"Ah, good afternoon, Dolly," Angie gave the terrified woman a polite nod.
"H-hi," the Dolly tried to keep her voice even as she walked over to Angie.
"If you're worried that this is another operation, then let me put your mind at ease," Angie smirked. The Dolly felt a surge of embarrassment that Angie was able to read her so easily, but Angie only seemed amused. "You are indeed being sent to the operating rooms, but you aren't going to be the one on the table this time."
"Y-you're making me watch a procedure again?" the Dolly felt her breath catch in her chest. Even though she already wanted to pass out from relief knowing that she wasn't going to be the one getting eviscerated today, she still felt a rush of dread and pity for the poor sap who was.
"In a sense," Angie replied mysteriously, giving the Dolly an unreadable smile, then she motioned for the other woman to follow her down…
ooo
"Oh my god…" the Dolly felt another rush of horror. As soon as she and Angie reached the observation deck and looked down, the Dolly was met with the sight of rows and rows and rows of operating tables. Even grimmer were all the corpses strapped to them. Countless naked bodies lying prostrate like a lifeless army. Standing beside each table was a single surgeon, but they were just as still and silent as the corpses.
"Come on," Angie made her way to the staircase that would take them down to the main floor. It was then that the Dolly got a better look at the surgeons and she realized, with growing horror, that all of them were—
"I have my Dollies, too, you know?" Angie smirked. "My medical assistants. You didn't think I did all of this on my own, did you?"
"You aren't… going to… do this to me… are you?" the Dolly whimpered, shaking like a leaf.
"Mmm, no, not today," Angie shrugged. "The, ah, proverbial deadline for my quota is today, and you're going to help me fill it."
"But I don't know the first thing about surgery!" the Dolly worried, wringing her hands. Even though she used to be a GENtern, she'd specialized in cosmetic surgeries, not organ transplantation.
"Oh, you don't need to," Angie laughed. "These bodies are literal cannon fodder. You don't need to be knowledgeable or delicate. You just need to know how a knife works. I trust that isn't too much to ask. So long as you aren't careless, removing parts from those who don't need them is easy."
She flicked her wrist casually and a small blade sprung out of her sleeve. The Dolly's breath hitched in her throat again. No matter how many times Angie would spring stuff like that onto her, it never stopped being terrifying. But Angie continued to speak as if nothing had happened, idly tossing the blade back and forth from hand to hand.
"It's just more beneficial to have at least one other thinking member of the team," she said calmly. "Since Emmie is running errands for me, that leaves you to be my right hand for today." Angie sounded pleased with herself, as though it was an ingenious plan. The Dolly would've begged to differ, but she didn't exactly want to be part of Angie's quota.
ooo
The Dolly spent the day slaving over body after body. As if cutting them open and ripping out every last organ they had wasn't gruesome enough, every time a table went empty, the surgeon attending it would disappear into another room and return minutes later with a new body.
"What? You didn't think that what we had at the start of the day would be the last of it, did you?" Angie asked innocently, working at the table closest to the Dolly's. Angie may have been the leader of the operation, but she was always very hands-on in her work.
She believed that it was her duty as the leader to get down and dirty just as much as anyone else under her "care". That way, she could supervise. It was also just fun to see how quickly and efficiently she could dissect and empty a corpse. It was lovely, fascinating work that she loved to watch and participate. They were powerless to stop her, and everything hidden under their skin was a buried treasure that was hers for the taking!
The Dolly didn't reply, but she didn't need to. The tears in her eyes, and her shaking hands, were indicators enough. But as Angie said, the Dolly needed no real skill to accomplish her tasks, so crying never interfered with her work. She went through body after body, weeping. Even though she did need to be a little careful so as not to accidentally damage an organ, it wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. Angie also made sure to scare the fear out of the Dolly when necessary. Knowing how to control and conceal one's emotions was nonnegotiable in Angie's world.
"I… I… can't!" the Dolly moaned piteously. "I can't! I can't! I just… can't!" Her cries were barely above whispers, but Angie could hear her clear as day and she relished in every single one of the Dolly's desperate, wear pleas and cries. The cruel woman even paused in her own work to watch the Dolly whimper and wail. Despite her shaking hands and blurry vision, though, her work was neat enough to satisfy Angie. They hadn't lost a single organ yet! Then again, Angie's presence was always an excellent motivator to not make any mistakes.
"What a good, obedient, little Dolly," Angie purred, eyelids lowering slightly as she continued to watch the Dolly's fingers fly. Her cuts, incisions, and stitches were clumsy and uneven, but the tools she had were so sharp, perfect, and precise that they still got the job done. And Angie could see evidence of past surgical experience within the Dolly. Even though she only ever worked in cosmetics, and smaller operations, the way she carried herself and the way she held a scalpel was familiar to Angie.
All around them, other medical and laboratory assistants worked just like zombies that they were, eyes empty as they moved in a robotic and repetitive fashion. Cut, open, remove, package, dispose of, repeat. Cut, pull, stitch.
"Why not just use machines?" the Dolly finally found the courage to ask, although the choice to speak to Angie was just as much a self-preservation tactic as it was honest curiosity on the Doll's part. She needed something, anything, real to cling to, even if it was Angie's voice. Their uniforms were splattered in blood. She finally understood why half the lab coats Angie owned were black.
"Humans are much more precise," Angie replied. "All of the machinery I could ever need is already right here in front of me, in one neat, convenient package!" she smirked, gesturing to the Dolly mockingly. "Why go to the trouble of building an overly complicated, complex machine when a neural inhibitor works even better, quicker, easier, and cheaper? I already have everything else I need!"
To prove her point, she gestured to a table across from them. The surgeon's movement was stiff and tight, lacking in variation, so he never made a single mistake, not even the slightest slip of a hand. Angie was right that even the finest and most advanced machinery of their age could not stand up to an actual, living, breathing human, at least that could be mass-produced and/or easily acquired. Snatching bodies off the street was always far faster and cheaper than to try to build them from the ground up.
"Besides, a few hundred a month surely won't be missed," Angie smiled darkly, quoting a past conversation she and the Dolly had. In the world of GeneCo, Largo, and Repo, unless one was at the very top of the heap, they would not be missed if they were killed or kidnapped. That was just how their world worked nowadays.
"I… guess that makes sense," the Dolly swallowed miserably and looked back down at the body lying prone before her. It was of a young woman, even younger than her, and she felt another wave of tears burn the back of her eyes. This was just so wrong! Even if the girl wouldn't feel or remember a thing, just the thought of someone so young losing their life in such a horrible manner, knowing that no one else would ever know... It disturbed the Dolly on a primal level and she had to fight the urge to throw up.
That could've been me…
Although, perhaps the corpse was the lucky one. Could the Dolly really say she was glad to be alive, glad that Angie hadn't killed her and put her out of her misery yet? But the Doll could not spend forever dwelling on "what if". It was a thankless job, but somebody had to do it. She did her best to choke down her tears as she picked up her scalpel again. What perfection, what precision…
ooo
After what seemed like an eternity, Angie finally called an end to the procedures. The steady flow of bodies finally halted, and there came a point where, once an operating table was clear, it stayed clear.
What a relief, I can finally see what the tables look like! the Dolly thought with a soft, unhinged laugh. She was still shaking, but this time it was from fatigue rather than fear. Eight hours of nonstop dissection and organ removal was already tiring work, to say nothing of the psychological horror that came with it. Knowing that the end was near filled the Dolly with a relief she hadn't even thought possible.
But while the Dolly looked more than ready to leave, Angie was still pacing around and barely breaking a sweat. To her, eight-hour days were normal. But even though the operations were over, there was still the matter of cleaning up…
"And there are still more bodies, they're just for another day," Angie smirked. The Dolly wilted. Although this did not surprise her in the slightest, she hated that Angie was intentionally trying to steal what little comfort she managed after dissecting so many people.
The only other comfort was the fact that all of the people were already dead by the time the Dolly got to them. There were no live patients, as her boyfriend had been, and for that, the Dolly was infinitely grateful. According to Angie, though, that was because live operations were actually quite rare for her. Even though she liked to do it to strike fear into the hearts of her enemies, and prove a point to those who dared try to cross her, live operations were actually quite difficult to carry out. She had to oversee them the entire time, which took hours out of her schedule. There was also the matter of the actual operation. A live patient was harder to work on than a dead one, even with the restraints.
Angie actually only did the live operations under "very special circumstances", she just made it seem as if every victim to pass through her doors would suffer the same fate because it added greatly to her dark and notorious reputation. It wasn't a good long-term business decision or model to make every operation a live one. She simply lacked the time and resources. She had other demands to meet as well, after all. Maybe it still felt strange to refer to Angie's work as a business, but technically she was not wrong. She had the supply, the world had a demand. As she once told the Dolly, all she needed was to know an interested buyer, and God knew their world had a lot of them.
After the NOS pandemic that started at the turn of the century and wiped out most of the people on Earth, the survivors became desperate for organs that wouldn't fail on them. That was what led to the rise of Largo, GeneCo, and Repo. Angie actually copied a lot of GeneCo's tactics when building her own organ empire, but the key difference was that she did not perform organ repossession. That was what made her so successful.
There were a lot of poor and desperate people in the world who would've done anything for an organ that came without strings attached. Even though their world had only recently come back from the brink of total annihilation, overpopulation still haunted the streets of Sanitarium. That was another reason Angie was confident that "a few hundred a month wouldn't be amiss."
"The demand shall meet my supply soon," Angie muttered, checking her wrist communicator, or Wricom, for the time. "For now, though, we must begin the sterilization process." She gave the Dolly a serene smile as she shoved a hose into her hand. The other assistants were already hard at work cleaning, scrubbing down the operating tables and removing the last of the human remains. The hoses were for the floor. As blood and other bits of viscera hit the ground, the hose was used to push it all into the far corner of the operating room where a drain was waiting.
"That… doesn't lead to one of the sewers, does it?" the Dolly asked as she, Angie and the other assistants hosed their way across the room.
"Pfft, no, don't be silly!" Angie laughed and shook her head. "Do you really think I'd be so stupid as to dispose of the leftover scraps like that?"
The Dolly had the good sense not to ask anything else. Her shoulders slumped in disappointment, although she supposed she wasn't surprised. Angie was always one step ahead of the game.
ooo
"Now all we have to do is wait for the delivery crew to come and pick up their order," Angie sighed in satisfaction as she hung the last hose back in its proper place. She dismissed all the other assistants to another room down the hall, where she kept them unconscious until she needed them again. Only the Dolly stayed with Angie. She wilted at the thought of even more work. The cleanup was not as long and strenuous as the operations, but she still hadn't taken any pleasure in cleaning up so much blood and gore.
If anything, realizing how fast and easy it was to make multiple operating rooms worth of people completely vanish only frightened the Dolly even more. Back when the Dolly was still a fairly new captive, Angie made sure she understood that there was no one out there looking for her. At first, the Dolly thought this was only a scare tactic on Angie's part, but as the days turned into weeks and months and the Dolly helped with more and more of Angie's operations, she began to realize just how right Angie was about a search party. Maybe Angie had already killed everyone who ever knew the Dolly… She had to bite back a sob as her stomach churned at the thought.
The Dolly was roused from her reveries when Angie took her to the front of the building. Almost immediately, the Dolly felt a rush of dread in the pit of her stomach. Merely approaching an exit made the Dolly anxious.
"Yes, you are right to be afraid, Dolly," Angie smiled languidly. "While I will disable the part of your tracker that renders you catatonic if you get too far away from the premises, I will not disable the tracker itself, so be careful."
She pushed open the doors and they were both met with a cool, midnight breeze. Already waiting in the shadows just beyond Angie and the Dolly's line of sight, there was a small crowd of large, burly figures all dressed in black from head to toe. Not an inch of skin was visible anywhere.
"Ahhh! My friends! Please do come in! We have everything you could ever want just inside!" She gave them all a smile that none of them believed, but they followed her in, nonetheless. They reminded the Dolly uncannily of the medical assistants. They were all just as still and silent. The Dolly knew, though, that this group had all of their mental faculties intact. It was just for anonymity that they remained so shady and silent. Only the leader of the group spoke, but the Dolly could not make out a voice.
"Dolly, you will be helping with packing and loading!" Angie instructed once she was finished speaking to the group's leader. "And don't forget the tracker," she added with another smirk.
"Understood," the Dolly squeaked, snapping to attention. Angie snickered but said nothing. She led the group past the operating rooms into a large walk-in freezer on the far end of the hall. The Dolly hadn't realized how many organs and body parts waited inside until Angie opened the door. She did not flinch when she was caught by an icy blast of wind, although the Dolly shivered slightly.
"We did all of this done in one day?" she gasped as they entered the freezer. Rows and rows of boxes and boxes of jars and jars of organs…
"Well, no," Angie admitted. "This freezer is filled and emptied on a regular cycle. About a third of this was done today, the rest has been over the past week or so, although organs have been taken out almost every night. The turnover is fast. I swap things out as the demand comes and goes." As she finished explaining, she turned to her band of black-clad visitors. "Everything in the far, leftmost corner is yours!" she said. "So have at it!"
The group spent the better part of an hour grabbing boxes from the fridge and carefully loading them on a large truck waiting outside. Like the drivers, and the rest of the gang, the truck was entirely black.
"Here," Angie dismissively handed the Dolly a smaller box, but even though it wasn't as large as the ones Angie and the others took, it was still so full of organs and body parts that the Dolly's knees buckled.
"Careful!" Angie snapped, catching the end of the box right before it could hit the ground.
"S-s-sorry, I didn't realize they'd be so heavy…" the Dolly mumbled, shaking violently. What a close call! She didn't even want to think how Angie might've reacted if she actually dropped an entire box of freshly-harvested organs.
"They're organs, what did you expect?" Angie scoffed and rolled her eyes as she helped the Dolly get a better grip on the box. "Now go," she pointed after the others and the Dolly didn't need a second reminder.
ooo
"Are you sure this isn't going to look suspicious?" the Dolly asked as she and Angie loaded the truck. The last of the boxes was finally out of the freezer, so they could focus their full attention outside.
"I've been doing this for years," Angie replied dismissively. Even though she could understand why the Dolly thought this entire operation was a bit… obvious, Angie had come to realize that most people were far less observant than the anxious mind liked to think. Likewise, it was late at night, far from the main part of the city. Nobody in their right mind would try confronting a gang of tall, dark, mysterious strangers in a situation like that.
"I mean if you saw all of this going on in the dead of night, on the farthest outskirts of town, what would you do?" Angie asked.
"I would probably just keep on walking," the Dolly admitted, wincing.
"Bingo." Once again, Angie was dead right (pun possibly intended), and the Dolly was clever enough to catch on. No help was coming. Nobody was going to stop, or even catch, them. The GeneCops did not patrol so far away from the main city. That was another advantage to the highly secluded and isolated location where Angie kept her headquarters.
"So keep on, keep on, we aren't done yet," Angie said impatiently, brushing past the Dolly. Even though she was trying to maintain an aura of calm, night like these always made her a little nervous. Reminding the Dolly of the obliviousness and weakness of humanity was just as much for Angie herself as it was for the Dolly. Even if the odds were low that anybody would see them, she didn't want to risk it. She knew her work was flawless, it was everyone else she didn't trust.
Eventually, though, the very last box was sorted into its proper place in the truck and the "delivery people" were gone just as quickly as they'd come. Even though the truck looked old and worn down, there must've been something much more modern and powerful inside because as the truck finally peeled away from Angie's headquarters, it was completely silent.
"Now we may retire for the night," Angie sighed, lowering her Wricom as she input the last of the delivery data. The truck was already long gone. Angie turned back to the Dolly and, for the first time since they met, she gave the other woman something of a smile. It was by no means warm, friendly, encouraging, appreciative or proud, but there was a sort of tired contentment in it that was surprisingly… genuine.
At that point, though, the Dolly was much too drained, physically and emotionally, to noticed or care. Instead, she only nodded wearily at Angie and allowed the other woman to escort her to their own ride home. The thankless job was finally, blessedly, over.
"Oh, and by the way, your tracking chip is back online now, so don't try anything funny," Angie added, tapping her Wricom one last time.
But the Dolly was out cold in the shotgun seat before they were even halfway home.
AN: Another Dangerous ASMR fanfic! This one, though, is a crossover with the rock opera horror movie musical: Repo the Genetic Opera. DA's Doll to a Yandere Series (written by Paul M) hugely inspired this anthology, particularly the AU episode with the older sister, Angie.
