Survelliance from the Shop
Del's voice brought him back to consciousness, whispering in his ear. "I want you to be awake for this..."
"Hnnn..." His head ached. Once again, he couldn't move his head, and when he opened his eyes, he was standing straight up. Well... perhaps not standing, but vertical. His legs were still powered down; he had no idea if he was sitting, standing, or if they were even-- no. Best not to think of that.
Del was sitting in front of him, her head cocked to one side. She wore a very unsettling smile. "How do you feel?"
"Head hurts... can't move." He focused on her face and grimaced. "Did you steal my legs?"
"No," she said blithely. "Not yet."
"Your arms, on the other hand..."
"Arms?" He was able to move his fingers, squeeze his hand into a fist. Not... oh. "The actuators? You took them? WHAT did you DO to them?" He was getting very angry again, teeth bared.
"They were an experiment. Now we can collect the data from them and move on."
"You didn't... dismantle them, did you?" His eyes grew wide and glassy, his voice hushed. Sure, he hadn't wanted them, but he'd gotten used to having them around. Their voices were more a comfort and a focus than a detriment anymore. "They didn't do anything wrong..."
"Not yet," she said again. "That's after the data dump."
He scowled. "Then what are you going to do now?"
She turned away from him and rolled over to a table off to the side, where a prosthetic leg lay in a foam cradle. "We've made a few more advances since you've been gone that we'd like to test."
He struggled against his bonds, but these were much stronger. Not straps. Something hard and immobile held him in place. And his skin was bare. He could feel the cool of the a/c vent above his head. "I won't work with you..."
"I don't need you to." Her gaze when she looked back at him was cool and self-assured.
He thought back to waking up, recalling what she'd said. I want you to be awake for this... For what? "Get it over with, whatever it is, and shut up. I don't like you."
"After all I did for you?" she chided, testing leads on the leg.
He blinked. "I... well, I appreciate that. But it was only to get me to trust you. So you could do things..." He couldn't see what she was doing very clearly, head immobilized and all. But he could hear her fidding with something out of his range of sight.
She hummed along with the radio as she worked, and then came back over to him. Two more scientists came in to give her a hand, but she was the one who began dismantling his hip. The one above his one remaining flesh and blood leg.
"N-no, what are you doing?" He knew what she was doing. But not... "Going to kill me, you're going to, yes and then what will that prove, what sort of science is that? What do you do when you've eliminated your subject? What sort of people does the government employ?" He was rambling now, talking fast and breathless, anything to keep his own attention away from what she was doing.
"Who said anything about killing you?" she said, surprised. With a hissing pop, the artificial hip separated, and she began the slower process of severing the nerves and artificial blood vessels.
"Hnnn..." A muscle in his face twitched. "Why are you doing this," he whispered desperately. His mind was starting to slip--he could feel distant twinges of pain and sensation, wavering in and out above his hip. Once in a while, there would be a sharp tendril of pain that would shoot up his back.
She looked up at him from her wheelchair, the glass eye catching the light obviously. "Why do you think?"
He shut his eyes tight. "It all started when you made me captive... can't blame it all on me." But he did feel guilty. Even now, with his eyes closed, he could see the images flicker across the darkness, the woman picked up and twisted in half, thrown aside. His face, wild and alien.
With a final small, painful snap, the leg was off.
He gasped, his breath catching in his throat. A made a low, guttural moan and felt hot wetness on his cheeks. Doing it again... again... never be human, never be anything but... alive-dead...
One of the others brought over the new leg, and Del took it in her hands as if it were something precious. She fit it on, making the connections one by one.
"Can't feel ... I can't ... " He opened his eyes and stared at the top of her head. He wanted to kill her. More than anything at that moment, the desire was unbearable. Basic animal need. His blood pressure rose and his breathing deepened. "I'll kill you all."
"You tried that already." She was doing the wiring, wearing a pair of magnifying goggles.
"Do it right this time. I and brother-Some and god-Hermes. Sharp and fast. No one left. Hot blood."
"If that little goth or the ditzy god show up, we'll handle them," she said, unbothered.
"Handle you. Handle your innards. Hot and thick." He started to giggle, his reality cracking just so.
She quirked one magnified eye at him, and shocked him again. "Threats aren't allowed, Subject 8," she said. "Have you forgotten the rules?"
He howled in pain, but it was colored with manic laughter.
The leg was attached now, and she fit a key into a socket on the hip, activating it. "Show us how well it works," she said, backing out of range.
He was still giggling as he felt the connection come to life. As she backed away, he kicked out, barely missing her. The leg was fast. He swung it around, but there was nothing within range. Nothing but the thing he was strapped to.
She nodded approvingly and smiled that wrong smile again. "Can you wiggle your toes for me?"
"Come here and I will." He grinned, too wide.
She shook her head, chuckling, and turned to a bank of keyboards, typing in a few commands. "I'm bringing you the rest of the way online... now. Just for a diagnostic. Cooperating now would be a good idea, or I might have to resort to drastic measures."
He watched her hands move, thinking of fast god-Hermes and his delicate, swift fingers. Thinking of prey fingers, and how the bones snap when you squeeze them. And then he felt his entire body come alive.
He was still tied down. THe board he was strapped to swiveled and fell back, bringing him down horizontally. She came close, on the side away from his unbound leg. "Let me test your reflexes."
He didn't answer. Something else went on behind his eyes, just under the surface.
She nodded in satisfaction, and applied a small tool to the joint of his knee. It discharged with a bbbzap.
There was no sensation in the leg, but his body registered it and alerted him of the discharge. He ignored it, reaching out in his mind to a familiar place and plugging in, his thoughts racing. I have to get free, I have to find my blood. Why can't they let me have my own body? Where is my blood, flesh, bone, muscle? I must reclaim it. I must pull them apart. I must...
Del paused, her expression furious, and she jerked a cord violently out of a socket behind his ear. "You bastard! You tried to call for help!"
He howled in pain when she pulled it out. It felt as if his skull had cracked.
A tech confirmed it. "You reached the Nexus," she hissed before forcibly calming herself.
"YES! You'll taste your own blood!"
She lowered the table until he could see her face while two techs deactivated his lower body again. "You didn't give them your whereabouts, fool. But just in case, we'll step up the work."
He hissed, sounding very actuator-like. He'd been cut off before he could send a coherent message. It was getting harder and harder to think properly. Everything wanted to be blood and bone, fast and sharp.
She leaned over him, adjusting a light attached to her glasses. "We have a new prosthetic we wanted to test on you," she said. Her grin, if he recognized it, was an eerie echo of his.
"Everything works" blood bone muscle brain heart "properly. Nothing needs" lungs nails teeth hair liver "to be replaced. Doctor."
"But then we have no study."
"Then you let me run--" fastsharpdarkpain
"Perhaps later." She took a needle, drawing a dose of something.
"Don't need don't want won't let you eat my mind run through my veins I'll..."
"He's lost it," said a tech derisively.
"He never had it," answered Del. She made the injection into the skin near his eye. It was a paralytic.
"Hnnn..." Sharp sharp again--can't move my eye, what? dead? wrong? Wrong. "N-not there with that..."
It was a mildpainkiller, but certainly not enough when she began to cut, a thin scalpel slicing away the eyelid.
"Ngaaaaaa! Stop! Please... stop!" He tried to struggle away from the knife, his eye abnormally wide and round.
The straps held him in place. "Eye for an eye, Octavius," she said darkly, and switched to a long, curved blade, sharp on the sides and dull at the tip.
"No, god no please no no I'll do anything please god oh god no no no no--"
"I. Begged. Too." And with a deft motion, his left eye went dark.
He screamed. Loud as anyone had ever done within the walls of The Shop. It went on long after the cut had been made, and wouldn't until he passed out or he was put under again. His eye was gone, and his mind had slipped out with it.