Broken People (Serial)

Forty-Six

The transporter was picking itself off the floor on wobbly legs when Aurore opened the door. She arched an eyebrow and stepped away to let Cielo enter, then asked, "What happened?"

Cielo rushed inside and froze, confronted with the sight of Cole's bare arms. She kept her hands to herself while she looked questioningly at Spinner.

"Just a glitch. Nothing to worry about," Spinner said, twisting around a handful of wires.

Aurore folded her arms. "That's not reassuring enough to convince me to lend you my arms." Her fingers twitched at the thought of parting with them.

"We don't need your arms." Rake got up from in front of the vault door where he had been digging into the lock with a long metallic tool. He tossed a tiny, ridged piece into the drawer open on the side of the transporter. "We only need to have control over them for a short while."

"And how do you plan to do that?" Aurore asked.

Spinner held up the wires. "With these."

"You want to connect my arms to his ..." Aurore frowned as she tried to think it through. To his arms? No, that wouldn't work since his nerves were shot. "Brain?"

"Not exactly." Spinner shifted uncomfortably. "We want to connect your brain to his. He doesn't know how to use your arms, so he'll run the commands through your brain first."

"You want to turn me into a relay." Wonderful. First Dale's hug and now this. This night couldn't get any weirder.

"Technically, yeah..." Spinner winced and pulled so hard on the wires, one of them snapped. "But it's not as bad as it sounds," he added quickly. "And it's only for a few seconds, under a minute ..." He threw Rake a glance, but he was busy signaling Cole to step back, turn around, and move closer to the vault.

Rake held both hands out and lowered them, guiding the transporter to do the same, and then he raised one palm up. "That's good. It seems to be the right height. Sit here," he told Aurore and patted the top front of the transporter.

"It will be fine," Cielo said with an eerie smile. "I'll make sure nothing happens to you."

Spinner sucked in a breath and stepped away to make room for her.

The long, metallic legs got in the way, but Aurore navigated around them and hopped onto the hood. She looked over, imagining her legs being crushed against the door if the transporter had another glitch, and pulled them up under her. Once settled, she removed her gloves, then paused and looked at the others. Why was she doing this? She didn't want to relinquish the control of her arms to them.

"Any metal in there?" Spinner pointed at her hair. "It can disturb the signal."

With precise moves, Aurore removed all of the hairpins that held her hair back. She still didn't want to do this, but she couldn't stop. Someone else controlled her moves.

"Right. Now, this is going to sting a little." Spinner approached her with a scalpel in one hand. "Don't worry. I'll make two small incisions behind the hairline so there won't be any visible marks."

Aurore glanced back over her shoulder. Rake was already working on Cole's head, attaching wires connected to long needles to his scalp. Cielo's encouraging smile was guiltier than ever, and Dale and Nicholas had just entered the room. Too late to pull out now. She turned around and looked toward the vault door, determined not to move.

Her hair was parted, and Spinner's scarred fingers glided over her scalp. He sprayed a cold liquid that numbed her enough to turn the cuts into faint pinches. More wire went in, pushed with a force that could have cracked her skull instead of just drilling a hole if Spinner hadn't been careful.