Rachael Stowe oozed back to consciousness, vaguely aware that a bright light was shining on her. Had she slept through Reveille, and the sun was now high enough to shine through her barracks window on her face? She'd done that once before, and caught holy hell from her sergeant. She'd better —
Wait. No. That wasn't sunlight. It was a spotlight. Or something like a spotlight. She blinked, trying to focus. Her blinking came with an odd clacking sensation, but she pushed that aside and tried to resolve her surroundings. Indoors — she could barely make out the walls of a much darker room beyond the bright light. Those slightly darker rectangles, high up on the walls . . . were those windows?
Then she heard, muffled as though coming from behind a pane of glass, the voice of some man she didn't recognize: "She's awake. She's moving her eyes."
The voice said "she," Rachael thought. Did he mean . . . her?
Another muffled voice spoke from the same direction: "Those restraints look excessive."
Even through the glass, that voice was unmistakable. It was the voice of Norman Dockran, Mister Eternal himself! The room she was in was beginning to come into focus. It looked, oddly, like an operating theater. The bright light fixture above her did resemble a surgeon's overhead lamp. Was she in the infirmary? Where were the nurses? She turned her head and started scanning the room. There were small tables here and there, some with surgical instruments on them and some with other, unrecognizable pieces of hardware; but no people. She was alone. Norman Dockran, and the other mystery man, were probably watching her through one of the high windows.
There was another odd sensation, too. She was . . . breathing. And not like the breaths she had to take when she talked. She was breathing in and out without thinking about it, like she used to do before she joined the Perpetual Army and got the proto-immortality procedure. Was . . . was that why she was lying in an operating room? Had they removed the energy receiver hardware, for some reason? It was a scary thought. Without the receiver, she'd not only have to breathe, she'd have to eat and excrete again. Assuming they remembered to replace her intestines. And she'd resume aging. This was bad, if that was the case. She didn't feel any clothing covering her body, other than some bracelets; if they'd operated on her abdomen, she should be able to get a look at whatever sutures had been added. She lifted her head . . . but what she saw didn't look anything like her naked body.
The unknown man's voice spoke up from behind the glass again: "Those inch-thick steel restraints are absolutely necessary. Cyberwood is fantastically strong."
Did he say cyber . . . wood? She glared at her torso again. It was vaguely human in shape, and the dark beige color of treated lumber. It did look like wood. Like actual wood. And so did her legs, and her arms, all of which were strapped down to the table she was on by thick, two-inch-wide metal bands.
She took a breath, deliberately this time, and tried out her voice. "What," she said. The voice that came out was nearly an octave lower than her normal speaking voice, and the movements of her jaw and tongue felt almost alien. "What," she growled, "Have you done to me?"
"Private Stowe," Norman Dockran's voice reverberated through the room. He must have picked up a microphone. "Don't be alarmed. You are the recipient of a new experimental procedure. The operation appears to have been a complete success so far. Your old, frail body is no more. In its place, you now possess a body far more resilient and capable."
Her old body? What in . . . she tried to move her arms up to look at them, but the restraints only permitted them to move a fraction of a centimeter. Same with her legs. And unless she missed her guess, this new wooden body was a lot taller, and wider, than she'd previously been. Incredulity gave way to panic, which gave way to steaming hot rage. "Change me back!" she yelled.
Now the mystery man's voice came on the mike. "We can't. The severing of your brain from your old body had to be complete. We could never hope to reattach it to your old spinal cord. It took days to attach it to the new receptors in the cyberwood, and to test each connection."
So she was . . . made of wood, now? Forever? Like Pinocchio, but in reverse? She could feel the restraints against her wrists and ankles, but the feeling was dulled, not at all like the sensation of metal against flesh had been. Not . . . sensual, anymore? And this new body they'd trapped her in . . . it wasn't feminine. At all. They'd taken away her sexy. She howled. "What . . . have . . . you . . . done to me!!"
With all the fury she could muster, she yanked upward on her left arm's restraint. It didn't budge. Behind the glass, she heard Norman Dockran say, "She's trying to get loose."
"That's inch-thick chrome-vanadium steel," she heard the other man's voice say. "There's no way even cyberwood can break it."
She yanked again. Again, the restraint held.
"Please remain calm," Norman Dockran's miked voice said more loudly. "You will adjust to your new reality in time. We need you for the greater good."
That just infuriated her more. She tried yanking with all four limbs.
"It's no good," Norman's muffled voice came from behind glass once again. "I was afraid this might happen without a volunteer. Prep her for brainwashing."
Brainwashing?! No. No. They'd taken her body from her. They weren't going to take her mind as well. She focused all of her new, wooden muscles on levering her arm up off that table, adding her wooden shoulders and wooden back into it. The metal restraint creaked. It groaned. And with one last upward yank, it popped loose from the table and flew into the ceiling. Her left arm was free! She reached over — that was quite a big wooden hand they'd equipped her with — and grabbed the restraint on her right arm. She pried at the metal; it bent, then broke loose into her hand. She tossed it aside and with both hands free she bent forward and began prying at her leg restraints.
Alarms blared and red lights flashed. There was a hissing sound; some kind of gas was venting into the room. They probably intended to knock her out. She took one deep breath, and held it. The leg restraints were tougher than the ones on her arms had been. It took two more yanks to pry the left one loose, and three to break the one on the right. Fighting the urge to breathe; she hadn't had to do that since the last time she went swimming, back in Georgia, before the island. She got to her feet, and stumbled. She must be over eight feet tall. She was not used to walking around in anything so huge. But she had to get out of this room while she could still hold her breath. There was only one door, and it was reinforced like a steel vault and shut tight. The wall, then? All four walls were made of cinderblock. If she was strong enough to break those steel bands, maybe . . . She punched at the wall. It didn't feel like a hard punch, but her fist cracked through the near side of the wall, revealing the back of the cinder blocks. She clasped both hands together and swung them full-force at the wall like a battering ram. An entire section of wall caved in, leaving an opening nearly a meter wide that ran all the way to the floor. A hallway lay beyond, with daylight pouring through the windowed doors at the far end. She wormed her massive wooden body into her newly-improvised exit hole, pulled herself through, and ran toward the exit doors, her wooden feet pounding on the tiles.
On the observation deck, Norman Dockran looked away from the now-vacant operating theater below them, and scowled at Dr. Jake Rasmussen. "It looks like your cyberwood is even stronger than you'd accounted for."
Dr. Rasmussen sighed. "You have to admit, the wooden cyborg project is a resounding success."
Norman snorted. "Except for its main purpose. We needed a product who was loyal to us. Instead, we got a loose cannon. I'm afraid we're going to have to put your wooden cyborg program on hold."
Rasmussen's eyebrows shot up. "But —"
"No buts," Norman cut him off. "Keep experimenting with rats if you feel it will help, but human subjects are off the table." He stood. "I'm going to the situation room. I'll need my advisors, and the room's broadcast console, if I'm to keep this from getting worse."
Rachael burst out through the doors into the sunlight. She was breathing hard. She still wasn't used to that sensation, but she kept running. She was finally starting to get used to these awkwardly-long legs. Damn. Eternal Mankind, the organization she'd believed in, that she'd pledged herself to, had turned her into a wooden monster. And Norman Dockran had watched it happen. Mister Eternal himself had been behind the whole damned experiment! How could he?!
Never meet your heroes, she told herself. Damn.
She glanced down again at her wooden body as she ran. It was as ugly in full daylight as it had been in the operating room. Her smooth skin was gone. Her feminine waist-to-hip ratio, gone. Her breasts, gone. She ran a large wooden hand along her wooden flank. She could feel the straight, hard contour. Then she stopped running for a moment. There was something else she needed to know. She reached down below her torso to where her legs met. Was there . . .
No. There wasn't. The space between her legs was smooth, like a Barbie doll. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. DAMN THEM! They had taken away her sexuality. She would never be able to make love again. Those nights of beautiful intimacy with boyfriends were over forever. It would go without saying that she also lacked a uterus. She hadn't wanted to have children of her own, at least not yet, but to have that option ripped away from her without so much as asking . . . she slumped down onto the dirt. She tried to weep, but even there she'd been cheated. Her new tearducts couldn't produce on demand.
"Attention," a voice boomed out over a distant loudspeaker. She gasped. It was Norman Dockran's voice, addressing the whole island. "This is Mister Eternal. There is an intruder on the island. This individual is 270 centimeters tall and looks like a person made of wood. It is extremely dangerous. It was last seen headed away from medbay 12. Take all steps necessary to capture this intruder alive."
Oh no. No no no no. God knows what they'd do to her if they got her back. She had to get away. She had to leave Dockran's Island. Maybe in a plane? No, the airfield would be too heavily guarded now. Was there a boat parked along the shore somewhere? Could she swim to North America in this wooden body? How many miles away was it again?
Well, she wasn't going to get away if she just stood there. She took off running again. She'd have to avoid the roads and built-up areas, but in theory, if she ran far enough in any one direction she should hit the shoreline somewhere. . . .
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