ZEX felt a chill when he entered the room, glimpses he caught of the equipment inside bringing back all too recent memories. His hallucinations definitely weren't helping, giving him the illusion of motion all around him, and he looked back at Donna, almost so he wouldn't have to look at the room around him anymore. It looked too familiar.
"Do you see anything?" Her eyesight might be better in the dark, and ZEX tried to suppress a shudder. Memories of what had happened to him were rising up quickly and it was difficult to fight them back. His difficulties discerning reality from the lies the Institute constantly fed him weren't making this much easier for him. He could see that shadowy form, feel the restraints, that buzzing as he cut through his skull, and he felt sick and it hurt all over again, like he was there again and trapped, and...
ZEX shut his eyes and wrapped his arms tightly around himself, squeezing in an effort to refocus his thoughts. This was not the time... if this was indeed one of those rooms, then that meant that there might be someone inside that needed his help. He had to focus, but his human mind wasn't giving him an easy time of it.
"Just... give me a moment..." A bit labored as he struggled to fight back his flashback. "Go on ahead..."
Donna was surprised when Zex made the first move, but hoped it meant he was feeling more confident now. She followed in after, saying a hushed, "Not yet" to his question since it was pretty dark there, even with the light. She'd been about to flash her torch around for a better view when she noticed Zex acting strangely again. "Hey, you all right?"
His words said otherwise and although he wanted her to continue, concern had Donna staying back with him instead. "I'm not just gunna leave you, silly," she scolded him, giving his back a rub in hopes that it might help.
Weakened and unconscious, the Replica sat limply on the tainted chair for a long time that never seemed enough to quench his fatigue. Yet slowly, a new set of sounds and lights pulled him from the shadows of his mind and back to the pitch black of the room. Some people had arrived, but who? Sechs' mind was too delirious from exhaustion to think of the strangers as anything but good news. He ordered his muscles to move, but every limb, particularly his back, felt as heavy as lead.
Meanwhile, the dark side of Sechs' psyche kept a distance, deciding to take advantage of the situation and toy with its vulnerable host, making itself known only through a faint but powerful thought.
"Well whaddya know? Looks like our good doctor just called in for the garbage disposal team!" the voice chuckled in Sechs' head, "Too bad it had to happen now, the Deckmen back at the Scrapyard factory would have been more than happy to do that job a long time ago!"
Sechs winced at the thought. Was that true? Had Sechs' time finally come? What was left of his adrenaline flashed through his system, but his body just couldn't fight anymore. Groaning, the defeated Replica weakly lifted his head up from his shoulder and peered towards the beam of lights and their unknown users.
"Who... Who's there?!" he called out to the strangers, only to hear his voice croak out as an incoherent grunt instead.
ZEX didn't really want to get into the details of what had happened to him, or why this room bothered him... he needed to support himself in times of duress. Years alone had taught him that that was the only option, and relying on a human didn't seem fair to them.
Although he did like being touched.
"I'm alright." ZEX could make out some kind of motion in the dark, no doubt his mind playing tricks on him again. "I just feel like I've been here before..."
He stiffened when he heard something in the dark, something that definitely hadn't come from one of his hallucinations. Someone, or something, was there!
"Did you hear that?" ZEX took a few steps towards the sound. "Hello? Who's there?" A moment. "Sechs, is that you?" He hoped it wasn't... maybe Sechs had just been otherwise occupied that night and hadn't been horribly tortured, as ZEX had been, but he doubted it. There was not a lot of mercy to be found in this place. "Sechs?"
An examining chair, much like the one he himself had been bound to not long ago, with a human sitting in it. There was nothing holding him there, but, as far as ZEX could tell, he didn't look to be in the best of shape.
Asking if he was alright would have been redundant. Looking at him brought on a cold, sinking feeling, like danger was near. No one had come for ZEX when he had suffered here; the door had not unlocked, his restraints had not gone loose. Which meant there was a reason Sechs' door had opened to let them in, and ZEX could only think of bait. For that reason, he kept his distance for now. "Sechs?"
Donna went from being concerned to being on edge from the sudden vice in the room she did not know. Her hand paused on Zex's back and she looked up. "Yeah," she said, giving a soft nod that Zex likely didn't see. How could she not have heard something with how silent the rest of the room was?
She lost the feeling of Zex's back as he moved forward and brought the light up to help. As he called for an answer, Donna noticed the chair and the person, but instead of simply speaking to it moved forward quickly, passing the man and getting to the person. She wasn't much for asking questions first.
"It doesn't matter who it is, now does it?" Donna snapped back at Zex, maybe a bit upset that he wasn't acting when he thought a possible friend was in trouble, and propped the torch next to the chair so that she could see. "Name's Donna, and that's Zex unless you already knew that," she told the sitting person, "But like I said, doesn't matter. Point is we'll be getting you out of here one way or another."
It didn't take a genius to realize that the guy had been taken. Just who would have been sitting in a chair up here on their own for the fun of it? She started checking the chair for restraints and found a few to begin pulling at. Of course that would be the setup. Landel so did not get points for originality, that was for sure.
One of the figures approached Sechs in a dizzying motion that warped in his blurry vision. The stranger's muffled words sounded close to a Deckman's monotone confirmation of a criminal cyborg's remains being processed into Factory 33 for complete disposal. Even the dark form before him seemed to have a robotic figure to it, along with fat organic hands attached to scrawny metal ligaments that reached out to grab Sechs' remains...
Within that deranged moment, Sechs' struggled to lift his bruised arms in a last ditch attempt to protect himself. "No...!" he wheezed out, his voice hoarse from all the screams and shouts he uttered earlier. "Don't throw me out! I'm not finished living...!"
Suddenly the threatening figure's beam of light pointed away from his eyes and in an angle that illuminated the true identities of the two strangers, snapping the Replica out of his delirious state.
"Huh?"
Sechs furiously blinked the watery shadows out of his eyes to find a red-haired woman instead of a factory worker standing before him. Meanwhile the dull ringing in his ears finally calmed down enough for him to catch the stranger's name and...
"ZEX?" Sechs squinted towards the second stranger and spotted the single eye and the greenly tinged hair. He tried to sit up on the chair but slumped back down into it with a fatigued grunt. "What? Why are you--"
Did the ex-VUX go through all this trouble to find Sechs? But why would he and the new woman do that? He and ZEX barely knew each other! ...Wait ...was this supposed to be like one of those friendship things that Kibitoshin tried to explain to him a few nights ago...?
"Don't even think about it," the living shadow suddenly hissed in Sechs' head, "If these two knew what you really are, they wouldn't have bothered wasting their time for the likes of you!"
It was hard to take his eye from the chair itself. It was a different design than the one he'd been trapped in, but that didn't make it any more difficult for his mind to imagine himself trapped there, screaming...
He wanted to shake the intrusive thoughts away, memories that kept echoing and amplifying one another, but they wouldn't stop. This room, this place, this chair... he'd been here or someplace much like it before, what if they were luring him here again? He couldn't let it happen to him again, lose his other eye, go completely blind, he couldn't...
"Uh..." Donna was moving forward, and ZEX struggled through his flashback, his human body's aversion to the chair, to do the same. His body might have been malfunctioning for some reason, but he had to rise above it. The socket where his eye once was was hurting, he could feel it-
He heard his name, and his voice matched his memory. It was Sechs after all. So he hadn't been spared... so much for mercy.
"You don't think I'd let you miss our appointment together, would you?" With a very weak smile. "I'm just sorry I couldn't get here sooner... it must have been terrible..."
He was trailing off, easily lost in his thoughts. Why couldn't he banish these memories? Why did they keep intruding on his thoughts? This didn't seem normal... he'd have to ask someone later. He moved to Sechs's side, reached out and touched his arm hesitantly. Touching always made ZEX feel better, after all, so surely it'd do the same for someone else. "Do you think you can walk?"
Sechs still had both of his eyes... he hoped this wasn't a trap.
"Hey? Apologize later, all right?" Donna snapped lightly as she finished with one of the restraints, "No telling what might try and get at us up here. "Work on getting that side free, would you?" If Zex had time to touch the man, then he had time enough to help her get the remaining restraints unstrapped as well.
Donna had no idea if this Sechs guy was an alien or human or whatever. Aside from knowing that Zex knew him, and that their names would have definitely gotten them some questions where she came from, she knew less to nothing about the guy. But he had been taken as a patient like the rest of them. That was reason enough not to just sit around and let him figure his own way out. If they didn't help each other, who would?
Finishing with the last strap she could spot, she grabbed her torch back and looked across to Zex, "You got that side done?"
"Ah right..." Sechs tried to chuckle, but the hollow laughter came out as a hoarse cough instead. "I... I almost forgot about that..." ZEX really wanted to talk and exchange battle techniques with him, didn't he? That helped Sechs feel just a touch less worthless...
Sechs flinched at the touch. His body was still associating such feelings with the approach of a needle. Reassuring himself that it was just ZEX and that no syringes were going to invade his system again, Sechs managed to relax, or at least as much as anyone could after going through what he just did. He could still feel his body tremble out of his control...
Looking to ZEX, the Replica gave the VUX a wary nod. All his limbs felt heavy and numb, like they were miles away from his brain. It took a moment for the sluggish muscles in his legs to lift through what seemed more like thick water than air. "I think so..."
Once the straps were out of the way, Sechs heaved himself off the chair and unto his wobbly legs. For a second, he felt like he was just born mere minutes ago, reminding him of the moment his newly loaded brain chip worked to get accustomed to a fresh cyborg body. To think that happened only two years ago...
Suddenly he lost his balance and dropped back into the chair's possessive arms. Groaning, he glanced between ZEX and Donna, "Uh... I... I think I'm gonna need some..."
He trailed off and dropped his gaze, not wanting to say the word that felt so humiliating for a warrior like him to utter. Hopefully his two rescuers would know what he was talking about and respect what was left of his dignity...
"We'll just have to reschedule our appointment then." Humor tended to help a bad situation... that was something that their two species seemed to share, if nothing else. Although technically, Sechs wasn't exactly human, but for ZEX's purposes he was close enough.
ZEX watched Sechs move to stand, and when he fell back he reached out to try and catch him without success. If he'd gone through anything like ZEX had gone through, he wouldn't be surprised to see that he was unsteady on his feet. Although, Sechs still had both his eyes and it didn't look like his hair had been cut anywhere... what had they done to him then?
"It's alright," ZEX tried to sound reassuring, although his voice shook itself. His hallucinations were making the darkness around them seem alive, and it wasn't helping calm his fears about this being a trap. "I don't think I could have walked much myself after..."
Not that he would have had much cause for it... no one had come for him, after all. He hadn't been released, and he still couldn't shake the suspicious feeling that came with the fact that Sechs had been. What was the staff here playing at?
Either way, he reached out to help Sechs up. The sooner they got out of this room, the better.
ZEX felt a chill when he entered the room, glimpses he caught of the equipment inside bringing back all too recent memories. His hallucinations definitely weren't helping, giving him the illusion of motion all around him, and he looked back at Donna, almost so he wouldn't have to look at the room around him anymore. It looked too familiar.
"Do you see anything?" Her eyesight might be better in the dark, and ZEX tried to suppress a shudder. Memories of what had happened to him were rising up quickly and it was difficult to fight them back. His difficulties discerning reality from the lies the Institute constantly fed him weren't making this much easier for him. He could see that shadowy form, feel the restraints, that buzzing as he cut through his skull, and he felt sick and it hurt all over again, like he was there again and trapped, and...
ZEX shut his eyes and wrapped his arms tightly around himself, squeezing in an effort to refocus his thoughts. This was not the time... if this was indeed one of those rooms, then that meant that there might be someone inside that needed his help. He had to focus, but his human mind wasn't giving him an easy time of it.
"Just... give me a moment..." A bit labored as he struggled to fight back his flashback. "Go on ahead..."
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His words said otherwise and although he wanted her to continue, concern had Donna staying back with him instead. "I'm not just gunna leave you, silly," she scolded him, giving his back a rub in hopes that it might help.
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Meanwhile, the dark side of Sechs' psyche kept a distance, deciding to take advantage of the situation and toy with its vulnerable host, making itself known only through a faint but powerful thought.
"Well whaddya know? Looks like our good doctor just called in for the garbage disposal team!" the voice chuckled in Sechs' head, "Too bad it had to happen now, the Deckmen back at the Scrapyard factory would have been more than happy to do that job a long time ago!"
Sechs winced at the thought. Was that true? Had Sechs' time finally come? What was left of his adrenaline flashed through his system, but his body just couldn't fight anymore. Groaning, the defeated Replica weakly lifted his head up from his shoulder and peered towards the beam of lights and their unknown users.
"Who... Who's there?!" he called out to the strangers, only to hear his voice croak out as an incoherent grunt instead.
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Although he did like being touched.
"I'm alright." ZEX could make out some kind of motion in the dark, no doubt his mind playing tricks on him again. "I just feel like I've been here before..."
He stiffened when he heard something in the dark, something that definitely hadn't come from one of his hallucinations. Someone, or something, was there!
"Did you hear that?" ZEX took a few steps towards the sound. "Hello? Who's there?" A moment. "Sechs, is that you?" He hoped it wasn't... maybe Sechs had just been otherwise occupied that night and hadn't been horribly tortured, as ZEX had been, but he doubted it. There was not a lot of mercy to be found in this place. "Sechs?"
An examining chair, much like the one he himself had been bound to not long ago, with a human sitting in it. There was nothing holding him there, but, as far as ZEX could tell, he didn't look to be in the best of shape.
Asking if he was alright would have been redundant. Looking at him brought on a cold, sinking feeling, like danger was near. No one had come for ZEX when he had suffered here; the door had not unlocked, his restraints had not gone loose. Which meant there was a reason Sechs' door had opened to let them in, and ZEX could only think of bait. For that reason, he kept his distance for now. "Sechs?"
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She lost the feeling of Zex's back as he moved forward and brought the light up to help. As he called for an answer, Donna noticed the chair and the person, but instead of simply speaking to it moved forward quickly, passing the man and getting to the person. She wasn't much for asking questions first.
"It doesn't matter who it is, now does it?" Donna snapped back at Zex, maybe a bit upset that he wasn't acting when he thought a possible friend was in trouble, and propped the torch next to the chair so that she could see. "Name's Donna, and that's Zex unless you already knew that," she told the sitting person, "But like I said, doesn't matter. Point is we'll be getting you out of here one way or another."
It didn't take a genius to realize that the guy had been taken. Just who would have been sitting in a chair up here on their own for the fun of it? She started checking the chair for restraints and found a few to begin pulling at. Of course that would be the setup. Landel so did not get points for originality, that was for sure.
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Within that deranged moment, Sechs' struggled to lift his bruised arms in a last ditch attempt to protect himself. "No...!" he wheezed out, his voice hoarse from all the screams and shouts he uttered earlier. "Don't throw me out! I'm not finished living...!"
Suddenly the threatening figure's beam of light pointed away from his eyes and in an angle that illuminated the true identities of the two strangers, snapping the Replica out of his delirious state.
"Huh?"
Sechs furiously blinked the watery shadows out of his eyes to find a red-haired woman instead of a factory worker standing before him. Meanwhile the dull ringing in his ears finally calmed down enough for him to catch the stranger's name and...
"ZEX?" Sechs squinted towards the second stranger and spotted the single eye and the greenly tinged hair. He tried to sit up on the chair but slumped back down into it with a fatigued grunt. "What? Why are you--"
Did the ex-VUX go through all this trouble to find Sechs? But why would he and the new woman do that? He and ZEX barely knew each other! ...Wait ...was this supposed to be like one of those friendship things that Kibitoshin tried to explain to him a few nights ago...?
"Don't even think about it," the living shadow suddenly hissed in Sechs' head, "If these two knew what you really are, they wouldn't have bothered wasting their time for the likes of you!"
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He wanted to shake the intrusive thoughts away, memories that kept echoing and amplifying one another, but they wouldn't stop. This room, this place, this chair... he'd been here or someplace much like it before, what if they were luring him here again? He couldn't let it happen to him again, lose his other eye, go completely blind, he couldn't...
"Uh..." Donna was moving forward, and ZEX struggled through his flashback, his human body's aversion to the chair, to do the same. His body might have been malfunctioning for some reason, but he had to rise above it. The socket where his eye once was was hurting, he could feel it-
He heard his name, and his voice matched his memory. It was Sechs after all. So he hadn't been spared... so much for mercy.
"You don't think I'd let you miss our appointment together, would you?" With a very weak smile. "I'm just sorry I couldn't get here sooner... it must have been terrible..."
He was trailing off, easily lost in his thoughts. Why couldn't he banish these memories? Why did they keep intruding on his thoughts? This didn't seem normal... he'd have to ask someone later. He moved to Sechs's side, reached out and touched his arm hesitantly. Touching always made ZEX feel better, after all, so surely it'd do the same for someone else. "Do you think you can walk?"
Sechs still had both of his eyes... he hoped this wasn't a trap.
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Donna had no idea if this Sechs guy was an alien or human or whatever. Aside from knowing that Zex knew him, and that their names would have definitely gotten them some questions where she came from, she knew less to nothing about the guy. But he had been taken as a patient like the rest of them. That was reason enough not to just sit around and let him figure his own way out. If they didn't help each other, who would?
Finishing with the last strap she could spot, she grabbed her torch back and looked across to Zex, "You got that side done?"
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Sechs flinched at the touch. His body was still associating such feelings with the approach of a needle. Reassuring himself that it was just ZEX and that no syringes were going to invade his system again, Sechs managed to relax, or at least as much as anyone could after going through what he just did. He could still feel his body tremble out of his control...
Looking to ZEX, the Replica gave the VUX a wary nod. All his limbs felt heavy and numb, like they were miles away from his brain. It took a moment for the sluggish muscles in his legs to lift through what seemed more like thick water than air. "I think so..."
Once the straps were out of the way, Sechs heaved himself off the chair and unto his wobbly legs. For a second, he felt like he was just born mere minutes ago, reminding him of the moment his newly loaded brain chip worked to get accustomed to a fresh cyborg body. To think that happened only two years ago...
Suddenly he lost his balance and dropped back into the chair's possessive arms. Groaning, he glanced between ZEX and Donna, "Uh... I... I think I'm gonna need some..."
He trailed off and dropped his gaze, not wanting to say the word that felt so humiliating for a warrior like him to utter. Hopefully his two rescuers would know what he was talking about and respect what was left of his dignity...
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ZEX watched Sechs move to stand, and when he fell back he reached out to try and catch him without success. If he'd gone through anything like ZEX had gone through, he wouldn't be surprised to see that he was unsteady on his feet. Although, Sechs still had both his eyes and it didn't look like his hair had been cut anywhere... what had they done to him then?
"It's alright," ZEX tried to sound reassuring, although his voice shook itself. His hallucinations were making the darkness around them seem alive, and it wasn't helping calm his fears about this being a trap. "I don't think I could have walked much myself after..."
Not that he would have had much cause for it... no one had come for him, after all. He hadn't been released, and he still couldn't shake the suspicious feeling that came with the fact that Sechs had been. What was the staff here playing at?
Either way, he reached out to help Sechs up. The sooner they got out of this room, the better.
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