89P13

The first procedure happens when the kits are three months old.  Enhancing a quadruped to a biped is no easy feat. Extensive cybernetics and skeletal reinforcements will be needs coupled with muscle stretching and suspension. 89P16 is first for it is the largest of the kits, fitting the muzzle around its jaws takes work, the iron pricking its tongue as the handlers wedge it between the subject’s teeth. Blood and foam flick on to your coat as it is wrangled to the gurney. You strap its limbs and tail downward until the skin pinches. Once in the operating theater the subject’s eyes wince at the bright light. You transfer it to the table, and it squirms, tail lashing. One claw manages to scratch a technician when they try to hook up the anesthetic. You already hold a scalpel in your hand, eager to begin and curl your fist in a rage, striking the raccoon kit across it’s muzzled face. It lets out a pained squeak your knuckles having jostled the sharp muzzle. Blood leaks from its teeth into its fur and it lies stunned. With a not to the technician you begin. Breaking the bones is the easy part, they are still somewhat malleable and snap easily with the blunt hammer you use. The hips and knees take more time, they are hard to break, stuck in place connected to the oh so precious spinal column but finally you and your team manage to snap the pelvis and widen the hips outward. You don’t mind pushing the soft tissue aside, all pink and lubricated with blood and bile and other fluids. The lower intestines are quite cumbersome to deal with as you are trying to insert a cybernetic rod into the right hip, so you decide to scoop them out. Your fellow doctor holds the tray while you heave coils out of the cavity, careful not to tug too hard. With those out of the way you finish pressing the left hip outward though it resists you eventually bend it to your will. 89P16 is crudely sown up after you put its innards back in. Yellowish fluid mixed with blood seeps through the stitches and you can see the black cybernetics through the shaved flesh. Not bad for the first of many surgeries you think on the way back to its cage. You deposit 89P16 in its enclosure and go back to the lab to write up your notes. It will require at least four more procedures before the skeletal restructuring is complete, then another two for the muscles and the ligaments. You factor in additional operations for the kits growth rates.

89P13 is next. It too hisses and growls and claws as you wench the muzzle over its head. It’s chittering grates on your ears so you tighten the clamps around i’s jaws. It thrashes all the way to the operating room, little body buckling under the restraints. It tears at its fur and does not stop it’s fight until you pump the anesthesia into it on full blast. Its throat gags and chest inflate in panic, reacting to this new thing that is not air. It’s red eyes dart about until it can no longer fight any more and its gaze goes rolling backward into its head. When you slice into its flesh the subject jerks its clever little paws and as you continue to peel back its skin 89P13 shits itself on the table, the defecation soaking into its fur and blood with a fetid stink.

The kits, no, subjects they are growing older now; the subjects handle their first round of modifications in varying degrees.  89P14 gets an infection in its left leg and has to be opened up again. It refuses to eat, and its hair begins to fall out. It curls in a ball in the corner of its cage and does not even resist the gloved hands that read for it. 89P11 claws at its stitches and almost gnaws out the cybernetic bolt in its left hip. You have it muzzled at all times, filing a tube between its teeth for food. 89P13 has to be re-opened after it chews at the stitches on its lower abdomen. When it awakes listless from the anesthetic it mewls and cries, but it does not dare resist the next time it is taken for weapons training. 89P15 is the first subject to die. It perishes under the knife on the third surgery. Just when its right shoulder is being modified. Its eyes are open, but it is knocked out with the gas. You see its quivering little heart beat faster and faster under layers of tissue. The small organ pumps furiously, you watch it twitch and shudder and slide your hand between its lungs to hold the slimy thing. It vibrates madly and though you shout for the defibrillator by the time one of your assistants bring it over, it is too late.

Afterwards you consult with your team. They determine the anesthetic to be the cause of cardiac arrest and that settles it. You do not use anesthetic when you crack 89P13’s chest and expand its shoulders and ribs. It kicks and growls and whines and foams at the mouth against the clamps that bind it down to the table. Blood splatters your coat when you break skin with your knife. 89P13 lifts its head up as much as it can, neck engorged as it presses against the leather strap. Ears are pressed downward, tiny nostrils puffing in and out with effort. You watch its red eyes stare down its own muzzle to where it's fur and flesh has been cut and opened and pulled apart. It looks at its own quivering insides, taking it in by degrees though of course it doesn’t’ understand. It’s cognitive electro and hydro therapy hasn’t progressed that far. Still you see its face look down at its own bones and clear mucus. Its eyes widen, its face crumbling. The subjects head sways briefly while its lungs rapidly inflate and deflate, finally its head falls with a thud to the aluminum table. It does not come to until you finish driving the second bolt into its left clavicle.  It awakes with a screech and arches against the straps, huffing and chittering. It is awake long enough to scratch your forearm, a sharp pain cutting into your own warm skin. You examine your own blood red and bright streaming in a thick line down to your elbow. You throw 89P13 into its cage with force and smile at the sound of its pathetic whimper when its sore form clangs against the bars.