I stopped when I had 20 of them in my inventory. It was now time to do the surgery. There was a small problem with it though. I had no clue what the hell I was doing. I had to get on the phone with the librarians. They did not like me, and I did not like them either. After what felt like hours of pulling teeth, I finally had a manual detailing how to do the procedure. A small victory. I was fussing over the group and told them to get ready for surgery. There were simply too many of them. I was going to have to send some of them to the AEP and PEP labs. I decided to go in order of my recruiting them. I looked at Alpha and said "I hope you're ready. Today's the day." He shook his head. "Sorry, I don't think you should do it, Brianne." I just blinked. Did he change his mind? "What happened? We came all of this way. What changed?" I asked. His eyes widened a bit. "Sorry. I do want the upgrade. I meant that I think you specifically should not be doing the procedure, Brianne." I was not getting it. "Your human hands have tiny spasms and tremors that cause error. This is a precious piece of hardware."
Looking at him, I crossed my arms. "And your sensitive body parts." I sighed. He nodded his head tellingly. I could understand where he was coming from. Surgery was not something I expected to have to do. I actually liked the squad I picked out. I had also invested a lot of time and energy into them If something went wrong now, that would be pretty bad. I held both my hands up in surrender. "I get it. I'm an engineer not a surgeon." I said. Since we currently in the PEA lab, one of the currently unaligned units snatched the instructions from me and moved away. It was from behind me, but before I could turn to berate him for the theft, he said "I can do it. My hands do not tremble when holding a knife." I was still miffed, but it worked out. I said "Fine. I was going to do it on a first come first served basis anyway. While you're at it, I'll make you the clan medical officer. When any of our members needs medical care, you will be the one to provide it. Either we will send you out on the field, or we'll bring them here to you." He seemed pleased with it. He began looking through the instructions.
They were cyborgs. Photographic memory was not going to phase me. "I understand what is needed." he told me. I nodded and said "You'll be doing the surgery for 12 of the clanmate. There are PEA unit patients waiting for you in each of the labs. Good luck." I was going to leave when I turned back to him. I had to first give him the upgrades. I also had to give him a name. He was an officer. Iota was not working here. As he moved about, I could see that he was heavily bruised and scarred as well. He had an eyepatch over his right eye. Most likely a casualty of the intense training. Since he was our medical officer, I said "Your name is now Doctor. Is that alright?" He did not seem to care one way or the other what he was called in the clan as long as he was a member. He was balancing my pen on his lips as he was going over the instructions again. I told him to use the pods. "If my hands are not good enough, that one eye business isn't either. Fix it." I ordered. He nodded and went over to the pods. He put in the settings before going in. When he came out, I saw he had no more scars.
