The distance between the muzzle of the Vance Cryo-Pneumatic Transfixer and the festering seam on Inquisitor Rask’s shoulder was less than eighteen inches. At that range, Arthur could smell the rotting rot seeping from beneath the razor-sharp staples. A stench of copper sulfate, stale bile, and decomposing connective tissue that turned the stomach of ordinary men.
Rask was howling from the shattered bones in his right hand. But the hungry instinct of his grafted beast organs was already taking over. His Abyssal Scorpid claw snapped backward in a wild reflex arc, the hard-shelled pincer whistling through the air to sever Arthur’s spine before the doctor could pull the trigger.
Arthur didn’t blink. His grip on the walnut stock of the Transfixer was steady as stone.
Phut-hiss!
The air-powered metal tube discharged with a sharp puff of frozen carbon dioxide. A six-inch fluted heavy dark metal dart, filled with fifty drops of packed, bio-engineered collagenase and acidic peptidase, punched through the thick keloid scar tissue right between the third and fourth staples of the graft boundary.
The needle struck the stringy capsule anchoring the scorpid claw to the human collar bone.
The acid-burn reaction was total and instant.
Collagenase doesn’t destroy healthy living bone. It specifically targets and hydrolyzes the peptide bonds in denatured, scarred connective tissue. In less than two seconds, the thick stringy tissue holding Rask’s four-hundred-pound monster arm to his human skeleton melted into a yellowish, frothy liquid. The iron staples, stripped of their load-bearing anchor, popped out…
