[ @linecrossed ]
– GLOVED FINGERS tinkered in blood and mechanics. A strange mix of screwdrivers and forceps lay on a sanitary tray. The organic and the machine working in tandem.
Lex peered inside as the doctors pointed out different mechanisms or devices. On display, some frog on a slab but very much ALIVE. Lex tried not to make eye contact, opting to focus on his notepad. Yellow legal paper was dotted with red thumbprints. Easier to handle when he just focused on the science of it. Detached, methodical.
(Somewhere along the line, this had gone from stomach churning to simply disquieting. Haha, wouldn’t Superman have something to say about that?)
The boy was a cyborg, but a different type than the ones he’d encountered in the past. Sleek, hidden-in-plain-sight. An exoskeleton covered in false skin, a human trapped in a machine trapped inside another human. It was a fascinating concept, one he hadn’t considered before. Very… Superman, wasn’t it? To look so human but be so different underneath. Power and strength and durability.
It was why he’d contacted DARPA in the first place, to share ideas (and funding, of course, there was always a bottom line to these things) for his Everyman project. To turn humans into gods, to let them stand toe-to-to with those damned capes that pretended to have the best interests of we ‘tiny humans’ at heart.
“Can I talk to him?” Lex asked, flipping his notebook closed. He blanched at the placid face and the contrast of the vicera and clockwork below. “Not immediately. I can wait for you to patch him up. I’m sure he’d respond better to my questions that way.” He added, maybe a little too quickly for Stewart’s tastes. Big Bad Luthor was squeamish, wasn’t that a sight?
They had called him down for a tune up. Hardware update or something. It didn’t really matter in the long run. Quarterly cut ups the guards had taken to calling it when they woke him with their electric batons. Circuits overpowered by the surge allowed them to bind him to the gurney. Earlier in his imprisonment he would have joked about being in the Silence of the Lambs, wheeled around like a mad cannibal. Gone were those days.
What they had not told him was there would be an audience. Again, it wasn’t something he was terribly unaccustomed to - many representatives were paraded in and out of the surgical theater these days as his management clawed for any source of funding. This man, however, was out of uniform. Civilian.
William followed the man’s movements with a ghoulish delight, the serotonin almost enough to dull the pain radiating from his exposed heart. Seeing a filleted teen on a cool metal table and displayed as an 8th wonder of human creation seemed to fill the investor with unease and discomfort. He smirked. This man wouldn’t last. His maker would see to that. Dr Stewart relished in the blood that now coated her forearms and needed someone as fanatical as she was.
The smile grew on his lips when the visitor spoke, his voice muffled slightly by the notebook covering his eyes. “You can talk with me now. I’m not going anywhere.” His breath caught when the first needle bit his skin. A glance at his exposed abdomen told him Stewart herself was stitching her project back together. Back together and back up, she’d sew up his lips if the visitor wasn’t watching. If his wallet wasn’t watching. Say nothing before counseling. This was a negotiation. Information in exchange for money. The oldest bartering system.
