Bishop stared at his reflection in a spare piece of laboratory glass and prodded his false face.
"How long will this body last?"
His chief scientist, a reedy man named Emmerich, adjusted his glasses. "We can't give any perfect predictions. Our best estimate is ten years, but your lifestyle isn't exactly friendly to our predictive capabilities."
Bishop smirked and prodded around his chin. Yes, this attempt was more realistic than his previous forms. They even got his stubble.
"Well, doctor, how bulletproof is it?"
"Don't walk into a live shooting range."
"Clearly you have no perception of my job." Bishop turned away from the glass with a snap, and held out his hand for his duster. Emmerich retrieved it and handed it to him. The man was too timid, Bishop mused as he checked his pockets. It made him a useful minion, but a poor professional scientist. Little wonder he had turned to white collar crime after he failed to catch the government's attention for grants.
His work in genetics had caught Bishop's, which kept him out of federal jail, but he was entrapped firmly in the tender embrace of employment for the EDF. All things considered, a decade in prison was probably the kinder option.
Emmerich had even bothered to cover Bishop's old body with a operating sheet. Bishop pulled away the sheet to look at his own, dead, slack face. The bodies were lasting longer now. How much of that was the scientific advances of the century and how much of that was his own adaptation to transference he didn't know. He wasn't a man prone to emotion, but not rotting alive was an improvement.
"Oh, the body." Emmerich finally spoke up. "Did you want us to send it to Arlington, or—"
"Cremate it and dump it with the rest of the medical waste." John Bishop's tomb had been filled for over two centuries.
Bishop exited the operating room. His right knee nearly buckled, but he managed to turn the motion into an exaggerated step.
"Something wrong, sir?" Emmerich peered at him from behind his coke bottle lenses, face pale under the fluorescent lights.
"What's the degree of integration?" Bishop snapped.
"One hundred percent, sir," Emmerich seemed surprised by the question, "you have complete bodily control, perfect motor calibration. We based the nervous input on your most recent homunculus. You took it—"
"Yesterday, yes, I know." Bishop straightened his jacket and kept walking. His knee ached, but it didn't threaten to send him tumbling to the ground.
"You know I recommend a full twenty four hours of rest after this procedure," Emmerich continued unprompted, his nasal voice grating on Bishop's nerves, "especially because of the abrupt transfer and the, ah, unique situation leading to it."
Maybe that was why he had covered the body. Traumatic head wounds scared him.
"Have you ever experienced something like this before? A legitimate injury? It could be a residual trauma, or a variant of phantom limb syndrome. We should do a NMRI."
"I have a meeting with the Secretary of Defense in an hour."
"I'll let the UNM lab know to expect you in the evening."
"I have a permanent metal implant."
"A CT then. This could be something serious."
"A localized x-ray of the knee. And we perform it here."
"What about a brain scan? I'm worried your mind is simulating injuries that aren't really there."
"Worry about yourself, doctor." Bishop held his eye open for a retinal scan at the operations room door.
"I am," Emmrich snapped, "and it's in my self interest that you not die. I don't want to serve a decade for fraud, and I really don't want to serve life for the things I've done for you."
Bishop smirked to himself. Clever man. Of course, at the beginning of his employment, Bishop had told him in grisly detail the fate of his predecessor.
"The knee x-ray. Nothing else. Have a good day, doctor."
From the twist of his expression, Emmerich realized that he was meant to have anything but. "Yes, sir."
Bishop let the door slam in his face. The operations room was a more advanced version of the new SETI Sentinel system at Harvard, with a few extraterrestrial upgrades.
"Lieutenant Jones, report."
"Fifteen reports of potentially valid UFO sightings, one confirmed contact with Greys. The eyewitness is in custody." Jones handed him the situation report. "And there's been an incident on that building in New York. Some kind of spill."
Bishop disregarded it. "Who's performing the interview?"
"Captain Townshend and Doctor Smith. The witness is on a sodium thiopental drip."
"Shut it off. Tell Doctor Smith to use substance seventy-eight. And tell Townshend I don't want to explain away another body."
"I'll let them know, sir." Jones saluted him and returned to her console. Bishop fought the urge to rub his forehead and instead walked across the room and stepped into his office. He closed the door, and quietly as possible, sagged against the frame. A new body wasn't a repair; it was a quick patch job to keep him from dissolving into a puddle of vengeful goo.
John Bishop had been posthumously awarded a Purple Heart for bravery in the face of peril after he took a musket round to the knee and was captured by a battalion of Hessian troops. That he had then been taken into the sky by grey monsters from the stars was tidily scrubbed out of the official reports. Bishop had gone to great lengths to remove any mention of his frantic ravings from history.
He'd tried to remove his body, too, but people tended to be suspicious of a man with a shovel lurking around Arlington, no matter what badges he flashed at them, and the president had more important things to deal with than a sternly worded request to exhume a Union soldier.
His phone started ringing.
Bishop wiped away the exhaustion and answered it, shoving the tangled cord behind him.
"John Bishop," he snapped.
"Ah, Agent Bishop, this is Secretary Keller. My assistant tried to phone you earlier and was told it had to be me personally, for security's sake."
"That's correct, Secretary," Bishop switched on the phone tap, "we can't allow calls from unauthorized individuals to this location."
"Smart man. I'm cancelling our meeting, by the way."
"Sir?" Bishop's jaw grated.
"I have golf scheduled with the president. Unlike you, I need people to like me to keep my job." Keller chuckled humorlessly. "I'll have my secretary fax you the cuts. I did my best to give you a budget, but you'll have to hold off on those shiny new probes for another year."
"Of course, sir," Bishop schmoozed, doing his best to keep from cursing at the man.
"Have a good evening, Agent. Ah, did your, uh, surgery go well? What was it, your knee?"
"Yes." And the rest of him, too, but Keller didn't need to know that. The President was only marginally aware of it. "It's fine."
"Hmm," Keller grunted, "must have been bad, to be so sudden. Well, best of luck recovering. Goodbye, Agent."
"Good evening, sir." Bishop repeated tonelessly into the receiver, then hung the phone in the cradle. His knee twinged. He picked up the phone and dialed an internal number.
"Emmerich, meet me in the main lab in ten minutes. Bring a local anesthetic." He hung up before Emmerich responded.
Golf with the president. How droll.
Politics, Bishop mused as he limped down to the main lab, never changed. Jackson himself had shaken his hand, once he was back on Earth. He hadn't invited him to go golfing, but he had played a sedate game of cricket with the good general and his wife once.
If his budget was truly in danger, perhaps he'd invite himself to a few rounds on the green.
Bishop waved his badge and held his eye open for the retinal scan into the laboratory.
"Hello, sir," Emmerich didn't look up from where he was adjusting a portable x-ray machine.
"Emmerich…"
"Just a scan of the knee, sir, and I'll perform it myself. No techs.
Bishop scowled. "Fine. I want the anesthetic."
"After the x-ray. Civfroaine is radiographic. On the bench, please. Do you need a lead shield?"
"I don't get cancer."
"Lucky you." Emmerich continued, setting up the machine and positioning it around Bishop's knee. "Nicotine patches are itchy. Straighten your leg, please."
Bishop did, and only barely managed to hide the reflexive cringe of pain. Emmerich pressed a button on the side of the machine, then walked a good twenty feet away and ducked behind one of the analyzers. The machine beeped twice. Emmrich came back and got two more x-rays, from either side of Bishop's knee, hiding behind the analyzer each time.
Bishop shoved aside the attachment himself, and snatched the anesthetic off of the tray. He flipped it upright, flicked it twice, then injected the entire syringe into his knee.
Emmerich paled. "I don't think you're supposed to use all of it."
"Medication doesn't work well on me." Blame that on an easy availability of opium and morphine following the War Between the States. The body changed, but the mind was set in its ways, and its ways were to treat fifty grams of pure fentanyl like a single aspirin.
The ache in his knee numbed only slightly. Emmerich set the x-rays in their developer and took a second to peer into the huge incubation tanks housing his latest project. Super soldiering had taken a swing from the sixties and seventies. Instead of singular, highly trained soldiers, Emmerich had proposed genetically modified troops—some sort of highly intelligent yet easily suggestible amalgamation of man and animal. It helped that he had brought almost two decades or research with him when he was invited into the EPF. The project was still in it's infancy, but thanks to Emmerich's work, they had an actual physical specimen to show off, rather than a petri dish. It was much more promising when the president got to look at a tank half filled with a man shaped monster, rather than squint into a microscope and try to determine what was tissue and what was stain.
"Amazing, aren't they?" Emmerich muttered, half to himself. "Human cloning is easy; just look at yourself. A cheek scraping and a few days and I can build you a new body. Simple. But these. Ha, ah, it's a bit cliche, but this, this is what it feels like to be a god."
"Careful, doctor. Megalomania isn't good on your resume."
"Look at him, sir," he gestured to the tank, "in two years, I've made more progress than I did in two decades, thanks to your funding, of course."
"Of course. Look at the x-rays."
"Oh, right," Emmerich retrieved the metal sheets and pinned them to the light table. "Oh."
"What?"
"Here," he shifted the table around so Bishop could see it without moving, "it looks like, well—"
"Musket round." Bishop interrupted him. There, drawn in stark white on the film, was a small sphere.
"I don't understand," Emmerich muttered, shaking his head, "there's no way this should have happened. I mean, injuries aren't carried in DNA. Well, genetic ones are, but a bullet wound isn't genetic. That's like saying a baby will come out tattooed, or muscular, or—"
"Get me a surgery tray."
"Sir?"
"A surgery tray, Emmerich," Bishop undid his belt and started removing his trousers.
"Uh," Emmerich turned away to dig through the autoclaved bags of equipment, "I'm not a medical doctor. I can't do, uh, extractions. I'll call Dr. Henry; she'll know how to—"
"Emmerich."
"Yes, sir." Emmerich placed a magnetized tray with a scalpel and a pair of forceps next to him.
"Get me antiseptic," Bishop eyed the tray, bundling up his trousers and throwing them across the room, "and a suture kit."
"Right, sutures." Emmerich looked paler than usual.
"Queasy, doctor?" Bishop took the bottle of antiseptic and splashed some onto a gauze pad, then rubbed it roughly over his knee.
"Well you know," Emmerich pulled on a pair of latex gloves, fiddling nervously with a it of scrap paper, "a corpse is different than a living person. I can do autopsies, just not surgeries. Do you want a hair net?"
Bishop looked up at his own receding hairline. "Fine."
Emmerich pulled the blue cap over his head. "And maybe wash your hands?"
"I don't get infections."
"No infections, no cancer, eternal life." Emmerich shook his head, smirking wanly. "If I didn't know any better, sir, I'd be jealous."
"Good thing you do," Bishop glanced at the x-ray, turned his leg slightly to the left, and made the first incision. Emmerich turned green.
"Don't vomit in my lab, Emmerich," Bishop hunched over the cut. Not deep enough. The lights in the lab were made for operations like this, so he could see well, despite the shadow he was casting. "I'll make you clean it up."
"Noted," Emmerich grunted. He had found a rolling chair, and was seated with his head between his knees. "Do you need a sponge?"
"No," Bishop grabbed the forceps and pulled the cut open a little further, "I see it."
"I hear it," Emmerich groaned.
Bishop held the cut open with his left hand and reached in for the bullet with the forceps. It was loose, like an actual bullet, rather than something that had been grown into existence. Bishop pulled it free, sighing once he got it out. Ah, yes, anesthesia made all the difference. The first time this had happened, some quack field doctor had plied him with a shot of strong whiskey before going at his knee with a hacksaw. It took four strong men to hold him down.
"Musket ball," Bishop confirmed, holding the sphere up to the light. It was about the size of a marble, but much heavier. The surface was blistered from heat, which meant the thing had actually been fired. He placed in on a bit of gauze on the surgery tray and began suturing the cut. Emmerich carefully looked up and picked up the musket ball.
"So, doctor, who decided to shoot my leg?" Bishop carefully tied the suture and began the next one.
"What, sir, I—"
"It was rhetorical."
"Ah, right. Do you, think, maybe the new alien tech is trying to exactly replicate your body? That maybe your 'black box' thinks a musket ball in your knee is normal?"
It was probably the best theory.
"It didn't record anything," Bishop lied, "it must be a glitch in your systems."
"We're running a Unix based code." Emmerich protested. "It's almost too simple to glitch. Besides, the body's construction is manually controlled."
"I don't want excuses, doctor."
"I'm not giving you excuses, I—" Emmerich cut himself off in frustration. "There is no reason for there to be a eighteenth century bullet in your knee."
"And yet there is." Bishop finished the sutures and taped a wide stretch of gauze over the wound. What little blood had bled was dry by now, so he didn't bother to wipe it off and instead pulled his trousers back on. "Don't let it happen again, doctor."
"I didn't let it happen in the first place." Emmerich frowned and crossed his arms. "Maybe we really should do a brain scan. We performed one on the body to make sure the neural pathways had developed correctly. I wonder what we'll find if we do one now."
"You'll keep wondering, doctor."
"It's a marvel a man as dependent on serious medical procedures as you is so adverse to getting a scan done."
"I aim to astound. We're finished here, doctor." Bishop grabbed the bullet from Emmerich and tucked it in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Then, he casually pulled the x-rays from the light table and smashed them into one of the biohazard bins.
"I needed those," Emmerich started towards the bin. Bishop held an arm out to stop him. He outweighed Emmerich by at least fifty pounds, and towered over him by half a head. Emmerich couldn't move him if he tried.
"No you don't." Bishop eyed the lab critically. He took the bullet and destroyed the x-rays, and there was so much of his blood splashed around the lab that a few more errant droplets wouldn't affect anything.
"What if something like this happens again?" Emmerich protested. "We could look and see if there are any similarities!"
"But something like this won't happen again. Right, doctor?"
"Yes, sir."
Bishop ushered Emmerich out of the lab before himself. He glanced back, rolling the bullet between his fingers. Yes, there was no trace of John Bishop left anymore.
He crushed the shot to powder, and flicked out the lights.
The title is from 25 or 6 to 4, by Chicago
A few references with the names, because I'm not clever enough to think of characters. Emmerich is an expy of Hal Emmerich, from Metal Gear Solid, and Keller is an expy of Secretary Keller from the Transformers movies. Although it isn't stated, because it isn't necessary, this story takes place around 1988, which is when I figure the turtles, being 15 in 2003, were mutated. Owing to that:
NMRI- an older name for MRI
Arlington cemetery wasn't established until the Civil War (or the War Between the States, an older term)
Fenytal technically wasn't invented until the late 90s (after which it was prescribed to everyone and now we have an opoid epidemic), but I needed a very potent drug to make a joke and couldn't think of another one.
If you perform knee surgery like Bishop, you will get a horrible strep infection. We had a guy with a swollen knee replacement, and his synovial fluid was full of strep. It was super gross.