The Assignment

Wren prodded the limp bunny with fading optimism. It squeaked miserably. Hours of experimentation had only served to teach her that bunnies were capable of making a sound much like a scream.

She frowned. The rabbit was a test and she had a gnawing anxiety that she was failing. She’d found the maligned creature by the side of the road, the victim of a badly timed dart across the highly trafficked road.

Hours earlier, she’d gone to the scientist with the dead rabbit and a hopeful expression, asking to keep it as a pet. His response was to inject it with a small amount the reanimation serum and tell her the rest was up to her. He called it a homework assignment.

She’d managed to save its damaged cardio-pulmonary system using a mirror to her own mechanical heart as a guide, along with her father’s notes on her reanimation, but the creature’s crushed spine was more than she could repair. She was a clever child perhaps even a little sparky, but her young mind, while able to understand well enough to copy what she’d seen, was not masterful enough to repair a severed nervous system. Her most recent attempt to insert small copper threads along the rabbit’s spine had resulted in mangled mess of oozing reanimation fluid. Fortunately, the rabbit’s paralysis prevented it from feeling the gory experiment.

She rubbed her hands, trying to get the circulation to her numb fingertips. The longer she went without an injection, the more deadened and less coordinated her hands and feet would become. Wren considered her options. If she went to The Scientist now for another injection, he would ask about the rabbit and she would have to admit what she perceived as her failure, but without the injection, her hands would become useless. If only the bunny hadn’t broken its back. A dead bunny with an intact spine would have been perfectly healed by now.

Wren’s sucked in a soft gasp of surprise as the solution came to her suddenly. She picked up the bunny with its tiny mechanical heart so similar to hers and with a kiss to its soft head; she hid it in her dresser drawer.

She hummed as she gathered the supplies to make a rabbit snare and skipped out the door to catch a more easily reanimated bunny.