Same warning as last chapter.

Memory download: Day two

Cor and I meet early at the lab and get into disguise quickly. In a way, the past three weeks have just been a buildup to this. And we've spent enough time planning that it's gonna be good.

Cor wakes Tak up with a stimulant.

She sees me and growls. "Human scum," she snarls.

"Go ahead and insult me while you still have vocal cords," I say coolly. I turn to Cor. "So what's first on the list?"

"I was thinking of showing you how the antennae work," he says.

I nod. "Sounds good to me."

Under his direction, I remove a ring of skin around the base of Tak's right antenna to show the muscle connections that make it move. I tickle the little hairs on the shaft of it and watch as it twitches involuntarily in response. Then I do it again. And again. It's actually quite fun to watch.

"Stop it!" Tak yells.

And it's annoying, too, apparently. I could keep doing that for an hour or so, but Cor clears his throat impatiently, signaling that we need to move on. He hands me a container of a paralyzing chemical, and I rub the stuff on the exposed muscles around the antenna so it won't twitch as I handle it.

Cor shows me how to cut lightly through the casing with minimal damage to the nerve bundles underneath. I've never actually opened up an antenna before, and I find it fascinating. It's composed mainly of little fibrous bunches of nerves wrapped in connective membranes and attatched to a cartilage stalk. There are also a lot of tiny blood vessels, so we have to keep applying a chemical cold-cauterizer to stop blood from getting everywhere and making it too hard to see.

After inspecting that, I move back to the base of the antenna, where I carefully sever the muscles and tendons holding it in place and pull it away from Tak's skull slightly to show the main nerve that carries all that information to her brain. It's a surprisingly thin white cord. Cor grasps it with a pair of forceps right where it enters the skull, and I snap it with a light touch of the scalpel, then hand him the antenna before taking over the forceps holding the nerve. He puts the antenna in today's tray, then glances at Tak's expression and adds a little more painkiller to her IV mix.

I tug on the nerve just to see what'll happen. It gives me quite a bit of resistance before it finally snaps. I hear Tak bite back a yelp. I shrug and drop the segment of nerve into the tray as well.

As Cor prepares the equipment for our next phase, I step back and look at Tak. She doesn't really look Irken anymore. The slimy bluish green of exposed muscle and the darker, duller green of congealing blood have overpowered the usual color of her skin. Her eyes seem unnaturally dark and glossy because of all the drugs we're pumping into her to keep her conscious. The missing antenna tops it all off. I feel a stange pride and coldness rise in me. This isn't one of my own kind. I am just what I appear to be: a scientist dissecting an alien, purely out of curiosity.

"Ready," Cor informs me.

I walk over and take the bone shears from his hand.

I think I'm ready to take this creature apart.

Entry: Needed a break from managing downloads. Here we go again . . .

Memory download: (continuation)

The heavy shears snap through Tak's ribs easily. She closes her eyes and grimaces, obviously trying to shut out the sound and feel of the crunch as the blades sever her bones. I pull away the front secton of her ribcage and slice through the muscles and tendons that expand her air sacs. There are still enough attached to other parts of her ribcage to let her breathe.

Now, all her remaining organs are fully visible. I spend a few minutes poking around, asking Cor questions, which he answers in a rather arrogant, Zim-like fashion. Finally, I get bored with that. I know I may be taking things a little bit quickly, but the thrill of having accomplished this is one feeling I don't want to wait for. My Tallest will be so proud.

I get to work, moving as slowly as I dare. We talked over timing a lot; Cor is watching her vital signs closely to make sure she doesn't die before I'm done. I carefully follow the plan he laid out for me, his directions barely more than formailites now.

First, most of the connective tissues that hold the organs in place. Those go fast. Next, the muscles that expand the air sacs. She's getting enough oxygen in her blood from the IV mix. I remove the air sacs with Cor's help, using the chemical cauterizer to rig a temporary connection between the blood vessels in and out of them so she won't lose blood as fast. Tak's eyes are shut tight, tears running down her face. We can't give her any more painkiller without knocking her out. Cor increases the stimulants in the mix so she won't lose too much awareness due to pain.

Then, I take out the organs that filter toxins from the blood, making sure to close off as many of the blood vessels as I can. It's only a matter of time now; a green pool is already forming in the bottom of Tak's body cavity. I glance up to Cor at his computer console. He nods, signaling me that he's shut down the life support systems in her PAK so that once I kill her, it won't keep trying to shock her back to life. I dump the organs I just pulled out into the tray and move up close to Tak's face.

"You can still hear me, right?" I ask coldly.

Tak replies with a weak nod, and her eyes open slightly.

"Good. That means you're still alive enough to feel."

I notice that her eyes get a bit wide at that, and I smile as I step back to stand over her chest. It's an empty place, walled in blue-green streaked with white. Almost in the middle of its gore-covered floor lies the only thing left for me to deal with: her heart. I slip my hand under it, making sure it's already loose, feeling the rythmic throbbing quicken as Tak realizes just how close the end of her life is.

Cor takes the scalpel from my hand and replaces it with a knife he pulled from his belt. I flip it open, briefly admiring its clean, cruel design. Unlike the scalpel, this is big enough to cut all the major blood vessels that attach to the heart with one swipe, and it's no less sharp than any surgical instrument.

I hold it ready to strike and pause, looking up at Tak. She stares back at me, her eyes full of undisguised terror and pleading. I smile savagely. Too bad she can't talk anymore; I'd love to hear her beg for her life.

A stroke with the knife, feeling treads of tissue ripping as I draw the blade through them, a huge warm gush of blood,the feeling of the still-throbbing lump of flesh in my left hand coming free, and that is it. Tak has ceased to exist. All that remains is a torn-up carcass and a PAK that still needs to be erased. More than enough to show the Tallest, I think.

Entry: I have the required "proof" prepared (or would preserved be a better word?), and tomorrow I present it to the Tallest. The Massive is currently only a few hours away at the speeds my ship can travel, so I can afford to stay around here a while longer before I need to leave. The maintenance drones are coming in to fix a couple of things that have been annoying me while I'm away, so I'm making sure all my potentially compromising data is stored on the ship's computer and deleting it from this one. All my journal drives are going with me, too. I don't trust anyone who can get into my apartment, not after what happened last time.

Okay, I'm gonna go watch a movie and eat cookies now. I think I deserve it.

"Play it loud, play it loud!" - MxPx

So there we go. Tak is dead, and things are gonna get quite a bit less violent for a while. But they'll stay nice and freaky, that's for sure.