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Beast Boy turned the envelope in his hands again, the thick paper catching on the fabric of his silver gloves with a rustle like tall grass on a breezy day.
When he had first opened the mailbox and seen the envelope with his name on it, he had been hoping for some fanmail– which did happen occasionally, though not as much as the Titan would like. If asked about it, Beast Boy would say that his favorite fanmail to get were letters from fawning ladies, but in reality he had never gotten one of those. He wouldn’t ever be able to bring himself to say it, but his favorite fanmail to receive was the nearly illegible scrawls from young children gushing about how cool his powers were, how they had always wanted to see so-and-so animal but thought they never would until they saw him in the streets, how seeing him protecting people had inspired them to have more faith in themselves and to help others.
There hadn't been any fanmail in the mailbox, though. The words on the envelope weren’t even written, they were printed. Beast Boy stared down at the formal black ink where it slunk across the crisp envelope’s surface like a predator stalking through weeds, and he swallowed hard.
S.T.A.R. Medical Research Facility
618 Gopher Road, Jump City
Beast Boy’s gaze trailed from the return address back to his hero name at the center only to drop the envelope entirely as his stomach twisted. The paper landed soundlessly beside him on the ratty mattress of his top bunk.
He’d been staring down at the envelope for an hour now, trying to figure out why the hell a medical research center would be reaching out to him unprompted and why a silly little envelope was leaving his stomach tied in knots this badly.
He already knew the answer to that second one, though. He’d never liked doctors. That was partly because Beast Boy was always going to doctors; his immune system had been fragile since he was young, and it seemed like the smallest things could and would get him sick, and Beast Boy hated being sick. It always made him think of–
Beast Boy squeezed his eyes shut as memories seared into the forefront of his mind: flashes of the large, green leaves and vines of an African jungle, blood, his parents screaming for him, the smell of vomit and tears floating around him for weeks…
Before he knew it, his silver-gloved hands were coated in the stark white of ripped-up paper. Beast Boy silently crawled off of the top bunk and shoved the shreds into the mess under his bed where he’d never see them again. His eyes hovered on the bottom bunk for a moment and he debated going to sleep there like he normally did. But in the end, Beast Boy curled up on the top bunk in the form of a cat, feeling oddly comforted that he could see nearly every inch of his room and everything in it from way up there.
Beast Boy found the exact same envelope in the mailbox again a week later.
He threw it away without opening it.
It wasn’t until the fourth letter that he finally got the courage to open it.
Sir,
My name is Doctor Hartman. My colleague Doctor Dole and I have been studying human and animal cancer cells for five years now, and quite recently we had an epiphany in our research. As you may know, cancer is associated with the rapid duplication of cells with damaged DNA. It has come to my and my partner’s attention that, if we were to study shapeshifters who regularly change their DNA, perhaps we might find some better way to reverse cancer after it has already occurred in the human body. We have already tried contacting you several times with no reply, but my partner and I are sure that you will now choose to do the right thing and help save countless lives by assisting us in our research.
The Titan tried to ignore the letter after that. Usually when he didn’t want to let himself think about things, all he had to do was fire up a video game until an alarm sounded and he and his team were rushing off to save the town.
As much as he tried to forget, though, those words wouldn’t leave his head.
We’re sure you will choose to do the right thing.
“BOOYAH!” Cyborg threw a metal fist in the air, almost hurling his controller across the room as he beat Beast Boy’s butt in yet another round of their fighting robots video game. He turned toward the younger Titan, trash talk already forming between his smug and smirking lips, only to pause as he noticed Beast Boy wasn’t fuming beside him. Instead, the green Titan was staring dead ahead at the tv screen with his thumbs still sluggishly pressing at the controller buttons as though he hadn’t noticed the game had ended.
“Uh, BB?”
Cyborg waved his hand in Beast Boy’s face a few times before the green teen suddenly jolted in his seat.
“B? You okay? You seem a little… distracted.”
For a split second, Beast Boy stared up at the older Titan with a face that was young and vulnerable and terrified, but the expression was gone faster than it had appeared, split apart by a wide and devilish grin. “Just thinking about how good my name is gonna look replacing yours in the high score menu!”
“Oh, you are on, grass stain!”
Beast Boy tried very hard not to let his gaze linger on the walls. They were a dreary plain white plaster, tinged slightly yellow by the sickly fluorescent lights. The whole place had the nose-burning stench of sterility and emptiness. It reminded him too much of the twisting halls of a hospital and did nothing to help calm the Titan’s nerves.
He walked faster, eager to get out of these halls. He didn’t stumble upon anyone else in the building, but he supposed that wasn’t too weird– the letter had told him to come here later at night; maybe the other departments in the research center were just closed.
He could hear the two doctors long before he saw them: the rustling of papers, the low murmuring of hushed voices, and the slap of rubber soles against the ground floated into the hallways from what was, presumably, their office. Beast Boy’s ears perked at the sounds that broke the monotony of the buzzing overhead lights and he walked with renewed vigor.
The two doctors didn’t look like anything special. Older men, wrinkled faces, glasses, gray hair– they looked like any typical scientist you’d see in tv shows and comic books. They even had long white lab coats, too.
The doctors both looked up as Beast Boy entered the room, and the Titan shifted under the weight of their stares. “Anyone order a pizza?”
Neither scientist reacted for a long moment. Then one of them leaned up from a desk he had been stooped over and cleared his throat. “We’re glad to see that you finally arrived.”
“How does this work? Are you gonna use a miniaturization ray to shrink yourself and play soccer with my DNA cells?"
The two men shared blank looks.
Beast Boy swallowed hard. Sure, people rarely ever laughed at his jokes, but people usually had some kind of reaction to them.
This was the part where the men were supposed to play into his game and act horrified that Beast Boy was 'stupid' enough to think that DNA had its own cells like muscles and skin did. This was the part where the men were supposed to correct him– that way they would open the doors for the Titan to make more jokes that would help calm his nerves.
One of the scientists took a step forward. His hair was more silvery-white as opposed to his partner's dark gray, and his hair stood every which way like he had been struck by lightning. “My name is Doctor Hartman. The first thing Doctor Dole and I are going to do is analyze how your body reacts to stimuli."
Beast Boy followed as the scientists led him away, only just managing to bite back a snicker. 'I've only just got here and they already want my body– and people keep telling me green skin isn't attractive!'
"What's this for?" Beast Boy resisted the urge to reach up and poke at the suction cups connected to wires the scientists were attaching to his forehead, chest, and arms.
"Monitoring your vital signs," Doctor Dole muttered under his breath as he attached one more.
Beast Boy nodded thoughtfully. "Cyborg does that sometimes, too. But, uh, I was talking about what he's doing."
The Titan motioned over to Doctor Hartman where he was putting something inside a syringe.
“Another form of monitoring,” Doctor Hartman said as he made his way over. “This solution contains nanobots capable of monitoring changes in your cells and, hopefully, in your DNA as you transform.”
“Woah, hey!” Beast Boy jerked his arm away as Doctor Hartman’s fingers curled around his elbow. “I did not agree to that. The last time I got those things put in me, I got turned into a weapon against my friend,” Beast Boy said, thinking of the time Slade had forced Robin into being his apprentice. “And that stuff hurt.”
“Well, except for the initial shot, this won’t hurt at all. You came here tonight because you wanted to help people. Don’t back out now.”
There was something hidden in Doctor Hartman’s voice, something almost mocking that Beast Boy couldn’t quite put his finger on, that made the Titan hesitate.
"I do want to help people, but…"
"You go out on the streets nearly every day fighting crime. Perhaps you just need to learn that there are other ways to do good in this world." Doctor Hartman held out his hand expectantly.
Beast Boy chewed on his lower lip as his gaze lowered to the man's hand. This was a medical research center. They weren’t going to hurt him; the two doctors just wanted to help people, just like he and the Titans did every day. They were on the same side here, but not if Beast Boy refused to cooperate.
The Titan slowly lowered his arm back into Doctor Hartman’s grasp. He looked away as the man peeled up his sleeve and revealed the scarred green skin beneath. His arm began to throb the second the needle pierced his skin and Beast Boy winced, glad that he wasn't looking.
"Is it over?" The Titan asked as Doctor Hartman stepped away.
The doctor nodded. "Now, if you'll follow us, we can begin our first test."
They ended up leading him to a treadmill. Beast Boy hadn't realized he had been hunching up his shoulders until all the tension drained away when he saw the familiar machine. This wasn't anything big or scary; he used a treadmill all the time when training at the Tower. This was going to be easy!
"We want you to start out in your current form," Doctor Dole said as he fiddled with a few settings on the treadmill. "We want to see how your humanoid form handles before you begin changing into animals."
"Got it!" Beast Boy started to stretch: shaking out his hands, lifting his legs and grabbing onto his feet, lifting his arms as far as possible. He even debated dropping to the ground and doing push ups, but then the doctors shared a look, not impressed with his theatrics.
He climbed up onto the treadmill and looked around the frame for the 'on' button. There weren't any buttons on the treadmill, though. Just as Beast Boy was getting ready to bend over and look at the underside of the bars– as though it made any logical sense for the buttons to be there, but it was the first thought to cross the young Titan's mind– the floor of the treadmill suddenly began to move. Beast Boy stumbled but managed to keep his feet, using the momentum to settle himself into an awkward half-jog as he looked around in confusion.
Both of the doctors were standing a few feet away, Doctor Hartman with a pen and clipboard in hand, and Doctor Dole standing behind some machine. It was angled away so that Beast Boy couldn't see the surface, but judging from the lack of surprise on the two scientists' faces and the bundle of wires leading from the machine to the treadmill, Dole was using that machine to control the treadmill.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just let him control the treadmill's speed? A frown tugged at Beast Boy’s lips but he quickly wiped it away. These guys were the experts, after all.
The Titan spent several minutes jogging at the speed Dole had set the treadmill to. Soon enough Beast Boy was running. Even sooner and the treadmill was going so fast, he was having trouble keeping up. He sent a nervous glance in the doctor’s direction before switching into a white-tailed deer. When the doctors didn’t react, Beast Boy changed again and again as the treadmill continued to go faster and faster. For a while, Beast Boy closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of the wind ruffling his fur, of the repetitive motion of his limbs moving, of the soft rumble of the machinery beneath him. After a while, though, the Titan started panting. He wasn’t sure how long he had been running, but he could feel his limbs stiffening and numbing with pain underneath him; if he didn’t get off soon, he was going to make a mistake. You could only run fast for so long.
Beast Boy opened his mouth to ask the doctors to start slowing down the treadmill so he could get off safely, but he startled himself when the only thing that came out of his mouth was a ferocious roar. Right; he was in the form of a lion right now. The moving ground underneath him picked up speed, the doctors seeming to have thought the roar was a request to go faster. Beast Boy quickly turned into a cheetah to compensate. Relief flashed through the Titan; these guys would know that a cheetah could only run fast for less than a minute, right? Then they’d slow down the machine, and–
The ground moved faster beneath his paws. Beast Boy’s heart skipped a beat and he rushed to correct himself, but suddenly the entire world was spinning. Pain pulsated through the Titan’s body as he blinked dazedly up at the ceiling. Where had the treadmill gone?
“Eighty-seven miles per hour,” a voice above him murmured. “Impressive.”
Beast Boy blinked the blurriness out of his eyes with a whimper. Oh god, his shoulder was throbbing. He tried laughing off the pain, but the second his jaw twitched it was like fire coursing through his veins, burning him alive.
It took him a second to remember. He had accidentally tripped over his own paws on the treadmill, then his jaw had slammed into the moving floor, and now he was lying in a heap a few feet away after being thrown.
Beast Boy closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the pain. He was okay. He was completely alright; he had gotten way worse injuries than this in fights and had still come out on top. He was okay.
Taking a deep breath, Beast Boy slowly peeled himself off of the ground, only letting himself use one arm for fear of what would happen if he tried using the one with the throbbing shoulder. When he finally got himself upright, he opened his eyes and made his way toward Hartman and Dole, pretending his legs weren’t shaking beneath him.
“I, uh– I guess we should have put more effort i-into figuring out how to stop, huh?” Beast Boy gave a half-hearted grin, ignoring how the pain in his jaw slurred his words more than he would have liked.
“Yes, I suppose we should have,” Dole muttered, looking Beast Boy up and down as Doctor Hartman took notes on his clipboard.
“So, uh…” Beast Boy crossed his arms over his chest, feeling awkward with Dole’s gaze on him. “What happens now?”
“We have information on how your body handles needing to change forms,” Doctor Hartman said, finally looking up from his clipboard. “But not on how your body–including your DNA– actually changes. We’ll need to wait for the nanobots to finish gathering input for that, but before then, there are other preliminary tests we can run.”
“Like what?”
“Well, in case you didn’t know,” Doctor Hartman cleared his throat. “Strands of DNA contain the blueprints to make proteins. We can see how accurate the DNA of your animal forms are by comparing the proteins you make while in them to the proteins of actual animals.”
“We have samples of barn spider web strands in the lab with us,” Doctor Dole continued. “We’d like you to transform into the same type of spider and produce the same type of strands, that way we can compare the protein composition at a later date.”
“Okay,” the Titan said quietly. The pain in his jaw wasn’t letting up at all, and the idea of turning into something that didn’t talk sounded good to him.
Beast Boy followed as they led him to a table with a small contraption on it that looked a bit like a spool. Taking care to climb up on the table first, Beast Boy transformed into the spider the doctors had wanted and wrapped some spider silk around the spool. This time he accomplished his task without incident, except that his shoulder was throbbing even worse by the time turned back. And he was exhausted. It had been about midnight when he had turned into a bird and flown an hour to get here–because for some reason no one would let him get a moped and public transportation in Jump didn’t run that late at night– and he wasn’t sure how long he had been on that treadmill but it had to have been at least forty minutes. So it was, what, two in the morning? Which wasn’t too late, not for Beast Boy at least, but usually he wasn’t doing much but playing video games when he stayed up this late, and these experiments were a bit more taxing than–
Beast Boy shook his head to clear his rambling thoughts as he realized Doctor Dole was saying something to him.
“Now, if you’ll turn into an octopus.”
Beast Boy blinked hard as Doctor Dole gestured at a chair in the corner. It… it would be nice to sit, get off his feet for a bit, but… well, Beast Boy wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to stand up again once he sat down.
Doctor Hartman raised a brow at the young Titan. “Well, go ahead.”
“Sorry,” the Titan muttered before moving over to the chair and slowly lowering himself down. It wasn’t until after he had already turned into an octopus that he realized he didn’t know why the scientists wanted this of him. Had they explained it while he had been zoned out? Was it too late to ask?
‘Apparently it is,’ Beast Boy thought as Doctor Hartman came toward him with what looked like a pen in hand. The bitterness in his mental voice took him by surprise. ‘Geez, I really must be tired. Maybe I should ask to go. Surely they don’t expect to finish all of their experiments in one night, right?’
It took Beast Boy a second to realize that Doctor Hartman wasn’t holding a clipboard along with his pen. It took another second to realize that the slender object in Hartman’s hand was really shiny for a pen. Too shiny.
Two of Beast Boy’s eight arms jerked forward to stop Hartman when he realized what the scientist was going to do, but he was too late. Beast Boy flinched as the scalpel in Hartman’s hands dug into the soft flesh of one of his arms as he wrapped his suckered appendage around Hartman’s wrist.
“What are you doing?!” Hartman cried as Beast Boy wrenched the scalpel away and flung it across the room.
Beast Boy pushed Hartman away before reverting back into his human form and standing to his feet, livid. “What am I doing?! Did you just stab me with a scalpel?!”
“We needed to see the colour of your blood,” Hartman said, his voice tight and annoyed like he was explaining to a small child why they weren’t allowed to bite and pick fights with others.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Octopuses have blue blood–” Hartman raised a hand covered in a viscous blue fluid. “Because their blood is based in copper, not iron.” Hartman nodded down at the stream of red blood pouring from the gash in Beast Boy’s human arm. “You can change everything about yourself, right down to your DNA, in seconds. Don’t you see how revolutionary this is for our research?”
“I don’t care,” Beast Boy growled. “This is just sick.”
“No.” Dole came to stand at Hartman’s side. “We’re trying to help people who are sick, and that’s what you agreed to help us do.”
“I didn’t agree to this! I don’t want any part of this!”
“Do you even understand the sheer number of people you’re going to let suffer if you turn your back on this?” Hartman hissed. “How can you even stand to let that happen when you took an oath to protect people?”
“I help people every day! There are better ways of doing it than this!”
Beast Boy turned away from the two scientists and started toward the door. He never wanted to see either of them again. He pressed a hand against the gash in his forearm, trying not to shiver as blood immediately soaked through his gloves and the warmth of it stuck between his fingers.
He didn’t make it very far before a hot, sharp sensation pierced the Titan’s body. He jerked at the impact, his body spasming hard enough to knock the air from his lungs. Beast Boy gave a breathless scream as the pain arced and pulsed through the rest of his body– it was like something was inside him, tearing him apart and burning him alive from the inside. It was enough to send the Titan crashing to his knees, and it didn’t stop; it rocketed through his skull, shredded his muscles, boiled his blood in his veins until it burned him without ceasing. Beast Boy wanted to scratch his skin off and drag whatever was inside him out with his bare hands, but his body wasn’t listening to him. He couldn’t get his arms to move, couldn’t even feel his fingers– some distant part of him wondered whether he still had them at all, or if his fingers had been torn apart by whatever was attacking him.
Pain exploded in his jaw as he collapsed face-first onto the concrete floor, and between one blink and the next, the Titan’s entire world faded away as he slipped into unconsciousness.
Beast Boy gave a groggy groan as he clawed his way back to awareness.
A lifetime of being knocked unconscious in the heat of battle had taught him to get to his feet and take note of his surroundings the second he woke up in pain, and those instincts did not fail the Titan now. He pulled himself up with a hiss and dug his teeth into his tongue to quiet himself.
Judging by the concrete floor and ceiling, he was definitely still in the medical center. His green eyes travelled along the four gray walls surrounding him one at a time, but there was nothing of immediate interest. The room was completely empty, but there had to be a door somewhere.
Limping forward, Beast Boy reached out to trail a hand along the wall so he could feel any indentations of a door, but he froze as something green entered his field of vision. The Titan stared in shock at his own ungloved hand held out before him.
It wasn’t just his gloves, either. The Titan’s gaze flitted up the exposed green skin of his arms– his entire Doom Patrol outfit was gone, and in its place was a white cotton t-shirt and some black shorts.
‘What the hell…?’
Beast Boy groaned in humiliation as a new thought occurred to him. He put his thumb between the waistline of his shorts and– no, those were definitely the same briefs he had been wearing before coming here. At least these assholes had afforded him some small level of privacy; looked like even mad scientists had their limits.
Beast Boy was just poking at a few bandages that had been taped over his arms when his sensitive ears perked at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“We’ll figure something out.”
“I’m telling you,” Doctor Dole’s voice. “We can’t trigger the tissue samples to change once they’ve been removed from the source. We just don’t have the time to experiment with it; we still need the source–”
The doctor’s voice cut out suddenly. “The boy’s awake.”
More footsteps, and then the wall to Beast Boy’s right shimmered. The grayness of the wall seemed to fade away, revealing transparent glass and two scientists watching him closely.
“Wh–” Beast Boy cut himself off with a wince, raising one hand to his aching lower jaw. The agitated flesh was rounded against his fingertips; it was definitely swollen. “What did you do to me?”
“What we had to do,” Hartman said simply. “But hopefully, with your co-operation, we can avoid any further mishaps.”
Beast Boy’s fingers clenched into fists. ‘It’s not co-operation if you’re torturing someone into saying yes,’ he thought. “What’d you do with my clothes? ‘Cause I know they look great, but I really don’t think they’d fit you.”
Hartman rolled his eyes. “ That’s what you’re worried about?”
The Titan’s fingernails dug into the tender flesh of his palm. He didn’t say anything, but he continued to take care not to look at the scarred green flesh on his arms– there was a reason he wore long sleeves and gloves and refused to keep mirrors in his room, and this new clothing arrangement wasn’t making his current situation any less stressful.
“Your other clothing was too restrictive,” Dole said. “We needed better access to your skin for tissue samples.”
Which they had taken from him while he was unconscious– so much for mad scientists having limits.
“Do you really think a sheet of glass is gonna keep me caged?”
Doctor Hartman smiled, but there was a venomous light in his dark blue eyes. “Go ahead; do your worst.”
Uh-oh. That was never a good thing to hear. Still, it didn’t matter– a thin piece of glass was nothing.
Taking a step back for a running start, Beast Boy turned into a bull and start to char–
The Titan collapsed onto the ground in his human form with a strangled whimper as electricity seared into his core.
“I’m afraid those nanobots do a tad more than monitor your internal functions,” Doctor Hartman said. “We were always going to need a form of insurance in case you decided to go rogue. Speaking of the nanobots,” Hartman continued, turning to his partner. “Have we gotten any data from them yet?”
Dole shook his head. “It’s all still being transferred from the bots to our computers.”
“Then I suppose we must do this the hard way,” Hartman muttered. He turned his attention back to Beast Boy. “Is there any way we can watch your DNA change under a microscope? Could you turn into an amoeba, perhaps, or some form of bacteria?”
The Titan stared up at him like he was crazy. “Why would I tell you anything?”
“Oh, dear,” Hartman murmured. “This one’s a bit slow, isn’t he?”
Beast Boy screamed as another round of electricity jolted down his body.
Two hours passed like that, with Doctor Hartman demanding to know how Beast Boy’s powers worked, and Beast Boy getting himself shocked when he refused to give any answers.
By the end of hour two, Beast Boy was shaking from head to toe. He couldn’t keep the small tremors or the full-body convulsions from wracking his body, which didn’t do his injured shoulder or jaw any favors. By now the pain in his shoulder had spread down his back and up his neck, and the Titan could barely turn his head without crying out.
“Fine,” Hartman growled. “Let's try something a bit simpler. Tell me how you received the ability to shapeshift.”
“No,” Beast Boy whispered.
Hartman lifted a small contraption in his hand. The teen flinched as he did so, the Titan’s wide emerald eyes locked onto Hartman’s fingers and the button he was about to press.
Dole interrupted his partner by putting a hand on his shoulder. “Hartman,” he said quietly. “The data from the nanobots just got entered into our system.”
Hartman turned with interest toward Dole and the Ipad screen he was reading from. “And?”
Dole stared at the screen without saying anything for a long moment.
"It appears as though…" Dole squinted down and adjusted his glasses. "The longer he stays in one form, the more unstable his DNA becomes. It's like his DNA is a ticking time bomb just waiting to fall apart, except every time he switches forms, the clock resets."
The corner of Hartman’s lips twitched upward. “Well, now I’m curious to see just how changing between different forms can fix his damaged DNA. If he were to remain trapped in one form, how long would it take for his DNA to destabilize?”
“If he was healthy? A week or two. But in his current state?” Dole glanced down at the readings again. “Days.”
“And if we were to keep–” Hartman raised the remote control for the shocking feature of the nanobots– “aiding his condition, how long would it take then?”
Dole looked up from the readings with a smile. “Hours.”
Beast Boy sat in the middle of the floor, struggling to catch his breath.
The wall that the doctors had been interrogating him from had returned back to a solid gray, but despite the Titan not being able to see through it, there was no doubt in his mind that the scientists were still watching him. The Titan hadn’t found any evidence of cameras during any of his perimeter searches, so he figured the walls must be functioning as some sort of one-way mirror. Unfortunately, whoever was currently watching him had realized he was walking around the perimeter searching for any weak points, and had decided to shock him any time he got too close to the walls.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been here anymore. What time was it? Four in the morning? Five? Eight? Had any of the Titans woken up yet?
Not that they would notice he was gone. It wasn’t unusual for the green teen to stay in bed until noon or later. They wouldn’t think twice about him not showing up for breakfast, and he hadn’t told any of his friends about the letters or his meeting with these scientists. It had just… felt like something he needed to do on his own.
Still, it was nice to think that maybe Robin was on his morning jog in the training room at the Tower, or maybe riding around town on his motorbike. Maybe Raven was sitting in her room meditating. Maybe Cyborg had just woken up and was running an analysis on his operating systems, or making a planner for everything he wanted to get done today. Sometimes Starfire would sleep in late and other times she would wake up super early, so Beast Boy couldn’t be sure what she was up to now, but hopefully she was smiling. She had such a nice, genuine smile.
Just like that, it was a little bit easier for the young Titan to breathe. Though, when he reached up a hand to rub at his tired eyes, it came away wet with tears.
Once the tears started, it was hard to get them to stop.
He couldn’t transform into an animal and smash his way out, he couldn’t get close enough to the walls to find any other hidden way out, and if he made the slightest wrong move, these guys would send so much electricity shooting through him that he wouldn’t be able to move for twenty minutes. Some superhero– he was completely useless.
Beast Boy had to remind himself to take a deep breath in and out. ‘C’mon, B, this is the point where Robin would give an inspirational speech and let the team know that we’ll find a way. And you will find a way, somehow.’
The green boy paused. He couldn’t use his powers to get out of here, but Robin didn’t have any powers, and he was still fully confident Robin would be able to get himself out of this kind of situation. Robin was one of the coolest people Beast Boy knew.
‘What would Robin do, what would Robin do, what would Robin do…’
‘Well…’ Beast Boy stared hard at the floor, trying his best not to look like he was planning an escape. ‘These guys would probably take Robin’s weapons away, just like they’ve kept me from using my powers. But Robin would say that anything can be used as a weapon– especially anything that the enemy tries to use against you…’
Beast Boy’s lips curved into a smile.
Beast Boy jerked his head up as he heard footsteps coming closer.
The electricity started arcing through his body again the second the door to his cell began creaking open.
The Titan shuddered against the ground, struggling to keep his eyes open as the concrete beneath him reverberated with approaching footsteps.
Through the tears blurring his vision, he could see a long white lab coat and flyaway hair. Hartman. There was something clenched in the scientist’s hand, but Beast Boy couldn’t quite make out what it was. The scientist continued closer and closer, and then he started to bend down, one hand reaching out for the tortured teen.
Beast Boy struck. He hurled himself off of the ground with what little strength he could muster up, and in a split second he had turned from a small boy to a long green electric eel. The eel wrapped himself around the exposed skin of the doctor’s neck, and the man screamed as thousands of volts carried from the eel and into his bare flesh, only amplified by the nanobots' electric shock.
“Hartman!” A voice screamed, and the electricity wracking Beast Boy’s body fizzled out.
Beast Boy squeezed around Hartman’s neck as tightly as he could, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t take long for Hartman to dig his fingers into Beast Boy’s eel body and throw him across the room.
But Beast Boy had the advantage: he was young, and he’d been doing this kind of thing for most of his life. He was a hero, a fighter. He was a Titan. He peeled himself off the ground and was running out of the cell door before Hartman even had his breath back. As he ran, he held tightly onto a small object he had managed to slip out of Hartman’s pocket in the melee: a small remote control. Eels were slippery in more ways than one.
Despite the fact that he was half-limping and felt like he had been hit by a train several times, Beast Boy couldn’t help but laugh. He’d gotten himself out! He was free; he had done it! He could have cried out of sheer relief.
Beast Boy’s bare feet continued to slam into the ground, and he prepared to turn himself into a lion: something dangerous, dangerous enough for him to fight his way out but fast enough to hopefully avoid fighting all together. But he didn’t have the chance to transform before the electricity was piercing his body like a thousand tiny blades.
Horror closed the Titan’s throat. Somehow it hadn't even occurred to him that the scientists might have more than one remote. He was still trapped here…
‘No.’ He was getting out of here if he had to do it crawling on his hands and knees.
He could feel the controls being turned higher and higher, and the teen was already weak from hours of electrocution without relief, but he dragged himself forward with single-minded determination. Too single-minded; Beast Boy didn’t realize that he wasn’t alone anymore until a rubber-gloved hand was wrapping itself around his ankle.
Beast Boy gasped as a second hand joined the first, then a third hand, and then a fourth. He turned into an octopus and desperately attached his suckers to the floor beneath him, but it didn’t do any good. He was steadily losing ground.
Something sharp stabbed into the back of Beast Boy’s bulbous head. He turned back into his human form and kicked at his captors in a panic, but it wasn’t any good. Somehow they had already dragged him back into his cell– he hadn’t run nearly as far as he had thought.
The door slammed closed behind him before disappearing entirely, trapping him in.
Beast Boy waited, but this time, the electricity didn’t stop.
Fifteen minutes later, Doctor Hartman pressed the button that would finally temporarily turn the nanobots off.
Twenty minutes after that, Beast Boy still couldn’t stop full-body tremors from wracking his body. His mouth felt so dry and cracked and stiff that it was almost hard to concentrate on anything else; he hadn’t had a drink of water since coming here, and the near-constant electrocution hadn’t helped.
One of the walls shimmered and the two Doctors appeared again on the other side of it.
Beast Boy watched them half-heartedly. He was so goddamn tired; he wanted nothing more than to curl up with his back to these guys and just take a nap, except he was shaking so much he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he tried. That, and he could practically hear Cyborg’s voice in his head telling him to never drop his guard in front of the enemy.
“Beast Boy.” The words fell awkwardly from Doctor Hartman’s tongue. It almost surprised the Titan that Hartman knew his name at all; Beast Boy was just realizing that these men had never referred to him by name once until now. “I want you to turn into a dog.”
The Titan glared up at him. “No.” The word got mangled by the Titan’s parched throat and aching jaw, so he repeated himself. “No.”
The doctor rolled his eyes. He nodded to Doctor Dole, who pressed the remote control button.
Pain.
“Transform.”
“N-No.”
Button.
Pain.
“Transform.”
Beast Boy squeezed his eyes shut, biting down on a sob. Then he obeyed.
Or at least, he tried to.
The Titan looked down at his human body in confusion.
Then he looked up and saw the smile on Doctor Hartman’s face.
“Wh-What did you do to me?” Beast Boy slurred.
The man held up an empty syringe. Beast Boy stared at it in horror, remembering the pain of something stabbing into the back of his head during the fight in the hallway.
“It neutralizes powers. We had to pay quite a lot to get a hold of this. Initially, we bought it in case you refused to come to us willingly, but I’m glad to say we have found a much better use for it.”
‘No…’
Beast Boy tried changing forms– into a dog, a cat, a crab, a fly, a scorpion, a koala, a pig, anything– but nothing worked. Every time he looked down at himself, he was still human.
“Are you insane?!” Beast Boy yelled in frustration. “What the hell do you get out of this?!”
“Do you even understand how your powers work?” Dole asked. “The more you use them, the more stable your DNA becomes. We need to analyze your ability to stabilize your DNA, but in order to do that–”
“We need your DNA to become as unstable as possible first,” Hartman finished.
“You’re not gonna get away with this,” Beast Boy whispered.
“Science disagrees with you.” Dole tapped on the glass between them, and the wall went gray.
In the end, Beast Boy did let his guard down and fall asleep. It wasn't a very restful sleep, but the teen knew that if he was going to plan– no, to succeed in another escape attempt, he'd need his strength back.
Unless the other Titans came for him. They would, eventually, but he couldn't rely on that just yet; they had no idea where he was. Beast Boy really wished he had his communicator still.
He still couldn't stop his body from trembling and twitching even after he woke up. His body felt even more sore and stiff from laying on the concrete floor for so long.
He thought about asking his captors for some water and something to eat– his stomach was starting to twist painfully– but he really wasn't in the mood to have to ask them for anything. Not yet, at least. He didn't have much faith that they would respect his dietary needs anyway.
At least they were leaving him alone for now. It wasn't much, but it gave him time to think. He was pretty sure the remote he had stolen had gotten lost during their fight, but next time he would have to keep his head and make sure he got that second remote. He just had to work out how…
It took Beast Boy a while to realize he was shivering. Not just involuntary trembling from all those electrocutions, but actually shivering. He was burning up and freezing at the same time. And he was itchy. It felt like something was wiggling beneath his skin all over, and his stomach was cramping so badly–
Beast Boy shook his head only to whimper as the action tugged at his aching neck and shoulder the wrong way. 'No.' None of that was important right now. He just had to figure out how to get out of here.
Sometime later, Beast Boy realized he was breaking out in rashes and boils. It was difficult to see at first with the colour of skin, but there were dark patches of green engraving themselves over his arms, his chest, his legs, even his face. He had to stop himself from scratching at them when they started to bleed. He didn't even realize he was sweating until the salty liquid stung the gashes he had scratched onto himself.
Beast Boy really should have been figuring out how he was going to get out of here. Instead, he curled up on the concrete floor again, his arms wrapped tightly around his stomach and his eyes squeezed shut.
It wouldn't hurt anything if he went back to sleep for another five minutes.
Beast Boy's ears twitched as a crash resounded outside of his cell.
He didn't have the energy to wonder what had caused it. All he knew was that the loud sound was amplified by his sensitive ears and made the throbbing in his head hurt worse– which really shouldn't have been possible at this point.
The crashing continued to thunder outside, and Beast Boy could do nothing but curl his fingers in his hair as another fresh wave of red hot pain seared through him.
Breaking into the abandoned medical research center was harder than Robin had thought it would be.
Well, ex- abandoned– it seemed like someone had gone to a lot of effort to fix the place up and give themselves their own personal lab where they could work unrestricted.
And whoever it was had also filled the place to the brim with traps, and the Titans couldn’t risk setting off a single one in case it gave away their position to the enemy. It took them thirty minutes longer than it should have to find the room they were searching for. When they finally did, Starfire blew the doors open by firing a starbolt at them, and the four Titans rushed into the smoke and stunned silence.
Unfortunately, the stunned silence didn’t last for long. The Titan’s two targets quickly made a grab for what appeared to be large guns.
Her eyes lighting up, Raven chanted under her breath and one of the guns was instantly bathed in shadows. The gun went flying up and slammed into one of the rogue scientists’ noses, sending the man flying backwards. But the other scientist grabbed his weapon and a dark blue stream of energy crashed into Raven before she had the chance to move out of the way.
The man aimed his gun at the next Titan– but not before Cyborg had rushed forward with his sonic cannon poised directly in front of the scientist’s face. “Don’t even think about it,” Cyborg said coolly.
Coming forward as well, Robin picked the second scientist off the ground by the front of his shirt and slammed him into a wall. “Where is Beast Boy?”
“Helping us with our medical research,” the man growled back. “Did he not tell you? He came willingly.”
The man whimpered as Robin yanked him forward before battering him against the wall with a sickening crack. “Don’t lie to me!”
“Besides,” Raven picked herself back off the ground with help from Starfire. “Beast Boy’s not exactly the scientist type.”
“You don’t understand,” the scientist under Cyborg’s weapon said. “Everything we’ve done needed to be done to save people.”
“Then why is our best friend missing?” Starfire cried out.
“Ignore them, Star,” Robin ordered. “You and Raven search the place and find Beast Boy. Cyborg and I will take care of these two.”
Starfire nodded, and the two Titans left to follow Robin’s lead. Despite the sheer size of the building, it didn’t take long for them to find their missing friend. He ended up being in the next room over; obviously, the two scientists had been loath to stray too far from their prized specimen.
Starfire gasped as she caught sight of something green huddled inside a large glass cage. She cried out her friend’s name, her hands and eyes already glowing a bright alien green.
“Starfire, wait–” Raven called, but it was too late.
The alien shattered a wall of the cage with a single starbolt and quickly flew to her friend’s side.
Raven sighed in relief. Thankfully breaking the glass hadn’t unleashed any nasty booby traps. She followed Starfire into the cage just in time to see Beast Boy cringe away as Star tried to touch him.
“Friend Beast Boy, why are you fearful? It is only me, Starfire,” the alien whispered as she lowered herself to kneel beside him.
“He doesn’t look so good.” Raven wasn’t just talking about the strange outfit Beast Boy was wearing, which revealed more scarred green skin than Raven had seen on him… well, ever. The entire lower half of their friend’s face was swollen badly. His entire body was shaking and covered in painful-looking pus-filled boils, his shirt and the floor was stained with what looked suspiciously like vomit, and he had his hands clamped firmly over his ears.
“Beast Boy?” Star whispered, but got no reaction.
Moving closer, Raven crouched down beside the two. She hovered her hands over Beast Boy and they started to glow a calming bluish white. Soon enough, the swelling on his face was gone.
“I healed a dislocated jaw, some abrasions on his arms, and a fracture in his shoulder and lower leg,” Raven murmured. She had eased the pain as much as she could as well. “But there’s something else, something sickening him that I can’t pin down.”
“Thank you.” Starfire flashed her a smile.
Raven didn’t return it. She just looked worriedly down at Beast Boy as he began to stir. “Don’t thank me yet.”
Beast Boy came back into awareness with a groan. He hadn’t been asleep, exactly, but had been lying in a pained, unaware daze that his fighter instincts refused to let him stay in now that some of the edge had been taken off.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a pair of soft green eyes and a familiar, gentle smile. Relief flooded through him. “I knew you’d be smiling…”
“I am so grateful to see you conscious once more!”
Snatching him up from off the ground, Starfire wrapped Beast Boy in a bear hug. The abrupt motion left the green Titan’s head spinning, though, and her Tamaranean death grip crushed the air out of Beast Boy’s lungs.
Beast Boy let out a pained gasp, his fingers scrabbling against Starfire to make her let go. Thankfully she did, though she did that abruptly as well, and the green Titan tumbled back the short distance to the ground. His hands clamped against the sides of his head, bracing himself like it would make the room stop spinning beneath him. It didn’t. He felt himself start curling into a ball as dry heaves wracked his sore body. Only a few droplets of bile and saliva passed his lips. He had already thrown up everything else a long time ago, but that wouldn’t stop his body from trying.
His scalp started tingling pleasantly, like the coolness of raindrops splattering lightly against one’s skin on a hot summer’s day. Beast Boy was leaning into the touch before he even realized what it was: Starfire running her fingertips gently across his scalp as he dry heaved.
For a split second, Beast Boy was a little kid again. Stuck in bed for weeks, plagued by words like “virus” and “dying,” throwing up so much that he didn’t even have the energy to move, but still comforted by his mother running her fingers through his hair.
God, he hated being sick.
“Beast Boy…” Raven’s voice was little more than a horrified whisper. “What did they do to you…?”
Beast Boy forced his eyes open. “The others– where–”
“Cyborg and Robin are fine,” Raven said.
“They have apprehended your captors,” Starfire added. “It is you we are worried about.”
Beast Boy ran a parched tongue over his chapped lips. “‘M fine now that you’re here.” It didn’t come out as jokingly as the Titan had meant it to.
Beast Boy’s ears twitched as a new sound rose to his ears. Raven and Starfire heard it, too, after a few seconds' delay: the sound of metal repeatedly slamming against concrete floors.
“Cyborg,” Starfire started uncertainly.
“Did you guys find–” Cyborg’s voice suddenly cut out. “Oh.”
“Hiya, Cy,” the green Titan murmured, though he couldn’t actually see his metal friend or the horrified look on his face until Cyborg drifted closer. He felt too exhausted to even lift his head off the dirty ground.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look awful.” Cyborg flipped open a compartment on his arm, getting his medical scanners ready. “My god, BB, I almost thought you had radiation poisoning.”
“I think I did get bit by a radioactive spider,” Beast Boy muttered. “Think I’ll get any super powers?”
“He keeps saying that he is fine,” Starfire said worriedly.
“I am fine.” But apparently the entire universe had decided to conspire against him today, because as soon as the words left his lips, Beast Boy started to feel lightheaded, like he was experiencing his body from the outside as another round of pain washed over him.
The other Titans watched in horror as new boils began bursting their way through Beast Boy’s skin, like they were air bubbles and he was being boiled alive from the inside.
“What’s happening?!” Raven called out, her control slipping as she watched her friend dry heave, tears slipping down his marred face and gasping for breath where he could in the small pockets of time between each gag.
“His entire body is shutting down,” Cyborg said, his eyes snapping between the readings on his screen and where his friend lay convulsing on the floor, one cybernetic hand fluttering up and down like he wanted to help but wasn’t sure how.
Starfire ended up being the first of the three of them to get over the shock enough to act. She scooped Beast Boy up in her arms– being careful to be more gentle than she had been last time–and flew them both back into the room where they had captured the rogue scientists, the other Titans quick on her heels.
She placed him down on one of the lab tables, wincing as he only seemed to be getting worse; his feet dug desperately into the flat surface and his fingers curled against the sharp metal table edges like he was in so much pain he couldn’t bear to stay still.
(Cyborg came forward, holding Beast Boy's hands tightly in his own. At first the green teen didn't react. He just kept writhing against the table like he could run away from the pain if he only tried hard enough, before he curled up and pressed his sweaty forehead into the blissfully cool metal of Cyborg’s chest.)
Robin looked up in shock as he flipped his communicator closed. The doctors were tied up at his feet, and he had just finished tipping the police off about what had happened.
Starfire was on the doctors in less than a second. One of them screamed as she picked him up by his gray, flyaway hair with a snarl on her face and a starbolt glowing in her hands. “What did you do to our friend?”
The man hesitated, so Starfire brought her hand close enough to his face that the man would feel its heat pressing against him like a silent threat. Doctor Hartman gulped and blinked rapidly as the starbolt’s heat evaporated the natural moisture coating his eyes. “H-His powers– every time he changes between animal forms, it st-stabilizes his DNA. We n-needed to see how exactly shapeshifting c-cou-could fix his DNA, and to d-do that, his DNA needed to be unstable–”
“ What did you do?” Raven growled, something inhuman thundering under her voice.
Doctor Hartman looked toward his partner for support, but Dole remained silent. “W-we drugged him, made it so he can’t shapeshift.”
“And where is the antidote?” Starfire tightened her grip on the man’s hair.
The man swallowed hard, motioning with his eyes toward a table at their right since his arms were tied at his sides. “S-Second drawer down, under some papers near the bottom. In a syringe.”
“Robin,” Starfire called, unwilling to let this vile man go until she had confirmation that he wasn’t lying or scheming.
“On it.”
“One more thing,” Cyborg spoke up. “Check those two for a remote control. My scans found that BB has nanobots inside him, similar to the ones that…" the Titan hesitated. "...that Slade used.”
Outrage sizzled between all of the Titans like electricity through a live wire. This just kept getting worse and worse.
A moment later, a small remote control floated out of Hartman’s pocket before it was systematically ripped to pieces by the same dark energy that had levitated it out of his pocket.
“Got it,” Robin called before launching himself over the few tables separating himself from Beast Boy.
“Hold on,” Cyborg said. “How do we know that syringe is what they say it is?”
Robin’s jaw set as he stared down at the youngest member of their team where he lay writhing and silently crying on the cold metal lab table. “We don’t, but what other choice do we have?"
'Besides, if he's lying, he'll be the one paying the price.'
No one had anything to say to that, so Robin pressed the tip of the needle into Beast Boy’s arm as gently as he could. The green Titan was in so much pain that he barely seemed to notice. Robin pressed the syringe down and took it out again as quickly as he could.
“Beast Boy,” the leader said. “Listen to me. Beast Boy– Beast Boy!”
Slowly, the young Titan’s eyes peeled open and he tilted his head to meet Robin’s gaze with only half-lucid eyes.
“You can change forms now, Beast Boy. It’s okay.”
The Titan choked on what might have been a sob, or just another dry heave. “I-I can’t–”
Robin reached out, taking one of Beast Boy's hands from Cyborg, his grip tight but gentle. “You can.”
Beast Boy stared at him for a moment longer with eyes wide in terror and doubt. Then the Titan gave a small, almost indiscernible nod and his eyes slid closed.
Suddenly Robin wasn’t holding a human hand in his own anymore, but the paw of a caracal. Then the paw of a wolf, then a kangaroo, then the tail of a snake. The snake’s tail flicked out of the boy wonder’s hand and finally Beast Boy settled into the form of an armadillo, lying curled into a protective ball on the lab table.
Behind Robin, Starfire threw Doctor Hartman to the ground.
Beast Boy’s memories after that were hazy.
He remembered someone–he wasn’t sure who– holding him in their arms as they left the medical center.
He remembered sitting in the back seat of the car, staring in confusion at the clock on the dashboard that read 11:00 pm until someone finally told him that they had needed over a day to track Beast Boy down to the medical center. Beast Boy had sat back in his seat, stunned at that information. He couldn’t believe that he had been trapped there for an entire day, and he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t been trapped there for weeks, months. A day felt so big but so small. Terrifying but insignificant.
After that, he remembered voices but not words. He remembered hearing but not listening. Looking but not seeing. He drifted in and out of consciousness for what could have been years.
“You found me,” Beast Boy whispered when he was closer to ‘in’ consciousness than he was ‘out.’
Raven looked up from her book like she was only just noticing Beast Boy was awake. She flipped the purple leather– ugh, leather– cover closed before setting the book on the infirmary bedside table.
“It took us a while,” Raven murmured. “They destroyed your communicator and the tracking mechanism in your belt. But thankfully we ended up searching your room.”
Beast Boy frowned at her. ‘Thankfully?’ The other Titans hated going into his room.
“We found the letter they sent you in there.”
“Oh,” Beast Boy said quietly. Then, quickly, perhaps too quickly: “I knew you guys would find me. I had faith in you.”
Raven didn’t say anything for a long moment, her purple eyes searing into his green ones. “Your faith was well-placed.”
She thought about not letting Beast Boy change the topic. She wanted to say that she– that all of the other Titans– wished Beast Boy had shown them that letter beforehand, because while Beast Boy might not have realized it, it had been glaringly obvious to them that the content of the letter had been specifically designed to manipulate Beast Boy into doing what those so-called doctors had wanted.
She didn’t say that, though. It wasn’t the right thing to say.
Beast Boy shifted on the infirmary bed. “How long have I been here?”
“A few days. Cyborg needed time to remove the nanobots from your system, and you needed time to heal. Your DNA was too damaged to heal completely from just a few transformations.” Raven’s lips quirked into a small smirk. “But you’ve been shapeshifting in your sleep, which has helped.”
“Better than drooling, I guess,” Beast Boy muttered.
“Not if you turn into a hagfish and get slime everywhere.”
Beast Boy stared at her in horror. “I didn’t.”
“I can assure you, you did.”
Beast Boy put his head back against the pillow with an embarrassed groan.
“At least you’re not covered in boils and sores anymore.”
“No, just the occasional rash.” His skin was already starting to itch along his arms and chest.
“Beast Boy, while we were in there, looking for you,” Raven started. “One of those men said something about you being there willingly. You may have chosen to walk into that building, but you did not choose what happened to you in there. And you didn’t deserve it.”
Beast Boy looked away, absently scratching at his arms. He was quiet for a long time, so long that Raven didn’t think he was going to acknowledge her at all. When he did speak, it was so quiet Raven almost didn’t hear it. "I just wanted to help."
“You do.” Raven reached out, a touch awkwardly but still sincerely, and put a hand on Beast Boy’s knee through the blanket he was curled up in. “You help people every day.”
Beast Boy didn’t look up at her and he didn’t make an attempt at speaking, but Raven watched as his eyes grew shiny with tears.
The blue-clad Titan gave a small nod before starting to leave. The other Titans would want to know that Beast Boy was lucid again.
Something stopped her.
She turned back to see Beast Boy’s still ungloved hand buried in the hem of her cloak.
Beast Boy was staring up at her with a somber expression like she had never seen before. “Thank you,” he said, his voice thick and shaky but somehow still strong and determined, like a tree branch that swayed and bowed but refused to break in the midst of a violent tempest.
“You don’t have me to thank for that, Beast Boy.”