introduced by a skilled matchmaker at a cocktail