“Can you save her?”
His fingers stilled, the quill froze, and he looked up at her at last. Green eyes, cold but not empty, saw right through her to her soul.
“I can.”
The words flowed from his lips in a soft and quiet murmur. The way he said it, an endless promise of so much more.
“Will you?”
The blood pumped thick through her veins, she could feel it, hear it, the desperation of the passing seconds straining against the unnatural calm of his presence, her heart fighting against the deadening void he left in the room.
“For an honest price.”
She swallowed, a heady mix of desperation and fear blurring the lines between what was real and what was sane.
“Anything.”
He smiled.
“Then let us begin.”
“Anything,” Fleur murmured, her hands tracing lightly over the silver table as she walked silently through the room where it happened.
Gabrielle was trying to scream, Fleur did her best to ignore it as she added another flask of murky blood to the ever dwindling supply hooked into what was left of her sister’s body. There was a spark, a pop of electricity as two of the needle-like limbs buried in her chest crossed and caused her to spasm on the slab. Fleur flinched, Harry didn’t. Not even with the needles embedded in his own brain, sticking out of his skull in a mockery of a halo, connected by a mass of withered grey flesh to the body of the device which he was controlling by thought alone.
Gabi tried to whimper, and Fleur chanced a look knowing she would regret it, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to look away. She was right. She stared transfixed as the countless many-jointed limbs picked up what was left of her left leg, aligning the stump of the femur with where the hip should be and threading strands of a pale white, flesh-like matter into the gap between. A chunk of bone was held up to the gap and carved to fit in place, the wet click of it being carved only adding to the macabre orchestra.
She tore her eyes away, focusing instead on the task of refilling Gabi’s blood bag. Her hands shook and shivered, the small mechanism that secured the flask too delicate for her unsteady touch.
“Calm yourself, move slowly but with purpose. Control your breathing.”
Harry didn’t look up as he said it, his focus still locked onto Gabrielle’s exposed brain, the damaged cells being meticulously removed, replaced, reconnected and activated by the precise movement of the wand in his right hand and the clockwork pincer on his left. Fleur stilled, staring wide eyed and open mouthed straight ahead, focusing on the sound of Harry’s voice and on the shudder of her chest, breathing. The latch clicked shut and the blood began to flow once more.
Gabrielle let out a gurgle as the reconstruction of one of her ribs was finished, but no sound came out. It couldn’t, her lungs were still floating in stasis in a nearby vat of fluid, along with the rest of what they had recovered.
“Anything,” she repeated, eyes sweeping over the gleaming dark wood floorboards, the flickering yellow lamps, the white curtains hiding tools and machines whose purpose she had never dared to investigate, that no sane person would wish to comprehend.
Fleur pushed the wooden cart with trembling hands, moving slowly so as not to disturb the vats atop it, nor the precious organs contained therein. She stared straight down as she moved, uncaring of the splattered fluids on her hands and face, thinking only of the precious cargo before her. She had to keep focused, to keep them from spilling, to keep herself from thinking where they came from. The operating theatre was almost silent as she entered, the slow throb of fluids being the only thing left to hear.
She approached the table, and her eyes were drawn unbidden to the form upon it. Gabi’s chest was splayed open, the intact and replacement ribs pulled wide as the mass of needles plucked away at her flesh. The cavities where her lungs, liver, and stomach had been still standing witness to the brutal violence that had been visited upon them, but the rest of her was unblemished. The tapestry of her skin painted in unnatural white interspersed with pallid fleshly hues.
“It is going well.”
Fleur didn’t look away from the hole where Gabi’s heart used to be.
“Soon she will be complete, and then it will only be a matter of time before she awakens.”
Fleur placed the jar with the left lung in the cradle, dragging her eyes away as splintered, splindly, many jointed fingers of metal began threading through the fluid to extract the delicate component.
“You shall have your sister back again, just as I promised, and then I shall have my price, just as you promised.”
Fleur closed her eyes but the sight of it all didn’t leave her, it never would.
“Anything,” the word turned to ash in her mouth as she stared blankly at her pale reflection, gleaming in the mirrored body of the insectoid, octopus-like engine which dangled over the operating table, its strange stone sinews resting still. (edited)
The greeting died on her lips as Fleur took in her sister. She was standing naked in front of the full length mirror set to one side of the recovery room. She was soaking wet, uncaring of the harsh cold of the entire place, shivering not from the temperature but from some strange ecstasy, her entire body shuddering after every full and lasting breath.
Gabrielle tilted her head to the side, a pleasant smile gracing her lips as she stared into the mirror, running her hands over the bare skin of her body, feeling every place where the profane miracle had remade her flesh. Her eyes were filled with wonder, and she caught sight of Fleur in the reflection, turning round to face her sister with arms held out in exultation. Her smile broadened into something too wide to be human, her pupils dilated and flung open to drink in every drop of light they could, the delight in them dancing mad.
“He saved me,” she said in wonder, staring at Fleur but not seeing her in the slightest. Her teeth parted and her tongue flicked out, tasting the air and quivering. “He brought me back.”
Fleur turned and fled, barely able to fight down her growing nausea as she stumbled down the hall, the apron of her white operating garb nearly tripping her as she stumbled round the corner clutching at the wall, the thick gloves deadening the feel of the rich wallpaper under her palm. She kept going, unthinking of where she was until she pushed open a door with her own weight and stumbled through, going still at the green glow and the slow sound of bubbling fluid.
She looked up, and they looked back. Countless of them, large and small, with eyes to match the light and shreds of black hair, twisted and deformed, stillborn for the harvest and grown to massive size, not a single one more than half-whole.
“Are you ready?”
She looked away from her reflection and stared blankly at Harry’s face instead. He was excited, the genuine emotion almost childlike in its honesty as he awaited her answer. There was no malice, no greed, no desire in how he looked at her, only expectation. She had long grown used to his expectation.
“For anything.”
He nodded happily and gestured her forward, watching as Fleur lay down slowly on the slab. The metal cool against her bare back, the bright lights doing nothing to warm her skin. Gabrielle stepped forward dressed in the same white garb that Harry was, wide-eyed and smiling, and draped a damp cloth over her eyes, a blindfold.
“Don’t worry Fleur,” she whispered, breathy and short and far too hot against Fleur’s cold skin, “the pain will all be worth it in the end.”
The engine began to hum, a resonant whine filling the air as the wet click of the needles piercing Harry’s brain sounded like a cannon to her heightened hearing, the many arms and limbs of the device folding out like the dark body of some nameless ocean thing.
“With you, we can make so much more. With you, we can save them all.”
Fleur’s heartbeat quickened, beating like a bird trapped in a shrinking cage, struggling to get out. She was cold, so cold, but the blades were colder. Their numbing touch froze her flesh and paralyzed her, and she felt like she was drowning. Gabrielle gasped in delight as the needles sank into her skin, though Harry didn’t say a word. Her face didn't move as they began to pull out the depths of her future, one by one with silent hands, and a single thought reverberated blindly through her skull as she stared wide eyed at the dappled filter of light that made it through the gauze, over and over until it was all that she was.
“Anything.”