Category : Adult

Sub Category : Horror

(This is the continuation of HOST(Chapters 1-4) If you have not read the first four chapters, these chapters WILL NOT MAKE SENSE. If you have not read the previous part, PLEASE STOP READING AND READ THE FIRST PART.)





Chapter 5: The Cut - Danielle



Pain.

This place held nothing but pain and agony. My mouth had been forced shut by Thomas' soft, if not very sweaty hand as he opened the door to this room. As soon as the door slid open for us, all I could hear was piercing screams and the sound of mechanical whirring and grinding. My nose caught the instant scent of barbecued meat, but my developed brain would not allow me the illusion that the scientists were having a cookout.

"This place..." Thomas looked sick to his stomach, his mocha skin turning a dark shade of green and pouring buckets of sweat. The kindness that I had felt from him before was increased tenfold now, it was clear that he didn't want to be here, and that he didn't want me to be here either. I removed his dampened hand from my mouth and decided to speak.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked, allowing myself as calm an attitude as I could manage with the sounds of screaming deafening my ears. He looked sheepish at that for a split second, before returning to looking ill. 

"Everyone is going to have to come to this room at some point to test their regenerative properties. You are also scheduled for this room soon... and I don't wish for you to be afraid, but something needs to be done." His voice was getting stronger, as if he were truly assured that he was doing the right thing by showing me this right now. I wasn't so sure that he was. Considering the traumatic screaming and smells my senses were currently being assaulted with.

" They won't explain the process to you, they'll just cut away and do their job. But you are one of the special ones, I don't want them to break you." I couldn't help but feel my brows furrow as he talked, knowing that calling me special wasn't as endearing as he had probably meant it to be. Special here only meant more testing, and apparently, more cutting.

"Then explain." He seemed to have followed my words like a command, as if he had been waiting for me to give the okay. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me along, though he seemed to have to give it a bit of effort for the first pull. We were very similar in height, though his musculature wasn't as lacking as mine still was. I liked to think that he simply didn't wish to seem like he was forcing me to look at this place, but in all honesty, I didn't have much of a choice here regardless of the one that was presented.

"The K-80Y serum shifted everybody's molecular structure to the point of such enhancement that you are supposed to be able to regenerate yourself if you incur any wounds... in order to make sure everyone is taking to the serum, we test the different aspects of your abilities. The other Physical Therapists like me make sure your body becomes strong and comfortable, the Psychiatrists make sure your mental health is manageable... and these scientists... Cut." He guided me around the perimeter, keeping me out of the other's scientist's sight.

"So... this is just their job." I reasoned aloud, wincing slightly at the sight I could now fully appreciate for every visceral detail.

Each subject was strapped down onto a slab, but there were different wounds on each. A woman here with the flesh of her leg stripped, her muscles and sinew exposed to the air. A man there with what looked like a terribly nasty broken arm, bone splintered and shattered through the skin and bleeding profusely. One persons face was missing a nose and their eyes... The smell of urine and waste wafted through the saline-scented air, the pain obviously too much once certain subjects passed out, but the doctors had prepped syringes of amber liquid one could only assume was adrenaline to keep them awake and alert. As horrifying as is was to see, all I could do was watch as closely as I could, seeing that the torn flesh had started healing itself. It was still repairing itself slowly, but compared to basic human healing, this was a massive breakthrough. In real time, I could see the jelly-like fluid filling a punctured eyeball. As it was repairing itself, the shattered eye socket was regenerating tiny pieces of bone shard by shard.

"Why don't they put them to sleep before testing? If anything, their bodies would heal better while they were under anesthesia." I ask, turning my attention back to something a bit less... medical mystery. Thomas shook his head, meeting my eyes to avoid looking at the other's. It was clear how uncomfortable he was here, but it was also clear that he was trying to hold himself together.

"Those trials are already done. Everyone needs to be awake now, to see how they fare when they aren't being assisted by their body's natural means of healing.  The step after this will be seeing how well they can function with such severe injuries." He responded uneasily, his hand on his stomach as he forced his lunch to remain in his stomach where it belonged. I could only assume that the functioning part of these exercises was to make sure that whatever they were sent out to do, it would get done no matter what kind of hostile environment they were thrust into. I couldn't help a sharp pang of worry settling in my stomach at the possibility of this amount of pain during a mission... doing whatever it is we were built to be doing.

"I have never gone through this treatment. You have never brought me here." I had made the statement with utmost certainty, but just as soon as the words left my lips, I felt them hang lifelessly in the air as lies.

"You were heavily sedated, just like everyone else. But... your wounds... were not made so severe... nor visible." He touched a place on my back and pressed lightly, and my body quickly processed the slight numbness there. There was scar tissue there, but it didn't feel as fresh as it obviously should have. 

"Why was my treatment different?" I asked, wondering if I had already guessed the answer.

"You and several others were spared these difficult tests... but your Doctor requested that you watch the process the others are made to go through. He may ask you about this later, and whatever your thoughts on the procedure...' he paused and looked onward at the other scientists, their drills and scapels digging and cutting away the tissue and bones of their prized experiments, 'You need to tell him that this procedure is barbaric."

I had to stop my gaze on the scientists at work and stared at Thomas, slightly shocked to hear him say what he had. He should know by now that I was basically genetically reprogrammed to be loyal to this facility and its inhabitants... regardless of my opinions about this particular place, I had to continue with the testing. The testing, the preparation, the experiements... I had spent so long in a tube, unable to speak and voice my thoughts. I had spent years laid bare before dozens of uncaring scientific eyes to become something new.

"If this is how the serum's effects were chosen to be tested, then it was probably the one that the Doctor deemed least likely to destroy his subjects. He wouldn't hurt us for fun, Thomas." Was all I could think to say to him. As scary as this procedure was, how else could they test our self-healing abilities? At the very least, these wounds could be kept under watch in case something went wrong. As frightening and painful as it was, this experiment was for the good of the serum. It was probably the most humane way they could do this... though the process made me want to throw up slightly.

Thomas looked mortified, his dark eyes looking me up and down with something different than he ever had before. Fear?

" You are supposed to be special. You are always thinking and learning more about this place like the other one, you..." He seemed to argue a point under his breath and to himself, his eyes going a bit wild and his complexion seeming to see with fresh sweat, but I couldn't decipher his resonings through the muttering. I reached out to him, hoping to calm him with a pat on the shoulder or something similar, but he quickly slapped my hand away, the expression of fear changing sharply into disgust. I had upset him.

" You need to get to the therapy wing, now. I need to make myself useful elsewhere, so escort yourself." Before I could speak, his voice seemed to boom around me, though he couldn't have spoken any louder than he had previously. I felt myself stiffen at his words, standing up straight, which only made his face pinch up even worse.

"That's an order."







Chapter Six: Bound -Tyler


Tyler had been sitting in his room for hours, waiting for some sort of treatment, therapist or doctor. Usually every day was suffiently busy, but today was just the opposite. It was quiet, only the subtle sounds of the air conditioning unit kicking on and whirring every once in a while, and the dull buzz from the fluorescents. 

On any other day, he would be getting his flesh poked or prodded by some tiny lady-nurse, followed by a shrink session with the old fat doctor he had been supervised by. Being left alone with his thoughts couldn't be the best thing for his new possible role as a leader, which made him wonder what the silent treatment was for.

He thought on J-80 for a time. The very tall woman with the lanky body and short brown hair. She seemed very tired and very quiet for someone who might be considered as a fellow competitor for a role in future leadership. That, and her body had looked like someone had sucked the life out of it; if her 'tube' experience was anything like what he was picturing in his mind... he was more than sympathetic. Hopefully, the more physical therapy she underwent, he could only assume that her body would finally grow into itself, like his own slowly was.

His skin was fitting much better today, though not quite what he would describe as comfortable yet. His eyes still struggled a bit with blinking or staying shut, and his stretch marks resembled what he could only imagine a mother of thirty's belly would look like... if she had carried them all at the same time. And they were also all small, round hippopotoamuses. 

He took this quiet, uninterrupted time to amble around his room, stretching his muscles and exerting a bit of energy. It was something that he had meant to mention to one of the doctors, but often found that it seemed to disappear from his mind before he could do so. He had the constant feeling that his body was slightly buzzing with energy, like it needed to be burned before it gradually turned him into molten lava. Or an atomic bomb. Instead of voicing his concerns, he simply took care of his excess on his own, doing his walking, push ups, sit ups... If anything, it kept him busy. Sped up the time between therapy or injections and made his time pass faster. 

Today, no amount of menial tasks or useless walking could keep him from counting the seconds. He briefly wondered if he was indeed receiving his punishment for clocking the idiot in the yard, the cold shoulder. Maybe this was another test, to see how well he could undergo solitary confinement. 

This day is the longest day.

Tyler's mind decided to take a trip during his walk, thinking of the time he had spent in the Yard. So many faces, but after the small bit of information he had gotten from J-80, a lot of their faces were much more identifiable now. 

The ones who had been put into tubes looked thinner, and understandably more... traumatised... than the ones who had been put onto a slab like he had. They were all very angular and wispy, though other than a very eerily tall subject who had remained beside the door the entire time, J-80 was the tallest of the tube subjects. There was also a bit of a gender asymmetry in the bunch that were in the yard. At the start of the experiment, there had probably been an even number of men to women ratio, but at this point in the treatment... it was probably a two-to-one male vs women population. He wanted to assess the reason for this, not wishing to chock it out to the old "Women can't handle as much as men can" as some would suggest. He had known many women among his ranks in the military and not one would be considered weak. He fought alongside many amazing ladies who gave 'Tough Guys' a run for their money.

It did make him think longer on this, as to why so many of them were... not in the picture. Had they died during the trials? Were they being kept elsewhere? And if they were, why were the other women here? He grumbled to himself, unable to put the puzzle pieces together without knowing the picture on the box.

They were supposed to be an elite force, weren't they? Every time he tried to keep that thought in mind, his every nerve fought to disagree. He told himself that he was supposed to fight, as he always had, but the inner war that constantly went on within his head only gave him headaches. Headaches led to more pacing. Pacing led to more thinking.

He continued to torture himself for what seemed like hours, but stopped when he heard a click by the outermost door. He turned and looked at the inner door, the door that led to the small decontamination chamber that separated him from the doctors. Not that he was contagious, but he had to give the scientists credit for thinking ahead.

"Did somebody forget about little ol' me in here?" He said aloud, both a bit irritated and relieved to hear someone coming to do their job.

The door slid open to reveal the small mousy woman scientist, who pitter-pattered her way to the center of the room.

"You have been in your room for about 72 hours. Aren't you going to go to sleep, K-80?" She said, her eyes a bit tired themselves. He frowned, cocking a tight brow at her. He had been back here for 3 days, and he hadn't even noticed the passage of time? It had felt like... Maybe a twelve hour period? A little more? 

"Were you waiting for me to sleep before you did your testing? Why?" He asked, knowing her answer before it was given.

"Instructions had been given to allow you some time to process your previous actions in the Recreation Yard. Dr. Allen requested that you were to be given your space. You seemed a little jittery, so I was trying to wait until you calmed down.' She looked sheepish at that before she continued. 'You only seemed to be getting worse, so I made an elective decision to try to calm you myself." 

He could have laughed in her face just about then. By trying to calm himself down and make the most of his day, he had unwittingly made his solitude go on longer than it was supposed to.

"Are you done?" The mousy doctor asked, her little feet tapping their way toward the dentist-like chair by the two-way mirror. He sighed and walked over, sitting carefully in the giant chair. It had been made specifically to handle his immense size, as it had been made clear with original (and now flattened) chair that one-size-fits-all did not fit Tyler-size.

"Yeah. What's on the menu today?" The lady doctor strapped him down with the metal locks, making him raise a brow at her.

" You know that I hate these things. And can easily break them." He tried to keep his arm off of the metal, but was stopped by a sharp shocking pain. He barked out a shout in surprise. 

"Not these ones.' The lady doctor batted her for eyes behind the glasses, looking down at the clip board a few seconds before turning on the projector on the mirror. Instead of seeing himself, he saw... J-80? She was being projected on the glass like a high-definition monitor. 'I have been instructed to show you this part of the process by Dr. Allen. He wants to know your thoughts on the procedure."

She pressed play on the clip, and began leaving the room.

"Wait... why do I have to be strapped for this? HEY, DOC!" She slipped through the door and it blinked red as it was locked again behind her. He fought the urge to call her something distasteful before returning his eyes to the screen. What he saw made his blood run cold.

J-80 was strapped down onto a metal slab, much like the one he had originally been placed on upon his arrival at the laboratory. Her mouth was clenched shut, making the jut of her jaw pinch the corners of her face. There were tears forming at the corners of her eyes, but none had fallen quite yet. The video panned out just slightly to show her entire body on the table, barely clothed in a sport-bra-esque chest covering and simply matching grey undergarments to cover her lower half. There were tiny suction cupped tubes feeding her vitals to a monitor just outside the camera's view, the sound was on just enough for him to make out the calm beeping noise of her heart.

The setting wasn t really new to him, but the open wound in her gut certainly was. The doctor who stood before her was cutting into her flesh, flaying the skin from her side like she was some gutted fish. He instinctively yanked his arms forward and received a mild shock, reminding him of his binds. He was being forced to watch... her torture?

The knife was digging in further, and the look on her face was becoming more and more... agonized. The tears that had refused to fall earlier were starting to spill over, and when a scapels found it's way into the tissue near her hip bone, they were gushing from her eyes. His mouth had dropped open by then, a tingling feeling rising from his chest and spreading through his body. He felt sick.

Another doctor was on the other side of her, playing her other side to meet the sick surgeon in the middle until her entire lower torso had been exposed. Bright red muscle was gleaming with blood, and J-80 had begun quivering her lip, clearly biting the inside of it to keep from sobbing and jostling their knives. Seeing her face in such pain made that tingling feeling begin to burn like a growing fire in his chest. The shocks he was receiving from clenching his fists was far from his mind.

A small buzz from the size of the camera only changed the tempo of the cutting. They moved to different parts of her, cutting and slicing and severing, she had lost the battle with herself and had started sobbing, her body drowning in it's own blood, what skin that had been left on her turning a pallid pink. When they had finally stopped cutting, they only paused to change their sterilized tools and move to her face. Her body was still... alive, but this torture... He could see, no feel, her fear.

"Please..." Her voice was small, as it had been when they had spoken before in the yard. She was such a quiet creature. The way she spoke now was simply defeated, exhausted. "You said-"

Before she could get another word out, a scalpel found it's way toward her eye, and her bleeding hands started tugging at her restraints. Her toes curled and her body fought to get herself off of the table. He watched in horror as the scalpel moved slowly downward, her bright eyes burning red with tears shut, trying desperately to protect her eyes. The off-hand doctor grabbed her face and forced her lid open, making her watch as the scalpel brushed her pupil, then dug into it, burying the silver of metal deep into her socket.

The volume from the projection felt like it had been cranked up to the sound of a theater system, J-80's quiet pleas shifted instantly into a scream, like a banshee had woken deep within her body. 

Tyler could hear no more, the sound of her screaming made the fire inside him nearly explode from his body, ripping himself free from his chair and throwing it through the double-sided mirror in a rage. The shackles remained around his wrists, detached from the chair, but still electrocuting him with a fury that couldn't hope to match his own. 

"What the FUCK are you doing in this place, old man?" He turned away from the shattered mirror to see that the small fat doctor was standing in the doorway, a contemplative look on his face. Tyler trudged toward him, feeling his own unbridled rage boiling and seething out of every pore, ready to grab that man and shred him into ragged bits. As always, Dr. Allen was simply watching the show.

"She has healed. This video was recorded yesterday and she has nearly made a full recovery." Tyler stopped dead in his tracks, his anger still bubbling off of him, but he felt like he had hit a wall.

"Why the FU-"

"Danielle is a very resilient subject. She was not originally supposed to be part of this particular program, but volunteered to see what the others were going through." Tyler felt like cold water had been poured on his face, the anger still hot under the cold that tried to surround him.

"You have a very strong bond with her, it seems. Not many of the other subjects reacted so... violently." The shackles buzzed slightly as if to punctuate his point. The small, fat doctor tilted his head, watching Tyler think.

"You two are very strong-willed, and I think it would be beneficial for you to spend more time with one another in the Yard. There are a few others who reacted similarly, if not much less destructive, who will also be present." Tyler realise now how very tired he was for once and blinked slowly at the man.

"I will have Melissa tell you when Danielle is ready for the recreation area. She still needs a bit more rest."

"Don't do that shit again." Tyler still held an expression that resembled fuming, but felt defeated all the same. He barely knew this Danielle, and he could have put himself into actual solitary confinement after that stunt he had just pulled. The serum was more potent than he had previously thought if it could rewire his brain like that. Would it help the subjects with their loyalty to one another? Or was there something... else to this?

"I promise you, Tyler, that shit will never happen to Miss Danielle again."