The vaulted floor of Factory Beta had ceased to be a butcher shop. Within two hours of securing the chemical override console, Arthur Vance and Dr. Morrigan Calder had transformed the space between the rows of glowing incubation cylinders into an eight-table razor-sharp assembly line.
Steaming stainless steel pans filled with boiling chlorhexidine hissed atop portable kerosene burners. Four Vanguard medical orderlies, their faces masked with clean linen and their aprons stiff with dried saline wash, moved between the rubberized running mats with practiced, quiet speed. Beside the third table, Titus sat with his massive black back shell humming with a steady earth-heat deep ring, providing a nonstop fifty-five-degree Celsius heat source that kept the intravenous saline carboys warm and prevented freezing shock in the young patients.
On the main running mat lay a young chimera hound, no older than six months. The creature’s pelt was a mottled pattern of silver wolf fur and rainbow-bright reptilian scales along its dorsal ridge. Driven directly through the back-skull crest at the base of its skull was a threaded brass metal tube. A bio-link socket through which cult handlers injected spark pain signals to enforce obedience.
“Suction the skull margin,” Arthur instructed. His voice dropped into the calm, steady beat of a seasoned trauma surgeon. “Morrigan, keep that micro-bone hook at thirty degrees. If the blade slips, the transverse sinus will tear.”
