chocolate chip mint and rhubarb with malt, hot fudge, butterscotch and sprinkles
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Cogs
Rating: R (gore/slightly disturbing concepts)
Challenge: Rhubarb ‘My Treat’ #8: time is money (Dr. Blackledge at work), Chocolate Chip Mint #23: imposing
Toppings/Extras: malt (advent calendar day three), butterscotch, sprinkles, hot fudge
Wordcount: 549
Summary: A young Blackledge needs a lifesaving operation and receives it.
Notes: OK, I didn’t have much of a plan for this and then it turned into nightmare fuel.
“Pass the next pin, boy,” Dr Blackledge murmured, leaning over the operating table, eyes intense with concentration. Trapped under the blazing lights was the unconscious form of one of the Blackledge Children-a girl of about ten-who had been opened at the front. The mask over her thin, whitish lips was foggy with her faint breath. The rest of her was linked up to several life support machines, although slowly she was gaining independence from them.
She had died about half an hour ago, although she seemed to be recovering.
Miracles were not unusual in the Blackledge Facility-not that most people would class this unnatural act as a miracle.
A boy with a bowed head stood next to the doctor turned to a small metal table next to the operating table and daintily picked up a tiny pin between his fingers. Dr Blackledge held his hand open, not exactly impatiently but certainly without tolerance for sluggishness. The Blackledge Child working alongside him was one of the earlier ones, one engineered to be extremely dextrous. He could thread a needle with one hand-although showing people his fingers bending in such a manner did not so much impress them as disturb them deeply.
The red slice in the girl’s midsection gleamed, pulled open by tight wires. Within her there were not only slithering organs but thick rubber tubing and metal wheels and grinding mechanic devices. Dr Blackledge wore gloves over his hands but the blood streaked well up to his elbows.
Two other surgeons had assisted him, but now that most of the work was done he had sent them away. They had seemed a little shaken at the intense operation they had had to perform on the young girl. Painstakingly, Dr Blackledge inserted the next pin to keep the girl’s replacement organs in place. His jaw was locked tightly, as it always was when he was concentrating.
Again he held his gloved hand up, blood glistening in the harsh lights. Another pin was placed between his fingers.
“Will she be alright?” AG-2 asked nervously as he picked up yet another pin. It was very much unlike him-or any of the Children-to talk without first being spoken to and an instant frown cut Dr Blackledge’s brow. AG-2 bit his lip and wished he hadn’t said a word.
“Probably,” Dr Blackledge replied, his accent clipped and flat. “It’s not the first time I’ve had to mechanise one of you because of an accident.”
One of you, AG-2 repeated in his mind. The girl splayed on the table, EC-15, had been involved in a horrific accident of some sort-not that AG-2 had seen it. He heard that it was something to do with the new obstacle course...
Glad that he was not one of the Children that had to partake in strenuous physical exercise to make the most of his mutation, AG-2 picked up another pin and held it aloft.
He wished that he could believe that it was some sort of paternal care prompting their Father and Overseer Dr Gideon Blackledge to save the young girl’s life, but an uncomfortable compartment of his brain that he kept shut no matter what needled the truth to the front of his mind: You can’t sell a dead clone...