Eyeball nodded at Butcher as the two waited for the helicopter to land; the green speck in the sky was slowly growing into the twin-rotor dark green mass of a Chinese military transport helicopter. Zhou had said he could bring a single bodyguard along; and, well. With Emerald out of action until her wings healed, Butcher seemed like the best candidate. For all sorts of reasons.

"So, did I mess things up too bad, pulling you away from the arena and the new girl?"

Butcher shrugged. "Not really, boss. She's... excited at the idea I work with you. She wanted to watch me in the arena, but hearing why I dropped out... I think she's a fan of yours. Wanted to come along. Kinda hard to argue the age thing, too, since she's older than me."

Eyeball laughed. "If you need me to put in a good word or something, I can. Or if you need to kick my ass to impress her, I'm good... so long as you don't put it on youtube or tiktok or anything."

The teenager blinked, staring at Eyeball. "You'd do that!?"

"..Butch. Unless I went downhill and dragged that Hiroshima sword out of its hole, or the Titanslayer rifle, I won't really be able to hurt you at all now. If we got in a fight... I'd have to run. There are people out there that can still hurt you. Like your mom. But... I don't think it'll be that way for long." He lifted his classic 40mm revolver.

"I have some incredibly sophisticated armor-piercing shells for these now. Send an osmium-alloy spike right through the armor of a heavy battle tank. Maybe even hurt a Jotun in their armor if I shoot it in the right spot. This thing would be stopped by your eyeball. Not the bone behind it... the eyeball itself."

Butch stared down at the gun. "Oh."

"Yeah. Just don't go trying to lift any buildings or aircraft carriers or any of that nonsense. You'd go right through em like a nail through jello."

He smiled. "Yeah, mom told me about that a long time ago."

Eyeball watched the helicopter settle in. "Alright. Just gotta warn you, Butch... this is... some seriously nasty stuff we're dealing with. Me and your mom, we've killed people. Hurt people. Stolen, cheated, lied. But the stuff you're about to see is... evil. We're getting the info we need to stop it, and we will, but until we come back here, its strictly look, don't touch; we only start fighting if they start it first. Got it?"

Butch nodded; and settled his helmet in place. "Got it, boss. I've met the surrogates. I know whats what. I've got your back."

The two Chinese soldiers on the chopper looked a bit taken aback at the two men that boarded. One of them had a handset in hand identical to what he was wearing, and was looking at the two men and their helmets. Eyeball tapped the side of his own for a moment. "Hello there. Just matched frequencies. I'm Eyeball, this is Butcher. Are we heading to meet your boss first, or is the tour on first?"

The soldier blinked, hanging the spare headset on a hook and snapping it in place as the chopper took off. "We are meeting general Zhou at the closest facility. He will want you to leave weapons on chopper."

"No deal. I'm not bringing anything that poses a risk to the facility as a whole, and he can have however many soldiers or armed guards he wants at our meeting, but I am bringing enough firepower to get out if you decide me knowing about the program is inconvenient. If that's a problem, tell your boss and we'll nix the deal. It would be far more expensive and time-consuming for me to acquire the women and material to do this myself, but if that's how he wants to go, I've got the money, and the time; we'll return the surrogates already on the island whenever they've given birth, or simply arrange a flat payment for those we keep."

He stared at the helmet for a moment. "I... will let general know."

***

Eyeball had mixed feelings as he looked down at the massive coastal warehouse; the structure looked like any other shipping warehouse; about four stories tall, enormous; easily able to fit a couple of football fields inside, and with a helipad on the roof. There was a perimeter fence, of course, but no guard towers; instead, he spotted at least a dozen positions in the building itself where snipers and cameras overlooked the surroundings...

And a few hatches for armed combat drones and turrets. Heavily defended, but concealed; this place could hold off a small army until the actual army showed up. Not the kind of place you'd want to attack.

He tapped the side of his helmet as he studied the surrounding port. They'd try to buy a boat, rent one, or get one sent in. La Famiglia had some boats around China already. If they could have one ready to go to get the kids out instead of having to steal one, that'd make things better. This place was maybe 200 yards from the water. They could definitely get kids out from here.

There was a subtle creak as the chopper settled down; and the two soldiers led him along the flat rooftop to a small shack containing a security door; and the stairs leading down into the facility.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

When he stepped inside, an older, mildly overweight Chinese man in a general's uniform was waiting, smiling, hand extended... and looked a bit taken aback when, rather than taking his hand, Eyeball extended a small foam package. "I would recommend you refrigerate this promptly. Its stored with a bit of dry ice, and should be fine for several hours, but its a valuable sample."

Zhou accepted the package, glancing down; surprised at the weight of it. "And this would be?"

"The first item I promised; a sample from the Lord of Iron. In the event you ever have a need to try to influence the man himself, he has a distinctive preference for hispanic women in their thirties, and of course, being treated as if he were some sort of god among men."

Zhou hefted it for a moment, smiling.. and turned, passing it to a man wearing light green scrubs. "And the second item?"

"After the tour, I'll give it to your superior. Which, by the way, doesn't have to be today; just before we finalize any agreement."

Zhou nodded. "Well then! We have three facilities to visit, and then our actual lab is maintained separately. What would you like to see?"

"The numbers of surrogates, the condition they are kept in, and what sort of equipment you have. If you have the ultrasound equipment already in place, I'd like to check a few at random. If your superior thinks we can come to a long-term agreement, we'll be wanting to ultrasound all of them, and essentially keep the ones with wings or tails; and provide you with plenty of material to make more."

A deep chuckle. "Well. Wings aren't too common among them. Nor are tails. But we do have some of each, including in the nursery downstairs. If you can get even a handful of samples as unique as that one, we'll be happy to make the arrangements."

Eyeball shrugged. "Well, you know La Famiglia has a bit of a contentious relationship with the United States. Having China as an ally going into the future would be good not just for the Dragon Empress, but myself and the Family as well. We would, of course, prefer to keep it quiet. Would your superior be the right one to speak with about some considerations involving some of our advanced equipment and processes we offer at Eyetech?"

Zhou grinned. "I myself cannot make use of such things... but yes. I suspect he will be extremely interested. Now come! Let's show you what you'll be paying for."

***

The first floor of the complex below the roof was a long row of individual rooms; the temperature was fairly warm, but not uncomfortably so. Eyeball glanced at Zhou. "Air conditioning issues?"

"Oh, no. We prefer to keep our surrogates as close to body temperature as possible. While we properly refrigerate things below, these two floors are kept at a precise 37. 98 for you Americans."

Eyeball chuckled. "La Famiglia uses metric for the most part, but that's fine. How many women per floor?"

Zhou walked over, tapping a button. The door slid open with a gentle hiss; and Eyeball could feel air escaping; the room was maintained with a higher air pressure than the surroundings. "Over two thousand on each floor. This is the largest facility."

"Over two thousand? How do you..." He stopped as he looked into the room. He didn't see women inside the room; but rather, torsos. Limbless forms, purely a head and body with the arms and legs cut short just outside the torso and some form of bolts attached to allow them to be mounted on the racks, attached to a variety of tubes. Each was stacked atop the next, a few inches between them, and a series of IVs and tubes ran to them.

While these women were, essentially, brain-dead, there was likely some level of animal awareness of their plight; the complete helplessness of what they'd gone through and were dealing with. If the lobotomy hadn't been done properly, one of these women might be fully aware, but helpless, tormented, for years. Eyeball glanced at Zhou. "That's... remarkable. Extremely efficient, if a bit brutal. I notice these women all seem to be hispanic?"

"Of course. This facility handles mostly those taken in from the North American protectorate; the other two facilities are in the Xinjiang and Tibet regions. We have them lobotomized first, then de-limbed, and feeding and excretion tubes surgically implanted to reduce clean-up and maintenance. It's taken a while to get it quite right."

"Interesting. I actually have telepaths on-staff at La Famiglia who can handle rendering the surrogates docile without resorting to this. And, well. Also leave the surrogates useful for other purposes. If they are willing servants, you don't need any support staff other than doctors."

Zhou glanced at Eyeball thoughtfully. "Interesting. We'd turned down the option of using telepaths for the purpose due to how expensive their time is... it would likely take an hour or two per subject to get the job done."

"You can cut that time dramatically with a bit of prep work. Proper psychological conditioning to get them into a good state, then a single telepath can get them locked into that swiftly; the right guy can do a dozen in an hour. If you do it right, sometimes he can do more than one at a time."

"... I'll discuss it with my superior. The idea of having the surrogates themselves doing the maintenance here, and without loyalty issues..." He smiled. "Less people to pay and ensure remain quiet."

"Tell you what. Whoever you've got on the line to lobotomize right now. Hold off on it for right now. Sedate them, bring them here. After we get a deal signed up, I can have my people do a demo group of however many you've got, and we can figure out which way is more cost effective. I'll cover the bill for the telepath for the current batch so long as I get a few of them for the Dragon island facility."

As they walked down the hall, Eyeball carefully recorded the layout on his helmet... and pretended to ignore the view when they walked by a room where an unfortunate woman, already lobotomized, was being precisely and carefully de-limbed by a group of Chinese doctors; he pretended to stop, facing away from it, chatting with Zhou about nutrition information, as his helmet got an up-close view of the process.

Eyeball absently performed a few ultrasounds.. sending Butcher to the rooftop to take a walk when the boy started to shake with rage at what he was seeing.. Easily seeing that each of the women had multiple fetuses part-way along; one had six of them, including one which had wings; something he brought to Zhou's attention. Afterwards, they met up at the helicopter on the roof.

"Mind if I send a message out? You can monitor, of course; I can even use your phone if you like."

Zhou tilted his head a moment. "And what would that be?"

"Going to call one of my people back at La Famiglia. Ask them to send over some telepaths, and a boat. Actually.. you can just send them that yourself, if you'd like."

He nodded. "Of course. I don't see any issues with it."

"Excellent. So where to now? Tibet, or Xinjiang? Honestly, I've liked what I see so far, and expect we'll be doing significant business together, but it would be foolish of me to simply jump ahead on this without a proper review."