Crossover by Joel Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

connections, squeezing desperately at the dogged pathways ... and nearly wished she hadn't. Hard pressure midway up her back, jabbing deep. A popping, hammering vibration, rattling her skull. A sickening wrench from her right shoulder, one way, then the other. The harsh whine of a power tool in her ear. A limp weight being shifted. Her arm. An impossible, grinding agony through her middle, buffers not coming to her rescue ... A frightened, agonised gasp from her lips, air spilling into empty lungs. Murmurs of consternation from nearby, echoing through the fractured sanity in her mind.
    " STOP!!! " she screamed, pure terror wrenching back control of lungs and vocals. " OH FUCK, I cant feel my legs, fucking STOP IT!!! " Drew another great, sobbing breath, something popping hard up her spine in an explosion of static pain. " Oh GOD!!! I'm SCARED, don't DO this to me!!! " That shrill whining in her ear, hard, crackling pressure through her shoulder joint... she couldn't feel her left arm either, it was gone, like her legs, like her entire pelvis ... oh Jesus, cut in half, they'd cut her in half and were working up her spine ...
    " PLEASE!!! " she sobbed hysterically, shuddering breaths fighting past the growing, rasping tightness of her throat and chest ... " Oh God, I'm pegging you ... NO!!! " as with one final crack! something in her shoulder gave way, then that awful, zero-sensation of something just missing, simply not there anymore. To her right, something limp and heavy was lifted away. Her arm.
    She would have screamed. But a scream was insufficient. And then she lost her voice completely, and the pressure crushed her flat and sprawling.
    "Got through," she heard a voice, faintly. "That's the final one, it's all downhill from here ..." And nothing more.
    The pressure bore down, hard, cold and invasive. She fought. The effort was enormous — the pressure consumed, it drank down light, and thought, and everything that was hers and hers alone. It took her space and her thoughts, and her hope. It was despair. It could not be fought.
    But she could run. Sandy drew back, retreating down familiar pathways, cross-connections, withdrawing further and further into the deep, dark recesses that only she knew, hiding, making herself small. The darkness followed. It pulled, and it gnawed, and it bit. It threatened to suck her down, into oblivion. Instant by instant, it consumed those last deep pathways, snatching her hiding places, pushing her backwards, further and further, deeper and deeper. There was no hope. But she fought anyway, pointlessly clutching to the last, barest strands of what was hers. It was what she was. And it was all that she'd ever been.
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    The thing on the operating table was a curiosity. It was a torso, although only barely recognisable as such. A human torso. Separated skin hung in great, thick folds over the table rim, draped like rubbery cloth. Musculature glistened in the theatre glare, thickly structured and coloured a reddish-grey. White bone showed in places, the curvature of ribs. Sensory implements protruded from the spinal column like a back-ridge of slim bristles. Below the lowest rib there was nothing, only the glistening cavity where the intestinal tract had been. The spinal column ended abruptly at a single, nubbed vertebra of the middle spine. Rounded bone at the shoulder joint, smooth and glistening. Musculature trailed loosely where it had been separated.
    Above perched the black, angular arm of a scanner, waiting and watching, vulture-like. Cabling trailed down from attachments, connections inserted into that mass of wet, red-grey tissue. Systems analysed, took data, stored it. Some emitted pulses and measured the response. People in white coats looked at their monitors and pushed their buttons, absorbed in their tasks.
    Beneath a ragged mop of dark blonde hair, the woman who knew herself as Cassandra Kresnov stared sightlessly at the spotless floor, her head held in place with a metal brace,