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Having the door to his lab kicked in was, by this point, merely a nuisance for Doctor Insano; he barely looked up as he flung a blast of blue lightning directly at the disturbance.
It hit the door and bounced back. Now, that was odd; normally crusading heroes bursting in on him charged directly forward instead of leaving the half-broken door between them like a shield. Insano brought up his other hand and refocused as the door fell off its hinges, smoking.
“Quit kidding around and help me here!” the intruder barked in an accent that belonged to a 1940s gangster film instead of the 1950s sci-fi flick that the lab currently resembled.
“Help you?” Insano sneered, still entirely by reflex, as he pushed himself up from the lab bench. “Why would I -” His eyes lit upon what the intruder was carrying, and suddenly the world seemed to shift pi radians around him. That was the detective-gangster-lounge-singer Linkara kept around for muscle, and that crumpled bundle slung over his shoulder was Linkara.
With a wild sweep of one arm, Insano cleared off the lab bench in front of him; blackened bits of electronics and a half-assembled circuit board clattered to the floor. He grabbed a bottle of bleach meant for sterilizing used petri dishes, dumped a quarter of it directly onto the bench, then swiped the lightly smoking puddle around the surface with handfuls of paper towels until it was dry again. “Over here,” he shouted at the singer, what was his name again? “Why did you come here, of all places?”
The singer - Finevoice, he remembered Linkara shouting that name in the heat of battle - nearly sprinted down the steps. “Where else was I gonna go?” he gasped, laying the motionless form of his boss on the table. “What hospital is gonna buy that something like this is real?” He flipped back the shreds of the brown jacket covering Linkara’s left flank; something dark and metallic glinted in the cold light of the lab, embedded in the flesh just below the last rib.
Insano adjusted his goggles. “That’s - cybernetic, isn’t it?” he asked, opening a drawer and fumbling for a pair of scissors. That shirt, or at least the bottom left quarter of it, would have to go; even if it wasn’t in the way, it was an infection risk.
“I don’t know,” Finevoice admitted. He staggered back, as if he were expecting to still be holding the weight of Linkara’s body. The white shirt under his tuxedo jacket was heavily striped with blood. “Mechakara - you remember him, right?”
“I do.” Insano tossed the shreds of Linkara’s shirt on top of the other debris, powered up a scanner, and ran it down Linkara’s side. The hero’s face twitched - probably just a reflex. “Go on.”
“He’s lost his robotic body, he’s made of muscle and bone like the rest of us now, it’s a long story, I’ll explain that part later, but he’s trying to build robotic parts to replace it. I think.” Finevoice looked down at his hands. “But he didn’t want to try them out on himself first, because what if they didn’t work, right? So he kidnaps the kid here, and tries to implant them on him, since they’re almost genetically identical now, to make sure they’re compatible.” His voice dropped as he finished, “I think he roughed him up first.”
Insano chewed on his lower lip as he read through the scanner readout. There were quite a lot of bruises in addition to the cyberware, which was roughly the size of an orange and apparently already attached to several minor blood vessels. “You’re almost certainly right about that part,” he agreed. “Do you know if the not-a-robot-anymore used any sort of anesthetic before implanting - that?” He shucked his lab coat and gloves and scrubbed his hands at the lab sink. A pair of mechanical arms (they had been a desk lamp and the magnifying clamp on a drafting table, not too long ago, but now they were much more useful) reached out of the cabinet to slip on a new pair of sterile latex gloves and hold a clean coat for him to wriggle into.
“Didn’t ask,” Finevoice said simply. “We got there, Goggles and the Knucklehead shot the place up, I got the kid off the damn ping-pong table Mechakara was using for an operating theater, and we got the hell out of there - but our mad scientist took a thump to the head from the once-and-future robot on the way out. He’s up in the ship, unconscious, with Pollo taking care of him.” He took a deep breath, and for a moment he looked much, much older. “I figured there was a fifty-fifty chance you’d at least take a look out of curiosity, and we had exactly zero other ideas,” he admitted in a half-sigh.
Insano nodded. There were no traces of any known sedative in Linkara’s system. Unless either much more or much less time had passed since the beginning of this operation than Finevoice’s narrative suggested, Mechakara had opened the hero up awake but restrained, and he had passed out due to either shock or blood-loss - assuming he was, in fact, completely unconscious. Was that another twitch? “You shouldn’t trust me, you know,” he said, selecting a vial from the shelf and a sterile syringe from the same drawer as the probe.
“I don’t,” Finevoice replied, his voice cracking. “Trust me, I’d rather be anyplace else right now. But it was you, wait until Linksano came to and then have him do this with maybe a concussion, or try to call in Jaeris and hope he could help, assuming he even got here in time.” His hands twisted around each other. “And I figured killing him while he was like this wouldn’t be any challenge for your crazy brain, no fun at all, so you probably wouldn’t.”
Insano removed the needle from the vial and examined the drop at the tip. “I can’t promise anything,” he said, tilting his head back. Yes, that was definite tension in the muscles of Linkara’s jaw. He was starting to come to. He’d start screaming any minute; the implant was raw metal against torn flesh. Mechakara, whatever else he was, was a better butcher than a doctor.
“I figured,” Finevoice said, resignation echoing off the other lab benches. “Just - I’m begging you, Insano. You don’t even have to fix it. Just keep him alive until Linksano can.”
“Like I’d let that miserable hypertime half-echo of me do anything more than touch up my handiwork,” Insano sniffed. “You probably shouldn’t stand so close.” He slid the needle into the vein in Linkara’s right wrist, a line of blue through the soft, pale skin. “This will keep him from waking up until I’m done, but unless he’s lost even more blood than it looks like, this is going to be messy, and you’re not sterile.” Linkara’s jaw relaxed again; Insano let himself do the same.
Finevoice slunk away, perching on a stool by the entrance and dropping his face into his hands.
Insano turned his back on him as he pulled out a scalpel and started his work in earnest, trimming metal away from torn muscle and ragged veins. Science, what had the robotic sociopath been thinking? The cyberware seemed to have a life of its own - every time Insano severed its bonds to Linkara’s nervous system, another connection seemed to uncoil from the maddening scramble of circuitry at its pulsating heart. The metal that made up its outer surface was some alloy that clung to living tissue, but had almost no friction against the steel of the scalpel, making it devilishly hard to cut away. And it didn’t seem to have a battery of its own, but it was clearly drawing power from somewhere.
Insano made a second incision, on the other side. There wasn’t nearly enough blood. This thing was feeding off of Linkara, sucking up fluids and metabolic energy, to run its own power supply. Vampiric cyberware; that would be right up Mechakara’s alley, although if he was planning on using this on himself, he was going to have to burn through human victims just to keep himself going. Maybe that was part of the plan.
But that meant every time it re-grew a severed connection, it was taking the energy right out of Linkara. Insano looked over at his enemy’s face, pale and waxy; an indicator on the scanner dropped from the yellow range into orange. Sorcerer or not, Linkara didn’t have that much to spare, it looked like.
For a moment, Insano froze. If he left this in Linkara while he figured out its electronic configuration, it was going to keep feeding on the patient. If he kept trying to cut it out while he pondered it, it was going to use Linkara’s own life force, and presumably his raw materials too, to regrow the connections he was severing. Either way, the patient was running on very limited time. But what -
Insano shifted so that his body was between Linkara and Finevoice’s line of sight. He suspected the singing mook wasn’t going to like this at all. Closing his eyes behind the goggles, he concentrated, drawing up the raw power of science into just one digit -
BZAP
Finevoice leaped to his feet. “What was that?” he howled, charging towards Insano like a linebacker.
“Shut up,” Insano growled back. The scalpel danced under his fingers; that clearly hadn’t done enough damage to the cyberware to break it, and if he hit it any harder, it was going to cause collateral injury. But it did seem to have temporarily stunned the implant, scrambled its circuits enough to keep it from regrowing its connections instantly. Guessing from the blinking lights, it was going through a soft reboot.
Two minutes later, he wrestled what now looked like a bloodied four-legged mechanical tarantula the size of a large orange out of the incision. It clawed at the cuff of his lab coat; he shook it off and threw it at Finevoice’s feet. “Shoot that,” Insano ordered.
“Delighted to,” Finevoice grunted back. Two shots rang, followed by the sound of metal shrapnel dinging off of the furniture.
Insano peered at the wound. Lots of ragged edges - Mechakara had not worked cleanly, and Insano’s own need for speed hadn’t helped - but there was less missing tissue than he had thought. No significant organ damage. He held out one hand, and a robotic arm from the cabinet dropped a needle and thread into his palm.
Now it was just a matter of disinfecting everything and stitching this fucking fool of a hero back up. So Insano could defeat him properly later, of course, he assured himself as he paired halves of broken veins back together. It was a simple matter of pride. He was Linkara’s arch-enemy, after all; the robot duplicate had come along later, wouldn’t even have been able to confront Linkara if it hadn’t been for the hypertime portal staying open. It would be nothing short of embarrassing for so clearly inferior an enemy to succeed in killing his arch-rival before he could.
Insano closed up Linkara’s skin with tiny, controlled stitches, swabbed him with an antiseptic gel he’d invented by mistake (and ought to get around to patenting one of these days), and hunted in the cabinet for gauze and medical tape. His gloved fingers traced Linkara’s skin - a little too cold, a lot too pale - and then trimmed the gauze down. No need to risk it getting caught on his jacket. He taped the pad into place, then added a self-adhesive patch that covered half of Linkara’s side, for good measure.
Slowly, Insano straightened up and half-stumbled across the cluttered lab. He opened up what had clearly started life as a fridge and removed two bags of straw-colored liquid. “I don’t have any whole blood,” he called over to Finevoice, “so plasma is going to have to do for the moment.” He popped the bags into something that looked like the bastard offspring of a microwave oven and a moonshine still; a puff of steam rose from the top, and he removed them both, now body-warm, one in each hand.
Finevoice removed a cufflink and began rolling up a sleeve. “You can have some of mine,” he stated; whether the growl underneath was bravado or desperation wasn’t clear.
“I don’t have time to test to see if you’re a type-match,” Insano replied, hanging the first bag off of a hook at the top of the cabinet. He dug around in the drawer for an IV line; ah, there it was. He didn’t have time to hunt around in Linkara’s elbow for the vein, either; at this low blood pressure, he’d be searching for a needle in a pincushion in that crook in the soft flesh. The wrist vein would just have to handle a little more punishment. Good thing Linkara would still be out cold for a while.
Harvey watched the bag slowly empty. “Is he gonna be okay?” he asked, searching Insano’s face for clues, or perhaps hope.
“He’ll live,” Insano said, and watched Finevoice’s eyes flutter closed in relief. Picking his next words carefully, Insano continued, “The muscle wall there is not in great shape. It’s going to take some time to heal. Under absolutely no circumstances are you to allow him to run around doing heroics for at least three weeks; do you understand?”
Finevoice nodded mutely. Insano didn’t have to be able to read his expression to know how tall an order that was.
“How well it heals up is going to depend on - well, on him,” Insano continued. “He has youth on his side, and probably magic. It might not even leave a scar, if he’s lucky. But it might also mean he’s going to be weaker on that side for a long time, perhaps even permanently, especially if he doesn’t give it time to recover.” He shrugged theatrically. “I’ve done what I can. Leave the wound dressing on for at least two days, then make sure you keep the area clean and covered. My imitator should be able to do that, at least. If there are any signs of infection, call Spoony and tell him to give me the phone.” He stripped off his blood-stained gloves and tossed them in the biohazard bin, put on a third pair, and then changed the IV line to the second bag of plasma.
Silence stretched out for several long minutes. Finally, Finevoice put a hand out; it landed on Linkara’s foot. His jaw shifting as if he were chewing on words, unable to spit them out, Finevoice stammered, “I - you -”
“You owe me one,” Insano agreed, sparing him the indignity of saying it.
“Yeah.” Finevoice’s face flushed.
Insano smiled, a little too broadly. “And I’ll be sure to collect at the most inconvenient possible time,” he promised. “But for now, you’ll want to get him on something more comfortable than my lab table.” He glanced down at the gory remnants of the cyber-thing. “Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can figure out exactly what that coiffure-chopping robotic psychotic is up to with these.” He checked the now-empty plasma bag, then slipped out the IV line and bandaged Linkara’s wrist.
Finevoice looked away, then stepped around the bench, scooping his boss up as gently as if he were lifting a feverish child. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
“You’re welcome,” Insano said, stepping back. He felt as if he should add something, a boast or at least a maniacal cackle, but honestly, he was too tired to put in the effort. His hands were starting to shake; he stuffed them in his pockets.
Finevoice nodded and mumbled something into his watch - a wrist communicator with the ship, probably. He and Linkara dissolved into motes of light and disappeared.
Insano grabbed another wad of paper towels and began swabbing the lab bench down again. The blood had started to dry and cake onto the surface. As he scrubbed, something else splashed onto the bench next to the bloodstains; he stood up, startled.
Salt water. Running out from under the goggles and down his nose.
The nausea hit him directly in the solar plexus; he slithered down the cabinet door as his legs gave out. Somehow the tears had become streams, hot and stinging as they rolled down his cheeks and onto his lab coat. His throat was half-closed, at least until the second wave of nausea hit him and the remnants of lunch joined the paper towels under the table.
Then he was sobbing, howling, curled in a ball on the floor. The image of Linkara’s face, too pale, almost waxen, against the black lab bench like a mortuary slab, swam before his eyes. What would a world without his arch-enemy even look like? Oh, sure, he had other things to live for - his son, his research, maybe even Spoony at this point - but that hadn’t always been true. And he still needed Linkara, needed a hero to define himself against. Losing that would be like losing a piece of himself.
Long minutes later, Insano pushed himself to his feet. He swept up the paper towels, finished disinfecting the lab bench, squirmed out of the filthy lab coat and hit it with a disintegrator beam, grabbed a mop, and cleaned every inch of the floor.
With a pair of tongs, he picked up the remains of the cybernetic implant and set it on the bench. Smiling the grimmest of mad grins, Insano pulled out a magnifying glass nearly the size of his own head. “Now,” he crooned, “let’s see what you’re made of.”