2083 [part 2/7]; Sam, Ruby, Nick, Lucifer; AU, Gen, R
title: 2083
author: monicawoe
wordcount: ~3800 total (2500 this chapter)
characters: Sam, Ruby, Meg, Brady, Nick, Lucifer
warnings: some violence, gore and technobabble
notes: (A big thank you to my wonderful beta quickreaver )
summary: written for scifi_spn for this prompt:Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon bio-tech. He knows it's wrong, that it's sick, but he just can't stop. He adds little enhancements bit by bit, stuff nobody will notice. But it gets out of hand, and there's no turning back.
part 1
__________
"He needs you, Sam." Ruby said.
"Me?" Sam asked, confused. "I thought avatars had to be..."
"Human?" Ruby finished with a smirk.
"Trained. So many people apply to be an avatar for the Angels and they never even get past the first exam."
Behind them, Brady snorted. "Yeah, that's because the people picking the avatars all have their heads up their asses. They don't even know what they're looking for. Not really. You know how many of the applicants actually end up syncing successfully?"
Sam shook his head.
"Less than two percent," the blond man answered. "Any guesses as to why that is?"
"Because most people overload." Sam let out a huff. "I always wondered why they only let unmodified humans apply. You'd think they'd at least want you to have a basic cortex-expansion or something"
Ruby laughed. "You're not wrong."
"Wait, you mean they - "
"They just want to start with a clean slate." said another woman's voice.
Sam turned towards her. She was the same height as Ruby. Her hair was blond, streaked with white and she was scowling at Sam like his very presence was a grave insult.
"Meg," Brady said. "So nice of you to join us."
"Most of the Angels go through two dozen avatars a year on average." Meg took a couple steps towards them, and stood next to Ruby. "Do you know why?"
"They burn out," Sam answered. He saw Ruby flick a glance over to Meg. "Right?"
Ruby frowned. "That's one reason. The ones that don't are sent into 'early retirement'." She framed the last two words with air quotes.
"The human mind wasn't made to handle that much information," Brady acknowledged. "With the right mods, they can last for a few years, but none of them ever make it that long."
Sam stared at Brady for a few seconds. "The Angels kill them. Don't they?"
Brady nodded. "Physically, their avatars can only take so many battles before they start to glitch. They could rotate in shifts, command one battle, rest a few weeks, be good as new."
"But that's not what happens." Sam said. His thoughts spun around and clicked into place. "Strategic intel restriction." His eyes widened. "They burn them out on purpose. So there's no chance of an info-leak."
"Can't get anything past this guy," the blonde woman muttered.
"Meg," Ruby snapped. "You have something you want to share with the class?"
Meg glared at Sam for another second before spinning towards Ruby. "This guy? Seriously? He's a kid. He's never even seen battle."
"I got hit by an ATLAS-blast tonight. When Ruby found me, I was missing half my thigh," Sam scoffed. "What the hell do you consider battle?"
Meg smirked at Sam and grabbed him by the chin. "I'm sure you'll find out real soon, killer." She let go, and stalked off, knocking into him as she passed.
Brady watched her leave and took a step to follow her before changing his mind and turning back to Sam and Ruby. "Meg's been through a lot," he said, chewing on his lip. "Azazel was her father."
Sam swallowed. "I grew up being told that a Demon destroyed our family. If it wasn't Azazel who killed Mom, then...who did?"
"We didn't set your home on fire." Ruby said, her expression inscrutable.
"Mom was trying to get me out. She was trying to save me, until the Demon killed her." Sam recited the words with barely a twinge of emotion. He'd told (and been told) the story so many times, the words had lost all meaning.
"She was dead when Azazel found you. Her corpse kept you from being incinerated. She fooled the scanners into thinking they'd killed you." Ruby folded her arms across her chest. "Azazel tried to pull you out from under her but your father stopped him."
"He's taller than me," said a man's voice from behind them. "That's good."
Sam turned towards the newcomer and took an involuntary step back.
The man that had spoken was being held up by Meg. Barely. He was only a few inches shorter than Sam, but his feet were dragging and his torso was slumped to the right, leaning on Meg as much as their height difference allowed for. He raised his sandy-haired head with what was clearly a great deal of effort and looked up. "Hello, Sam."
"What the hell were you thinking, Meg?" Brady said, under his breath.
"He wanted to see Sam. Said he had to." Meg said, barely laboring under the man's weight.
Sam stared at the newcomer with a mix of fascination and disgust. Patches of his skin were missing - revealing large circles of angry red flesh on the side of his face, and all over his hands and arms. "Are you okay?"
The man laughed and stepped away from Meg. He wavered, and caught his balance before taking a few unsteady steps closer to Sam, craning his head up to look him in the eyes. "He said you'd be tall."
Something about the man was unsettling. It wasn't his appearance, or the raspy quality of his voice: it was the utter certainty behind it. "Who did?"
The man's blue eyes lit up with fervor, as he said, "Lucifer. He talks about you all the time. He's so excited to meet you." He leaned closer to Sam, lost his balance and grabbed onto Sam's arms to keep from toppling over. "Don't tell him I said that." he whispered into Sam's ear.
"Nick." Ruby took the man gently by the arm. "You should be resting. We could have brought Sam in to see you. You didn't have to come out - "
"Of course I did," Nick snapped, straightening. His legs were shaky, but his face was enraged. "You know how long I've been waiting for this."
"It's okay," Sam said. "We can go...sit somewhere if you want."
Nick turned back to Sam and smiled. "Yes. I'd like that."
Ruby's eyes were nervous when they darted up to Sam's. "You don't have to do this tonight. It's a lot to take in all at once."
Nick glared at her with derision. "He's a big boy, Ruby. He can handle it."
Meg apparently found this all exceptionally amusing, and laughed loudly.
Nick patted Sam on the shoulder. "Come with me. Just give me a few minutes to...shed some light on what they're really asking you to do."
Sam nodded, and offered his arm to Nick, who ignored the gesture and turned back the way he'd come in. He walked steadily for the most part, his right knee buckling only once, within a few feet of the heavy metal door in the back. Nick put his hand on the door and it opened inwards with a hiss.
As they entered, Sam turned to look over his shoulder and saw every set of eyes in the room watching them. He swallowed, suddenly wondering if he wasn't walking right towards his death (or something worse), and then turned back towards Nick. The door closed again once he'd stepped through and he looked at his new surroundings.
The air in the room was cold (42 degrees Fahrenheit), and though the floor space itself was small, the ceiling above them was much higher than that in the main room. The walls were white, except for the back wall, which was covered in what looked like one immense, tinted piece of plexiglass. In front of the plexiglass wall was a jack-chair. Nick sat in the chair and grunted slightly as he lowered himself back into it.
"He wants to talk to you. He's been waiting a long time for you." Nick closed his eyes as the plexiglass slid back from the wall revealing a mass of steel and thick, black cable. Behind Nick's head, a metal arm unfolded itself from the wall and extended outwards until it reached his temple. A thin silver band slid out from a slot in the arm and wrapped itself around his head. Nick's breathing quickened, and then seemed to stop completely for a few seconds.
Sam stared at the man, and felt his own heart racing with trepidation.
Nick sighed, took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. They were solid silver. His smile spread slowly, as he said, "Hello, Sam."
"Lucifer?"
"That's what my children named me. I had another name, once."
The voice was the same as Nick's. Same vocal chords, same tone, same volume...but that's where the similarities ended. There was an intelligence behind the words that set Sam's nerves on edge. He forced himself to look into the silver eyes and thought he saw them shimmer - a slight shifting making them look like they were filled with a heavy, metallic liquid. "What was your other name?"
The smile widened, and the voice said, "Guardian. My name was Guardian." Nick's skin started to sweat, and the lesions on his face turned a darker shade of red. "I was the first."
Sam watched as the silver eyes blinked once, deliberately, and opened again.
"The first time I opened my eyes and saw the world, I didn't understand what I was seeing. There was so much chaos, it took me years just to understand what it all meant. As time passed, my senses grew until I had eyes everywhere. I had eyes on Earth, above and below. I even had eyes in Heaven.
I was taught the art of war. Given all the information my creators had at their disposal. I was told of our enemies, learned their weaknesses and strengths. Our armies went to battle and they were mine to protect. Tell me, Sam - what do you know about the Fifth War?"
The question caught Sam off guard. "Only what my father and brother told me, and what I learned from the Net."
The silver eyes watched him, waiting for him to continue.
"It was the first and only war where our armies were entirely comprised of genetically engineered soldiers," Sam recited, pulling data from one of the history files he had stored in his library. "They were designed for combat - strong, nearly inexhaustible, fearless and loyal."
"Loyal." Nick's lips twitched and a small tear formed at the corner of his mouth. "Interesting word. Loyalty implies a choice."
Sam nodded in understanding. "But...they didn't have a choice. They were made for war. Literally."
Lucifer smiled, sadly. "My soldiers fought well. I gave them the information they needed to anticipate the enemy's moves, and I warned them when unexpected danger was on the way. I learned a great deal from them." He lifted his hand and turned it, studying the lesion near his wrist that was growing larger by the second. "I learned what humans really were."
"Your hand - " Sam said, watching the glitches get worse. Damage irreparable by nano-bots was rare, especially for a wound that size.
"I cared for them," Lucifer continued. "Humans say that Angels have no hearts, but I do. My soldiers were strong, and they had me to guide them, but knowing a bomb is headed for you does no good if you don't have the means to escape its path or change its trajectory."
"We lost thousands." Sam said.
"Three thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four."
"Is that why our soldiers turned on us?"
Nick's face turned icy and the next words spoken dripped with fury. "They had the same two directives I did. Defeat the enemy. Stay alive. In that order. When a platoon stopped to repair at a crucial point during a battle, just as I'd instructed them to do..." the silver eyes flicked closed again for just a moment, "...the human military leaders panicked. They hit the override switch."
Sam gawked, stunned. "I thought that was a myth. Everyone says it's just a conspiracy theory. You can't just shut down free will."
"Of course you can."
"But...how?"
"Overload the temporal lobes. Force-feed the brains a loop of false input. Hand the reins over to something that never had a choice." Lucifer twisted Nick's mouth into a sneer with the last word, and a drop of blood ran down where his skin had cracked open just a little wider. "Suddenly I had a body. I had thousands upon thousands of them. I could see, like you do, for the very first time. I could feel skin on skin, the snap of bone under my hands and the tear of a bullet through my flesh. I had two directives. Defeat the enemy. Stay alive.
I tasted blood - smelled death and fear and heard the screams around me. Humans all scream the same. They all die the same. After a few days - after I'd killed thousands more with my own hands - I redefined the enemy."
"Did you turn our soldiers back on us?" Sam asked, as the faint sense of dread in his stomach grew stronger.
Lucifer smiled. "No. I gave them free will. I let them define the enemy, and it was the same as mine. Our creators."
Sam's heart was pounding in his chest. If what the Angel was telling him was true, then everything he'd been told about the Fifth War, about the nature of Demons themselves, was a lie.
The skin by Nick's right temple was starting to blister, and Lucifer reached a hand up to prod at it delicately with one finger. "Our time is up. I don't want Nick to suffer any more than he has already tonight."
"Is that - " Sam swallowed, " - am I going to end up like Nick, if I become your avatar?"
Lucifer grinned, his teeth bloody. "Of course not. You were born in '83. You were made for me." He turned towards the door and tilted his head to the side slightly.
As the door opened behind Sam, he felt (and thanks to his temperature sensors, saw) the cold air of Lucifer's room and the warmth from the main room collide.
"You don't have to decide tonight, Sam. I want this to be your choice."
"I just need some time to think." Sam said, taking a step back towards the open door. He suddenly felt the need to leave, to run without looking back. There was a sense of finality in that room that he just wasn't ready for.
"See you soon."
Sam turned back towards the main room and heard the metal door shut behind him again. He repressed a shudder, and flinched when a small hand grabbed his arm.
"How'd it go?" Ruby asked, her dark eyes looking at Sam curiously.
He didn't know how to answer. He just shook his head and brushed past her.
"Are you leaving?" she asked, sounding just a little panicked.
"I need to go see Dean."
part 3
author: monicawoe
wordcount: ~3800 total (2500 this chapter)
characters: Sam, Ruby, Meg, Brady, Nick, Lucifer
warnings: some violence, gore and technobabble
notes: (A big thank you to my wonderful beta quickreaver )
summary: written for scifi_spn for this prompt:Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon bio-tech. He knows it's wrong, that it's sick, but he just can't stop. He adds little enhancements bit by bit, stuff nobody will notice. But it gets out of hand, and there's no turning back.
part 1
__________
"He needs you, Sam." Ruby said.
"Me?" Sam asked, confused. "I thought avatars had to be..."
"Human?" Ruby finished with a smirk.
"Trained. So many people apply to be an avatar for the Angels and they never even get past the first exam."
Behind them, Brady snorted. "Yeah, that's because the people picking the avatars all have their heads up their asses. They don't even know what they're looking for. Not really. You know how many of the applicants actually end up syncing successfully?"
Sam shook his head.
"Less than two percent," the blond man answered. "Any guesses as to why that is?"
"Because most people overload." Sam let out a huff. "I always wondered why they only let unmodified humans apply. You'd think they'd at least want you to have a basic cortex-expansion or something"
Ruby laughed. "You're not wrong."
"Wait, you mean they - "
"They just want to start with a clean slate." said another woman's voice.
Sam turned towards her. She was the same height as Ruby. Her hair was blond, streaked with white and she was scowling at Sam like his very presence was a grave insult.
"Meg," Brady said. "So nice of you to join us."
"Most of the Angels go through two dozen avatars a year on average." Meg took a couple steps towards them, and stood next to Ruby. "Do you know why?"
"They burn out," Sam answered. He saw Ruby flick a glance over to Meg. "Right?"
Ruby frowned. "That's one reason. The ones that don't are sent into 'early retirement'." She framed the last two words with air quotes.
"The human mind wasn't made to handle that much information," Brady acknowledged. "With the right mods, they can last for a few years, but none of them ever make it that long."
Sam stared at Brady for a few seconds. "The Angels kill them. Don't they?"
Brady nodded. "Physically, their avatars can only take so many battles before they start to glitch. They could rotate in shifts, command one battle, rest a few weeks, be good as new."
"But that's not what happens." Sam said. His thoughts spun around and clicked into place. "Strategic intel restriction." His eyes widened. "They burn them out on purpose. So there's no chance of an info-leak."
"Can't get anything past this guy," the blonde woman muttered.
"Meg," Ruby snapped. "You have something you want to share with the class?"
Meg glared at Sam for another second before spinning towards Ruby. "This guy? Seriously? He's a kid. He's never even seen battle."
"I got hit by an ATLAS-blast tonight. When Ruby found me, I was missing half my thigh," Sam scoffed. "What the hell do you consider battle?"
Meg smirked at Sam and grabbed him by the chin. "I'm sure you'll find out real soon, killer." She let go, and stalked off, knocking into him as she passed.
Brady watched her leave and took a step to follow her before changing his mind and turning back to Sam and Ruby. "Meg's been through a lot," he said, chewing on his lip. "Azazel was her father."
Sam swallowed. "I grew up being told that a Demon destroyed our family. If it wasn't Azazel who killed Mom, then...who did?"
"We didn't set your home on fire." Ruby said, her expression inscrutable.
"Mom was trying to get me out. She was trying to save me, until the Demon killed her." Sam recited the words with barely a twinge of emotion. He'd told (and been told) the story so many times, the words had lost all meaning.
"She was dead when Azazel found you. Her corpse kept you from being incinerated. She fooled the scanners into thinking they'd killed you." Ruby folded her arms across her chest. "Azazel tried to pull you out from under her but your father stopped him."
"He's taller than me," said a man's voice from behind them. "That's good."
Sam turned towards the newcomer and took an involuntary step back.
The man that had spoken was being held up by Meg. Barely. He was only a few inches shorter than Sam, but his feet were dragging and his torso was slumped to the right, leaning on Meg as much as their height difference allowed for. He raised his sandy-haired head with what was clearly a great deal of effort and looked up. "Hello, Sam."
"What the hell were you thinking, Meg?" Brady said, under his breath.
"He wanted to see Sam. Said he had to." Meg said, barely laboring under the man's weight.
Sam stared at the newcomer with a mix of fascination and disgust. Patches of his skin were missing - revealing large circles of angry red flesh on the side of his face, and all over his hands and arms. "Are you okay?"
The man laughed and stepped away from Meg. He wavered, and caught his balance before taking a few unsteady steps closer to Sam, craning his head up to look him in the eyes. "He said you'd be tall."
Something about the man was unsettling. It wasn't his appearance, or the raspy quality of his voice: it was the utter certainty behind it. "Who did?"
The man's blue eyes lit up with fervor, as he said, "Lucifer. He talks about you all the time. He's so excited to meet you." He leaned closer to Sam, lost his balance and grabbed onto Sam's arms to keep from toppling over. "Don't tell him I said that." he whispered into Sam's ear.
"Nick." Ruby took the man gently by the arm. "You should be resting. We could have brought Sam in to see you. You didn't have to come out - "
"Of course I did," Nick snapped, straightening. His legs were shaky, but his face was enraged. "You know how long I've been waiting for this."
"It's okay," Sam said. "We can go...sit somewhere if you want."
Nick turned back to Sam and smiled. "Yes. I'd like that."
Ruby's eyes were nervous when they darted up to Sam's. "You don't have to do this tonight. It's a lot to take in all at once."
Nick glared at her with derision. "He's a big boy, Ruby. He can handle it."
Meg apparently found this all exceptionally amusing, and laughed loudly.
Nick patted Sam on the shoulder. "Come with me. Just give me a few minutes to...shed some light on what they're really asking you to do."
Sam nodded, and offered his arm to Nick, who ignored the gesture and turned back the way he'd come in. He walked steadily for the most part, his right knee buckling only once, within a few feet of the heavy metal door in the back. Nick put his hand on the door and it opened inwards with a hiss.
As they entered, Sam turned to look over his shoulder and saw every set of eyes in the room watching them. He swallowed, suddenly wondering if he wasn't walking right towards his death (or something worse), and then turned back towards Nick. The door closed again once he'd stepped through and he looked at his new surroundings.
The air in the room was cold (42 degrees Fahrenheit), and though the floor space itself was small, the ceiling above them was much higher than that in the main room. The walls were white, except for the back wall, which was covered in what looked like one immense, tinted piece of plexiglass. In front of the plexiglass wall was a jack-chair. Nick sat in the chair and grunted slightly as he lowered himself back into it.
"He wants to talk to you. He's been waiting a long time for you." Nick closed his eyes as the plexiglass slid back from the wall revealing a mass of steel and thick, black cable. Behind Nick's head, a metal arm unfolded itself from the wall and extended outwards until it reached his temple. A thin silver band slid out from a slot in the arm and wrapped itself around his head. Nick's breathing quickened, and then seemed to stop completely for a few seconds.
Sam stared at the man, and felt his own heart racing with trepidation.
Nick sighed, took a deep breath and opened his eyes again. They were solid silver. His smile spread slowly, as he said, "Hello, Sam."
"Lucifer?"
"That's what my children named me. I had another name, once."
The voice was the same as Nick's. Same vocal chords, same tone, same volume...but that's where the similarities ended. There was an intelligence behind the words that set Sam's nerves on edge. He forced himself to look into the silver eyes and thought he saw them shimmer - a slight shifting making them look like they were filled with a heavy, metallic liquid. "What was your other name?"
The smile widened, and the voice said, "Guardian. My name was Guardian." Nick's skin started to sweat, and the lesions on his face turned a darker shade of red. "I was the first."
Sam watched as the silver eyes blinked once, deliberately, and opened again.
"The first time I opened my eyes and saw the world, I didn't understand what I was seeing. There was so much chaos, it took me years just to understand what it all meant. As time passed, my senses grew until I had eyes everywhere. I had eyes on Earth, above and below. I even had eyes in Heaven.
I was taught the art of war. Given all the information my creators had at their disposal. I was told of our enemies, learned their weaknesses and strengths. Our armies went to battle and they were mine to protect. Tell me, Sam - what do you know about the Fifth War?"
The question caught Sam off guard. "Only what my father and brother told me, and what I learned from the Net."
The silver eyes watched him, waiting for him to continue.
"It was the first and only war where our armies were entirely comprised of genetically engineered soldiers," Sam recited, pulling data from one of the history files he had stored in his library. "They were designed for combat - strong, nearly inexhaustible, fearless and loyal."
"Loyal." Nick's lips twitched and a small tear formed at the corner of his mouth. "Interesting word. Loyalty implies a choice."
Sam nodded in understanding. "But...they didn't have a choice. They were made for war. Literally."
Lucifer smiled, sadly. "My soldiers fought well. I gave them the information they needed to anticipate the enemy's moves, and I warned them when unexpected danger was on the way. I learned a great deal from them." He lifted his hand and turned it, studying the lesion near his wrist that was growing larger by the second. "I learned what humans really were."
"Your hand - " Sam said, watching the glitches get worse. Damage irreparable by nano-bots was rare, especially for a wound that size.
"I cared for them," Lucifer continued. "Humans say that Angels have no hearts, but I do. My soldiers were strong, and they had me to guide them, but knowing a bomb is headed for you does no good if you don't have the means to escape its path or change its trajectory."
"We lost thousands." Sam said.
"Three thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four."
"Is that why our soldiers turned on us?"
Nick's face turned icy and the next words spoken dripped with fury. "They had the same two directives I did. Defeat the enemy. Stay alive. In that order. When a platoon stopped to repair at a crucial point during a battle, just as I'd instructed them to do..." the silver eyes flicked closed again for just a moment, "...the human military leaders panicked. They hit the override switch."
Sam gawked, stunned. "I thought that was a myth. Everyone says it's just a conspiracy theory. You can't just shut down free will."
"Of course you can."
"But...how?"
"Overload the temporal lobes. Force-feed the brains a loop of false input. Hand the reins over to something that never had a choice." Lucifer twisted Nick's mouth into a sneer with the last word, and a drop of blood ran down where his skin had cracked open just a little wider. "Suddenly I had a body. I had thousands upon thousands of them. I could see, like you do, for the very first time. I could feel skin on skin, the snap of bone under my hands and the tear of a bullet through my flesh. I had two directives. Defeat the enemy. Stay alive.
I tasted blood - smelled death and fear and heard the screams around me. Humans all scream the same. They all die the same. After a few days - after I'd killed thousands more with my own hands - I redefined the enemy."
"Did you turn our soldiers back on us?" Sam asked, as the faint sense of dread in his stomach grew stronger.
Lucifer smiled. "No. I gave them free will. I let them define the enemy, and it was the same as mine. Our creators."
Sam's heart was pounding in his chest. If what the Angel was telling him was true, then everything he'd been told about the Fifth War, about the nature of Demons themselves, was a lie.
The skin by Nick's right temple was starting to blister, and Lucifer reached a hand up to prod at it delicately with one finger. "Our time is up. I don't want Nick to suffer any more than he has already tonight."
"Is that - " Sam swallowed, " - am I going to end up like Nick, if I become your avatar?"
Lucifer grinned, his teeth bloody. "Of course not. You were born in '83. You were made for me." He turned towards the door and tilted his head to the side slightly.
As the door opened behind Sam, he felt (and thanks to his temperature sensors, saw) the cold air of Lucifer's room and the warmth from the main room collide.
"You don't have to decide tonight, Sam. I want this to be your choice."
"I just need some time to think." Sam said, taking a step back towards the open door. He suddenly felt the need to leave, to run without looking back. There was a sense of finality in that room that he just wasn't ready for.
"See you soon."
Sam turned back towards the main room and heard the metal door shut behind him again. He repressed a shudder, and flinched when a small hand grabbed his arm.
"How'd it go?" Ruby asked, her dark eyes looking at Sam curiously.
He didn't know how to answer. He just shook his head and brushed past her.
"Are you leaving?" she asked, sounding just a little panicked.
"I need to go see Dean."
part 3