The days that followed consisted of Thomas and I establishing ourselves as quite possibly the only mod shop in the entire occupied region; word of our business had spread among the numbering refuges of displaced humans and soon we had a line forming outside our front door of people willing to barter for maintenance services which in turn had transformed our breakroom into a second store room full of our newly established wealth. The beasts that had occupied our city had begun a slow and uncoordinated relocation of refugees into poorly constructed camps that were no better than the slums they were taken from. We found out that Marco and Kinsler, our first customers, had owned one of the largest firearm shops in the entire country, their stockroom was dozens of metres wide and long with the shop itself being no larger than our waiting area and when we learnt of this, we realised that we may even be able to ‘purchase’ better quality weapons. We had also discovered, after visiting their shop, that they were the ones who spread the word about our business to the nearby squalors. As I stood there amidst the towering racks of weapons, ammunition and accessories, I found myself drawn to a rifle with an elongated body and an oddly geometric barrel with small wires criss-crossing each other before running back to the main body. It was a light grey in colour and had quite a nice amount of weight to it. Kinsler came over to me to explain this was a single-shot gauss rifle.
Despite the amount of ammo we were given when we first started this endeavour, it had quickly proven to not be sufficient enough as we initially believed at first. Thomas and I had practiced at night with the rifles we were given as payment and took them to a makeshift rifle range we constructed in the service tunnel behind the clinic. We wore hearing protection and fired in short bursts at the assortment of glass and aluminium cans. Each pull of the trigger had violently thrusted the rifle into my shoulder and forced me to aim upward and almost shoot the ceiling; Thomas advised me that my form was wrong, so he had me part my legs shoulder width apart and adjusted how I held the rifle. I kept my left hand firmly gripping the underside of the barrel. By the time we had run out of bullets from practice we exchanged whatever food and valuables for twenty magazines of compatible bullets. Kinsler felt generous when we came to him for ammunition, he took us to a room where he had set down all modification units for our rifles and said we can pick one.
Thomas reached for a small device that looked like a small hard drive. I overheard Kinsler talking to Thomas about the device by saying it was some external processor that greatly aided in the bullet’s tracking abilities and increased their chances of hitting a vital area by nearly forty percent.
I picked up a small device that had a similar design to that processor Thomas had picked up, but in my case, it was twice as big. Kinsler came over to me to explain it was an Enabler: An illegal black-market device used to modify the bullets to give them elemental abilities. My heart raced with excitement as I thought about all the things that I could do with it. I watched Kinsler attach the wires into the receiver assembly before he slid the module into a rail on the side of the barrel, next, he took me to the back of the warehouse where a proper firing range was established.
“Okay, listen up. With the enabler activated you have more power than the elves. Each bullet is laced with a magic sensitive material. All you have to do is speak into the device, saying words like: Incendiary, Thunder, Viper or Leech. That will switch the bullets to only fire with that kind of elemental damage.”
I looked at Kinsler with a confused expression. What on earth could those be, Incendiary and thunder I assumed to be fire and electrical elements respectively. “What is the Viper and Leech?”
“Viper is poison, even if the bullets scratch your target, it’ll incapacitate them, and make them sick to their stomach. You know, sore bone joints, throwing up, the bends, et cetera.” Kinsler went on to explain. “Leech is a new one, when the bullets hit your target, it prevents their haemoglobin from sealing up any damage for a short period of time. In some cases, they may even bleed out after one shot.”
After handing the weapon back to me, I held it up and spread my legs apart, tucked in my elbows. I took a deep breath before I said “Incendiary”. The Enabler beeped twice and the light on it had turned a bright orange. I squeezed the trigger to let out a burst of six bullets, all of which hit the target which left small, flickering flames in the target from where the bullets had struck. I felt powerful as I stared at the scorched holes.
We left the warehouse with our newly modified weapons and carried a duffel bag of magazines each. Thomas had set the bags on the table before telling me to put an open sign on the door, I promptly grabbed the makeshift sign we made out of cardboard and as I had pressed the button to open the door, I was met with the cold unfeeling terror of a creature that was neither man nor beast. He looked like a stick with his unusually thin frame, his head included. “I heard among the captives that this place was still in business.” With skin as pale as a corpse and a softly spoken voice of a loving father he slowly approached me with calculated steps.
The Elf before me had an air of danger surrounding him giving me the urge to reach for my gun and empty the magazine into him. He made no attempts to protect himself because his hands rested behind his back. I jumped when he brought one hand forward, thinking he was going to gut me, however, he moved his hand to brush past his short-cropped silver hair to scratch the back of his head.
“I am interested in knowing exactly what it is you do here.” He said in his kindly soft voice.
My lips quivered with fear and I had fallen on my backside when I had noticed he had back up, though unlike himself, his bodyguards wore armour of gold and were carrying some kind of staff with unusual symmetrical blades on the top end. They stood outside the door and had their backs turned to face outside the clinic and not in; clearly, they assumed my brother and I were of no threat to this man. He drew closer to me and my fear had spiked when he loomed over me before he had extended his hand, it took a second for my mind to realise he had offered his hand to help me up. I felt a chill run up my spine as I touched his cold smooth hand.
“Well?” he continued “Are you going to answer or are you a mute?”
“Uh, oh I am sorry, what was it you said earlier?” I asked nervously.
“I asked; what is it that you do here?”
“We-well we replace body parts for synthetic duplicates for aesthetic choices or for work purposes.”
“Why would you humans remove such perfectly normal body parts for some faux duplicate? Nothing is better than your own flesh and blood.”
“I agree, I have no idea why we do it. People seem to think it makes them better or something.”
He raised an eyebrow as he looked at me.
“I personally do not want any part of me replaced, unless of course it was damaged and couldn’t be fixed.”
“And yet you work here?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “What can I say, I needed the money.”
Thomas walked in the waiting room without looking up from his clipboard, he was in the middle of asking me something when I heard him shriek, I laughed a little when the clipboard he was holding onto had flown out of his hands when he screamed. The elf chuckled at my brother while he raised his hands. “Fear not young humans, I am not here to hurt anyone today.”
“Michael, get behind me!” Thomas shouted.
I turned to face him as he reached into the back of his pants and pulled out his custom hand cannon and fired two shots. The clinic thundered with each shot making me feel the force of the weapon in my chest as its sound rattled my ribs. I turned to face the poor defenceless elven creature but to my own bewilderment he was still standing completely unfazed by my brother’s attack. But what possibly drew my attention was the bright purple shield that resembled our holographic technology. He wore no projector on him and yet, clear as day I could see his hand manipulate the odd geometric shapes that appeared on his shield. The symmetry moved like the gears and cogs of ancient timepieces with a pace that seemed hypnotic at first, but eventually the luminosity died down and the man had lowered his hand leaving himself open to attack.
What was with this guy? We ran over one of his buddies and shot him point blank, but this guy, this guy was something else.
He smiled once more while wagging his index finger in a disapproving manner “Tsk tsk tsk, for a young man such as yourself you shouldn’t really be playing with such dangerous toys.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Me, I am the First Field commander Xareith of the Wood Elven Kingdom. I am the leader of this prison of yours and I would very much like to try out those prosthetics of yours.” Xareith explained with his hands behind him once more.
“Thomas, what the fuck is he saying? Is this true, is he their boss!?”
“Yes.”
Xareith groaned, his face scrunched up in discomfort “I would not call myself their ‘boss’, it was more a group effort and I just so happen to be the only one with a high rank in any of the species who collaborated.”
“Why the fuck do you want our prosthetics?” Thomas said. “I thought you guys hated all things human.”
“Well, Thomas, was it?” Xareith took small steps to his right and sat himself down on the couch. After he adjusted himself, he threw his feet up onto the coffee table, kicking off the pile of magazines that crowned it. “I believe in the method of thinking like my enemy. If I were to embrace this weird fashion of yours then I would gain a better understanding of how you think.”
“Xareith.” Said Thomas, exasperated “Even if we wanted to, which, I don’t by the way. There’s no guarantee that your physiology is compatible with our tech.”
The warm smile that Xareith wore had shifted to one of sternness “Perhaps I did not make myself clear, human” as he said the word, I could hear the disdain in his voice. “Because I am not asking if I could have one… I want one. And you will give me whatever I want.”
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“What the Hell are you gonna do to make us?!” I shouted.
“Don’t,” Thomas responded. “Michael, don’t provoke him. While you were comatose, I heard rumours of some Elf Commander who killed ten men all armed with bats and pipes and he… he apparently killed all ten without breaking a sweat or even getting touched by one of them.”
Xareith had a smile on his face as he slowly clapped. “Very good, somebody has been paying attention to what goes on around here. Except I did get hit once, that was the first time I let them. So, shall we browse your wares?”
Thomas gestured for him to follow us into the surgical room and he sat himself into one of the chairs. I handed Xareith a tablet that contained our existing stock. For ten minutes he browsed our products until he made a sound of surprise.
“This looks interesting,” he said with a hint of excitement in his voice. I looked over his shoulder to see what he was interested in. My eyes widened as I saw the item but, the implications of it was what had troubled me deeply.
“This is the one I want!” he pointed his finger at the screen. It looked no different than a debit card with two separate wires extending outward from it. The name next to the card-like device read: Synco-Raptor 780X, in the category for the neural enhancement processors. I began to panic internally as I worried what this might do for a wood elf who easily dispatched ten men. Thomas approached us and looked at the neural processor; his eyes widened slightly in alarm as he no doubt experienced the same issues I had.
“Uhh…Uhhm, Xareith, I – uhm we do not have that particular model here. How about I give you an obsidian grade arm?” he nervously sputtered.
“I know you are lying, I could see the nerves and the change in your speech pattern. You seem awfully hesitant despite my making it clear that this is not a request you can deny.” Xareith said, still smiling.
Damn his constant smile. It had been used as a tool of luring others into a false sense of security but now I had found it to be creepy.
“I-its just that… Well, you see, in order for me to install a neural processor I have to put you unconscious and cut into your brain. And even if we did install it, you would be the first non-human to get this kind of tech and I have no understanding of how that will change you.”
Before I had time to process it, Xareith held one of his curved blades up to my throat from behind, the cold steel gently caressed my skin while my whole body tensed up. I hadn’t processed what just happened, seeing Xareith move with such unnatural speed, he was nothing but a blur from a sitting position in front of me to standing behind me in one swift motion. A high-pitched yelp escaped my mouth but I paid it no attention as the elven assassin behind me had masterfully positioned the curved knife. Thomas had almost jumped out of his skin when he saw him move with lightning quick reflexes; the tablet he had been holding fell to the ground and had shattered the screen. His eyes widened and he put his hand out to stop Xareith from making another move.
“I see that even in humanity the bond between two blood brothers is as strong as it is in my village. Perhaps I was mistaken when I initially believed humans to be soulless and greedy.”
“Says the guy holding my brother hostage because he is having a fucking tantrum over not getting what he wanted!”
“Don’t provoke him!” I shouted as I felt the blade press more firmly against my skin, I felt a tingling pain near my Adams apple, he must have already made a small cut on my throat.
In a single second, every memory I have had flashed in my mind like a film. It went by too fast to make out its entirety with the exception of a few images. By the time it was done, my head felt dizzy. Thomas had tried to calm Xareith down and told him to put the blade away.
“So, how about it, eh Xareith? Let my brother go and we can get to work on cracking open your skull?”
“I accept.” He eased the blade off my skin and proceeded to sheathe it before Xareith promptly shoved me off of him. Thomas gestured for him to take a seat and to prepare himself.
“Michael, can you come with me to the store room? I'll need your help with the tools and the gas.”
Once inside the stuffy and claustrophobic storeroom, Thomas closed the door behind us and he looked at me with concern.
“Holy shit dude, are you alright, did he hurt you, are you frightened??” He said, panicking.
I shook my head and told him I was fine. “More importantly, what are we going to do about that whack job!?” I angrily whispered. “He’s bad enough right now, if we install that processor in him, it will make him dodge bullets!”
“I don’t know about the bullets part but he will be more dangerous with it in him.”
Thomas let out a long sigh then suddenly, he snapped his fingers “Wait, I got it!”
“What is it?”
“He has no idea what any of this stuff does, what it can do. He has no frame of reference for a good product from a bad one. And since his guards haven’t seen what it looks like, we can install a defective component and they’d be none the wiser.”
Hoo… shit, you’re right!” I said with excitement. Amongst my excitement, an idea sprouted in my mind which seemed perfect. “I just had an idea, Tom. What if we installed one of those processors that have ‘explosive’ issues?” I said with a grin.
“That. Is. Perfect. But the neuro processor that had those issues was fixed by Benji; we’d have to restore it to their ‘default’ coding and I don’t have the technical know-how to do it.”
“It can’t hurt us to try.”
I shrugged my shoulders while Thomas pondered for a moment. He gestured for me to help him lift the nitrous oxide bottle rack and we carried it out and set it down next to the surgical bed. I then went back inside and searched for the neuro processors and found the box for the Synco-Raptor that our hostile guest wanted. With the box in hand I had also searched for the other brand of neuro-processor, the one that had been known for certain ‘malfunctions’ while in use. I pulled the other processor out of its box and carefully placed it in the same box with the superior one. When I walked out, Thomas had already prepped Xareith for surgery, he wore a clean white garb and surgical mask, while he waited for me he had begun to organise the tools on the tray in a particular fashion that worked only for him.
“The final piece of the puzzle” I said, holding the box aloft.
Xarieth looked over to me with that signature smile of his. “Your brother was telling me how this whole process works, that I have to inhale some gas that makes me go to sleep.”
“Well we don’t want our benevolent overlord and saviour to feel the pain as us, pathetic humans cut open his head and insert this thing into his brain.” I said, smiling back.
“Very well” Was all he said. “But before you do, I have some advice for you: Don’t try any funny ideas, my guards will be watching you every step of the way and they will finish you before you finish me… now you can proceed.”
The two guards approached us and were closely observing us, almost literally breathing down our necks, I looked at the guard watching me weirdly “Can you back up a bit?” I barked at him. “You are seriously in my personal space and it freaks me out.”
Xareith layed down on the chair that had flattened out to accommodate the procedure, Thomas had placed the gas mask onto Xareith. As he turned the valve, the hissing of the gas could be heard travelling from the valve. I approached the bedside of Xareith and his guard had likewise followed my movements carefully.
“I guess your magical leaders in The Cauldron must be happy with you, I’ll bet the Dragon Lord is just oozing with excitement at his successful invasion. Are you gonna present this surgery as something for all creatures?” I asked with a sneer.
Xareith, merely laughed hysterically at my comment. I raised an eyebrow as I watched him convulse in a fit of laughter. “Hah! The leaders know nothing… Hahaha, nothing I tell you!... they- the Dragon Lord opposed this idea strongly… Hahehe… he thought the losses on our side would be too great… But when he sees this, what I’ve accomplished… he’ll want to be a part of it!”
Thomas and I exchanged quizzical looks.
“The Dragon Lord doesn’t know about this?” I asked.
Xareith giggled “Nope! And I know what you two are thinking, don’t tell the Dragon Lord about this otherwise I will flay you both alive and toss you into a river full of saber toothed guppies… hehehee!” Finally he stopped giggling as his eyes closed fully. Both my brother and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Alright, I guess we begin.'' Thomas said to himself.
The operation was not performed admirably by either Thomas or I. My brother had to improvise on more than one occasion. For the first few hours he had delicately cut open Xareith’s skull cap open by using a scalpel along the skin. Next, he proceeded to use the bone cutter delicately along the skull cap, I almost threw up when Thomas pulled it off and before me was the Elf’s brain, its shape and colour was almost identical to that of our own. Another hour of delicate surgery went by and it had finally come to the important part of the procedure: installing the Neural enhancement co-processor. It was risky and we could not risk the guards figuring out our plans. I left to get something in the breakroom and my guard had followed me as expected. While in the breakroom I heard Thomas fumble with something and I later learnt it was his attempt at switching the cards around without being caught, he switched the cards around successfully while he was under the table collecting the box off the floor and apparently the guard didn’t see him. However, throughout the course of the entire surgery one thought had dominated my mental landscape: Xarieth’s drugged out confession had me thinking deeply about his ambitious plan for human dominance and disobeying the one creature that should never be crossed. I thought back on the times I read about mythological history about the Dragon Lord: A being who represents the highest of values and morals, who’s magical abilities are said to be powerful enough to allow them to shapeshift into human forms, their strength challenged only by their successor and who also happens to be a living god-like being who demanded all respect and obedience.
Thomas called me over to help him and I did, I walked up to where he stood and had helped him install the coprocessor. Thomas installed a neural port at the base of the brainstem at the back of Xareith’s head before I grabbed the skull cap and held it pressed against the rest of the skull as Thomas, with a pen-like device, generated a fine point of high intensive heat rays used to cauterise the skin. The smell of the burnt flesh punctured its way through our noses and all I could think of was food. When Thomas finished cauterising the cap back on, I noticed at the back of Xarieth’s head was a bunch of incisions in an odd shape. As I pushed the silvery hair aside to get a closer look at it, I smiled and almost broke into a fit of laughter when I saw it. I leaned over to Thomas and whispered.
“Did you carve a dick into his scalp?” I struggled to resist the urge to burst into laughter. I caught a glimpse of the guards watching me, narrowing his eyes at me as he wondered what I was up to.
I stifled my laugh and helped Thomas prepare for Xareith to wake up. Whilst still plugged in, Thomas worked the diagnostic computer and I watched as he fumbled around with the commands, he struggled to restore the processor to its original coding and remove the patched software, eventually the diagnostic computer read that original software had been reset. Soon after, the pale hominid lying on his backside started to moan and squirm. He brought his hand to his face and pinched his nose and began rubbing his eyes. His fingers covered his face before he noticed the scarring we left on his head.
“It’s done?” groggily, Xareith said. “My head feels like a dragon is crushing it.”
“I would be more amazed if it didn’t.”
He sat up right and hunched over on the ledge of the flattened chair. “I feel ill.” Xaireith said. “Is this normal, why would you humans go through so much suffering for this?”
Thomas rolled his eyes and let out a heavy sigh “As I recall, I said I had no idea how this tech would affect you. Anything that happens next is entirely on you.”
He continued to massage his temples, while groaning, Xareith was able to mutter out “Why does everything seem so slow?”
“It’s a thought processor!” I shouted. “The fuck you think it was going to do, give you super strength?”
“Xareith, I advise you to rest for a few days to adjust to the processor’s capabilities as it adjusts to your neurons. You’ll feel dizziness, disorientation, but hopefully that will disappear in a few days.”
The guards that had carefully watched us like birds of prey waiting for the moment to strike approached their commander and lifted him off the makeshift bed. In his own weird way he thanked us for the surgery, like we had any say in the matter, and he had finally left us. I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath when he left as I had eased all my muscles. I turned to face Thomas with a smile before I laughed hysterically, he joined in my laughter as we realised how close that was.
“Did you install the faulty processor?” I said struggling between breaths.
“I did more than that, I was able to install a remote command from my own processor to cause it to fritz up! If it doesn’t burn half his face off by itself, I’ll do it myself!”
We broke even further down into a chorus of laughter.
Later that night when Thomas had set everything aside and packed it all away, I sat idly on the couch thinking to myself. It was obvious to Thomas when he came in. “What’re you thinking about, bud?”
“What Xareith said when he was high on the Nitro. ‘Bout how the Dragon Lord doesn’t know about this… What do you think will happen if the Dragon Lord found out about this?”
“I dunno,” he shrugged, “who gives a shit, they all hate us humans. They’ll probably throw a parade in his honour or make a day of him… Maybe a twenty-foot marble statue in Amaro park.”
I stared at the short carpet and continued to think “Why are you thinking about what he said? Like you said, he was as high as this building. He was probably speaking gibberish.” Thomas continued.
“You know, I remember this old mythos book back home in the apartment. It had at least ten pages dedicated to the Dragon lord… If I can go back and get that book-…”
“No! I know what you are thinking, Mikey” Thomas interjected. “It is not happening, the building took a massive boulder to the side, it’s probably going to collapse soon.”
“But if I can just grab that book-“
“NO!”
“Why not?”
“Michael,” Thomas softly said, “I know you mean well and want to fix this, but there isn’t a thing we can do about this.”
He walked to the office where Thomas had converted it into his private bedroom. I saw the light go out from the door frame and assumed he went to sleep. I looked at the old analogue clock that hung on the ceiling and continued thinking over what Xareith said.