Broken People (Serial)

Forty-Eight

All the color had run out of Aurore's face. She stared inside the safe, her lips parted, not saying a word. Next to a sphere the size of a man's head that was chained to the wall sat two sets of transparent, rectangular boxes.

Dale felt bad for her. She had obviously waited for this moment for a long time. The disappointment must have been crushing. "Do you still want them?"

Aurore looked at him like she didn't understand the words.

"Do you want them?" Dale asked.

She started. "Yes, of course I do. This is not the right place for them."

Those were no treasures. Sure, they were one of a kind, but like she'd said before, they were not valuable to anyone but her. And now, not even to her. They were nothing more than a painful memory. Dale nodded and picked up one of the smaller boxes. It weighted more than expected. He stepped away from the safe.

The knife throwers were making their way to the back of the vault, so he handed the box over to Spinner. "Take it to the transporter. There are three more inside."

An arm floated gently in the green liquid filling the box. Through the transparent wall, the perfectly formed arm was visible—a child's arm.

"Wow..." Spinner glanced at the contents of the box, then at Aurore, his eyes lingering on her hands. He shook his head and placed the box under his bulky arm. "Give me the other one, too."

Rake picked up the boxes containing the legs.

"I can't believe Big Dino screwed up this badly," Spinner said while they walked towards the exit.

"It was an experiment. It had never been done before," Rake said with a shrug, and the edge of one of the boxes clattered against a drawer. "There were bound to be a few glitches."

"That's a big glitch!" Spinner said.

Like a five or six centimeter long glitch. Big Dino had regrown the limbs from close to nothing, having them reach the exact state as the ones destroyed, but they hadn't aged a day since. They couldn't replace the golden prosthetics. They were unusable.

"Bring the plasma cutter!" Dale yelled after them.

"This is what you came for?" Aurore frowned at the sphere made of a material she didn't recognize, covered in rusted bits of metal. "What is it?"

"It's a power source." Dale pulled on the chains. They didn't budge. He needed fancy gas powered bolt cutters capable of slicing through titanium diamond steel links. "It's supposed to be able to power a small city."

"Supposed to?" Aurore arched an eyebrow.

"Up until recently, it was believed to be a myth," Dale said. "Then we heard a rumor there might be something similar inside the Hrad. We had several talks with the mayor, but he never admitted its existence."

"Who's 'we'?"

"The European United Nation Council." There was no point in hiding anymore. He was here. The proof lay in front of him. "The martial law hasn't been instated here, so we couldn't barge in and take it. We had to find another way."

"Steal it..."

"If that's what it takes..." Dale shrugged. "It's not like he's using it."

"That's ... not entirely correct," Spinner said on his way back to them. Neither he nor Rake carried the plasma cutter.

"It's powering her prosthetics." Rake nodded at Aurore. "You can't take it."

"Big Dino will have all of our heads if you do," Spinner said.