He woke up on an operating table, with a bright light shining right into his face. It took several seconds for him to shake off the grogginess, and several more seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light.

  He tried to get up, but discovered, to his horror, that he was strapped to the table, his wrists and ankles held firmly in place by a set of steel clasps. He struggled against them, but it was no use; even his superhuman strength wasn't enough to break free of these restraints.

  The light, which was on a swivel, suddenly swung out of the way, replaced by a female face, which peered down at him. "You're awake already?" she said, sounding a little surprised. "Interesting."

  "Who are you?" he managed.

  She frowned at him, evidently annoyed by his talking out of turn. "My name is Natasha Valois," she said. She poked his cheek with a long fingernail. "And you're Subject No. 375. Best not forget it."

  "Natasha...Valois?"

  "They call me the Researcher," she clarified.

  "You're the Researcher?" He suddenly noticed that she had a designation hanging over her head; according to the ICON system she was a Level 3 Brainy.

  "This surprises you?"

  "I'd heard you were a zombie. You don't...you don't look like one."

  "Zombie," she sniffed. "I don't like that term."

  She was definitely not what he was expecting. In spite of the designation, the woman hovering over him didn't resemble a zombie at all -- she was, in fact, a beautiful woman, with perfect, magazine-model features, long, luxurious brown hair, and a pair of highly unusual silver-stained eyes, which glinted like diamonds beneath her big, black-rimmed glasses. She was perhaps thirty years old, though it was hard to tell. The only flaw in her appearance was a jagged wound, about three inches long and only partially healed, which ran down the side of her jaw and into her neck. A bite mark, perhaps? It was mostly hidden, in any case, by the high collar of her lab coat. If he had seen her walking down the street outside of Phil's repair shop, he never would have suspected she was a zombie, or that there was anything amiss about her at all.

  The Lab Rat was another story. The giant robo-zombie was present as well, standing on the other side of the room, next to the door, his huge metallic arms crossed over his chest. He was scowling deeply.

  "But you are one, aren't you?" he pressed. "A brainy?"

  "I've been infected," she conceded.

  "What are you going to do to me?"

  "I haven't decided yet. You're an interesting specimen. You don't have any signs of infection, and yet, your body seems to possess several rather remarkable qualities. Your skin is extremely durable and capable of rapid regeneration -- it took me ten minutes to finally puncture it with a needle in, and your skin repaired itself and pushed out the needle after only a moment anyway, before I could take a blood sample. The infected are capable of repairing their internal organs with similar speed, but I've never seen the skin repair itself in this way." She paused. "Exactly what are you?"

  "There's nothing special about me," he said, a little too quickly.

  "And there's nothing I hate worse than a liar," she said. "But I'll get the truth out of you, one way or another." She went over to a table and started preparing some frightening-looking surgical tools, including one which had a long, serrated blade.

  "What do you want?" Stu asked, trying desperately to control his fear and terror. "Why are you turning people into...into cyborgs? Why are you experimenting with zombies? What are you trying to accomplish here?"

  "This one is starting to annoy me," she said to the Lab Rat.

  "You want me to shut him up?"

  "Not just yet. I want to see what it'll take to make him scream."

  Stu gulped. His Regeneration skill and defense stat protected him to a certain degree, but if this woman decided to open him up with that crazy-looking surgical knife...

  Would Regeneration be able to heal him fast enough? Would it grow back his limbs and organs, if she started cutting them away? He doubted it. But even if the skill could repair him, the unthinkable pain of being disemboweled while wide awake would probably drive him insane. She obviously had no intention of giving him any kind of anesthesia.

  How the hell was he going to get out of this one? Desperate, he opened up the ICON menu. He had twenty-five SP to spend; surely there was something he could purchase that could get him out of this.

  With his hands bound, he couldn't use his fingers to scroll through the skill list, but he was so used to the ICON system now that he could manipulate it pretty well just by thinking about it. Flipping through the menus, he found the skill list and started zooming through it, frantic.

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  None of the offensive skills, like Chainsaw Ballet or Guns Blazing, were likely to help him in this situation, even if he could afford them -- Chainsaw Ballet, for example, cost thirty-eight SP, and he only had twenty-five. He could try leveling up the Strong Arm skill, to make himself stronger -- the next level of the skill cost four SP, and the next level after that cost sixteen. But would a boosted Strong Arm skill give him enough strength to break free of the steel clasps holding him down? He had no way of knowing. If he spent twenty SP leveling up Strong Arm, and found that he still couldn't free himself...

  What else? Well, there was Zombie Master, which would allow him to "hypnotize" a single zombie and force it do his bidding. That would certainly come in handy in this situation, but the skill cost forty SP. Turtle would increase his defense, and presumably make it more difficult for the Researcher to vivisect him, but it only lasted a few minutes. As soon as it wore off, he would be helpless again.

  Captain Critical. Lie Detector. Sniffer. Boulder Smasher. Super Jump. Wild Kingdom.

  He raced through the list of skills, growing more desperate by the moment. Silence, Cannibal, Golden Moment, Taste of Victory, Bomber Blocker, Flawless, Marksman, Dangerous Trade, Artful Dodge, Don Juan...

  He paused there, at Don Juan. This was the skill that would make him irresistible to women. Naturally he had found the notion intriguing, on seeing it for the first time, but he had never seriously considered purchasing this skill -- partly because he felt he had more important things to worry about in this zombie hellscape than seducing women, and partly because it was so expensive. It cost twenty-five SP.

  He glanced at the Researcher, who was still busily preparing her surgical tools. Would the Don Juan skill work on her? She was definitely a woman, but she was also a zombie, and he wasn't sure if the skill would work on zombies. The skill's description was brief, and not helpful:

  Turn on the charm! Make yourself irresistible to any woman you choose.

  That didn't really clarify whether it would work on a female zombie. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. It was a roll of the dice. The fact that the Researcher was obviously no ordinary zombie might work in his favor, though -- she showed no signs of decay, and she hadn't yet degenerated into a mindless monster.

  Could he talk her out of dissecting him, if he "turned on the charm" with the Don Juan skill? Could he talk her into releasing him? He hated the idea of spending all of his hard-earned SP on a single skill, which might not even get him out of this mess, but his options were limited. Very limited -- he was strapped down on an operating table.

  He took a deep breath. Praying that he wasn't making a huge mistake, he purchased the Don Juan skill. Then he opened the skill list and selected it.

  Activate Don Juan? Y/N

  He selected yes. Then, to his surprise, another message popped up:

  Scanning for available targets.

  Which was immediately followed by:

  Target found! Proceed? Y/N

  The "target" the ICON system had found was, in fact, the Researcher. The system had highlighted her, and in Stu's eyes she now had a soft white glow surrounding her body. Her name, Natasha Valois, hung over her head now, just beneath her zombie designation.

  He checked the "Yes" button to proceed, once again praying that this ridiculous idea would pay off. As soon as he hit the button, the white glow surrounding the Researcher vanished and a cutesy heart symbol appeared over her head -- indicating, apparently, that she had been successfully ensorcelled.

  Up to now she had had her back turned to Stu, while she sharpened her knives and prepared to cut him open. When she finally turned around to face him, however, scalpel in hand, she stopped suddenly, and spent several seconds staring at his face, as though she had seen something there that she hadn't noticed before.

  Had it worked? Stu returned her gaze, wondering what she would do now.

  What she did, after a moment, was place the scalpel back on the tray. "I've changed my mind," she said. "I think I'd like to study this subject a little more closely, before I commit to any major operations." She leaned down, so that her face was mere inches from his, and murmured, "Curious."

  "C-curious?" Stu managed.

  She drew back. "Very curious. Where do you come from, 375?"

  "I have a name," he said. "It's Stuart."

  "Stuart. Where do you come from?"

  "As a matter of fact, I come from another world."

  "Another world? You're an alien?"

  "In a manner of speaking." He gave her a steady, searching look, staring right into her silvery eyes. "Where do you come from, Natasha?"

  She smiled, very slightly. "Meriweather, originally."

  Stu had heard of this place -- it was a city near the center of the continent -- but he knew nothing about it. "I've never been there."

  "It's not worth the trip."

  "Heart's Glow suits you better?"

  "One place is as good as another. It just so happened Heart's Glow had everything I needed to conduct my experiments. A Watch & Coppersmith factory, an intact hospital laboratory, a steady supply of subjects wandering into town on Route 90...and the nearest Pale Riders outpost is far away. After I got rid of the Butcher's boys, I had no trouble setting up shop here."

  They were actually having a conversation. She was no longer threatening to cut him open; she seemed genuinely interested in him. The Don Juan skill was apparently working.

  "I'd like to know more," Stu tried. "About you, and about your...experiments."

  She studied him for another long moment. "Those manacles must be uncomfortable."

  "A little."

  She waved the Lab Rat over. "Release him."

  The cyborg-zombie hesitated. "Release him? Are you sure that's a good idea?"

  "I've got a feeling about this one," she said, licking her lips. "A good feeling."

  "What if he tries something?"

  "Kill him," she said, shrugging.

  Reluctantly, the Lab Rat unlocked the clasps holding his arms and legs down. Stu might have tried to make a break for it, in that moment, but he thought it wiser to play along, at least until Lucky and Luna were safe. Besides, he didn't want to have to fight the Lab Rat. The ICON system was having trouble deciding whether he was a zombie or not -- even now, the designation hanging over his head kept glitching out -- but he was, at the very least, a Level 41. That was a very high level, the highest he had ever seen, and Stu had no intention of challenging him, certainly not without a weapon.

  "Let's go," the Researcher told him, when he was back on his feet.

  "Where are we going?"

  "We're going to have a nice long chat, up in my quarters," she said. "You wanted to learn more about me, didn't you?"

  He had to suppress a shudder, but he answered, "A-absolutely."

  "Good."

  The Lab Rat -- who was scowling at this whole exchange -- gave him a push, and Stu found himself obediently following the Researcher out of the operating room. He noticed that she was swinging her hips, in a rather seductive way.

  He swallowed hard. What the hell was he getting himself into here?