Inhuman // Cyborg

Chapter Forty: Headache

Harper looked as if none of what they were saying made sense in the slightest. Victor immediately noticed and added, "The Progenitor probably ensured that the neural implants passively influenced each clone to be practically unable to even consider the possibility that they could be influenced. Look at her. She can write a seamless simulation of reality but right now, she looks like a first grader in a theoretical physics lecture."

"So...what do we do?" Barry asked. He was munching on a sausage roll that he definitely hadn't been eating just a few seconds before. No one reacted to the sudden appearance of food...it was normal for Barry to duck out and grab a snack whilst in the middle of a conversation. "We can't arrest her, but we can't exactly let her wander around here either. Not if she has no control over herself."

Victor fell silent for a moment, then finally murmured, "I'll need to take the implant out..."

———————————————-

Harper hadn't argued against the idea of having the implant removed, especially when Victor promised to replace it with a more advanced version. However, as the anaesthesia stole away her consciousness, Victor found himself consumed with fear. Sure, he was a living alien computer. He knew almost everything and his body could perform brain surgery within a matter of minutes...but his mind was still human. It still doubted his own abilities, especially when Harper's safety was involved.

Still, he couldn't let his emotions take over. Not if he wanted to perform this surgery correctly. First, Harper's hair had to be shaven off - so that her scalp was entirely visible. Then Victor made the first incision.

The cyborg already knew that the neural implant was inserted primarily in Harper's cerebellum. This would typically require only a very small opening in the skull...but the Progenitor was cunning. Victor knew this because Harper was also cunning, and to underestimate her would be a dire mistake. So, he sawed around the full circumference of Harper's skull and removed it with such ease, it was almost like lifting the lid off a cookie jar.

There wasn't as much blood as one would be expecting. This was primarily because Victor had injected Harper with an advanced Amiodarone shot. Its soul purpose was to lower her heart rate...and a slower beating heart, meant less blood circulating throughout Harper's body. Still, bleeding could not be entirely eradicated. That was why Victor had every intention of trashing this table once the operation was done - it was already beginning to stain bright crimson in certain places.

The implant wasn't hard to find. It sat nestled amongst the fleshy dome, but taking it out wasn't going to be as easy. It had been interwoven into various sections of Harper's brain. In other words, it acted as a foreign connection and contributed to the overall brain activity. This presented at least a dozen new complications, one of which being that disconnecting the implant incorrectly could affect Harper's mind...permanently.

Thankfully, Victor wasn't bound by the limited medical knowledge of Earth; consisting of mostly alien tech meant that he was far beyond such simple methods. Disconnecting the implant was easy for him, as was replacing it with the more advanced one that he had made, but that didn't stop him from worrying. Though his hands moved with undeniable skill, his brain just wouldn't shut off. Victor needed to be certain that this operation hadn't left a lasting effect on Harper...because the last time he had cut her open, she had lost her ability to walk.

Checking her brain activity wasn't exactly difficult, but it wouldn't reveal any problems that pertained to consciousness; this meant speech, and more importantly, pain receptors. To ensure that she could still function in these regards, Victor had lowered Harper's anaesthesia dosage and hacked her new implant to slowly wake certain sections of her brain to full operating capacity.

Pain relief was being constantly injected into her bloodstream. It still wasn't enough though. Harper woke with a sharp gasp, lungs burning and heart pounding. She felt like her entire body was being electrocuted but worst of all was her head. It ached. Like the worst migraine humanly possible...but still much more agonising. There were no words to describe such a pain...only sounds; gasping and groaning and the complete inability to scream due to the shock.

Harper's eyes wandered to each individual part of the room - searching for something, anything, to stop the pain. Then her gaze fell to a glass cabinet. Through it, she could see her own reflection clear as day. She was laying on a metal table...and her head had been sawed open. Inside the remaining half of her skull, her brain pulsed and each vein seemed to extend throughout the entirety of that pink organ.

In that intense silence she somehow screamed with her whole body. Her eyes grew wide with horror, mouth rigid and open, her chalky face gaunt and immobile, and her fists clenched with blanched knuckles - nails digging deeply into the palms of her hands.

Victor swiftly touched her arm and forced her shocked eyes away from the reflection. "I'm here, Harp. Everything's okay. I just need to know if your pain receptors are still firing. Blink twice for yes, thrice for no."

Harper immediately blinked twice, in quick succession, trying desperately to ride through the pain.

"Don't worry, I'm going to put you back under." Victor assured, though his voice was straining with an unspoken stress. He hated to see her this way...even more so knowing that he was the cause of her torment. As quickly as he possibly could, Victor turned her anaesthesia back up. "Take deep, controlled breaths. The pain will go away soon."

Harper complied, though it was hard to do when her head felt like it was being run over by a bulldozer. Every second was agony, and as the anaesthesia finally took hold of her body, Harper was all too glad to sink back into peaceful nothingness. In that world of darkness she could forget about what she had seen...and more importantly, what she had done to earn the distrust of the entire Justice League. There was part of her that thought it might be easier to never wake up again.

Alas, this wasn't meant to be. Victor finished the surgery rather quickly, and when Harper awoke, she was in her room - a bandage wrapped tightly around her bald head and a throbbing headache to match.