Sylac was a surgeon of a kind that was frowned on in the Polity. There was not much that humans could do to themselves that was disallowed, including cosmetic alteration, genetic adaptation and cyber-implants and alterations. What the Polity did frown upon was people who carried out the aforementioned without sufficient qualification, or those who liked experimenting, and for whom the human body was a testing ground, even a playground. But so long as no one complained there was nothing that could be done about these people. No one complained about what Sylac did to them. In nearly every case they came to him for something other, more reputable surgeons would refuse to handle.

Stanton neither liked nor trusted the man, and he could not understand Arian wanting to be here. He studied his surroundings. The operating theatre was cutting edge, in more ways than the metaphorical. A surgical robot, looking something like a giant chrome cockroach, was crouched over the operating table. The devices lining one wall had labels on them like ‘Bone-weld Inc.’, ‘Cell Fuser’ and ‘Nervectonic’. Below these, in row upon row of cryogenic cylinders, were things he knew he would not really want to study too closely. Spares or leftovers, probably.

A long workbench on the other side of the theatre was strewn with devices of which Stanton had only scant recognition. There he saw selections of cerebral augmentations, booster-joint motors, nerve links and synaptic plugs, and those were but a small portion of what lay there. Stanton realized that many of these items were intended for those wanting to go further than mere physical boosting or cerebral augmentation. Some people, he knew, actually wanted to lose their humanity and go completely cyborg.

‘Well?’ said Sylac. He turned around to them and crossed his arms, all four of them.

Sylac was his own advertisement. He was apparently human up to the waist, but thereafter things started to go drastically wrong. From his waistline there protruded two double-jointed arms, which would have looked more suitable on the surgical robot. The extremities of these two arms bore no resemblance to human hands. They were a confetti of blades and esoteric instruments. His torso was keel-shaped so as to support this set of additional appendages. His head, set above perfectly normal shoulders and arms, had a half hemisphere on one side of it, as if a cannonball was in the process of obliterating it.

‘Glad you could see us,’ said Pelter.

Sylac looked at the both of them. ‘Your usual doctor retired?’ he smirked.