damned_institute | Nightshift 49: Disciplinary Therapy Room 3 [M-U for Kemanorel]

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Nightshift 49: Disciplinary Therapy Room 3 [M-U for Kemanorel]

It has been said that an animal lurks within the heart of every man. In some cases, that could even be taken literally. In tonight's specimen the dragon sleeping within his heart was a literal thing, the human exterior only a deceptive facade. And masks could be so easily shattered, couldn't they? It simply took the right kind of blow in just the right place.

And tonight the stage was all prepared, the set pieces in place and the curtain about to rise as soon as the star decided to awaken. In anticipation of that event the young man had been placed on a table illuminated by a single particularly bright light above him, enough to cast the rest of the room in shadow. After all, it'd be premature to reveal the rest of the backdrops before the show began, wouldn't it?

For the moment the room was almost utterly silent but for a faint humming, buzzing sound, the sort that wasn't immediately noticed but as soon as it was became impossible to ignore. And accompanying the sound was a particularly heavy tang of ozone, as though lightning had just struck nearby. Nobody else was visible in the room as yet, no sounds of movement to give away the doctor's presence. Until the time was right she simply waited, watchful and silent.

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Keman woke gradually. For what seemed like ages—but was probably only a minute or two—the only thing that he was aware of was the aching in his head. Every heartbeat sent a new spike of discomfort jolting through his skull, right behind his eyes.

He was lying down, that much he knew. He was flat on his back against something hard and cold and he couldn’t seem to figure out why. Everything felt foggy. He’d been on the buses, hadn’t he? And then there was dinner, and then there was…nothing. Keman couldn’t remember what happened next, and thinking about it hurt. A lot. He tried opening his eyes—which was a mistake, as it turned out. The light was entirely too bright for comfort, so bright he could feel it even after his eyes were closed again. It wasn’t morning already, was it? His head was still so fuzzy.

And why couldn’t he move?

“What...?”

Ah, at last. The star player had joined them, even if his opening line was... somewhat less than ideal. The doctor rose to her feet, clapping softly as she did. "Welcome, welcome," she said, as she took hold of the handle of her cart and pushed it out of the darkness and into the circle of the light. Her heels clicked against tile with each step as the equipment on the tray rattled noisily, then stopped a short distance from the table.

"So kind of you to join us this evening, Kemanorel." The woman laughed softly, moving over to stand next to the table as she ripped open an alcohol wipe. "How are you feeling? Ready for the opening act, I hope?"

Kemanorel.

Nurses didn’t know his full name; most patients didn’t. For about half a second, Keman entertained the utterly mad thought that he was back at the Lair somehow, but that wasn’t right either. Whatever he was laying on was cold and metallic and he remembered dinner with Leon, and the nurse with a syringe, and—

He knew where he was. Or, rather, he knew what was going to happen to him and had a very vague idea of where he was. This had happened to Shadow, and even though it felt like ages ago, it had really only been a couple of weeks, hadn’t it? Shadow had been taken for the experiments, and then he hadn’t been Shadow anymore. Not until whatever they’d done to him had worn off.

“Are you going to Change me?” Augh, his mouth tasted like he’d been chewing on his pillow. “Like you did with Mero?” Shadow had said that it was Lord Dyran who’d done locked him in his own mind and made him into a perfect, biddable little slave, which didn’t make much sense, and that was a woman’s voice, but…it seemed like the most logical thing.

How else would they know his name?

"Oh, no, dear boy." The doctor chuckled softly and began wiping down a spot on the inside of his elbow, then paused and stared into the distance with a thoughtful frown. "Well. Not as such, but... in a manner of speaking, perhaps." She thought a moment longer, lips pursed as though she rather liked the idea, then finally shrugged and drew back again, discarding the used wipe on the tray she'd brought with her. It was an interesting thought, and one she filed away mentally to use on her report later.

She rattled equipment around on the tray for a moment longer before turning back to her subject, taking hold of his arm and a tourniquet around his bicep with the absent efficiency of long practice. "You should be used to change, though, shouldn't you? It's natural for your kind, shifting here and there into whatever you'd like." She prodded at the vein in his arm for a moment, then picked up the needle and carefully slid it into the vein. "You're like... natural actors. It only requires seconds for a costume change."

“Are you being literal or strictly theoretical?” Keman risked opening his eyes again, squinting in the bright light, but he couldn’t make out the woman’s face. Just her hands, doing Fire and Rain knew what to his arm. He recognized the pinch of a needle and tensed even more. What had she just injected him with? Nothing good, obviously. “Yes, I can shift. Could shift. But Dr. Landel saw fit to take it away from me, remember?” His voice shook a lot more than he wanted it to; he was terrified. Animal instincts, buried under layers of newfound humanity, were going absolutely haywire. Everything in him wanted to fight or fly—flight was preferable. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but watch what little he could see of the doctor through half-closed eyes.

“Let me go. Please. I can’t shift here. There’s nothing I can teach you. Just…please, let me go.”

Oh, he should be grateful. She was doing him a favor, after all, in restoring something that he'd lost, but they never saw it that way. They always resorted to threats or demands or begging to be released, as he was. If only they could truly understand just what their roles were in all of this, but -- well, it wasn't as though the rats in their cages had to comprehend why they were there, they simply had to run the mazes as they were supposed to.

The doctor simply shook her head as she gently slid the needle from the catheter inserted in his arm, discarding it on the tray with a metallic clang before she turned back with a piece of tape. "I don't understand why people seem to think I'd just... change my mind," she observed, as she carefully taped the catheter in place on his arm. "After I've gone to all the work of planning and preparation and getting you here, do you really think I'd just turn out the lights and say the show's over?"

She patted his hand lightly and smiled, aware that he might not be able to see the exact expression, but he should be able to hear it in her voice. "We've only just begun, dear boy. We all have our roles to play before it's finished. You just need a little... help, to prepare for yours." She chuckled softly, then moved to attach the IV tubing to the catheter and hang a bag from a stand she'd unfolded on the edge of her rolling tray.

Inside the IV bag was a peculiar-looking substance that seemed to constantly shift between a myriad of colors, and she smiled at it with the attitude of a proud parent. "Just give this a few minutes to work, Kemanorel. Then perhaps you'll start to understand." She chuckled again and moved back into the darkness, leaving him apparently alone in the silence.

Keman had known that asking nicely for his freedom probably wouldn’t yield anything positive, but it had been worth a shot. It had been completely useless, of course; the woman hadn’t even paused in what she was doing. She’d just shrugged it off. Now there was a tube going into his arm, and she was attaching something to it that made his insides run cold. Even with his eyes still adjusting to the light, he couldn’t seem to look away from whatever was swirling in the bag. It was dripping into the tube and…oh no, he could feel it in his arm. Dripping and cold and foreign.

The woman was still going on insanely about ‘roles’ and ‘scenes.’ Like all of this was one big theatre to her. What did that have anything to do with this? Plays and playacting were something Keman knew about only second-hand, and now…she was leaving.

“Where are you going?!” he shouted. “Come back!”

Suddenly, being alone in the thrumming room with that substance dripping slowly into his arm was a much more frightening prospect than having another person in the room (even if that person was a madwoman). All he could do was watch and wait and wonder what was going to happen to him.

There was no response to his call, no indication that the woman had even heard. Even the click of her shoes against the tile had disappeared, as though the woman had simply left him there. Alone, with only his thoughts and the monotonously even drip of the IV fluid.

Gradually, though, the subtle hum increased in volume, as hidden in the shadows the doctor prepared the equipment for the next phase of the experiment, to be performed as soon as the drug had made its way through the dragon-boy's system. It should soften him up, so to speak, lay the foundations for what she intended to do. And it had the added side benefit of making him drowsy -- it was ever so much easier to do what she intended when he wasn't trying to whine or struggle.

For now, though, she just waited. And watched. She had no shortage of patience, after all, and a great deal of interest in the results of this experiment.

The minutes stretched on and on, and Keman realized he had no idea how long it had actually been since the doctor had left him alone with whatever it was seeping down the tube into his arm. It felt like hours. The steady drip-drip-drip echoed the buzzing in the room—or was it just in his own head? No way to tell. It was louder now, more insistent. Now that there was no other ambient noise, it was all Keman could focus on.

But even that was getting difficult. After…however long it had been, his vision started getting fuzzy at the edges. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and his eyelids were so heavy…

Keman started awake. He couldn’t fall asleep! Not now. He needed to fight the drugs. He tried to pull his arm away from the IV, but it wouldn’t move. His whole body felt like a leaden weight, and eventually he gave up trying to struggle. The boy’s eyes fluttered closed, and he sank back into unconsciousness.

Time passed, but how much? It could have been hours, days, perhaps even weeks, but once Keman woke again it was much dimmer, the light low enough that again he couldn't see much around him but this time for the opposite reason. The harshly bright whiteness of the overhead light had been replaced by a faint, apparently sourceless blue-green illumination that allowed him to see himself and little else. Something about this felt different, however. More closed-in, or confined, like a small cave.

He was still on what seemed to be the same table, but the IV was gone and a bright neon pink wrapping left around his elbow where it had been. The reek of ozone was even stronger now, strong enough to taste, and the humming had grown to an almost bone-rattling buzz. Otherwise, again, it was silent. No sign of the doctor, or anyone else for that matter. To all appearances he was alone.

Once again, the buzzing in Keman’s skull was what woke him. This time, though, it wasn’t pain. It was just…pressure. It echoed the hum in the room, which was so strong now that he could feel it vibrating through the table he lay on. The IV was gone.

The room itself had changed. It felt smaller now, more enclosed. That, combined with the directionless blue-green light, was almost comforting to the young dragon.

Almost.

It felt like a cave, like his little cave back at the Lair, but it also felt wrong. He tried to sit up, and found that he actually could. He wasn’t bound anymore. He threw his legs over the side of the table, whimpering slightly when the change in equilibrium made the pounding in his head that much worse. It felt like his skull was slowly being squeezed, too slowly to be painful but certainly fast enough to be uncomfortable.

"I wouldn't suggest that you move too much yet." The doctor's voice echoed against the walls of the small chamber, its source impossible to pinpoint. "Use of this medication could cause lightheadedness, dizziness, or drowsiness. Do not operate heavy machinery while using this medication." She laughed at that, the sound slightly distorted by whatever speaker was broadcasting it. "Not that you're that large, are you?

"Ah, but dear me. Let's give you a bit of light, shall we?" There was a soft click through the speaker as the doctor flipped a switch, at which point the light began to slowly brighten, making the chamber visible. The walls were made of something that looked like stone, deeply engraved with arcane-looking symbols and writing in a variety of languages. And as their glow brightened, it became apparent that a number of gemstones embedded amidst the symbols were the source of the illumination.

The doctor's voice continued, as she could be heard flipping more switches wherever she was sitting. "It shouldn't take too long now. Just sit back and relax a little. It'll hurt less that way." Pause. "Probably."

“Shut up,” Keman hissed, clutching his head. The pressure in it was incredible. It crescendoed with the humming in the little room, to the point where it was almost the only thing he could focus on. At least, until the woman—wherever she was—turned up the lights.

Writing. A lot of it. It was all over the walls, in several different languages. Some of it he could read, most of it he couldn’t. Most of the arcane sigils on the walls were beyond anything he’d even seen in his mother’s books, but one or two of them looked almost draconic. His stomach twisted. There were gems on the walls too, precious and semi-precious and all of them perfectly able to channel power.

His power.

“…What are you going to do to me?”

Pinpoints of light within each gem grew and expanded until they were almost incandescent, and slowly, ever so slowly, the power within them seemed to flow out along the inset patterns along the walls. The doctor's chuckle echoed oddly now, the speakers sounding more and more distorted as the seconds ticked past. "Do to you?" she asked. "Nothing you shouldn't be able to do yourself."

The buzzing hum within the room grew louder and stronger until the table on which he was sitting was rattling against the floor even with his weight on it. The doctor continued to speak, voice now coming between bursts of pure static. "-- hope you -- tonight. It's a -- tunity -- see what -- within you." Click, click went two more switches on the panel before her, the sound oddly sharp and clear before the static resumed. "Good --, you're -- need --. Enjoy!" The intercom shut off with a final ear-piercing squeal of feedback.

And almost simultaneously the light flared blindingly bright as the power surging into the chamber reached its peak.

Keman knew that the doctor was speaking again, but the pressure in his head had gotten even stronger and little things like “listening” didn’t seem so important right now. It felt like his skull was being crushed and his brain squeezed down to nothing. As the light got brighter, the pain got worse. It spread to other parts of his body, to every single bone and joint until he thought his skeleton was going to jump out his body completely.

At some point, right around the time that the light got brightest, he fell off the table entirely and lay curled up on the floor. Everything hurt. His face, his hands, his back; he couldn’t stand the pain and the pressure. Keman grit his teeth to keep himself from screaming—he still had presence of mind not to allow the woman doing this to him that particular pleasure—but he couldn’t help himself.

I want to die. Please, just let me die.

The monitors had all gone black, of course; in the presence of that much power it wouldn't have been surprising if they'd shorted out completely. It was unfortunate that she couldn't directly watch what was going on, but the doctor felt it was an acceptable compromise. If Keman should get a somewhat higher dosage than intended, well, he'd live. Most likely.

The doctor watched the seconds tick by on her timepiece, lips pursed as she counted. That should be enough, but just to be on the safe side she waited a tiny bit longer before switching off the machinery. As the light faded and the humming finally ceased, she removed the protective helmet she'd been wearing and leaned over to tap impatiently on the monitors. One of them seemed like it wasn't going to ever turn back on, but the others were slowly flickering back to life.

"Come on, Kemanorel," she murmured, smiling with anticipation. "It shouldn't have been that difficult for you. Let's see how well you'll fit the starring role." If it hadn't succeeded the first time he'd just be in for another dose, of course, but it would be simpler for them both if it had.

Something was different.

Keman was in so much pain, at first, that he hadn’t recognized it for what it was right away. He was out of practice, after all; how long had it been since this had happened? A month? More? And the pain was still so intense…it was no wonder that he hadn’t realized it.

He was changing.

Slowly, so slowly that he thought he would either die or go mad with pain long before it was finished, he could feel his spine stretching, lengthening. His shoulderblades, too, were growing; little spurs of bone that were starting to poke through his skin, almost like—no. It couldn’t be.

With a choked gasp, Keman risked opening his eyes and saw his nails growing into claws. His arm was beginning to blur. He was shifting, so slowly it shouldn’t have even been possible, and he had absolutely no control over it.

He just couldn’t help it anymore. He started to scream.

Perfect.

As soon as the monitor displays finally returned to full display the doctor couldn't help it: she laughed. Full-voiced and triumphant, she laughed, in counterpoint to the boy's scream of pain. He was, after all, not even human, so what did it matter? Her experiment had succeeded.

She reached over and flicked on the speaker again, wincing slightly as it squealed and spat static at her before settling to the soft hum of an open microphone. "Bravo, my dear boy, bravo!" she cried, the wide smile clearly audible in her voice. "I always knew you had it in you.

"And now everyone else will, too," the doctor continued, reaching over to a panel of switches and flipping several in turn. "It's a little unorthodox, sending the star out with his true face instead of a costume, but when the role calls for it... well, we needed a monster. A beast. And, after all, you fit."

The same laws that applied to shifting back home seemed to apply here. As Keman’s tail grew and he sprouted wings, his arms and legs shrank to make up for the additional mass, repositioning themselves as they did so because dragons are not bipeds. His skull lengthened and so did his neck, but both had to become smaller and thinner. Hair grew back into his scalp, leaving him momentarily bald until a bony ridge could take its place. Without all of the spare mass he’d moved to the Out unavailable to him, each little change in one part of the body directly impacted another.

And all of it was agony.

Keman screamed until he literally couldn’t anymore; his vocal chords changed to accommodate his longer throat and the next sound that came out was an animalistic whimper through teeth that were suddenly too long and too sharp. It should only have taken seconds to shift into something this small, but…it felt like hours. Maybe it was minutes. There was no way to tell. His wings ripped through what was left of his shirt, lacing themselves with skin from his back. It was still human skin, pink and fragile and bleeding from a dozen little cuts he couldn’t remember sustaining, but that would change soon enough.

He could hear the woman over the intercom, gleeful, and he realized that he wanted to kill her. He wanted to rip her throat out with his newly-sharp fangs, feel her lifeblood dripping down his jaws. She was wrong. He wasn’t a monster; he was a thinking, reasoning, intelligent being. He only killed to hunt, the same as any other carnivore.

But he could make an exception for her.

While the blue-green scales were still spreading over his body, the little dragon shed the remnants of his patient uniform and started to run towards the sound of the woman’s voice.

Edited 2010-05-25 18:14 (UTC)

The speakers broadcasting the doctor's voice in the small chamber were located at the very base of the walls, camouflaged well enough that they were hard to see until one was almost on top of them. And should anyone be foolish enough to try to touch speaker or even the wall, so much lingering power still remained that it would give him quite a bit of a shock.

A faint sigh echoed from said speakers as the doctor noticed her subject's charge on the monitors, and she shook her head slightly as she pressed a button on the console in front of herself. "No, no. Stage left, dear boy," she chided, as with a grating rumble one of the panels on the opposite side of the chamber lifted, leaving a gap perhaps a couple feet high. It wouldn't have been easy for someone human-sized to get out, but Keman's minature dragon form would fit just fine.

The snap of a flipped switch echoed through the microphone, and the gems on the walls began to glow again, but this time with a predominantly red tinge. "Sometimes it can be difficult to train the dumb beasts of the world, though. They need a little... prod." A minature bolt of lightning arced from one wall panel to the next, providing a dramatic punctuation to her words.

Keman collided with the wall and sprang back with a yelp of pain as soon as he touched it. His scales had done their job and reflected a lot of the shock, but enough power hit him that it hurt, registering across nerves that were already over-sensitive. He watched warily as the door opened just a little bit, not wide enough for a person to get through…

But he wasn’t a person now, was he, and he was barely a fraction of the size that he should have been for this form. The only mass that had been available while shifting—or, rather, while he was being forced to shift—was that of a skinny seventeen year old boy, barely enough to make a dragon the size of a hunting dog. This was wrong. All of it. The dragon seethed with anger, so much so that red haze filled his vision, and—no. Keman took a deep breath through his new nostrils, trying to calm himself. He couldn’t prove the woman right. He wasn’t dumb animal or a monster.

Steeling himself, the little dragon folded his wings and raced towards the open door. He had to get out of here, no matter what the cost. And not too soon, either. Lightning arced behind him, searing the tip of his tail as he went.

[going here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/910780.html?thread=69700796#t69700796).]

Edited 2010-06-02 03:09 (UTC)

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Nightshift 49: Disciplinary Therapy Room 3 [M-U for Kemanorel]

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