I called out to the man beyond the door.
There was no answer, though I could still hear him breathing. Each breath came slowly, with an unpleasant rattle that suggested great difficulty.
I approached the doorway, taking care not to disturb the broken glass scattered across the floor. Beyond it lay a narrow corridor, illuminated by a single lamp suspended from the ceiling. The walls were lined with pipes, some trembling beneath the pressure of whatever passed through them.
At the far end stood another door.
The breathing grew louder as I approached.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
I pressed my ear against the wood. There was a faint movement within, followed by what sounded like something being dragged across the floor.
I pushed the door open.
The room beyond was considerably smaller than the first. Its walls were crowded with shelves containing jars of preserved organs, bones, and things I could not readily identify. A large surgical table occupied the center, surrounded by instruments arranged on wheeled trays.
Upon the table lay a man.
At least, I believed it to be a man.
His body was concealed beneath a stained sheet, save for one arm that hung limply over the edge. His skin was pale and discolored, interrupted by dark lines of stitching that ran from his wrist toward his shoulder.
I stood motionless, waiting for him to acknowledge me.
His chest rose beneath the sheet.
Then fell.
He was alive.
I stepped closer and asked if he could hear me. There was no response. His hand rested inches above the floor, the fingers curled slightly inward. I reached for it, intending to determine whether he was conscious.
But something about the hand made me hesitate.
There were narrow seams along the joints, too precise to be wounds. Beneath the skin near his wrist, a small metallic piece caught the light.
I looked down at my own hand.
For the first time, I noticed a thin scar running across the inside of my wrist.
I turned it toward the lamp.
The scar was almost perfectly straight.
I pressed my thumb against it. Beneath the skin was something hard, something that did not yield as flesh should.
A sudden noise came from the table.
The man’s fingers had moved.
I withdrew my hand and stepped backward.
“Who are you?”
The question seemed to disturb him. His breathing quickened, and the sheet shifted as his body strained against something beneath it.
I searched the surrounding instruments for anything that might help him, but my attention was drawn to a collection of papers on a nearby desk.
They were covered in diagrams of the human body. Some depicted the arrangement of muscles and bones, while others showed elaborate mechanisms fitted within them. Several drawings had been altered repeatedly, their original lines obscured by corrections and annotations.
One illustration showed a human arm divided into sections.
Beside it was a second drawing, nearly identical, except that the bones had been replaced by an intricate assembly of rods, springs, and small interlocking wheels.
I studied the diagrams, then looked again at the man on the table.
Someone had been attempting to rebuild him.
I turned another page.
There were sketches of a face, drawn from several angles. The features were ordinary enough, though the eyes had been rendered with an unusual amount of detail.
Something about them troubled me.
I could not explain why.
I moved to the next sheet and found the same face again, this time with measurements written along the jaw and forehead.
Beneath the drawing was a name.
I stared at it for some time, trying to make sense of the letters. I had encountered writing elsewhere in the laboratory, but this was different. I felt an immediate urge to pronounce it, as though the sound might explain something the marks themselves could not.
I attempted the first syllable.
For an instant, a sensation passed through me that I could neither place nor describe. I gripped the edge of the desk and waited for it to return.
It did not.
The man on the table stopped breathing.
I turned toward him.
His hand was no longer hanging over the edge.
It rested upon his chest.
I approached cautiously, uncertain whether he had moved it himself.
Then I noticed the restraints.
Thick leather straps secured his wrists and ankles to the table. One had been torn nearly in half.
I looked down at the marks around my own wrists.
They were identical.
Had I been lying here before him? Was this what had been done to me?
I looked again at the instruments, the diagrams, the carefully arranged pieces of a human body. Someone had devoted considerable effort to this work, though I could not imagine why.
Perhaps I had been brought here to assist.
Perhaps I had been brought here to suffer the same treatment.
Or perhaps I had been responsible for it.
I searched the desk for some indication of who had conducted these experiments. There were more papers, most covered in calculations, and several pages filled with drawings of hands, each slightly different from the last.
I examined my own fingers.
They moved as I instructed them.
I could feel the pressure of my thumb against my palm.
Everything appeared ordinary.
And yet I could not bring myself to look away.
A sharp scraping noise came from behind me.
The man was pulling against his restraints.
I hurried toward the table. His chest rose violently, and the muscles in his exposed arm tightened beneath the stitches.
“Please,” I said. “I don’t know how to help you.”
He continued struggling.
I reached toward the strap securing his wrist, but stopped when I saw how badly it had been damaged.
Had he been trying to escape?
Was I about to release someone who had been restrained for good reason?
Before I could decide, his hand closed around my wrist.
His grip was impossibly strong.
I cried out and tried to pull away, but he held me firmly, drawing me closer.
His head turned beneath the sheet.
And in a voice so faint that I nearly failed to hear it, he spoke.
“You shouldn’t be awake.”
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