Project Hyperion (A Kaiju Thriller) (Kaiju #4)

The girl’s tail had grown three feet. The skin at her feet and the tip of the tail had grown dark and thick with hard, nearly black nodules. If she’d been allowed to continue growing, Elliot thought the condition would eventually expand to the rest of her body, which was a shame considering the girl’s beauty. But it was Maigo’s toenails that disturbed Elliot the most. They’d grown thick and rough at first, like the skin, but then they grew out and hooked into talons, like polished obsidian.

Maigo currently measured nearly six feet tall and though slender, weighed in at nearly two hundred pounds. Despite the weight, Elliot had managed to hoist her onto a gurney. After giving the girl more sedatives, she tucked the long tail beneath one of Maigo’s legs and taped it in place. She then covered the nude lower body with several white sheets. A thick leather restraint went over everything ensuring that the girl and sheet couldn’t move. Elliot bound her ankles and wrists, just to be safe. The doctors had questioned the restraints at first, but Elliot wrote them off as a precaution and showed them the paperwork that declared Maigo brain dead and authorized the transplantation of her heart to Gordon.

Elliot scrubbed her hands for the tenth time in the past hour. She knew Maigo had no transferable diseases, but knowing the girl was only part human repulsed her. She slipped on a pair of blue rubber gloves, straightened her plastic face shield and turned back to join the doctors. There were six of them—two surgeons, a perfusionist, an anesthetist and two nurses. She knew none of their names, didn’t care to and would likely never see them again. Her job was to observe the operation and make sure Maigo stayed sedated.

Gordon sat on his operating table, prepared for surgery. The doctors had wanted to sedate him so the transplant could happen quickly, but Gordon demanded to see the heart that was being put in his chest. Elliot knew that Gordon really wanted to see if the heart would turn to sludge. If she had failed to grow him a viable heart, the surgery was off.

Endo was also present. He stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed. He watched the surgeons prep Maigo’s chest, smearing it with brown iodine. His presence bothered her far more than Maigo’s, because she knew what it meant. Endo was there in case the surgery failed and Gordon died. If that happened, she doubted anyone, including her, would leave the room alive.

“Making incision,” declared one of the surgeons. He drew a scalpel quickly across the skin.

Elliot thought the man was being a little careless, but decided it was simply because he knew Maigo would not need to be stitched up afterwards. He cut two more incisions, making a capital “I” shape on her chest. When the man shoved his fingers beneath Maigo’s skin and began to lift, Elliot looked away. They were handling the girl like a pig in a slaughter house. Although Elliot felt unnerved by Maigo, she was still the girl’s creator. She winced at the wet sound of separating flesh. When the shick, shick of scissors followed, she nearly gagged.

“Clamp this,” one of the surgeons said.

Elliot looked back up. Her view was mostly blocked by three of the doctors and a tray of surgical tools, but she could see Maigo’s white ribs through a gap. A sharp whine filled the air. She saw the circular bone saw just before it was placed against Maigo’s sternum. As the saw chewed through bone, the sound became grating, like nails on a chalkboard. Elliot was about to stand and leave when the saw was lifted away and shut off.

“Splitting the ribs,” one of the surgeons said. “What are the vitals?”

“Elevated heart rate and blood pressure,” the anesthetist said, looking at the silent heart monitor. She turned to the EEG display showing Maigo’s brain activity, which showed very little since Maigo had no real brain. “No change in brain activity.”

“Good,” the surgeon said before placing a rib splitter in the sternum’s incision. He turned the crank, quickly separating the flexible ribs and exposing the lungs and heart below.

Elliot stood and walked closer. The scene was horrible, but this was the moment of truth. She needed to see. Gordon leaned in closer too, eager to see whether he would live or die.

“Deflating the lungs,” the surgeon said, then rather callously poked each lung with a scalpel. Air hissed from the puncture wounds and the lungs sagged away, revealing the heart.

Elliot held her breath.

The surgeon roughly probed the fist-sized heart with his fingers. Then, as though holding a newborn baby, he declared, “Looks like we have a healthy heart.” He turned to Gordon. “Congratulations, sir.”

Gordon didn’t reply. Instead he looked at Elliot and gave her a smile. An earnest smile. It felt so strange, coming from the gruff General, but she had come through for him in a big way. If the surgeons were any good—and she was sure they were—then Gordon would have a new, fully compatible heart beating in his chest in the next few hours.

She returned the smile, thinking, you’re welcome.