Scrap - Cyborg

Not much to say about this.  Just an curious idea of a man who ends up forced to have a cyborg arm and how he deals with it.

The metal was alive, somehow.  As Jerry sat on the hospital bed, he stared at his arm, which looked like a metal version of a skeleton arm; thin, with rods, springs, and motors instead of bones, sinew, and joints.  And yet, when he shifted his hand into a fist, it moved and flexed so naturally, as if the metal had been a part of him his whole life.  He began to feel ill, staring at something that felt so familiar but looked so artificial.

And as if responding to his emotions, he noticed that the metal was changing.  He saw that little sections of it would poke out and quickly expand across the existing structure, filling it in with surprising efficiency.  Coming up from the sleeve of his hospital gown, the metal quietly clicked it's way up his arm, across his hand, to the very tips of his fingers.  Within seconds, the bony metal hand had become something more human and natural, like he was just wearing a nice, and very flexible, gauntlet on his arm.  He flexed his hand again, and while the skin didn't reveal the motions of it's metallic muscles underneath, he could feel the normalness of it.

Still awed by the magic of it all, he flexed his arm again, and this time, spikes quickly grew out of his arm, poking out like metal studs on a bracer.  He jumped a little, observing this new development.  He moved his left, unmarred hand over and touched one of the spikes with his index finger.  They weren't sharp, not at first, but as he continued to roll his finger around the tip of the spike, he could feel it becoming sharper.

Jerry began to wonder just how interconnected this living metal was to his mind.  He decided to test something, and tried to imagine his arm turning into a shield.  Sure enough, just as he was putting the mental image together, the spikes gave way and the metal parts quickly formed a classic shield, about a foot wide, with one point on the bottom and three on the top, like the shape of a badge.   Clearly, the metal was responding to his will, like it was a part of his body.

"That's an interesting trick," a woman's voice floated into the patient's room evenly, jarring Jerry's concentration.  He looked up and saw a black woman all dressed in medical white, with curly hair down to her shoulders and a smirk on her face.

At first, Jerry was embarrassed, and he tried to cover the arm up, which was quickly shifting back to his normal proportions, but then he remembered his military bearing and simply sat up, placing his hands on the bed, and giving the woman his full attention.

"You, uh, you clearly picked up something while fighting out there, didn't you?" the woman said, looking him up and down.  She could see the some of the scarring that marred some of his face and neck, as well as his left arm.

Jerry hesitated to respond, before muttering, "I . . . I don't remember much."  He looked down at the tile floor.

"How does it feel?" she asked.  Jerry glared at her for half a moment, but quickly decided that she only meant to understand what was going on, asking questions like a doctor.

He lifted his metal arm in front of him and flexed his hand a few times.  "Not weird enough, if that makes sense," he said.  The woman just nodded, watching the hand as well, before turning to look at his face.

"My name is Michelle Guyman.  I'm the doctor that's been assigned to your . . . particular condition," she said, continuing to speak in an even, level way.

"Uh, Jerry McCall, First Lieutenant of the Armed Forces," he rambled out automatically, holding out his metal arm to a handshake like it was normal.  Dr. Guyman leered at the hand, looking a little cautious.

"It's not going to bite me, is it?" she said with more snark than fear.

"Sorry," Jerry muttered, moving the hand back to the edge of the bed.