Click... Sizzle... Buzz!
Jiang Chan was jerked awake by a sharp, piercing force on the back of her neck.
The cold metal claws, with the force of hydraulic rods, gripped the back of her neck tightly, pressing her incredibly heavy head upwards onto the conveyor belt of the assembly line.
All I could see were flashing red lights, making my head throb. Blood-red words jumped around in the center of my vision like a death knell: [Warning: Increased prosthetic rejection! Cervical spine interface overload!]
With each inhale, it felt like sandpaper was grinding against my chest. The cheap plastic bionic lung on the left was like a broken bellows, hissing and groaning, each expansion bringing a strange smell of rust and disinfectant mixed together that pushed down my throat.
Her eyelids felt as heavy as lead, and she managed to open them a crack. Her vision was blurry, with double images. Under the glaring white LED light of the assembly line, the metal conveyor belt chugged forward, piled high with gleaming, unshelled metal skeletons—human-shaped, dog-shaped, and a few other things whose exact nature was unclear.
The air was filled with the smells of engine oil, the burnt smell of welding, and a faint, charred smell, like human flesh being roasted.
This is the seventh prosthetic body production line at Creation Technology. She is no one in particular; she is "free trial subject" numbered D-734.
Free means the company gets free consumables, stuffs your body with cheap, obsolete, or even unreleased and still-testing prosthetics, and makes you work like crazy to test when these things will explode or kill you.
It doesn't matter if they die. Once the data is collected, it's all over. They won't even leave a name behind.
"D-734! What are you standing there for! Hurry up!" A voice harder than iron slammed down, accompanied by static.
Jiang Chan jolted awake. It was the foreman, a cyborg fitted with a cheap vocal synthesizer, half his face encased in a metal shell, his eyes gleaming with an inhuman red light. The mechanical arm he was controlling was still wedged around her neck.
She tried to move, to reach for the parts on the conveyor belt. But her body wouldn't obey. The broken drive shaft in her left elbow suddenly slipped, and her forearm made a strange "crack" sound, then jerked outwards like a cramp!
Bang!
His elbow slammed hard against the metal frame at the edge of the conveyor belt, the impact sending numbness through his entire arm. Suddenly, the data stream in his field of vision exploded into a shower of static, mixed with jumbled gibberish.
[WARNING: Right arm hydraulic joint conflicts with spinal nerve interface!]
[WARNING: Visual sensor has been impacted, causing signal interference!]
[WARNING: Left knee bearing overheating! Cool immediately!]
My head was in complete chaos, a jumble of alarms going off. Sweat suddenly poured from my forehead—not from the heat, but from the pain and frustration.
"Useless!" The overseer's voice grew even colder, and the mechanical claw gripping her neck tightened its grip even more. Jiang Chan could even hear her cervical vertebrae groaning.
"If it gets out of control again, send it straight to the recycling center!"
Jiang Chan gritted her teeth and remained silent. With her neck being choked, she could only manage a few breaths from her throat. She forced herself to slowly move the unruly arm back, her fingers trembling violently, and finally managed to grasp a metal joint.
The tactile sensors on my fingertips seemed to be malfunctioning, sending intermittent signals. One moment it felt like I was holding a block of ice, and the next it felt like I was holding a hot iron.
The moment she gripped the part, a flood of unfamiliar yet strangely familiar fragments of memory rushed into her mind!
Fragment 1: The blinding light of an operating room. A dozen or so people in white coats and masks, their eyes cold as if watching laboratory animals, surrounded her. Sharp needles pierced her spine, cold liquid was poured in, and then came the excruciating pain, like an electric drill drilling into her bone!
She tried to scream, but only a hoarse, gasping sound came from her throat. All she could see were moving shadows; they were stuffing things into her body! Hard, cold things with wires attached!
Fragment 2: A narrow, disinfectant-smelling metal cage. She curled up on the cold metal bed, her whole body convulsing uncontrollably. Her stomach churned, and she vomited up the nutritional paste she had just swallowed, mixed with green bile.
A man in a gray uniform walked over; he wasn't a doctor, but a supervisor. He looked at the floor she'd vomited on and kicked a small tube of nutritional paste in her face: "Trash! Another waste of resources! Vomit again, and I'll dismantle you and sell you for parts!"
Fragment 3: The cage next door is empty. The thin young man who was lying there yesterday suddenly started smoking all over this morning, with bulges the size of light bulbs rising under his skin, and then bursting open with a "pop," spurting out black oil and blood.
Two men in yellow hazmat suits, looking like they were wearing plastic bags, rushed in, hooked his hands and feet with iron hooks, and dragged him out like a dead dog. The cage door slammed shut, leaving a shiny drag mark on the ground mixed with blood and scum…
Despair. Cold, endless despair. Like the machine oil seeping from the bottom of this assembly line, black and thick, slowly drowning you.
Viral symbiosis? Glitch art? Jiang Chan stared at the two words on the system panel, her mind buzzing. Implant a virus? With her current broken, shattered body that could fall apart at any moment? What could she possibly use to implant it?
She glanced instinctively at her right hand, at a mechanical arm covered in cheap, silver artificial skin. The skin at the joints was torn in places, revealing a grayish-black metal skeleton underneath. She tried to move her index finger.
Buzz...
The tiny motors in my finger joints emitted a dull grinding sound, and my movements were as stiff as a rusty wrench. At the same time, a sudden, sharp, stabbing pain shot through my ankle! It felt like the nerve connections inside had been forcibly ripped!
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