Twisted Metal Heart - Eve Langlais Page 0,10

knew when someone new had the same measurement as a previous client.

The molds for her parts she kept in her room. Only she touched them.

“We are running out of the ore.”

“I know.” She wandered to their bin and noticed only a few chunks of rock with the dull metal streaking them remained. They might have finally tapped out the line running in the tunnels under the citadel.

“What are we going to do?”

Always with the “we” when, in reality, he waited for her to decide. She put it off because she had no answer. Hadn’t come up with a single one since she realized the vein underground had been running low. Yet she really needed to make a decision. Because, without the ore, they were out of business. At least the limb-making kind. They could still do other things.

She changed the subject. “Our guest is awake.”

“Our? Don’t you mean your guest?” Alfred grumbled. “You should have left him asleep. The parts are not ready.”

“How long until they are?”

“Another day, perhaps two. The modifications you requested are taking longer than expected. Which is why I advised keeping him in the coma.”

“Given we’re running low on certain items, we couldn’t keep him under any longer.” The excuse she used when, in reality, she couldn’t stand waiting to see his eyes open and to hear him talk.

He didn’t disappoint with a deep gravelly tone that tickled.

“He’s going to be trouble,” Alfred predicted.

“I’ll handle him.”

He eyed her. “Can you?”

Good question.

Three

The bed appeared a mile away from the chair. Titan eyed it and wondered why he’d been so stubborn as to try and prove he could move from one to the other.

Because he was a man, and they just always had to prove something. Having eaten the broth, he felt somewhat more alive and used his hands to palm the table and steady himself as he pushed to his foot.

Not feet.

He was still trying to come to grips with it. Ever since he’d woken, he’d felt out of sorts. The balance of his body was off. He could feel the lack of weight on his left side. As if that weren’t freaky enough, it was as if his mind refused to accept it, and he kept trying to use his hand. Over and over, falling into a minor panic each time it failed to work.

There was no pain. Nothing to indicate he’d been recently injured. He’d also lost days because she’d placed him in a coma.

The reminder meant he focused on the reason for his dilemma. The woman who’d left him outside and then, instead of letting him pass, turned him into half a man.

He fought against the bitterness that threatened to swallow him. Focused on her scent that remained. Something flowery with a sharper taint. Almost metallic if it could be said to have a flavor.

She called herself Riella. An unusual name for a strange woman. A beautiful woman with a curvy figure and auburn hair. She didn’t seem as if she went out in the sun often with her fair skin, which made him wonder how she lost the arm. Was it before or after she began living in this place?

And what was this place? More than a mere building that could appear suddenly in the middle of nowhere. The medical machinery in this room alone was more extravagant than he’d ever seen. The kind of thing that usually only existed in a dome, if a lot less sleek and elegant looking. There was a bit of a roughness to the humming robots, and they were raw in appearance, lacking the usual plastic-composite shell casing, as if they’d been cobbled together instead of fabricated by a tri-dimensional printer.

While the machines appeared somewhat unfinished, the limb she’d showed him, he’d never seen the like. The arm was the right shape and size. The metal felt hard and cold, but her control of it appeared perfect. Would it work at all with him? She’d implied it depended on the person. That the Deviant gene made it more likely to function.

Which meant he was screwed. He was as ordinary as they came, and yet he’d gotten a second chance at life. Why? By all rights he should have died that night under the teeth and claws of the tigber. A miracle saved him.

He made the sign of the holy circle and kissed his fingers, even as it felt slightly blasphemous to do it with his right hand.

Thank you for saving me, goddess. His mother was a follower