Terminator Salvation_ The Official Movie Novelization - Alan Dean Foster [57]
This he did for several minutes before an intensely bright light struck him full in the face, causing him to squint sharply and look away.
When the prisoner’s eyes could finally focus once more, a watchful John Connor allowed himself to approach more closely. Given the circumstances, he knew the sensible thing would have been to keep his distance. But he had to have a better look. The fascination of the thing was undeniable. As a bewildered, exhausted, and yes, frightened Wright gasped for air, Connor slowly let his gaze travel over every inch of the singular captive.
“The devil’s hands have been busy,” Connor finally murmured.
The prisoner had been allowed to retain his pants. He had been allowed to retain his boots and his hair. What he was presently missing was his shirt and much of the skin that had formerly covered the upper portion of his body. It had been cleanly peeled back like the plastic wrapping on an old toy. Beneath lay—beneath was....
In places it was impossible to tell where man ended and machine began. Or machine ended and man began; confusion as to precedent only serving to further emphasize the beauty and dreadfulness of what unknown talents had wrought. Titanium and other metal parts gleamed in the bright light. Veins and arteries became tubing with nary a break or weld visible. In places where primate verisimilitude had been sacrificed to save weight, light shone completely through the exposed body.
Connor stared.
You have to stare, he told himself. Because you’ve never seen anything like it before. To the best of his knowledge, no one had.
“What is it?” he murmured. “What the hell?”
Kate moved forward to stand beside him.
“More accurate to say, what hell?” She joined her husband in gazing at the disorientated prisoner. “The outer three epidermal layers reproduce their natural equivalent almost perfectly. I can’t tell if it has been engineered and grown, or if it’s real human skin that’s been modified. One characteristic that has already been noted is the remarkable healing properties it possesses.” She stepped forward and pointed with the large scalpel she was holding. “Look at that. I made the original incision there less than twelve hours ago. It’s already completely scarred over. Underneath is—well, see for yourself.”
Eyes widening, Wright gaped at the moving hand and the potentially lethal instrument it was holding.
“What are you doing to me?” Suspended in the heavy restraints, Wright stared at the people arrayed in front of him. “What have you done?”
Kate didn’t hesitate. A few quick, deft, practiced slashes with the blade opened the chest cavity wide. Stepping back, she studied the result as emotionlessly as if she had performed the opening on a cadaver. Except that a cadaver would have been far less unsettling.
“The heart is human, and very powerful. Given its powers of recuperation, that was to be expected. The brain is human too, and I think also original. But with some kind of chip interface. No one could have anticipated that. Even looking at it under the scanner, it’s hard to believe. But there’s no denying it.”
As she spoke she used the tip of the scalpel to indicate relevant parts of the prisoner, as if she was gesturing at an illustrative chart.
“There’s still quite a lot we haven’t analyzed. The pulmonary system is completely hydraulic and the heart muscle has been stabilized and enhanced accordingly to handle the increased flow and higher pressure. I can’t wait to get into the details of the nervous system and see how the hard wiring is integrated with the brain and the spinal cord. If it is a spinal cord and not just a braided cable.”
What were they talking about?
Wright had finally managed to come to grips with having awakened in a world gone mad. Now it seemed that he had been taken