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Rules of Engagement (Prototype/MCU)
- Thread starter FixerUpper
- Start date
- Crossover
XkaliburRage
Perpetual Procrastinator
[x] Strike a pose and rescue a few hapless hobos.
theflyingbiscuit
"Titanic neechan"
[x] Run into your house to rescue your cat.
If I'm not mistaken, the cats take this one. Thanks for voting!
8. Week 7: White Coats
Jersey City. Minutes Later.
Snow falls, flakes fat, wet and cold, carpeting the back of your head and rolling down to your waist. Gatot is a memory, and the worst of the slaughter has vanished, small carcasses buried beneath the rising snow. You, however, haven't. You are still, silent; nothing more than a statue kneeling in the icy gloam, a small, trembling bundle clutched in your hands.
Minds whirl within your own, a wealth of information and experience, all of it telling you need to move.
You don't.
There's been a bit of a misunderstanding. It needs sorting out. Just in case, you push again against the pressure surrounding your skin, but nothing happens. You bite your lower lip.
It really, really needs sorting out.
"Leah," you prompt.
For almost a minute, all you receive in reply is silence. Then you hear a small 'sorry'. It's like a voice coming from very far away.
Or from within.
You are pretty sure you have it figured. Leah was trying to protect you and at some point, she must have tried to jump bodies and the last viable one was yours. All other things being equal, you wouldn't have minded, but her unexpected residency has come with some unexpected consequences.
"There's not a lot of room in here," you tell her. This is patently false: your mind is very roomy and growing roomier all the time as new people move in, but you don't want to hurt her feelings so you are lying whitely. You hold up the bird hopefully. It's only slightly used and half-dead instead of completely used and all dead. "Look, I found a bird for you."
Another minute passes impatiently.
... can't.
"Okay, okay, okay," you mutter.
You wait, just in case she has more to say.
She doesn't.
Frowning, you try to consume the bird again, but your fingers remain fingers. They are small, human, and little else. No tendrils of biomatter, no holes, no mouths, no teeth, not even the slightest shiver of expanding and contracting flesh mars the surface. They're just fingers.
Above you, lamplight flickers and the snow continues its slow tumble down from the sky.
And you? You are, for the first time in your life, cold.
"Shit darn poo damn fuck," you curse.
Then you walk off, into the night, kicking moodily at the snow.
-----
Five days later, everything is on fire and there are scaled monster men escaping into the night.
It isn't even slightly your fault.
-----
Let's backtrack a bit. Just far enough so that we find you shivering in a dumpster in an alleyway between Circle Q and Radoslav's Vietnamese Grocery, but not so far that – as a certain merc armed with yellow boxes might colorfully put it – the Man with a Laptop has to explain where it was you shoved your inventory of miscellaneous weapons and loose change after you discovered you were mode-locked into being human. [1]
For some reasons your immediate neighbors are all mannequins, populating the dumpster like so many frozen bodies. Frost rims its sides, and if the temperature were any higher, you'd be wet instead of just cold. Indeed, normally, you'd be grazing on a dumpster buffet of new and excitingly rotting biomass, but you're three quarters human right now and you have determined, scientifically, that humans don't like dumpster food.
Leah warned you. You didn't listen. She blames your current predicament on you.
To be fair to you, she used the word 'gross' which you have become quite immune to by this point and thought of as hyperbole.
Now your human body is punishing you. Your mind feels stuffed with soft paper, and your body feels cold and shivery and sweaty all at once. You are dying. Things that you ate are now struggling to become uneaten. You didn't think that was possible. You'd seen it before, trawling around bars and imbibing delicious alcohol, but you assumed that people had been doing it for obscure social reasons.
Turns out, that's only half true. The other half is basic biology. Human bodies have minds of their own, and those minds are both fragile and picky and deeply entrenched in the gutter instinct known as 'disgust'. You honestly don't understand how humans have survived for so long.
Not enough water? The body starts demanding water. It gets thirsty. All on its own, instead of through carefully designed impetuses to become greater than it already is, like your hunger does for you. Drink too much water in the form of snow? It'll start nagging you about letting the excess water out even though there's a perfectly good system that can push water out through the pores. It's too cold because you let the water out and maybe because you were trying to drink snow? Blood starts getting rerouted from extremities and body starts going into fits. Your teeth clatter together and everything quakes like a car ride on a bad road.
Ridiculous. Worse is the whole consumption nonsense. Human bodies can consume things through a single orifice and first it has to go through a whole series of checks. Smell doesn't seem to be mainly for tracking prey, it's for verifying the disgust instinct. So is taste. So are the teeth. You ignore them at your peril.
Eat something out of a dumpster? It'll try to come back out all by itself having made some friends along the way.
And those friends will try to kill you.
Ugh. Everything hurts.
You huddle deeper into your shivering carcass. Human bodies are completely unreasonable and infuriating and you aren't having it. Not being able to shapeshift is one thing, not being able to hold down food is quite another. At this rate you're going to starve to – well, not to death, death is far away, even in your reduced state, but you're going to be very hungry and that's probably just as bad as dying. Worse, even. Death is an end of sorts. Starving is both really annoying and very painful.
Very, very painful.
The creak of a dumpster lid going up is amazingly loud. The sound of a trash bag hitting the ground is somehow even louder. And suddenly, it is really, really hecking cold.
You don't even have the energy to open your eyes.
A voice goes: "These mannequins are creeping me – wuh - oh shit! C-Bob! Chatty! You're going to want to have a look at this!"
Just because you don't have the energy to open your eyes, doesn't mean you don't have the energy to open one eye. You do so and see a young man with hair that reminds you of a brown lampshade, and skin the color of - of something brown. You don't have the - the wherewithwhatever to manage similes and metaphors right now. Nobody got time for that while they're busy dying because that's all human beings are good for. Dying.
You hate humans.
The boy begins mumbling under his breath. "Woah. Your eyes. Uh, we should get you somewhere warmer, but if it's too warm you could, um, oh god, please don't die-"
Footsteps crunch through the snow, accompanied by another voice: "Bruno, the day I want to have a look in a dumpster is the day I –" A much rounder, whiter face with dark thrusts itself up within eyesight, and immediately takes on a horrified mien, "HOLY SHIT."
"Like I said, Chatty. What do we do?"
You feel someone poke your shoulder. It says something about how far gone you are that if you were capable of it, you would have happily eaten him. Go away. You're dying or you feel like you're dying and you want to do so in peace.
Human beings suck.
"I dunno. Is she dead?" Chatty asks, the poking apparently not enough of a diagnostic. You conclude that Chatty is an idiot. You will eat him should the opportunity arise. "Hey. Girl in the dumpster. Are you dead?"
Definitely going to eat him.
"I think she's alive." Bruno says, allaying your wrath. When the time comes, he will be spared. "We should call-"
"911?"
"Yeah, that."
"Right."
"…Uh, Chatty, are you calling 911?"
"Yes. I am 100% doing that and not just freaking out because her eyes are like bright red lobster claws, stabbing through the darkness and stuff."
Someone moves closer to you. You can feel the heat of their existence and their breath. You will your skin to detach and form tendrils and spear him through the eyesockets, but what happens is mostly you shivering harder.
"Yeah, that's uncanny. But seriously, you need to call -"
"911 what's your emergency?"
"Shush. Hi 911, we, uh, we found a girl in a dumpster and she looks like she's in a bad way-"
The next few minutes are pretty busy.
911 wants them to do a lot of things so they end up taking you out of the dumpster, mostly complaining about how heavy you are and how they need to work out more before dragging you into the store and piling warm things on top of you until the ambulance arrives. You kind of cover one of them in regurgitated food before the ambulance makes it to the Circle Q.
For that, you will spare Bob's life.
The ambulance ride is fun. You toss out more food that is no longer food.
And at some point, everything goes black.
----
"Dee."
Mmhm?
"Dee."
Go 'way.
"Dee, you need to – well, not wake up wake up, but I need to talk to you."
'kay.
You wake up, but not wake up wake up. It'd be an amazing feat of skill were it not done completely by accident.
You are suddenly sitting in a chair. No, not a chair, a park bench. It is the newest-looking park bench you have ever seen: the paint all but sparkles. The grass is green. The sky is blue. The trees are lush, but when you peer closer, lack definition. You look around – the details here jump in and out of focus, like looking at real life with sudden blurs and whorls that are akin to a water painting. The sun is not so much blinding as it is a bright white dot in the sky. You sniff the air: the smell's all wrong. Muted.
A sketchy outline with shining hair sits on the bench next to you. It's made of lines of light.
"Can you stop doing that?" it asks you.
Leah, you realize. You also realize that you are not in pain anymore. You are suddenly much more cheerful.
Stop doing what?
"Focusing on all the details. It's giving me a headache."
I'll try.
"Please do."
You try to close your 'eyes', but somehow that doesn't work. Instead, you focus on Leah.
What's – you gesture vaguely and realize that you are made up of black bubbles, they coalesce into a hand that makes an expansive motion - this?
"I'm not sure. I'm calling it my Mindosphere. It's my, uh, personal bubble of me."
Oh. Cool. Is that the right time to use 'cool'?
"Yes it is, and yes it is."
Hmm. You make sure not to look around. Are we dead?
"Nope. Or, at least, I hope not." The white lines that you are pretty sure are arms fold across her chest. "I think you're dreaming."
I'm what.
"Dreaming. Like, y'know, sleeping?"
You do not need to scratch your head, but do so anyway.
What's sleeping. And dreaming.
"What do you mean what's sleeping – we've – you've slept before. What you're doing right now," Leah says.
I did not enter your mindosphere before, you inform her tartly, I would remember.
Leah purses her 'lips' and lets out a breath. Somewhere behind you, trees start to sway, as if a gust of wind had just picked up. "Ugh, no, I mean, like when I stop moving around and you also stop moving around. Usually at night?"
You think back. During most nights you mostly integrate new memories and fiddle with your biology to increase your basic abilities. It's very soothing.
Nope, you reply.
"Well, it's what you're doing now."
You scratch your head again.
I don't get it?
"Well…"
You are a little horrified by the explanation that follows.
You occasionally become physically inactive because it helps you digest your new memories and put them to productive use. It's also necessary for some of the more drastic alterations to your physiological makeup. Everyone needs a little bit of stasis time to tinker and make sure everything works properly when everything not working properly would probably make your arm fall off or your eyeballs explode.
But human bodies? Oh, human bodies would find that too reasonable. Human bodies find the whole sleep business mandatory. A quarter to a third of the day just spent lying on the ground. For no apparent reason! It's not like they'd been electrocuted or something. Leah says it's to recover energy, but in this dreamlike state you can vaguely monitor yourself and perform subtle alterations, but you still don't know why humans need to sleep. It's not an energy thing, it's not a digestion thing, it's not… anything!
Human bodies are dumb, you announce after making your checks.
"Yes, well, you get used to them," Leah says.
You sigh wistfully. Delicious, though.
Bubbles pop as Leah flicks you with a 'finger.' "And you were doing so well, too. Please don't tell the muggles that."
What are 'muggles'?
"Normal people. I've told you this before. And I've also told you not to tell people you eat people. Not that you ever listen to me –" an unknowing lie, you do listen to her, you just don't consider her 'normal,' "Anyway, I think I've figured out why you can't transform."
Ooh, ooh, you know the answer to this one.
Because of you.
"Yes, and there's the rub. I can't get out."
You ignore the obvious question in favor of getting to the point: Why?
"I jumped too many times, I think. I became thin. There wasn't enough of me left, just a lot of wildlife in the shape of a girl. I don't even know how I jumped here. I've been pulling myself together. I should have been able to leave, after that, but your mind's a scary place, Dee. It keeps trying to eat me."
Leah's trying to be nice, but you still get it. It's your fault, more or less. An unfamiliar feeling makes your black, bubbly mindosphere body fizz redly.
S-sorry.
"So, we're in a kind of tug-of-war." Before you need to ask, she adds: "We're fighting for control."
Hrm.
"If you could stop trying to eat me…"
It's not what she wants to hear, but the truth is: I'm really not trying.
"Well, could you not try, harder?" she asks you.
I'll-
-----
"-try."
You blink. Or rather, you make an attempt to do so. Something's covering your eyes. Gauzy pads, wrapped in some sort of fabric. You pull it off.
You are left staring at a ceiling. There's not that much to see - it's dark, wherever you are, and the ceiling is notably empty of anything save long lightbulbs emitting no light. There's a window next to your head and no sunlight shining through it. You feel – what's the word – woozy. You check carefully, but you don't think you're nauseous. Even so, you make sure that you're ready for it when it hits. This body has tricked you before into thinking it had recovered.
Don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah-
You flex some muscles. They, cruelly, do not become tentacles or tendrils or even indentations.
Drat.
In the meantime you take stock. Your nose is still blocked. Your stomach still hurts. You're wearing different clothes, ones not spun from your own biomass. They're thin and light and rather absent in the pants department. You have, strangely, socks on your hands have only they come in strips and are on face and feet as well. Probably not socks then. Humans get weirdly inventive about clothing. There's something taped to the top of your hand. It's clear and it's plastic and it's been shoved into the top of your hand like some sort of overly ambitious tendril from a rival viral abomination.
There's liquid going into you? You pull the needle out and let it dangle.
Hrmmm. Someone took your clothes.
In theory, that's alright. It should be as quiescent as you are right now. Under, well, a different theory it could spin off and become its own individual viral abomination.
What're the chances of that happening though?
You think about it for a second.
-----
[x] [Chance] 80-95%?
[x] [Chance] 45-55%?
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
-----
Well, you're no expert, but you're pretty sure it's not zero. Also, they're your clothes and you are right now in a hospital which is basically the human version of a laboratory. All things considered, you should probably go look for them.
Don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah---
You slip off the large, sheet-like material that they'd placed over you and tip-toe past three other people sharing your room. There are three other people here and all of them are sound asleep. After a moment of shivering, you tip-toe right back and grab the sheet and place it around you and snuggle into your own warmth.
Mmm, much better.
You look around the room, first. Then you look in the little adjoining bathroom. Your neighbors have brought slippers, toothbrushes, books, fruit, water bottles, and even flowers. One of them has a tiny little Christmas tree. Your corner of the room is, by contrast, completely bare.
All of them are your apparent age or younger.
You open the door and slip out into the corridor.
-----
A hospital doesn't sleep.
It doesn't wake either, not literally, but you've been around the world for a bit now and you know that most buildings sleep in the same way that Leah described people sleeping. The lights go out and they stop. There's no movement, no motion, no signs of life. A hospital's not like that. A hospital's always got people bustling through its corridors and arteries like little cells or embolisms waiting to happen.
Whatever time it is right now, it's got less. You sneak through, your heartbeat slowed to a crawl, your feet ghosting around doors and corridors. Gatot would have been able to get through the entire hospital without once being caught by a person or camera and would have managed the same against dogs if he didn't carry around funny-smelling tools.
Speaking of which, you're going to have to go back for all your stuff at some point. You hope you'll remember where you put it.
Right, he would have managed it, but you don't have quite his level of skill. You merely walk quietly and carefully, sometimes spending minutes at a time absolutely still, and more time suddenly diving into rooms and sneaking beneath chairs, beds and other miscellaneous furniture.
People pass by without noticing you.
You continue onwards, occasionally wandering into rooms to search for your missing biomass.
It occurs to you, after having entered a few rooms that this is probably not the most efficient means of finding, well, anything. You wish your nose was not still blocked up, you'd be able to backtrack using scent.
Actually…
You blow air through your nose, dislodging the-
Gross, Dee.
You ignore her, nostrils flaring: it worked! Well, more or less, you'll have to blow your nose again. You're starting to get a hang of this whole being human thing. It mostly involves expelling seemingly innocuous substances out of various orifices and suffering an immediate, illogical feeling of Ugh. Now, all you need to do is ignore this epiphany, find out where your clothes are, get Leah to stop possessing you, and –
You pause, sniff the air. Your head snaps around.
For the recent past you've been sharpening your nose, focusing on one singular scent. It hasn't been a conscious thing, mostly you've been looking for blood and murderers, but the underlying motivation exists. Beneath the smell of sick and soap, you smell it. You smell him.
He's been here.
You break off into a run. It's a slow one, compared to what you are capable of, but reckless even so. Stealth and speed are not things that normally go together.
Dee?
"He's here," you hiss.
Who?
"The Man in Purple."
You smell him everywhere. Your nose drags you across a fleet of doors and down two floors before Leah manages to reply. In that time you're sure that, one, you aren't imagining the smell, and that, two, something's off about it. You figure it out when you reach it the source of the scent.
It's a purple suit. Just a purple suit with no tasty, pheromone-producing human. There's a hole high up, near the lapel and the area around it is crusty blood. Someone had stuffed it inside a laundry basket, and then put the laundry basket into a closet. It's the first basket you've seen that has wheels and is otherwise filled with white rags and maybe it is not actually a laundry basket, but rather a hospital trolley or something. Its presence is a mystery.
You will your hands to consume, but no such luck. You hold onto it a little tighter and that's it. You brow wrinkles. It's unlikely you'll get anything good from it anyway: after a certain level of degradation, biological matter is no longer useful except for more biomass. Try as you might, a hamburger will not tell you much about being a cow.
You poke a finger through the hole. A knife or edged weapon did this. The amount of blood is encouraging certain lines of thought, and those lines of thought are starting to feel a little conflicted.
Did someone kill him? Before you got to???
You puff your cheeks out. That's – that's, well, it's good! But also! It's! Bad! You wanted to be the one to kill him! You were, in fact, planning on it. And if he's dead then – well, you don't know what, but it's kind of sucky.
Dee?
"He was hit in the upper body, close to the neck. I think it was an arrow." Connections fizz between neurons. You don't know how you know this, but you do. Gatot might have known the conscious steps in between fact and theory, but you are working off a sort of intuition. "Might have been a knife. Hit just above here," you tap your clavicle. "Someone tried to kill him. Someone might have killed him."
If you knew how to sulk, you would have pointedly not sulked. As is, you try to put on a brave face.
You're better at acting than you know: Leah definitely buys it.
Dee. We're kind of in a hospital. Hate to burst your bubble, but I think he made it.
You don't ask about the bubble. It's probably something metaphorological.
Enthusiasm builds as you think about what she's said. Leah's right! This is a hospital. It's a place where people go to get all better. Example exhibit A: yourself. Some time ago you were doing your best not to explode in a dumpster, and now you're hunting down baddies despite your human handicap of being, well, human. If his bloody clothes are here it means he made it all the way here. And if he made it all the way here, why, then, he might be here.
You fold the suit up and sort of stuff it awkwardly into your blanket cloak.
Dee. Be careful.
You don't need telling twice. You might be stronger, faster, and physically more awesome than any human, but right now you are not even capable of simple virus-led consumption, and while embarrassing to admit, the human version not only defeated you, but hospitalized you. Taking on the Man in Purple and his budding superhuman army might be beyond your considerably truncated abilities.
But better to know where he is than not. You'll just have to stay out of eyeshot and then… follow him around? Mweh, you'll figure out the next part if you find him. Some human presumably managed to hurt him, how hard can it be, really?
Dee?
You give a short, sharp shake of your head. You've seen other humans do it when trying to clear their thoughts. It doesn't really work.
"I'll be careful," you say.
The worst part is you are careful and it doesn't matter because he's not here.
Unfortunately for you, someone else is.
"Naughty, naughty," a voice like a sack of rocks tells you. There's an impact, a sensation like falling, and you go to sleep.
-----
Bright lights greet you upon waking.
Your eyes water as you squint. You've been strapped down. You can't so much as move your neck. You smell – you smell – no, no, no, no, no. You utter a muffled, panicked cry and heave. Your restraints buckle, but do not break.
Dee? Dee? What's going on?
No. No, no, no, no, no.
Dee? Dee, talk to me, please. I can only see what you see.
Air goes in and out of you in quick, shallow breaths. You pull again, as hard as you can, and if you were as sturdy as you were strong, you might have broken the leather straps and metal chains holding you down. Unfortunately for you, you are not as sturdy as you are strong.
Oh god, Dee? Dee, you're hurting yourself.
Dee?
DEE. STOP.
You stop. You whimper. There's water trying to make its way out of your eyes and blood running from where leather cut into your skin.
Breathe. Slowly.
You breathe slowly. You want to vomit. You don't even know why.
Dee, it's – it's going to be okay.
"No. It's not," you whisper. You're shaking. "This smells like – smells like home."
Not everyone would understand.
Leah does. Her home was nothing great either.
"They're going to hurt me again, Leah." Your nose burns. You're a mess. You're back in the lab. You couldn't even feel pain before: you just didn't like the feeling of becoming less, of being smart, then dumb, big, then small, of losing bits of yourself, piece by piece, and there's so much more of yourself to lose. "They're going to- they're going to-"
This is why you listened to Leah. She kept you safe. And the moment she had less input you fucked up. They caught you.
Dee. Look around.
You try. There's not much to see. You can't crane your head either: it's strapped down tight so that instead of looking straight up, you get to look to your left. To your left is a wall. It is about as nondescript a wall as is possible and is made up of a flat white surface. It's very clean.
"There's not-"
The sound of tapping interrupts you. It's slow, rhythmic. A picture forms in your mind. A hunched over figure, with a cane, sweeping it to and fro, accompanied by a taller person who holds the door open for them. It comes closer and closer, tap-swish-tap, until you can feel the breath and smell a subtle blend of innumerable and unnameable plants. The other one smells human.
The tapping subsides.
If you could but turn your head you would be able to see who it is, or at least what they look like, but you can't.
"Madame-" the voice is male, hesitant, and it stops as soon as it starts as if cut off.
Silence.
Something is said, in a language you do not understand, sharp, quick, imperious. You feel a pressure where it hurts the most, and gasp as a quick, prodding pressure digs into your side, then your wrists, then your ankles. There's a disgusted sigh, and more foreign words, spoken quickly. The tapping begins again, but moving away. A door swings shut.
You are alone with the man now. The scientist.
This is your every nightmare distilled.
He hums, then says: "Well, that was embarrassing. I'll have to have words with Twenty-Twenty, given his description I honestly thought you were one of hers. You're not though, are you? Don't tell me, Weapon X? Canadians were always big on conditioning – ugh, please stop that. I just want to talk."
He waits for you to subside. You don't. He gets up and carts something towards you: it is on squeaky wheels and the insides rattle as if full of loose metal.
"Suit yourself. You'll tire yourself out at some point, and then you'll be placed into the full-body version until you learn to behae – yes, that's better." The squeaking stops. Thin, sharp-smelly gloves are snapped on. A drawer slides open and he starts picking things up and laying them out, all in a row. Your imagination might not be able to conjure the worst of all worlds, but you'd still appreciate knowing that it's not the worst of all worlds. "So, the million dollar question is, who are you?"
Leah tells you to keep him talking. "I'm – I'm Dee."
"'Dee'? Nothing else?" He unwraps something. You can hear the plastic as it tears.
"I - I like Damien."
A box opens. Out drops a small bottle. You can sort of hear its contents as they're aspirated upwards into a small thin tube.
Shit. Dee, that sounds like a needle.
"So you chose your name, hm? And 'Damien' - how interesting." He flicks the 'needle'. A second later you feel a thin, sharp pain in your arm and then a strange coolness that spreads outwards. "I want to ask you a few other questions, but I think I'll save them for now. I did a bit of thinking while the fumble-fingered idiots they give MD's out to these days were puzzling over your eyes, thinking you were just plain old homo homo sapiens. Did you know that for certain diseases –Ebola among them –a person's eye color will change?"
"N-no?" You try to say, but your muscles have started to relax and you're having trouble doing so. A binding is loosened: your head is repositioned so that you are facing up. You stare at a surprisingly young looking face, mostly unwrinkled, but with dark, balding hair and sparkling white teeth. Horn-rimmed glasses perch on a hooked nose.
He kind of looks like a young, balding Professor Snape.
You have no idea who Professor Snape is, but assume the Doctor looks like a young, balding version of him.
"Nuh-" you try again.
"No? Of course not. Well, it happens. With a sufficiently virulent strain, the viral load can build up in even the eyeball. Granted the iris is of a light enough shade, it'll change color. The eyeball is one of those places in the human body that doesn't see much in the way of immune system traffic, you see, so the virus can build up there. " He puts the needle down. You hear him pick up something else, and open it, paper and plastic tearing with a familiar crinkling noise. It sounds like yet another needle. "The reason why it changes color - well, no one is quite sure. Except in select cases, that sort of knowledge is trivia."
"You, however, are a select case. Your iris glows. I'm really very curious as to why that is. I already let one specimen slip through my fingers this week, so you'll pardon my haste if I indulge in my curiosity right now."
A needle is produced. It's produced very, very close to your eyeball.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Dee, Dee, I want you to – I want you to think happy thoughts, okay?
"Hold still. I'm going to try to take a sample without taking your entire eyeball, but if you jerk, who knows what'll happen?"
-----
-----
"I think that went well," the doctor says, peeling off his gloves.
You whimper. You don't know how much time has passed. He's taken a lot of samples. Blood. Hair. Bone marrow. Skin. Snot. Saliva. Spinal fluid. Tissue from various organs. You've been cut open and sewn back up in five different places. You've answered his questions. You've stayed quiet. You've lied. You've told the truth. You've begged. You've pleaded. It never seems to matter. It never matters. Of course, it never matters. He's a scientist.
In the end, he did take that eyeball.
In your head, Leah rages.
I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill-
"Stop," you croak.
"No," he says, thinking you're talking to him. "No, I don't think I will. But if you're really, really good, Dee, I might let you out one day. You found 'the Man in Purple,' somehow. Maybe you'll manage it again. You're… interesting. He's, ah, he's genius. Sweet dreams, Subject D-Zero-Zero-Zero-One."
He leaves, whistling, his 'samples' all on a trolley that he wheels away. The doors close behind him.
You huddle into yourself, as much as you're able.
Then, you let go.
----
You are on a trolley, floating gently within some jelly-like medium.
Well, not you you, you you is busy enjoying all the perks of being human (i.e.: none) while you are an eyeball stuffed in some sort of science liquid. Normally, this sort of long-distance separation would lead to a rapidly degrading sense of self, but for some reason, that isn't the case today.
You strongly suspect it's due to the fact that just as Leah is in a tug-of-war for control with you, you are in a tug-of-war of control with her. You're borrowing her powers, just like she's borrowing powers. She says you're trying to eat her, but you suspect that on some level she also doesn't want to leave. It was her body, originally. She doesn't want to change which is why your body can't change, but she wants you to leave and you want to escape.
You are possessing your own extraneous biomass.
You could be wrong, in fact, you know you are wrong in certain respects, you clearly can't hop at will like Leah can, but it's still the explanation that makes the most sense to you, so you'll stick with it until a more likely one rears its head. Coherent thought generally cannot be maintained within the biomass of an eyeball, there's just not enough there. As is, you feel dangerously frail. Fortunately, you also feel dangerous.
The eyeball ripples as you flex your viral fingers.
Finally.
The jelly is some sort of nutrient bath. You slowly, slowly, slowly start to consume it. It would take a split second to do so normally, but you want the entire cylinder to look the same throughout the entire process. That means doing it carefully, and converting the biomass into identical, but infected, biomass without any telltale glowing or visible consumption.
It takes you a while. You're put on dry ice while the scientist fiddles with the rest of his samples he obtained from you. The lab isn't the largest you've known, but it is admirably well stocked with fancy equipment. You see flickering lights, blinky dials, and black-green monitors. You wonder when exactly he takes the time to sleep, then ignore that thought. You'll find out soon enough.
You wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And then you get bored and start fiddling. Sound isn't all that complicated, compared to an eye without a brain, a few subtle alterations and… The first burst of static is annoying, but you have time. You work, you fiddle, you change until finally you can hear.
You make out the sound of footsteps first, pacing back and forth. Then comes the voice, first too loud, then comically high. Leah would have called him a chipmunk, and you would have been confused, but she's not here, so the entire exchange will remain unhad.
Still, he sounds like a chipmunk.
"-no, no, no this can't be right. And yet – these values, I don't understand this at all. I wish I could – but, of course not."
You slow him down until his voice is approximately right.
You hear crashing sound, like a baking pan thrown on the ground. Someone's impatient. You try not to dance in glee. A jiggling eyeball without anything to jiggle with is probably suspicious. Your pupil still creases into an approximation of a smile before you realize what those muscles are doing and get them to stop.
"According to the data, she should be dead. A fact clearly contradicted by observation, so the data must be wrong." The Doctor continues to pace. You make out, blurrily, a lot of bodily hand waving. "What am I missing? What idiotic detail have I overlooked? She must have been engineered, but looking through her code is like looking at a toddler's finger painting. It's nonsense. Wyndham would be appalled. She should not be viable."
You do not know if you should be pleased or not by his frustration. You'll make a mental note to ask Leah. After some more ranting you discover that while entertaining, this is also frustrating on a different level.
Pick up the eyeball, Doctor Asshole.
"Perhaps a fresh sample…"
Yes!
"If she were engineered, a failsafe to prevent analysis would be logical, if beyond anything I have even heard of, which means I need to perform my analysis on a living tissue sample-"
Yes! One living eyeball! Just! Pick! It! Up!
"I suppose I'll have to visit Dee One again."
What.
He leaves. You are still busy going: What by the time the door swishes closed behind him. It's infuriating. He took the eyeball out! He made corny jokes while he did so! Well, you didn't get the humor at first, but Leah explained them to you to distract you and you agree, they sucked. The anaesthetic wore off (but not the muscle relaxant) and it was excruciatingly painful! Come on, at least experiment on it!
Despite your mental protests, he remains stubbornly absent.
After a moment where you are pretty sure he is being serious, but aren't sure he's sure he's being serious you grumpily crawl out of your containment receptacle. It's not hard. It clearly wasn't made with a locomotive eyeball in mind. You wish you had more experience transforming into smaller arthropods, but you make do with what you are capable of.
Spider silk manages to get a very tiny, biologically improbable human to ground level. The ground is simple, unadorned concrete. It's annoying clean: there's nothing for you to eat. You later make your way up a shelf and then a desk and hit the jackpot in the shape of the rest of the samples. You consume them all, growing slightly all the while. You even find your own biomass-spun clothes which helps a lot, and the Man in Purple's suit, which doesn't: tiny in terms of biomass, less in terms of information. His desk is made of hardwood. His computer is made of plastic, and has four monitors, all of which seem to show a black-and-white video of a room. Video 4 is showing yours. Videos 1 to 3 are empty. Videos 5 to 18 are full of people. Videos 19 to 25 show empty-ish corridors, the Doctor occasionally striding through them.
You consume the drawers and papers first. It's like eating pencil shavings. Actually, no, it's like eating wood and paper, but – point is – you've picked up a bad human habit, and that human habit is disgust. You don't want to eat it at all.
You screw your courage to the sticking place and do so.
With enough mass, you can put the monitors down on the ground before you consume the entire desk. There. Just enough biomass to move around at a human size.
You consider the computer, then the rest of the room.
You could run off after him, but this room seems to be pretty important to him. Also, it's a lab. You hate labs.
It takes some effort, but you finally set the place on fire. It's not hard. You are a determined arsonist and can make space alien jet fuel through biochemical processes. All it takes is the idea and a spark. Alarms sound and klaxons ring and the lab is plunged into whirling red darkness. When he comes rushing back, Camera nineteen nicely captures his thinning hair, his arms like windmills, and the expression of utter horror on his face. The smoke is billowing nicely when the door swishes open. You don't bother with any speeches or witty words or one-liners. You just jump at him through the smoke, admire how his eyes widen, how his pupils dilate, how his mouth opens to scream, and then how his flesh twists and tears as you consume him head-first. He dies without a scream, but with a lot of meaty, mushy, eating noises.
You burp, contented. Not necessary, of course, but satisfying, oh yes.
After that you realize you haven't quite thought this through because fire is hot and Leah is still stuck and also there are fifteen or so other 'people' down here with you. The 'Mad Dogs' of City Hospital Psych Ward which lies in a basement so forgotten that it was built over after something or another happened to the original City Hospital.
You rifle through the Doctor's brain while it's still fresh. Apparently, the Subjects can all turn into giant lizardmen? Due to surgery? You're not entirely sure how that works. Or even why anyone would want to do so. Something to do with money. You rifle a little further and find, to your surprise, a certain compulsion to go to the quickly charring computer setup. There's a tiny USB in one of the ports: you start clicking and dragging files into it.
Well, now you know how the Doctor would answer the question: if your house was on fire, what would you take out of it?
You realize you may have eaten a mad genius. Given he dug out your eye after poking a needle into it, you aren't too fussed about the eating part. The mad genius part on the other hand…
Humans are so weird. And you're saying that after having learned how they eat. In order to be a Good Person, all he'd need to do is experiment on – cows or birds or something. He probably would not have tried experimenting on you and would have avoided his messy and somewhat protracted end.
So. Should you free the Subjects?
Well, yes, obviously you should. Fire is hot, and letting them burn to death would probably be Bad, given that you set the fire, so in a roundabout way, you're responsible for all the people the fire kills. You suppose the real question is: should you free them, knowing that without constant treatment they'll go insane? This was an actual concern to the Doctor, so you suppose it should be one of yours as well though the logical step between 'saving their lives' and 'being responsible for them going insane' is not very clear to you.
Does saving people mean saving them all the way? Like, if they were burnt in a fire, and you save them from the fire, do you have to make sure they don't die from their burns?
Your foray into the realm of superhero philosophy is temporarily set aside when the flames start licking at your backside, reminding you that regardless of all those other preoccupations, there is one that reigns supreme. The files have finished loading: looks like it's time to go!
You burst out of the main laboratory, just in time to get kicked in the face.
If you were to replay the event in slow motion, it'd happen a bit like this: a girl, at the perfect height to be frustrated by cookie jars placed on the second shelf in the cupboard, leaps from a room in flames, long, flowing tresses trailing smoke, ramming into a door that was already preparing to slide open for her. It crumples, revealing the fact that even super genius mad scientists can get ripped off by their villainous contractors, and lets her through.
It's not a clean breakaway though: even as the door flowers into jagged pieces, the impact forces her to twist in mid-air, and she curls into a ball. The ball hits a foot that just happens to be there.
So, really, more accurately, one could have said: you burst out of the main laboratory, just in time to fall face-first onto someone's foot.
You much prefer the version where you got kicked in the face. It's somehow less embarrassing.
You look up. A man wearing hospital scrubs looks down. Your gazes intersect.
"You!" you both say.
You because you finally figured out how you were knocked unconscious, him because he's the nondescript orderly that you didn't notice in time who managed to incapacitate your frail, human constitution. His pupils lengthen and his skin starts splitting into rapidly growing scales.
By the time you rear up to punch him, he's got enough sheer physical armor to at least slow your consumption down. Even so, he doesn't let your punch connect: he leaps backwards twenty feet down the corridor, sparks flying where his claws scrape against the walls. Walls that drip with condensation because whatever the labs, and cells and prisons are made of, the corridors make it obvious that right now you're somewhere full of leaky, hissing pipes and poor lighting.
He stares at you, eyes wide.
"What the fuck."
He's probably talking about the nozzles that have sprouted from your arms and your legs. That's cute, coming from a human that can grow scales in the time it usually takes humans to throw on a coat. The two of you share a fraught moment. The walls grow hot and the air thickens while the two of you have your stand-off.
The lizardman orderly is the first to look away. He makes a break for it down the corridor. You could catch him. For a moment the fury, the rage, the anger burns, hotter than the flames licking their way through the corridors and you almost do.
You stop instead, turn around. Even before the other patients, even before catching the man responsible for handing you over to a scientist, you need to check on Leah. You don't know how long she was at his mercies, but you know that the scientist wasn't immediately summoned back by the fire.
Behind you, something in the lab explodes. A backwash of heat crisps your skin and sends you stumbling forward. A place this wet should not catch fire so readily, but here they are, catching fire. You run. You pass containment pods and the men and women in them are going nuts with fear. You see a few flicker through their transformations.
You'll go back for them. You will. Just not right now.
When you bust down the door, Leah's there.
Her eye doesn't glow anymore, and she's still covered in gore. But the body you were using – her body – is hers again, somehow.
"Dee?" she whispers.
"Leah!" You can't help but smile: you've always felt a little bad for having eaten Leah. And here she is, whole again, not just a voice in your head. "How do you feel?"
Something shudders through her. "Dee, please – please just let me out."
"Oh? Oh, yeah, of course."
You do.
In moments she's on your shoulders, carried piggy-back as you rush down the corridor, pressing all the right buttons to let the monster men out, one-by-one, the noise of their messy escape a calamity, when she whispers: "Did you get him?"
"Yup."
There's no moralizing from her this time. No talk of the police. Just a rough, pained: "Good."
She squeezes your arm. You beam more widely.
And that's how, five days after you left a park powerless and nearly alone, everything is on fire and there are scaled monster men escaping into the night. So maybe some of it is your fault. Obviously the fire didn't light itself and, as it so happens, the scaled monster men had to be punch coded into freedom. None of that matters: you, you have Leah. An undeniably human Leah, even if she has just a tiny little bit of virus in her and could probably make her way through a brick wall or alien army.
It's not the best thing that has happened to you, but it's damn close.
----
Real voting options to follow at some later point. This update is still subject to editing: I deleted at least 3k of garbage, but given how much of it has been changed, I'm not sure I caught all the holes.
Dr. Eric Hope (Based on the Spider-Man villain 'Dr. Hope'
A former Genesis Project scientist, Dr. Eric Hope was expected to make important, Nobel-award winning contributions to the field of science as a matter of course. While other GP luminaries went on to investigate the possibilities of cloning, simulated evolutionary pressures, and the holy grail of 'predictive gene theory' – Dr. Hope sought what, in many ways, was the reverse of his colleagues. He obsessed over the evolutionary dead ends, believing that the past informs the future and that for that reason alone the past was well worth exploring. While Dr. Hope might have been born a genius, he was also born a sociopath, and in trying to prove his theories true, crossed lines that his much more morally grounded mentor could not condone and was forced to resign in disgrace. His license suspended and his standing in the medical research community in tatters, Dr. Eric Hope could not let go of his pride and continued quietly experimenting. A certain group caught wind of his activities and – for a price – decided to support him by gifting him with a new identity and a new place of practice.
Pick 4 skills:
Pick any skill from the list and add a IV to it, he's got it:
Anatomy, Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Embryology, Emergency Medicine, Epidemiology, Genetics, Immunology, Human Behavior, Organic Chemistry, Medicine, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Physics, Physiology, Radiology, Surgery - and so on and so forth. I'm not writing up a description of each, that's ridiculous.
[x] Ego: Dr. Eric Hope (Rare)
As a sociopath and a genius, Dr. Eric Hope has the potential to survive in the 'maelstrom of identity' that is your existence. If allowed to survive, he will retain not only all his skills, but also his sense of self. While he cannot control you, he can distract you and refuse to give you his knowledge. On the other hand, he can also advise you far in excess of your current skills, and will automatically generate 1d10 xp every week.
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
Like Charisma, genius is a rare trait that governs mental faculties, improving them immensely. At this level, skills falling under the domain of 'medical sciences' can be upgraded as if their cost were two ranks lower than they actually were. So a Biology V would be purchased at the cost of Biology III, and so on. The cost cannot be made lower than a rank I skill.
[x] Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
A branch of medical science pioneered by Dr. Hope, the intricacies of Regression Biomechanics is still mostly beyond your understanding. However, due to your unique biology, you can brute force what took Dr. Hope years of study and dedication to skillfully refine. Roll a 2d10 whenever you use this skill: this represents both how much biomass you burn and how much experience you gain in the skill. Effects are up to the QM, but will generally skew towards the comic. A high-end feat (roll of 20, would be giving a chicken the ability to turn into a T-rex, while a lower row will have a chicken think it's a T-rex.[/spoiler]
Snow falls, flakes fat, wet and cold, carpeting the back of your head and rolling down to your waist. Gatot is a memory, and the worst of the slaughter has vanished, small carcasses buried beneath the rising snow. You, however, haven't. You are still, silent; nothing more than a statue kneeling in the icy gloam, a small, trembling bundle clutched in your hands.
Minds whirl within your own, a wealth of information and experience, all of it telling you need to move.
You don't.
There's been a bit of a misunderstanding. It needs sorting out. Just in case, you push again against the pressure surrounding your skin, but nothing happens. You bite your lower lip.
It really, really needs sorting out.
"Leah," you prompt.
For almost a minute, all you receive in reply is silence. Then you hear a small 'sorry'. It's like a voice coming from very far away.
Or from within.
You are pretty sure you have it figured. Leah was trying to protect you and at some point, she must have tried to jump bodies and the last viable one was yours. All other things being equal, you wouldn't have minded, but her unexpected residency has come with some unexpected consequences.
"There's not a lot of room in here," you tell her. This is patently false: your mind is very roomy and growing roomier all the time as new people move in, but you don't want to hurt her feelings so you are lying whitely. You hold up the bird hopefully. It's only slightly used and half-dead instead of completely used and all dead. "Look, I found a bird for you."
Another minute passes impatiently.
... can't.
"Okay, okay, okay," you mutter.
You wait, just in case she has more to say.
She doesn't.
Frowning, you try to consume the bird again, but your fingers remain fingers. They are small, human, and little else. No tendrils of biomatter, no holes, no mouths, no teeth, not even the slightest shiver of expanding and contracting flesh mars the surface. They're just fingers.
Above you, lamplight flickers and the snow continues its slow tumble down from the sky.
And you? You are, for the first time in your life, cold.
"Shit darn poo damn fuck," you curse.
Then you walk off, into the night, kicking moodily at the snow.
-----
Five days later, everything is on fire and there are scaled monster men escaping into the night.
It isn't even slightly your fault.
-----
Let's backtrack a bit. Just far enough so that we find you shivering in a dumpster in an alleyway between Circle Q and Radoslav's Vietnamese Grocery, but not so far that – as a certain merc armed with yellow boxes might colorfully put it – the Man with a Laptop has to explain where it was you shoved your inventory of miscellaneous weapons and loose change after you discovered you were mode-locked into being human. [1]
](You buried it. It's not like you got physically weaker just by turning human. You're just limited in your transformational abilities. So, having nowhere to put a giant honking pair of swords and a gun not to mention electrical grenades, you just dug a hole and chucked it all in there. You also, having seen Leah do it many times as a cat, wanted to bury your biological 'waste', but after the first time you did so, Leah very laboriously and very earnestly explained the concept of toilets to you.)
(Humans are so weird sometimes.)
(Humans are so weird sometimes.)
For some reasons your immediate neighbors are all mannequins, populating the dumpster like so many frozen bodies. Frost rims its sides, and if the temperature were any higher, you'd be wet instead of just cold. Indeed, normally, you'd be grazing on a dumpster buffet of new and excitingly rotting biomass, but you're three quarters human right now and you have determined, scientifically, that humans don't like dumpster food.
Leah warned you. You didn't listen. She blames your current predicament on you.
To be fair to you, she used the word 'gross' which you have become quite immune to by this point and thought of as hyperbole.
Now your human body is punishing you. Your mind feels stuffed with soft paper, and your body feels cold and shivery and sweaty all at once. You are dying. Things that you ate are now struggling to become uneaten. You didn't think that was possible. You'd seen it before, trawling around bars and imbibing delicious alcohol, but you assumed that people had been doing it for obscure social reasons.
Turns out, that's only half true. The other half is basic biology. Human bodies have minds of their own, and those minds are both fragile and picky and deeply entrenched in the gutter instinct known as 'disgust'. You honestly don't understand how humans have survived for so long.
Not enough water? The body starts demanding water. It gets thirsty. All on its own, instead of through carefully designed impetuses to become greater than it already is, like your hunger does for you. Drink too much water in the form of snow? It'll start nagging you about letting the excess water out even though there's a perfectly good system that can push water out through the pores. It's too cold because you let the water out and maybe because you were trying to drink snow? Blood starts getting rerouted from extremities and body starts going into fits. Your teeth clatter together and everything quakes like a car ride on a bad road.
Ridiculous. Worse is the whole consumption nonsense. Human bodies can consume things through a single orifice and first it has to go through a whole series of checks. Smell doesn't seem to be mainly for tracking prey, it's for verifying the disgust instinct. So is taste. So are the teeth. You ignore them at your peril.
Eat something out of a dumpster? It'll try to come back out all by itself having made some friends along the way.
And those friends will try to kill you.
Ugh. Everything hurts.
You huddle deeper into your shivering carcass. Human bodies are completely unreasonable and infuriating and you aren't having it. Not being able to shapeshift is one thing, not being able to hold down food is quite another. At this rate you're going to starve to – well, not to death, death is far away, even in your reduced state, but you're going to be very hungry and that's probably just as bad as dying. Worse, even. Death is an end of sorts. Starving is both really annoying and very painful.
Very, very painful.
The creak of a dumpster lid going up is amazingly loud. The sound of a trash bag hitting the ground is somehow even louder. And suddenly, it is really, really hecking cold.
You don't even have the energy to open your eyes.
A voice goes: "These mannequins are creeping me – wuh - oh shit! C-Bob! Chatty! You're going to want to have a look at this!"
Just because you don't have the energy to open your eyes, doesn't mean you don't have the energy to open one eye. You do so and see a young man with hair that reminds you of a brown lampshade, and skin the color of - of something brown. You don't have the - the wherewithwhatever to manage similes and metaphors right now. Nobody got time for that while they're busy dying because that's all human beings are good for. Dying.
You hate humans.
The boy begins mumbling under his breath. "Woah. Your eyes. Uh, we should get you somewhere warmer, but if it's too warm you could, um, oh god, please don't die-"
Footsteps crunch through the snow, accompanied by another voice: "Bruno, the day I want to have a look in a dumpster is the day I –" A much rounder, whiter face with dark thrusts itself up within eyesight, and immediately takes on a horrified mien, "HOLY SHIT."
"Like I said, Chatty. What do we do?"
You feel someone poke your shoulder. It says something about how far gone you are that if you were capable of it, you would have happily eaten him. Go away. You're dying or you feel like you're dying and you want to do so in peace.
Human beings suck.
"I dunno. Is she dead?" Chatty asks, the poking apparently not enough of a diagnostic. You conclude that Chatty is an idiot. You will eat him should the opportunity arise. "Hey. Girl in the dumpster. Are you dead?"
Definitely going to eat him.
"I think she's alive." Bruno says, allaying your wrath. When the time comes, he will be spared. "We should call-"
"911?"
"Yeah, that."
"Right."
"…Uh, Chatty, are you calling 911?"
"Yes. I am 100% doing that and not just freaking out because her eyes are like bright red lobster claws, stabbing through the darkness and stuff."
Someone moves closer to you. You can feel the heat of their existence and their breath. You will your skin to detach and form tendrils and spear him through the eyesockets, but what happens is mostly you shivering harder.
"Yeah, that's uncanny. But seriously, you need to call -"
"911 what's your emergency?"
"Shush. Hi 911, we, uh, we found a girl in a dumpster and she looks like she's in a bad way-"
The next few minutes are pretty busy.
911 wants them to do a lot of things so they end up taking you out of the dumpster, mostly complaining about how heavy you are and how they need to work out more before dragging you into the store and piling warm things on top of you until the ambulance arrives. You kind of cover one of them in regurgitated food before the ambulance makes it to the Circle Q.
For that, you will spare Bob's life.
The ambulance ride is fun. You toss out more food that is no longer food.
And at some point, everything goes black.
----
"Dee."
Mmhm?
"Dee."
Go 'way.
"Dee, you need to – well, not wake up wake up, but I need to talk to you."
'kay.
You wake up, but not wake up wake up. It'd be an amazing feat of skill were it not done completely by accident.
You are suddenly sitting in a chair. No, not a chair, a park bench. It is the newest-looking park bench you have ever seen: the paint all but sparkles. The grass is green. The sky is blue. The trees are lush, but when you peer closer, lack definition. You look around – the details here jump in and out of focus, like looking at real life with sudden blurs and whorls that are akin to a water painting. The sun is not so much blinding as it is a bright white dot in the sky. You sniff the air: the smell's all wrong. Muted.
A sketchy outline with shining hair sits on the bench next to you. It's made of lines of light.
"Can you stop doing that?" it asks you.
Leah, you realize. You also realize that you are not in pain anymore. You are suddenly much more cheerful.
Stop doing what?
"Focusing on all the details. It's giving me a headache."
I'll try.
"Please do."
You try to close your 'eyes', but somehow that doesn't work. Instead, you focus on Leah.
What's – you gesture vaguely and realize that you are made up of black bubbles, they coalesce into a hand that makes an expansive motion - this?
"I'm not sure. I'm calling it my Mindosphere. It's my, uh, personal bubble of me."
Oh. Cool. Is that the right time to use 'cool'?
"Yes it is, and yes it is."
Hmm. You make sure not to look around. Are we dead?
"Nope. Or, at least, I hope not." The white lines that you are pretty sure are arms fold across her chest. "I think you're dreaming."
I'm what.
"Dreaming. Like, y'know, sleeping?"
You do not need to scratch your head, but do so anyway.
What's sleeping. And dreaming.
"What do you mean what's sleeping – we've – you've slept before. What you're doing right now," Leah says.
I did not enter your mindosphere before, you inform her tartly, I would remember.
Leah purses her 'lips' and lets out a breath. Somewhere behind you, trees start to sway, as if a gust of wind had just picked up. "Ugh, no, I mean, like when I stop moving around and you also stop moving around. Usually at night?"
You think back. During most nights you mostly integrate new memories and fiddle with your biology to increase your basic abilities. It's very soothing.
Nope, you reply.
"Well, it's what you're doing now."
You scratch your head again.
I don't get it?
"Well…"
You are a little horrified by the explanation that follows.
You occasionally become physically inactive because it helps you digest your new memories and put them to productive use. It's also necessary for some of the more drastic alterations to your physiological makeup. Everyone needs a little bit of stasis time to tinker and make sure everything works properly when everything not working properly would probably make your arm fall off or your eyeballs explode.
But human bodies? Oh, human bodies would find that too reasonable. Human bodies find the whole sleep business mandatory. A quarter to a third of the day just spent lying on the ground. For no apparent reason! It's not like they'd been electrocuted or something. Leah says it's to recover energy, but in this dreamlike state you can vaguely monitor yourself and perform subtle alterations, but you still don't know why humans need to sleep. It's not an energy thing, it's not a digestion thing, it's not… anything!
Human bodies are dumb, you announce after making your checks.
"Yes, well, you get used to them," Leah says.
You sigh wistfully. Delicious, though.
Bubbles pop as Leah flicks you with a 'finger.' "And you were doing so well, too. Please don't tell the muggles that."
What are 'muggles'?
"Normal people. I've told you this before. And I've also told you not to tell people you eat people. Not that you ever listen to me –" an unknowing lie, you do listen to her, you just don't consider her 'normal,' "Anyway, I think I've figured out why you can't transform."
Ooh, ooh, you know the answer to this one.
Because of you.
"Yes, and there's the rub. I can't get out."
You ignore the obvious question in favor of getting to the point: Why?
"I jumped too many times, I think. I became thin. There wasn't enough of me left, just a lot of wildlife in the shape of a girl. I don't even know how I jumped here. I've been pulling myself together. I should have been able to leave, after that, but your mind's a scary place, Dee. It keeps trying to eat me."
Leah's trying to be nice, but you still get it. It's your fault, more or less. An unfamiliar feeling makes your black, bubbly mindosphere body fizz redly.
S-sorry.
"So, we're in a kind of tug-of-war." Before you need to ask, she adds: "We're fighting for control."
Hrm.
"If you could stop trying to eat me…"
It's not what she wants to hear, but the truth is: I'm really not trying.
"Well, could you not try, harder?" she asks you.
I'll-
-----
"-try."
You blink. Or rather, you make an attempt to do so. Something's covering your eyes. Gauzy pads, wrapped in some sort of fabric. You pull it off.
You are left staring at a ceiling. There's not that much to see - it's dark, wherever you are, and the ceiling is notably empty of anything save long lightbulbs emitting no light. There's a window next to your head and no sunlight shining through it. You feel – what's the word – woozy. You check carefully, but you don't think you're nauseous. Even so, you make sure that you're ready for it when it hits. This body has tricked you before into thinking it had recovered.
Don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah-
You flex some muscles. They, cruelly, do not become tentacles or tendrils or even indentations.
Drat.
In the meantime you take stock. Your nose is still blocked. Your stomach still hurts. You're wearing different clothes, ones not spun from your own biomass. They're thin and light and rather absent in the pants department. You have, strangely, socks on your hands have only they come in strips and are on face and feet as well. Probably not socks then. Humans get weirdly inventive about clothing. There's something taped to the top of your hand. It's clear and it's plastic and it's been shoved into the top of your hand like some sort of overly ambitious tendril from a rival viral abomination.
There's liquid going into you? You pull the needle out and let it dangle.
Hrmmm. Someone took your clothes.
In theory, that's alright. It should be as quiescent as you are right now. Under, well, a different theory it could spin off and become its own individual viral abomination.
What're the chances of that happening though?
You think about it for a second.
-----
[x] [Chance] 80-95%?
[x] [Chance] 45-55%?
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
(Reminder: In the previous interlude, it was revealed that Roxxon was fiddling around with SPRINGFIELD GREENE – aka, the Blacklight virus. This is a vote that affects how likely it was they fucked up and another Prototype is running around. This is your one chance to affect things, past this vote I'll be doing the rolls behind the scenes.)
-----
Well, you're no expert, but you're pretty sure it's not zero. Also, they're your clothes and you are right now in a hospital which is basically the human version of a laboratory. All things considered, you should probably go look for them.
Don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah, don't eat Leah---
You slip off the large, sheet-like material that they'd placed over you and tip-toe past three other people sharing your room. There are three other people here and all of them are sound asleep. After a moment of shivering, you tip-toe right back and grab the sheet and place it around you and snuggle into your own warmth.
Mmm, much better.
You look around the room, first. Then you look in the little adjoining bathroom. Your neighbors have brought slippers, toothbrushes, books, fruit, water bottles, and even flowers. One of them has a tiny little Christmas tree. Your corner of the room is, by contrast, completely bare.
All of them are your apparent age or younger.
You open the door and slip out into the corridor.
-----
A hospital doesn't sleep.
It doesn't wake either, not literally, but you've been around the world for a bit now and you know that most buildings sleep in the same way that Leah described people sleeping. The lights go out and they stop. There's no movement, no motion, no signs of life. A hospital's not like that. A hospital's always got people bustling through its corridors and arteries like little cells or embolisms waiting to happen.
Whatever time it is right now, it's got less. You sneak through, your heartbeat slowed to a crawl, your feet ghosting around doors and corridors. Gatot would have been able to get through the entire hospital without once being caught by a person or camera and would have managed the same against dogs if he didn't carry around funny-smelling tools.
Speaking of which, you're going to have to go back for all your stuff at some point. You hope you'll remember where you put it.
Right, he would have managed it, but you don't have quite his level of skill. You merely walk quietly and carefully, sometimes spending minutes at a time absolutely still, and more time suddenly diving into rooms and sneaking beneath chairs, beds and other miscellaneous furniture.
People pass by without noticing you.
You continue onwards, occasionally wandering into rooms to search for your missing biomass.
It occurs to you, after having entered a few rooms that this is probably not the most efficient means of finding, well, anything. You wish your nose was not still blocked up, you'd be able to backtrack using scent.
Actually…
You blow air through your nose, dislodging the-
Gross, Dee.
You ignore her, nostrils flaring: it worked! Well, more or less, you'll have to blow your nose again. You're starting to get a hang of this whole being human thing. It mostly involves expelling seemingly innocuous substances out of various orifices and suffering an immediate, illogical feeling of Ugh. Now, all you need to do is ignore this epiphany, find out where your clothes are, get Leah to stop possessing you, and –
You pause, sniff the air. Your head snaps around.
For the recent past you've been sharpening your nose, focusing on one singular scent. It hasn't been a conscious thing, mostly you've been looking for blood and murderers, but the underlying motivation exists. Beneath the smell of sick and soap, you smell it. You smell him.
He's been here.
You break off into a run. It's a slow one, compared to what you are capable of, but reckless even so. Stealth and speed are not things that normally go together.
Dee?
"He's here," you hiss.
Who?
"The Man in Purple."
You smell him everywhere. Your nose drags you across a fleet of doors and down two floors before Leah manages to reply. In that time you're sure that, one, you aren't imagining the smell, and that, two, something's off about it. You figure it out when you reach it the source of the scent.
It's a purple suit. Just a purple suit with no tasty, pheromone-producing human. There's a hole high up, near the lapel and the area around it is crusty blood. Someone had stuffed it inside a laundry basket, and then put the laundry basket into a closet. It's the first basket you've seen that has wheels and is otherwise filled with white rags and maybe it is not actually a laundry basket, but rather a hospital trolley or something. Its presence is a mystery.
You will your hands to consume, but no such luck. You hold onto it a little tighter and that's it. You brow wrinkles. It's unlikely you'll get anything good from it anyway: after a certain level of degradation, biological matter is no longer useful except for more biomass. Try as you might, a hamburger will not tell you much about being a cow.
You poke a finger through the hole. A knife or edged weapon did this. The amount of blood is encouraging certain lines of thought, and those lines of thought are starting to feel a little conflicted.
Did someone kill him? Before you got to???
You puff your cheeks out. That's – that's, well, it's good! But also! It's! Bad! You wanted to be the one to kill him! You were, in fact, planning on it. And if he's dead then – well, you don't know what, but it's kind of sucky.
Dee?
"He was hit in the upper body, close to the neck. I think it was an arrow." Connections fizz between neurons. You don't know how you know this, but you do. Gatot might have known the conscious steps in between fact and theory, but you are working off a sort of intuition. "Might have been a knife. Hit just above here," you tap your clavicle. "Someone tried to kill him. Someone might have killed him."
If you knew how to sulk, you would have pointedly not sulked. As is, you try to put on a brave face.
You're better at acting than you know: Leah definitely buys it.
Dee. We're kind of in a hospital. Hate to burst your bubble, but I think he made it.
You don't ask about the bubble. It's probably something metaphorological.
Enthusiasm builds as you think about what she's said. Leah's right! This is a hospital. It's a place where people go to get all better. Example exhibit A: yourself. Some time ago you were doing your best not to explode in a dumpster, and now you're hunting down baddies despite your human handicap of being, well, human. If his bloody clothes are here it means he made it all the way here. And if he made it all the way here, why, then, he might be here.
You fold the suit up and sort of stuff it awkwardly into your blanket cloak.
Dee. Be careful.
You don't need telling twice. You might be stronger, faster, and physically more awesome than any human, but right now you are not even capable of simple virus-led consumption, and while embarrassing to admit, the human version not only defeated you, but hospitalized you. Taking on the Man in Purple and his budding superhuman army might be beyond your considerably truncated abilities.
But better to know where he is than not. You'll just have to stay out of eyeshot and then… follow him around? Mweh, you'll figure out the next part if you find him. Some human presumably managed to hurt him, how hard can it be, really?
Dee?
You give a short, sharp shake of your head. You've seen other humans do it when trying to clear their thoughts. It doesn't really work.
"I'll be careful," you say.
The worst part is you are careful and it doesn't matter because he's not here.
Unfortunately for you, someone else is.
"Naughty, naughty," a voice like a sack of rocks tells you. There's an impact, a sensation like falling, and you go to sleep.
-----
Bright lights greet you upon waking.
Your eyes water as you squint. You've been strapped down. You can't so much as move your neck. You smell – you smell – no, no, no, no, no. You utter a muffled, panicked cry and heave. Your restraints buckle, but do not break.
Dee? Dee? What's going on?
No. No, no, no, no, no.
Dee? Dee, talk to me, please. I can only see what you see.
Air goes in and out of you in quick, shallow breaths. You pull again, as hard as you can, and if you were as sturdy as you were strong, you might have broken the leather straps and metal chains holding you down. Unfortunately for you, you are not as sturdy as you are strong.
Oh god, Dee? Dee, you're hurting yourself.
Dee?
DEE. STOP.
You stop. You whimper. There's water trying to make its way out of your eyes and blood running from where leather cut into your skin.
Breathe. Slowly.
You breathe slowly. You want to vomit. You don't even know why.
Dee, it's – it's going to be okay.
"No. It's not," you whisper. You're shaking. "This smells like – smells like home."
Not everyone would understand.
Leah does. Her home was nothing great either.
"They're going to hurt me again, Leah." Your nose burns. You're a mess. You're back in the lab. You couldn't even feel pain before: you just didn't like the feeling of becoming less, of being smart, then dumb, big, then small, of losing bits of yourself, piece by piece, and there's so much more of yourself to lose. "They're going to- they're going to-"
This is why you listened to Leah. She kept you safe. And the moment she had less input you fucked up. They caught you.
Dee. Look around.
You try. There's not much to see. You can't crane your head either: it's strapped down tight so that instead of looking straight up, you get to look to your left. To your left is a wall. It is about as nondescript a wall as is possible and is made up of a flat white surface. It's very clean.
"There's not-"
The sound of tapping interrupts you. It's slow, rhythmic. A picture forms in your mind. A hunched over figure, with a cane, sweeping it to and fro, accompanied by a taller person who holds the door open for them. It comes closer and closer, tap-swish-tap, until you can feel the breath and smell a subtle blend of innumerable and unnameable plants. The other one smells human.
The tapping subsides.
If you could but turn your head you would be able to see who it is, or at least what they look like, but you can't.
"Madame-" the voice is male, hesitant, and it stops as soon as it starts as if cut off.
Silence.
Something is said, in a language you do not understand, sharp, quick, imperious. You feel a pressure where it hurts the most, and gasp as a quick, prodding pressure digs into your side, then your wrists, then your ankles. There's a disgusted sigh, and more foreign words, spoken quickly. The tapping begins again, but moving away. A door swings shut.
You are alone with the man now. The scientist.
This is your every nightmare distilled.
He hums, then says: "Well, that was embarrassing. I'll have to have words with Twenty-Twenty, given his description I honestly thought you were one of hers. You're not though, are you? Don't tell me, Weapon X? Canadians were always big on conditioning – ugh, please stop that. I just want to talk."
He waits for you to subside. You don't. He gets up and carts something towards you: it is on squeaky wheels and the insides rattle as if full of loose metal.
"Suit yourself. You'll tire yourself out at some point, and then you'll be placed into the full-body version until you learn to behae – yes, that's better." The squeaking stops. Thin, sharp-smelly gloves are snapped on. A drawer slides open and he starts picking things up and laying them out, all in a row. Your imagination might not be able to conjure the worst of all worlds, but you'd still appreciate knowing that it's not the worst of all worlds. "So, the million dollar question is, who are you?"
Leah tells you to keep him talking. "I'm – I'm Dee."
"'Dee'? Nothing else?" He unwraps something. You can hear the plastic as it tears.
"I - I like Damien."
A box opens. Out drops a small bottle. You can sort of hear its contents as they're aspirated upwards into a small thin tube.
Shit. Dee, that sounds like a needle.
"So you chose your name, hm? And 'Damien' - how interesting." He flicks the 'needle'. A second later you feel a thin, sharp pain in your arm and then a strange coolness that spreads outwards. "I want to ask you a few other questions, but I think I'll save them for now. I did a bit of thinking while the fumble-fingered idiots they give MD's out to these days were puzzling over your eyes, thinking you were just plain old homo homo sapiens. Did you know that for certain diseases –Ebola among them –a person's eye color will change?"
"N-no?" You try to say, but your muscles have started to relax and you're having trouble doing so. A binding is loosened: your head is repositioned so that you are facing up. You stare at a surprisingly young looking face, mostly unwrinkled, but with dark, balding hair and sparkling white teeth. Horn-rimmed glasses perch on a hooked nose.
He kind of looks like a young, balding Professor Snape.
You have no idea who Professor Snape is, but assume the Doctor looks like a young, balding version of him.
"Nuh-" you try again.
"No? Of course not. Well, it happens. With a sufficiently virulent strain, the viral load can build up in even the eyeball. Granted the iris is of a light enough shade, it'll change color. The eyeball is one of those places in the human body that doesn't see much in the way of immune system traffic, you see, so the virus can build up there. " He puts the needle down. You hear him pick up something else, and open it, paper and plastic tearing with a familiar crinkling noise. It sounds like yet another needle. "The reason why it changes color - well, no one is quite sure. Except in select cases, that sort of knowledge is trivia."
"You, however, are a select case. Your iris glows. I'm really very curious as to why that is. I already let one specimen slip through my fingers this week, so you'll pardon my haste if I indulge in my curiosity right now."
A needle is produced. It's produced very, very close to your eyeball.
Oh shit. Oh shit. Dee, Dee, I want you to – I want you to think happy thoughts, okay?
"Hold still. I'm going to try to take a sample without taking your entire eyeball, but if you jerk, who knows what'll happen?"
-----
-----
"I think that went well," the doctor says, peeling off his gloves.
You whimper. You don't know how much time has passed. He's taken a lot of samples. Blood. Hair. Bone marrow. Skin. Snot. Saliva. Spinal fluid. Tissue from various organs. You've been cut open and sewn back up in five different places. You've answered his questions. You've stayed quiet. You've lied. You've told the truth. You've begged. You've pleaded. It never seems to matter. It never matters. Of course, it never matters. He's a scientist.
In the end, he did take that eyeball.
In your head, Leah rages.
I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill him. I'll kill-
"Stop," you croak.
"No," he says, thinking you're talking to him. "No, I don't think I will. But if you're really, really good, Dee, I might let you out one day. You found 'the Man in Purple,' somehow. Maybe you'll manage it again. You're… interesting. He's, ah, he's genius. Sweet dreams, Subject D-Zero-Zero-Zero-One."
He leaves, whistling, his 'samples' all on a trolley that he wheels away. The doors close behind him.
You huddle into yourself, as much as you're able.
Then, you let go.
----
You are on a trolley, floating gently within some jelly-like medium.
Well, not you you, you you is busy enjoying all the perks of being human (i.e.: none) while you are an eyeball stuffed in some sort of science liquid. Normally, this sort of long-distance separation would lead to a rapidly degrading sense of self, but for some reason, that isn't the case today.
You strongly suspect it's due to the fact that just as Leah is in a tug-of-war for control with you, you are in a tug-of-war of control with her. You're borrowing her powers, just like she's borrowing powers. She says you're trying to eat her, but you suspect that on some level she also doesn't want to leave. It was her body, originally. She doesn't want to change which is why your body can't change, but she wants you to leave and you want to escape.
You are possessing your own extraneous biomass.
You could be wrong, in fact, you know you are wrong in certain respects, you clearly can't hop at will like Leah can, but it's still the explanation that makes the most sense to you, so you'll stick with it until a more likely one rears its head. Coherent thought generally cannot be maintained within the biomass of an eyeball, there's just not enough there. As is, you feel dangerously frail. Fortunately, you also feel dangerous.
The eyeball ripples as you flex your viral fingers.
Finally.
The jelly is some sort of nutrient bath. You slowly, slowly, slowly start to consume it. It would take a split second to do so normally, but you want the entire cylinder to look the same throughout the entire process. That means doing it carefully, and converting the biomass into identical, but infected, biomass without any telltale glowing or visible consumption.
It takes you a while. You're put on dry ice while the scientist fiddles with the rest of his samples he obtained from you. The lab isn't the largest you've known, but it is admirably well stocked with fancy equipment. You see flickering lights, blinky dials, and black-green monitors. You wonder when exactly he takes the time to sleep, then ignore that thought. You'll find out soon enough.
You wait.
And wait.
And wait.
And then you get bored and start fiddling. Sound isn't all that complicated, compared to an eye without a brain, a few subtle alterations and… The first burst of static is annoying, but you have time. You work, you fiddle, you change until finally you can hear.
You make out the sound of footsteps first, pacing back and forth. Then comes the voice, first too loud, then comically high. Leah would have called him a chipmunk, and you would have been confused, but she's not here, so the entire exchange will remain unhad.
Still, he sounds like a chipmunk.
"-no, no, no this can't be right. And yet – these values, I don't understand this at all. I wish I could – but, of course not."
You slow him down until his voice is approximately right.
You hear crashing sound, like a baking pan thrown on the ground. Someone's impatient. You try not to dance in glee. A jiggling eyeball without anything to jiggle with is probably suspicious. Your pupil still creases into an approximation of a smile before you realize what those muscles are doing and get them to stop.
"According to the data, she should be dead. A fact clearly contradicted by observation, so the data must be wrong." The Doctor continues to pace. You make out, blurrily, a lot of bodily hand waving. "What am I missing? What idiotic detail have I overlooked? She must have been engineered, but looking through her code is like looking at a toddler's finger painting. It's nonsense. Wyndham would be appalled. She should not be viable."
You do not know if you should be pleased or not by his frustration. You'll make a mental note to ask Leah. After some more ranting you discover that while entertaining, this is also frustrating on a different level.
Pick up the eyeball, Doctor Asshole.
"Perhaps a fresh sample…"
Yes!
"If she were engineered, a failsafe to prevent analysis would be logical, if beyond anything I have even heard of, which means I need to perform my analysis on a living tissue sample-"
Yes! One living eyeball! Just! Pick! It! Up!
"I suppose I'll have to visit Dee One again."
What.
He leaves. You are still busy going: What by the time the door swishes closed behind him. It's infuriating. He took the eyeball out! He made corny jokes while he did so! Well, you didn't get the humor at first, but Leah explained them to you to distract you and you agree, they sucked. The anaesthetic wore off (but not the muscle relaxant) and it was excruciatingly painful! Come on, at least experiment on it!
Despite your mental protests, he remains stubbornly absent.
After a moment where you are pretty sure he is being serious, but aren't sure he's sure he's being serious you grumpily crawl out of your containment receptacle. It's not hard. It clearly wasn't made with a locomotive eyeball in mind. You wish you had more experience transforming into smaller arthropods, but you make do with what you are capable of.
Spider silk manages to get a very tiny, biologically improbable human to ground level. The ground is simple, unadorned concrete. It's annoying clean: there's nothing for you to eat. You later make your way up a shelf and then a desk and hit the jackpot in the shape of the rest of the samples. You consume them all, growing slightly all the while. You even find your own biomass-spun clothes which helps a lot, and the Man in Purple's suit, which doesn't: tiny in terms of biomass, less in terms of information. His desk is made of hardwood. His computer is made of plastic, and has four monitors, all of which seem to show a black-and-white video of a room. Video 4 is showing yours. Videos 1 to 3 are empty. Videos 5 to 18 are full of people. Videos 19 to 25 show empty-ish corridors, the Doctor occasionally striding through them.
You consume the drawers and papers first. It's like eating pencil shavings. Actually, no, it's like eating wood and paper, but – point is – you've picked up a bad human habit, and that human habit is disgust. You don't want to eat it at all.
You screw your courage to the sticking place and do so.
With enough mass, you can put the monitors down on the ground before you consume the entire desk. There. Just enough biomass to move around at a human size.
You consider the computer, then the rest of the room.
You could run off after him, but this room seems to be pretty important to him. Also, it's a lab. You hate labs.
It takes some effort, but you finally set the place on fire. It's not hard. You are a determined arsonist and can make space alien jet fuel through biochemical processes. All it takes is the idea and a spark. Alarms sound and klaxons ring and the lab is plunged into whirling red darkness. When he comes rushing back, Camera nineteen nicely captures his thinning hair, his arms like windmills, and the expression of utter horror on his face. The smoke is billowing nicely when the door swishes open. You don't bother with any speeches or witty words or one-liners. You just jump at him through the smoke, admire how his eyes widen, how his pupils dilate, how his mouth opens to scream, and then how his flesh twists and tears as you consume him head-first. He dies without a scream, but with a lot of meaty, mushy, eating noises.
You burp, contented. Not necessary, of course, but satisfying, oh yes.
After that you realize you haven't quite thought this through because fire is hot and Leah is still stuck and also there are fifteen or so other 'people' down here with you. The 'Mad Dogs' of City Hospital Psych Ward which lies in a basement so forgotten that it was built over after something or another happened to the original City Hospital.
You rifle through the Doctor's brain while it's still fresh. Apparently, the Subjects can all turn into giant lizardmen? Due to surgery? You're not entirely sure how that works. Or even why anyone would want to do so. Something to do with money. You rifle a little further and find, to your surprise, a certain compulsion to go to the quickly charring computer setup. There's a tiny USB in one of the ports: you start clicking and dragging files into it.
Well, now you know how the Doctor would answer the question: if your house was on fire, what would you take out of it?
You realize you may have eaten a mad genius. Given he dug out your eye after poking a needle into it, you aren't too fussed about the eating part. The mad genius part on the other hand…
Humans are so weird. And you're saying that after having learned how they eat. In order to be a Good Person, all he'd need to do is experiment on – cows or birds or something. He probably would not have tried experimenting on you and would have avoided his messy and somewhat protracted end.
So. Should you free the Subjects?
Well, yes, obviously you should. Fire is hot, and letting them burn to death would probably be Bad, given that you set the fire, so in a roundabout way, you're responsible for all the people the fire kills. You suppose the real question is: should you free them, knowing that without constant treatment they'll go insane? This was an actual concern to the Doctor, so you suppose it should be one of yours as well though the logical step between 'saving their lives' and 'being responsible for them going insane' is not very clear to you.
Does saving people mean saving them all the way? Like, if they were burnt in a fire, and you save them from the fire, do you have to make sure they don't die from their burns?
Your foray into the realm of superhero philosophy is temporarily set aside when the flames start licking at your backside, reminding you that regardless of all those other preoccupations, there is one that reigns supreme. The files have finished loading: looks like it's time to go!
You burst out of the main laboratory, just in time to get kicked in the face.
If you were to replay the event in slow motion, it'd happen a bit like this: a girl, at the perfect height to be frustrated by cookie jars placed on the second shelf in the cupboard, leaps from a room in flames, long, flowing tresses trailing smoke, ramming into a door that was already preparing to slide open for her. It crumples, revealing the fact that even super genius mad scientists can get ripped off by their villainous contractors, and lets her through.
It's not a clean breakaway though: even as the door flowers into jagged pieces, the impact forces her to twist in mid-air, and she curls into a ball. The ball hits a foot that just happens to be there.
So, really, more accurately, one could have said: you burst out of the main laboratory, just in time to fall face-first onto someone's foot.
You much prefer the version where you got kicked in the face. It's somehow less embarrassing.
You look up. A man wearing hospital scrubs looks down. Your gazes intersect.
"You!" you both say.
You because you finally figured out how you were knocked unconscious, him because he's the nondescript orderly that you didn't notice in time who managed to incapacitate your frail, human constitution. His pupils lengthen and his skin starts splitting into rapidly growing scales.
By the time you rear up to punch him, he's got enough sheer physical armor to at least slow your consumption down. Even so, he doesn't let your punch connect: he leaps backwards twenty feet down the corridor, sparks flying where his claws scrape against the walls. Walls that drip with condensation because whatever the labs, and cells and prisons are made of, the corridors make it obvious that right now you're somewhere full of leaky, hissing pipes and poor lighting.
He stares at you, eyes wide.
"What the fuck."
He's probably talking about the nozzles that have sprouted from your arms and your legs. That's cute, coming from a human that can grow scales in the time it usually takes humans to throw on a coat. The two of you share a fraught moment. The walls grow hot and the air thickens while the two of you have your stand-off.
The lizardman orderly is the first to look away. He makes a break for it down the corridor. You could catch him. For a moment the fury, the rage, the anger burns, hotter than the flames licking their way through the corridors and you almost do.
You stop instead, turn around. Even before the other patients, even before catching the man responsible for handing you over to a scientist, you need to check on Leah. You don't know how long she was at his mercies, but you know that the scientist wasn't immediately summoned back by the fire.
Behind you, something in the lab explodes. A backwash of heat crisps your skin and sends you stumbling forward. A place this wet should not catch fire so readily, but here they are, catching fire. You run. You pass containment pods and the men and women in them are going nuts with fear. You see a few flicker through their transformations.
You'll go back for them. You will. Just not right now.
When you bust down the door, Leah's there.
Her eye doesn't glow anymore, and she's still covered in gore. But the body you were using – her body – is hers again, somehow.
"Dee?" she whispers.
"Leah!" You can't help but smile: you've always felt a little bad for having eaten Leah. And here she is, whole again, not just a voice in your head. "How do you feel?"
Something shudders through her. "Dee, please – please just let me out."
"Oh? Oh, yeah, of course."
You do.
In moments she's on your shoulders, carried piggy-back as you rush down the corridor, pressing all the right buttons to let the monster men out, one-by-one, the noise of their messy escape a calamity, when she whispers: "Did you get him?"
"Yup."
There's no moralizing from her this time. No talk of the police. Just a rough, pained: "Good."
She squeezes your arm. You beam more widely.
And that's how, five days after you left a park powerless and nearly alone, everything is on fire and there are scaled monster men escaping into the night. So maybe some of it is your fault. Obviously the fire didn't light itself and, as it so happens, the scaled monster men had to be punch coded into freedom. None of that matters: you, you have Leah. An undeniably human Leah, even if she has just a tiny little bit of virus in her and could probably make her way through a brick wall or alien army.
It's not the best thing that has happened to you, but it's damn close.
----
Real voting options to follow at some later point. This update is still subject to editing: I deleted at least 3k of garbage, but given how much of it has been changed, I'm not sure I caught all the holes.
Dr. Eric Hope (Based on the Spider-Man villain 'Dr. Hope'
A former Genesis Project scientist, Dr. Eric Hope was expected to make important, Nobel-award winning contributions to the field of science as a matter of course. While other GP luminaries went on to investigate the possibilities of cloning, simulated evolutionary pressures, and the holy grail of 'predictive gene theory' – Dr. Hope sought what, in many ways, was the reverse of his colleagues. He obsessed over the evolutionary dead ends, believing that the past informs the future and that for that reason alone the past was well worth exploring. While Dr. Hope might have been born a genius, he was also born a sociopath, and in trying to prove his theories true, crossed lines that his much more morally grounded mentor could not condone and was forced to resign in disgrace. His license suspended and his standing in the medical research community in tatters, Dr. Eric Hope could not let go of his pride and continued quietly experimenting. A certain group caught wind of his activities and – for a price – decided to support him by gifting him with a new identity and a new place of practice.
Pick 4 skills:
Pick any skill from the list and add a IV to it, he's got it:
Anatomy, Biology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Embryology, Emergency Medicine, Epidemiology, Genetics, Immunology, Human Behavior, Organic Chemistry, Medicine, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Physics, Physiology, Radiology, Surgery - and so on and so forth. I'm not writing up a description of each, that's ridiculous.
[x] Ego: Dr. Eric Hope (Rare)
As a sociopath and a genius, Dr. Eric Hope has the potential to survive in the 'maelstrom of identity' that is your existence. If allowed to survive, he will retain not only all his skills, but also his sense of self. While he cannot control you, he can distract you and refuse to give you his knowledge. On the other hand, he can also advise you far in excess of your current skills, and will automatically generate 1d10 xp every week.
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
Like Charisma, genius is a rare trait that governs mental faculties, improving them immensely. At this level, skills falling under the domain of 'medical sciences' can be upgraded as if their cost were two ranks lower than they actually were. So a Biology V would be purchased at the cost of Biology III, and so on. The cost cannot be made lower than a rank I skill.
[x] Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
A branch of medical science pioneered by Dr. Hope, the intricacies of Regression Biomechanics is still mostly beyond your understanding. However, due to your unique biology, you can brute force what took Dr. Hope years of study and dedication to skillfully refine. Roll a 2d10 whenever you use this skill: this represents both how much biomass you burn and how much experience you gain in the skill. Effects are up to the QM, but will generally skew towards the comic. A high-end feat (roll of 20, would be giving a chicken the ability to turn into a T-rex, while a lower row will have a chicken think it's a T-rex.[/spoiler]
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Please ignore the last few lines of the update, I am on my phone and apparently the update is of a size that Chrome will crash if you so much as sneeze in its general direction. I did not mean to leave this update on a 'and Dee thought Christmas would be even MORE interesting ho ho ho'.
EDIT: Line changed.
So it was either this or no update for the next day or so and at some point you just gotta go with: 'eh, it'll do.'
I need to crash and think of what to add to the voting options now that Leah's arc has been accelerated. But for now ZZZzzzz.
EDIT: Line changed.
So it was either this or no update for the next day or so and at some point you just gotta go with: 'eh, it'll do.'
I need to crash and think of what to add to the voting options now that Leah's arc has been accelerated. But for now ZZZzzzz.
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WanderingEye
smol skeleton
Seems the most useful ones:
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[X] Biology IV
[X] Medicine IV
[X] Chemistry IV
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[X] Biology IV
[X] Medicine IV
[X] Chemistry IV
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NexysDhyArchen
Throne Breaker
[x] [Chance] 45-55%?
[x]Cell Biology IV
[x]Genetics IV
[x]Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
[x]Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
Lets become the master of all evolution!
Also, I have this strong suspicion that this selection will be enormously useful for evolving ourselves.
[x]Cell Biology IV
[x]Genetics IV
[x]Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
[x]Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
Lets become the master of all evolution!
Also, I have this strong suspicion that this selection will be enormously useful for evolving ourselves.
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At the end, I think Purple man or anyone else does not have any Blacklight samples in their posession, as D swapped his body to that formely-eye, and we burned the rest of the samples.
I hope. And I hope what Purple man is dead.
If I misunderstood, please correct me so I am be annoyed about other people now being capable of making blacklight clones and stuff.
[X] Biology IV
[X] Medicine IV
[X] Chemistry IV
[x]Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[x] [Chance] 05-15%
Sorry, wanna have one horrible special blacklight shoggoth. Too many shoggoths makes things very ehhh.
I hope. And I hope what Purple man is dead.
If I misunderstood, please correct me so I am be annoyed about other people now being capable of making blacklight clones and stuff.
[X] Biology IV
[X] Medicine IV
[X] Chemistry IV
[x]Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[x] [Chance] 05-15%
Sorry, wanna have one horrible special blacklight shoggoth. Too many shoggoths makes things very ehhh.
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Ivan the Not-so-Terrible
AH MEW CHEEKI BREEKI I V DAMKE
- Location
- Mikonyan’s USSR
[x] [Chance] 80-95%?
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[X] Genetics IV
[X] Biology IV
[X] Medicine IV
Is Leah gonna go hobo-shoggoth?
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[X] Genetics IV
[X] Biology IV
[X] Medicine IV
Is Leah gonna go hobo-shoggoth?
chrisleech
The Finder of Things Left Behind
- Location
- Jacksonville, Florida
I'm very conflicted on this update. On the one hand Leah got us stuck as a human in her body. On the other hand, we found where the Purple Man got to. On the next tendril we got knocked out captured and experimented on. Then again we got to eat the guy, even if we couldn't get revenge on the lizardman. And now Leah has her body back and all I really want is for the two of us to go our separate ways. She's been a moral ball and chain for a long time, and she only been getting heavier on us the more time we spent with her.
I like our moral ball.
It is a fun companionship.
She somehow locked our shapeshifting in the rest of the body, and more or less made it perfectly human. Somehow.
I suspect what we might be capable of likewise transforming normal bodies into blacklight biomass if we ever purchase her bodyhopping superpower.
It is a fun companionship.
Probably not. She is stuck with a body which can't really shapeshift, while we hopped to the eye and proceeded to regenerate back into shapeshift-capable shoggoth.
She somehow locked our shapeshifting in the rest of the body, and more or less made it perfectly human. Somehow.
I suspect what we might be capable of likewise transforming normal bodies into blacklight biomass if we ever purchase her bodyhopping superpower.
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Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[x] [Chance] 05-15%
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[X] Biology IV
[X] Emergency Medicine IV
[X] Human Behavior IV
Human behavior so we're better at understanding people, and Emergency Medicine so we can keep Leah from dying again. SPeaking of Leah, do you think she'll grow the eye back?
[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[X] Biology IV
[X] Emergency Medicine IV
[X] Human Behavior IV
Human behavior so we're better at understanding people, and Emergency Medicine so we can keep Leah from dying again. SPeaking of Leah, do you think she'll grow the eye back?
theflyingbiscuit
"Titanic neechan"
Replace a moralizing kinder-gardener with a sociopathic mad scientist.
For those who get upset about our morality.
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
[X] Regression Biomechanics IV
[X] Biology IV
[X] Emergency Medicine IV
[X] Bio-Science Genius
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Welcome back!
So Purple Man got himself in a bit of a bother, but is still not dead.
He's probably hanging out somewhere and healing; that is a non-trivial injury, and recovery times without bullshit is in the months.
Gotta catch them all......
Should have eaten that lizard man on general principles; you bash me over the head, I eat you.
Fair's fair.
VOTE
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
[x]Biology IV
[x]Pharmacology IV
[x]Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
[x]Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
Biology IV is a prereq for Consumption IV.
Pharmacology IV means we can synthesize a lot of drugs, medicines and poisons we have come across, for non-lethal incapacitation of people we don't want to eat. BioSci Genius gives us a discount on medical sciences; do want.
Regression Biomechanics is a gimme, because who doesn't want to become a TRex?
And I don't think having Carnage to our Venom is a good idea.
So Purple Man got himself in a bit of a bother, but is still not dead.
He's probably hanging out somewhere and healing; that is a non-trivial injury, and recovery times without bullshit is in the months.
Gotta catch them all......
Should have eaten that lizard man on general principles; you bash me over the head, I eat you.
Fair's fair.
VOTE
[x] [Chance] 05-15%?
[x]Biology IV
[x]Pharmacology IV
[x]Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
[x]Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
Biology IV is a prereq for Consumption IV.
Pharmacology IV means we can synthesize a lot of drugs, medicines and poisons we have come across, for non-lethal incapacitation of people we don't want to eat. BioSci Genius gives us a discount on medical sciences; do want.
Regression Biomechanics is a gimme, because who doesn't want to become a TRex?
And I don't think having Carnage to our Venom is a good idea.
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[x] Bio-Sciences Genius II (Rare)
[x] Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
[X] Biology IV
Those three definitely. Not sure what should be the fourth.
Also, before voting on the other evolved, I'd like to know what it's general purpose in the story would be. Like, i don't think it's be interesting to just have it serve as our Elizabeth Green
[x] Regression Biomechanics IV (Specialty)
[X] Biology IV
Those three definitely. Not sure what should be the fourth.
Also, before voting on the other evolved, I'd like to know what it's general purpose in the story would be. Like, i don't think it's be interesting to just have it serve as our Elizabeth Green
- Location
- sweden
if we have [ ] Ego: Dr. Eric Hope (Rare) we can have all that more