There were probably worse things than letting MHI have the formula for the extremely dangerous Elixir of Life, but he couldn’t think of any right then. His body was barely functioning, and it was working at all only because of his many redundant systems which had been built in over the years. Even then, he should have been dead . . . Franks lay there patiently while the orc reattached his internal organs. He really didn’t have much choice in the matter. “Where am I?”

“The Body Shack . . . Uh . . . It’s where I store cadavers for training purposes. Staking and chopping, that sort of thing. Lucky for you I just bought a fresh shipment from the med school supply place so we’re stocked up. You can have your choice of the finest spleens from our spleen gallery . . . That was a joke. Sorry. . . . Okay, to be fair I’d guess most of them were homeless people and drug addicts, but there are a few who looked pretty healthy.”

Gretchen mumbled something as she pried a bone sliver out of his arm stump with a pair of pliers.

“Good point. Most of them are probably a little small, but we’ve got one guy with arms that looks like he did a lot of steroids. Those should fit.”

Franks grunted. The Elixir would force everything to work. New parts would be properly assimilated over time. His genetic code was continually shifting, a rolling average of his various parts. “Why are you doing this?”

“Earl’s orders. They came rushing in here with you rolled up in a tarp in the back of his truck. He said that I needed to save you. We’ve been putting you back together for hours now, well, Gretchen has anyway, me and Holly have mostly been handing her tools and guts. So . . . it sounds like you and Earl had something of a disagreement . . .”

“Yes.” Franks still wasn’t sure why exactly Harbinger had attacked him.

Anderson played it coy as he went back to his stitching. “So . . . before Owen hit you both with a car . . . I was curious, unstoppable force meets the immovable object and all that . . .”

If Pitt hadn’t interrupted them, Franks’ best estimate is that they both would have died. “It was a draw.”

“Shoot.” Milo stopped, reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet, and handed Gretchen a twenty-dollar bill. The orc cocked her head and studied the money, probably not really sure what to do with it, and then stuffed it inside her gown before going back to her operation.

“Where’s Harbinger?”