Some of those structures were the same ones that kept her apparent age at twelve. She had never gotten around to undoing that, in part because it required her to overhaul so many systems that were hooked into it. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t end up over a hundred years old and still postponing the change to her appearance.

Right now, she maintained. The drill continued to bore through the bone, and she had to remind herself that the tickling sensation that ran through her leg, one side of her stomach, and her neck was supposed to be pain from the operation.

A quick once-over ensured there wasn’t anything slipping or tearing.

The drill penetrated the bone, reaching a small hollow compartment. She pulled the drill out, caught a cloth in her pocket between her pinky and ring fingers, and wiped down the bit and the end of the drill, before pulling it out and turning it around.

The end of the drill had deep scratches in it, easily mistaken for the teeth of the drill itself, holding the bit firm. Instead, it was a key.

She slid the key into the hollow compartment, scraped it against bone until she found the socket, and turned it.

A single droplet of coded chemicals was released into the ‘marrow’ of her bone. The marrow immediately liquefied, and the entire bone with the various things she’d screwed into it, the segments she’d capped off and connected to one another, and the patch jobs, all came to the point of almost collapsing on itself. Her entire leg squelched loudly.

“Jesus,” the driver said.

“You’re jumpy.”

“You’re Bonesaw. Yes, I’m jumpy. I shouldn’t lose man points if I’m fucking jumping at fucking ominous squelching noises.”

“Man points, huh?”

“What? Shit. I should probably keep my mouth shut.”

“Why keep your mouth shut? I don’t mind conversation. Jeez, I would have thought a stoner would be more mellow.”

“I don’t want to give you inspiration or say the wrong thing and set you off.”

“I don’t go off anymore, don’t worry.” She worked on extracting the marrow fluid. It was laborious, not helped by the fact that the hose was a bit too short. She had to twist in her seat and reorient her leg to get the fluid to flow back, while keeping the blood from spilling out of the open wound. “You know, I’ve hung around a lot of guys over the years. Names you’ve probably heard of.”

“Uh huh,” he said. He seemed to cringe a bit at the sucking sound from the syringe.

“As a rule, I found the guys most concerned with ‘man points’ were just overgrown boys, slow to grow up, if they ever did.”

“I’ll, uh, keep that in mind. I was being tongue-in-cheek, just so you know. I don’t really believe anything like that.”