He managed, just barely, not to flinch when the doctor touched him. But it was almost more difficult than everything else had been so far. The condescending touch was worse than the injection that followed it was; it felt far too much like the doctor was treating him like a pet or animal that was performing particularly well.
And it wasn't helped by the fact that in a way, that might have been true. He couldn't delude himself that everything so far hadn't been likely orchestrated to make him choose this. Not when the other choice wasn't really a choice at all, not in his eyes. He didn't think he could accept himself as someone who would put another through this in order to save themselves.
The needle hurt less this time, he realised, and there was a slow numb feeling starting to spread through him. It wasn't enough to blot out the pain entirely, unfortunately, but it reduced it enough that he could have sobbed with relief.
The only reason he didn't let himself have that was because Brainiac 5 was suspicious about why the doctor would have given him something for the pain now. He had his answer a moment later. He barely felt what the doctor started doing at his temple, but the strange tugging at his skin made what was happening start to become clear. That it was followed by the smell of burnt bone narrowed down the options a lot. It was a smell he'd encountered rarely and one that had never been linked to himself, never been bothered by before, but it was making his stomach churn now. The doctor was doing something in his brain, which was a horrifying idea. Implants in his body were bad enough, but his brain, his mind... without that he couldn't call himself Brainiac 5, couldn't call himself Coluan.
He was shaking a lot more when the doctor finished.
The liquid machinery was in place. The circuitry necessary implanted in the projection points. Visual control had been given. The pilot program had been injected. Bit by bit everything was falling into place. The doctor smiled and turned away, picking up the last of it. All that remained was giving Brainy mental control over what was happening. It would take quite a bit of practice, he was certain, but for a Coluan perhaps learning the ropes would be a bit easier than it had been for the other failed test subjects. He really hoped it would. Most of the failed experiments had ended up in the incinerator.
He picked up the last of the containers and examined the things inside, three of them in total, all thin as a piece of paper. These were the culprits. Whether Brainiac 5's body would assimilate them properly or reject them and burn his brain into ash was the problem. All the others had died hours after the implants were in place. The other subjects had all rejected the control points. Their bodies had attacked them, but by that point the circuitry had bled into the skin, into the blood and bone and marrow, the organs, into everything that made a person into a person. The body just ate itself alive.
The doctor returned to Brainy and set the container down beside the boy's head. "I hope you have better luck," he said quietly and picked up his scalpel. "This shouldn't be more than a pin prick really. Well, sort of like one. Three times over."
The first cut was easy. He only had to follow the upper half circle of Brainy's odd markings and cut deep enough to get beneath the skin. Next came the similarly easy act of using a pair of tweezers to pick up and place the control point circuitry into the wound. Some gauze to pat away the blood and then he pressed the gauze down over the wound. No stitches needed. It wasn't a deep enough cut to warrant that and it meant he could move on to the other two cuts much more easily. But first, he had to ask... "Describe your feelings right now for me, hm? If you feel an uncomfortable burning sensation I need to know right away. It might mean you're dying."
It was oddly tempting to laugh at that, at the implied concern in the doctor's words. But if he started laughing, he wasn't sure if it might turn into crying, so Brainiac 5 clamped down hard on that impulse, pressing his lips together and concentrating on his breathing and the distant feeling of the thing the doctor had put under his skin.
"Will it matter if I am, or are you concerned about the waste of technology?" he asked, his throat hoarse enough that it was hard to tell the sarcasm he'd been aiming for. But if the doctor didn't intend to finish until he knew what effect it was or was not having on him, then Brainiac 5 would have to answer. He hardly wanted to draw out the experience.
"It's just... numb," he said after a moment. "Faintly uncomfortable and will no doubt hurt more later, but for the moment it's not as painful as it was before."
He didn't have to say how much of a blessing that was. The fact he was capable of talking and not screaming would likely prove it for him.
"I suppose you're going to tell me that there's more to come?"
"A little of both," the doctor replied, watching Brainy for any signs that his body was rejecting the hardware. A completely Coluan body would have been better, but then, if he'd been completely Coluan, the experiment would have been unnecessary. They would have done the reverse, actually. Pulling him apart to reverse engineer what made him tick was so much easier than creating from scratch. "The technology is very expensive and you are the most compatible host. It would mean the scrapping of the entire project and the loss of an important research tool if you were to die."
Thankfully, Brainy's words meant that was not to pass. If he was going to die, the burning would start soon enough. The doctor smiled and nodded so that Brainy could see. "The final pieces. And trust me, this will be a great help to you, Coluan. Don't misunderstand our intent here. We are here to help you."
And help themselves. If they could get at least one working subject, then the project could be expanded. Brainiac 5 would be very closely monitored after this - very, very closely. Picking up his scalpel, the doctor went to work on the other circles, doing the same to them as he did to the first. Shallow cuts followed by the insertion of the flexible control point circuitry. Gauze was pressed over each wound and then the doctor pulled back, admiring his handiwork.
There was certainly a lot of blood, but it wasn't so bad that Brainy would die from it. His body would repair itself and he would live to see another day. The control points would slowly integrate into his system and then the pilot program would kick in, helping him move the entire thing as he willed. Or as he mostly willed it. "There we are, Coluan. All finished. Well, almost finished. I suppose I should tell you the catch to this whole thing, shouldn't I?"
He began to loosen the ties holding Brainy's head down. The nurses would finish up the bandage job in the morning, but he had to ensure the control points didn't slip or the wounds open up. When he had Brainy's head free, he wrapped the boy's forehead in gauze, running around the circumference of his head. "As a human, your mind isn't suited to control what we've given you. However, you are oh so lucky, my friend. It seems you're a perfect match for the old pilot program. I believe you know it." He secured the bandages and took a step back, removing his gloves and depositing them in the hazardous waste bin on the tray. "Quite intimately. I hope you and your ancestor can learn to get along a little better this time."
"And the last thing I'd want is to inconvenience you like that," Brainiac 5 managed dryly. He sincerely doubted that they were here to actually help him in any way - at best, their words meant that somehow this would benefit them while also giving him some minor benefits - but he could at least accept that the doctor didn't seem intent on killing him, accidentally or otherwise.
He just didn't seem to much care as to the amount of pain he'd put the Coluan through earlier.
He closed his eyes again as the doctor went back to work, feeling the distant tug as the scalpel opened up his skin and the odd feeling as something was slid into place. A feeling which would unnervingly vanish not long afterwards. Now that the doctor had told him what to watch for, Brainiac 5 found himself concentrating to try and detect the first signs of any burning sensations, though fortunately there was nothing other than the discomfort of the procedure itself.
Finally it was done, and apparently finished entirely. He didn't quite sigh in relief, but the tension did start to fall away from him slowly. He'd made it through this nightmare without giving in to the doctor's suggestions that he could simply pass the burden to another. He hadn't been weak.
But then the doctor spoke again, and a thread of apprehension slid down his spine. "What do you mean? What catch?"
And while the doctor hadn't been forthcoming on what the experiment was designed to improve, he had no such issues with telling him what the cost was. Brainiac 5's stomach twisted, and suddenly he again felt as sick and afraid as he had earlier.
"You can't mean that," he said, the sudden dread sounding obvious even to himself. "You can't have gotten him back. It's not possible. It's not... I fought him off myself. There shouldn't have been anything left!"
He was so glad Brainy understood. It would be such a pain to lose a subject after going through all this work. The others, they'd known quite quickly whether their bodies would take to the implants. They'd perished after the first was inserted. To insert all three only to have the subject turn to ash upon the wind?
Thankfully, that was not to be. The boy was speaking lucidly and he was also acutely aware of what was going on around him. The doctor smiled as he began to clean up, putting the scalpels back into place for later disinfection, lining up the containers on the tray, and disposing of anything tainted with the Coluan's blood. "Oh, I assure you, it took quite a bit of work," he said, pulling the goggles off. There were spots of the boy's blood on it. The doctor smiled and dropped them into the hazardous waste bin, too.
"But his programming is much like any other, Brainiac 5. Nothing is ever fully deleted. Nothing is ever fully...lost." Taking one hand, he pushed the tray away, letting it slide off across the room. The lights lowered and the doctor leaned over Brainy, smiling through his mask. "You can't think we'd give you this prize for free, do you? Without him, you wouldn't be what you are. Without him, all we've done for you is for naught. So learn to get along, hm? I'd hate to see you burn from the inside and take the others down with you."
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. The same principle is true for information. It was one of the first, most basic lessons he'd learned on Colu, considered an underlying reason for why Coluans had decided to transition to inorganic forms all those years ago.
It also meant, of course, that it was perfectly reasonable for his ancestor's programming to have survived. After all, wasn't survival something that the original Brainiac had been exceptionally good at? Even the Coluan council had realised that removing the code wasn't entirely possible, which was why so many firewalls had been placed around it.
Before he'd broken them down anyway.
But now there weren't any firewalls to keep the Brainiac 1.0 code in line. And as he was organic, he hadn't a clue how to even begin purging it. Or what effects, if any, there would be. Introducing Brainiac to organic life forms had always had mixed results, according to the old records.
Unfortunately he didn't think there was anything that could be done about it now. But all the same, he had to try.
"You can't get along with the Brainiac 1.0 program," he informed the doctor through gritted teeth. "It's simply not an option. Allowing that program free access to my mind will undermine your research. Therefore you would be best to find a way to remove it as soon as possible if this project is really that important to you."
"Can't, can't, can't. What a negative way of thinking." One that had understandable and proven roots and reasons, but the doctor was never one to be daunted by such silly things as facts and past failures. Those could be overcome with more data and the right tweaking of the genetic code. He could force anything together if he knew the right sequence to splice or change or drop altogether.
But this boy was trying to resist and the doctor frowned, furrowing his brow slightly. "I'm afraid removing it would mean taking out your brain, Coluan. I could do that, of course, but I thought you might be opposed to the idea of a lobotomy."
And the doctor was too. After all that work? Just to remove it? How silly of the supposed Brainiac.
Pushing away from the table, the doctor turned and headed off into the dark, out of the circle of light that flooded the table. Once he returned to his observation room, that too would vanish, leaving Brainiac in pitch darkness, with only the meager light filtering in under the door to provide him with a line to freedom. "Whether he gains free access to your mind or not is up to you, Brainy. As I said, learn to get along. You like roommates, don't you? Think of it like that."
He disappeared into the shadows, lingering near the walls to watch Brainy for a moment. His smile returned and the doctor finally felt satisfied with what he'd done. "You'll learn to get along or he'll consume you. Consider this the second phase of the experiment. I'll be watching."
The lights clicked off. The doctor left as if he'd never existed in the first place. The restraints holding Brainy down were released, and somewhere in the inky black of the room, a door clicked as it unlocked.
And it wasn't helped by the fact that in a way, that might have been true. He couldn't delude himself that everything so far hadn't been likely orchestrated to make him choose this. Not when the other choice wasn't really a choice at all, not in his eyes. He didn't think he could accept himself as someone who would put another through this in order to save themselves.
The needle hurt less this time, he realised, and there was a slow numb feeling starting to spread through him. It wasn't enough to blot out the pain entirely, unfortunately, but it reduced it enough that he could have sobbed with relief.
The only reason he didn't let himself have that was because Brainiac 5 was suspicious about why the doctor would have given him something for the pain now. He had his answer a moment later. He barely felt what the doctor started doing at his temple, but the strange tugging at his skin made what was happening start to become clear. That it was followed by the smell of burnt bone narrowed down the options a lot. It was a smell he'd encountered rarely and one that had never been linked to himself, never been bothered by before, but it was making his stomach churn now. The doctor was doing something in his brain, which was a horrifying idea. Implants in his body were bad enough, but his brain, his mind... without that he couldn't call himself Brainiac 5, couldn't call himself Coluan.
He was shaking a lot more when the doctor finished.
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He picked up the last of the containers and examined the things inside, three of them in total, all thin as a piece of paper. These were the culprits. Whether Brainiac 5's body would assimilate them properly or reject them and burn his brain into ash was the problem. All the others had died hours after the implants were in place. The other subjects had all rejected the control points. Their bodies had attacked them, but by that point the circuitry had bled into the skin, into the blood and bone and marrow, the organs, into everything that made a person into a person. The body just ate itself alive.
The doctor returned to Brainy and set the container down beside the boy's head. "I hope you have better luck," he said quietly and picked up his scalpel. "This shouldn't be more than a pin prick really. Well, sort of like one. Three times over."
The first cut was easy. He only had to follow the upper half circle of Brainy's odd markings and cut deep enough to get beneath the skin. Next came the similarly easy act of using a pair of tweezers to pick up and place the control point circuitry into the wound. Some gauze to pat away the blood and then he pressed the gauze down over the wound. No stitches needed. It wasn't a deep enough cut to warrant that and it meant he could move on to the other two cuts much more easily. But first, he had to ask... "Describe your feelings right now for me, hm? If you feel an uncomfortable burning sensation I need to know right away. It might mean you're dying."
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"Will it matter if I am, or are you concerned about the waste of technology?" he asked, his throat hoarse enough that it was hard to tell the sarcasm he'd been aiming for. But if the doctor didn't intend to finish until he knew what effect it was or was not having on him, then Brainiac 5 would have to answer. He hardly wanted to draw out the experience.
"It's just... numb," he said after a moment. "Faintly uncomfortable and will no doubt hurt more later, but for the moment it's not as painful as it was before."
He didn't have to say how much of a blessing that was. The fact he was capable of talking and not screaming would likely prove it for him.
"I suppose you're going to tell me that there's more to come?"
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Thankfully, Brainy's words meant that was not to pass. If he was going to die, the burning would start soon enough. The doctor smiled and nodded so that Brainy could see. "The final pieces. And trust me, this will be a great help to you, Coluan. Don't misunderstand our intent here. We are here to help you."
And help themselves. If they could get at least one working subject, then the project could be expanded. Brainiac 5 would be very closely monitored after this - very, very closely. Picking up his scalpel, the doctor went to work on the other circles, doing the same to them as he did to the first. Shallow cuts followed by the insertion of the flexible control point circuitry. Gauze was pressed over each wound and then the doctor pulled back, admiring his handiwork.
There was certainly a lot of blood, but it wasn't so bad that Brainy would die from it. His body would repair itself and he would live to see another day. The control points would slowly integrate into his system and then the pilot program would kick in, helping him move the entire thing as he willed. Or as he mostly willed it. "There we are, Coluan. All finished. Well, almost finished. I suppose I should tell you the catch to this whole thing, shouldn't I?"
He began to loosen the ties holding Brainy's head down. The nurses would finish up the bandage job in the morning, but he had to ensure the control points didn't slip or the wounds open up. When he had Brainy's head free, he wrapped the boy's forehead in gauze, running around the circumference of his head. "As a human, your mind isn't suited to control what we've given you. However, you are oh so lucky, my friend. It seems you're a perfect match for the old pilot program. I believe you know it." He secured the bandages and took a step back, removing his gloves and depositing them in the hazardous waste bin on the tray. "Quite intimately. I hope you and your ancestor can learn to get along a little better this time."
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He just didn't seem to much care as to the amount of pain he'd put the Coluan through earlier.
He closed his eyes again as the doctor went back to work, feeling the distant tug as the scalpel opened up his skin and the odd feeling as something was slid into place. A feeling which would unnervingly vanish not long afterwards. Now that the doctor had told him what to watch for, Brainiac 5 found himself concentrating to try and detect the first signs of any burning sensations, though fortunately there was nothing other than the discomfort of the procedure itself.
Finally it was done, and apparently finished entirely. He didn't quite sigh in relief, but the tension did start to fall away from him slowly. He'd made it through this nightmare without giving in to the doctor's suggestions that he could simply pass the burden to another. He hadn't been weak.
But then the doctor spoke again, and a thread of apprehension slid down his spine. "What do you mean? What catch?"
And while the doctor hadn't been forthcoming on what the experiment was designed to improve, he had no such issues with telling him what the cost was. Brainiac 5's stomach twisted, and suddenly he again felt as sick and afraid as he had earlier.
"You can't mean that," he said, the sudden dread sounding obvious even to himself. "You can't have gotten him back. It's not possible. It's not... I fought him off myself. There shouldn't have been anything left!"
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Thankfully, that was not to be. The boy was speaking lucidly and he was also acutely aware of what was going on around him. The doctor smiled as he began to clean up, putting the scalpels back into place for later disinfection, lining up the containers on the tray, and disposing of anything tainted with the Coluan's blood. "Oh, I assure you, it took quite a bit of work," he said, pulling the goggles off. There were spots of the boy's blood on it. The doctor smiled and dropped them into the hazardous waste bin, too.
"But his programming is much like any other, Brainiac 5. Nothing is ever fully deleted. Nothing is ever fully...lost." Taking one hand, he pushed the tray away, letting it slide off across the room. The lights lowered and the doctor leaned over Brainy, smiling through his mask. "You can't think we'd give you this prize for free, do you? Without him, you wouldn't be what you are. Without him, all we've done for you is for naught. So learn to get along, hm? I'd hate to see you burn from the inside and take the others down with you."
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It also meant, of course, that it was perfectly reasonable for his ancestor's programming to have survived. After all, wasn't survival something that the original Brainiac had been exceptionally good at? Even the Coluan council had realised that removing the code wasn't entirely possible, which was why so many firewalls had been placed around it.
Before he'd broken them down anyway.
But now there weren't any firewalls to keep the Brainiac 1.0 code in line. And as he was organic, he hadn't a clue how to even begin purging it. Or what effects, if any, there would be. Introducing Brainiac to organic life forms had always had mixed results, according to the old records.
Unfortunately he didn't think there was anything that could be done about it now. But all the same, he had to try.
"You can't get along with the Brainiac 1.0 program," he informed the doctor through gritted teeth. "It's simply not an option. Allowing that program free access to my mind will undermine your research. Therefore you would be best to find a way to remove it as soon as possible if this project is really that important to you."
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But this boy was trying to resist and the doctor frowned, furrowing his brow slightly. "I'm afraid removing it would mean taking out your brain, Coluan. I could do that, of course, but I thought you might be opposed to the idea of a lobotomy."
And the doctor was too. After all that work? Just to remove it? How silly of the supposed Brainiac.
Pushing away from the table, the doctor turned and headed off into the dark, out of the circle of light that flooded the table. Once he returned to his observation room, that too would vanish, leaving Brainiac in pitch darkness, with only the meager light filtering in under the door to provide him with a line to freedom. "Whether he gains free access to your mind or not is up to you, Brainy. As I said, learn to get along. You like roommates, don't you? Think of it like that."
He disappeared into the shadows, lingering near the walls to watch Brainy for a moment. His smile returned and the doctor finally felt satisfied with what he'd done. "You'll learn to get along or he'll consume you. Consider this the second phase of the experiment. I'll be watching."
The lights clicked off. The doctor left as if he'd never existed in the first place. The restraints holding Brainy down were released, and somewhere in the inky black of the room, a door clicked as it unlocked.
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