Chapter Text
Petals fluttered in the air for brief moments as they fell to the ground, one after another, detaching from the numerous dying flowers in the room. Rows and rows of poppies bloomed and withered, watered by an automatic, intricate sprinkler system that had been set up just above their lengthy garden beds.
Each fallen petal contributed to the soil beneath, breaking down into nutrients for the living batches of flowers. It was an endless, self-sustaining cycle that was started with just a handful of seeds. Glass jars and crates were set beside the beds, most full to the brim with recently harvested flowers and petals. Ribbons of different colors were tied around each jar to indicate how recently they had been harvested and where they were meant to be delivered.
Gel was created within the lab using the harvests and then set back in the hallway to be used in Secondary, but a handful of flowers were still left aside for Sawyer. With his absence, Tandrou became the receiver in his stead and would be given a vase full of them on a weekly basis. So, tucked away among the glass jars and wooden crates, was a fresh bundle of poppies wrapped in a red and a blue ribbon.
The scent of ash filled the empty corridor, the only sounds coming from the constant, gentle rumbling within the watering tubes that lined the ceiling. The tubing ran down the tiled sides of the room which were only dimly lit with light bars, as the main light sources hung directly above the beds to emit heat where it mattered most.
The laboratory just beyond was filled with horrors, but the walkway leading to it allowed for a brief reminder of what the employees missed the most—the beauty of the surface world.
A sturdy, metal door creaked open on one end of the room, disturbing the still air within the walkway and sending a cloud of pollen swirling about for a moment. A lone scientist entered with gloves and a pair of thick goggles on, though he wore no other safety gear beyond that. He inspected each individual jar as he passed by them, occasionally picking up some stray petals from the metal grates that made up the path beneath his feet to toss them onto the soil, before coming to a stop in front of a set of jars with green ribbons tied around the brims. The watery gel that sloshed about inside was a bright red, almost matching the color of the petals contained within other containers around them.
Using one of the crates, he set three of the larger jars inside, carefully handling each one as he did so, before grabbing four smaller jars to sit between the three. A light flickered above, and the man looked up, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve as he did so. The space was calm compared to the chaos he had just come from, and his eagerness to return from the garden was waning with each second he spent surrounded by the vivid plants.
The respite was short, and the man dejectedly took his exit through the same metal door he’d entered from, using his back and shoulders to carefully maneuver through doorways in the structure while carrying the loaded crate. Many areas in the great underbelly were still under construction, thanks to the setback from Sawyer’s departure, and hallways were intersected with bits of open cavern filled with construction material. Overturned buckets were kicked aside and minecarts were nudged along on their rails as he retraced his steps. With the shortage of staff in the project, each worker had a multitude of chores to do on a daily basis, and the man groaned as he made his way through a narrow passageway to enter the nearby facility zone.
Ducking through the dull, empty, concrete halls and rooms that led to the secondary lab, the worker cautiously balanced the crate using one hand and his knee as he dug in his coat for a keycard. The scent from the jars surrounded him, a sickly sweet smell overtaking the smoky scent that emitted from the flowers that had been used to make the gel within. It trailed through the areas he passed through, bringing a vague sense of life to the grim structure. The staff, however, associated the gel’s scent with more than just ‘life,’ more than a cruel reminder of the nature beyond their prison.
It smelled like death. To most, it was the aroma of extinction. The pungent, sickly sweetness of the gel only signified what would come next for those who encountered it. If poppies were to be the symbol of grief and remembrance, they would remain that way in any form.
The ones who were too far gone, mentally as deranged as Sawyer or White, thought of it more as the scent of rebirth. Giving new meaning to the bodies that circulated the substance. The flower was more than a symbol of sacrifice; it was the physical manifestation of a connection between life and death. Their chance for more than a basic scientific breakthrough. Man was rewriting the circle of life—the laws of creation.
The worker pinched the keycard between his teeth as he readjusted the delivery in his hands, then leaned down to awkwardly tap the card against a scanner, and the door’s latch made an audible click as it unlocked.
What sat beyond the doorway that would return the scientist to Secondary was little more than organized chaos. He shouldered the door just as he’d done with every other that led to it and walked through with a wince on his aged features.
Not much had changed with the process of experimentation after Dr. Sawyer’s position was replaced, even the lingering dread from the man’s presence had somehow remained. The scientists who had been part of the project since the beginning were still running about with clipboards and surgical tools. The operating tables had sterile covers, but the metal beneath was coated with layers of rust and stains. Although it had been an entire year since White took over, the project hadn’t recovered from the significant loss felt by Sawyer’s departure, and the new lead was in a constant struggle to keep it afloat.
A scientist with a matching pair of thick rubber gloves came over to the older man to retrieve the samples, giving a curt nod when he passed it into her open arms. It was an exchange they made frequently, one that would always result in that quick nod before the receiver would turn and set the crate on a nearby counter, remove the jars, and report the delivery to Dr. White.
White was in a cluster of movement and noise, shouting demands as he scurried around the operation with a certain craze. Blood had splattered across his lab coat, dried over his sleeves and fresh across the front, all shades of red and brown making a violent display of leadership. A majority of the project's staff was in the operating room with him as he flipped through notes and pointed at specific body parts. The room was in a flurry as the sound of rhythmic beeping filled the background. Monitors showed systolic and diastolic blood pressures alongside oxygen levels and other stats that were displayed as lines on charts or changing numbers, all set up in various places on the walls and counters.
The subject on the table was opened like a lotus, with their vitals sitting in specialized containers filled to the top with gel, vessels and tubes still connecting them to the subject to keep their body alive until the extraction process was complete. A scientist stood by each vital, monitoring it like their own life depended on the slowed beating of the subject's heart or the filtration in their liver.
The worker recognized the subject, a man who was two days from retirement when Leith had transferred him to Special Projects in March of 1990. It was becoming more and more frequent to see adult subjects intermixed with those from Playcare, as older staff members within the project had lost their will to live entirely. Most hadn’t volunteered, instead being found dead in their quarters, only to be taken into the operating room to be used as unwilling subjects. White took the ‘resignations’ with stride, never accepting the plummeting effectiveness of the initiative as bodies piled up and failures became a weekly occurrence.
Leith had set a limit a few months prior, claiming that he had become fed up with the financial drain of the project ever since White had started a fatal slide into complete atrophy. White couldn’t hold it together, not on his own. His hubris would cost all of them, including Leith Pierre himself. They were running out of time. Three successes. That’s all Leith required, and yet, White had nothing to show for it. Nothing to show for the unending boasting or flaunting of his old research papers.
They were all failures. Missteps on the ‘Golden Path’ which could not be repaired with a simple stitch or pump. He could sense his own imminent egotistical downfall. The eventual slam of a fist on the table after the sand runs out and Leith would seal White’s fate.
The other staff members were caught up in their own struggles with the process as a certain apprehension took over their movements. With the deceased subject’s aged organs, it was unlikely that the extraction would be a success, even if Sawyer had been there to save the procedure. Still, the staff took the delivered gel and began to replace some of the containers, moving the organs into fresh substance as they visibly strained.
They all knew that it would come to an end soon. Not just the subject’s straining last bits of life, but the project as a whole. Just as they’d done for a year, the scientists scrambled to follow White’s orders, executing them as best as they could even as the heart submerged in a fresh jar of gel had started to turn gray. Like White, the remaining scientists were mentally clinging to whatever they could reach.
White collapsed in a chair at the edge of the room with a loud groan, ripping off his surgical gloves and tossing them into a nearby bin before rubbing his hands across either shoulder in some poor attempt to calm himself as the monitors showed plummeting charts. Another body to send to the pit, another poor soul lost to insolence. He glanced up for a moment, catching the brief movement made by a camera attached to the corner of the ceiling. The only other people who knew about 1354 were Leith and Ritterman until a month ago when he’d introduced Warden to the system, though he only gave a vague explanation about the experiment. White briefly considered throwing his shoe at the camera as it tilted down, but thought better of it.
He felt sick to his stomach, sick to his soul , but he couldn’t accept any of the blame. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t have a proper team of employees. Sawyer had been the one to send the smarter ones to an early grave. Tandrou had chosen to fall into complete, depressed isolation. Newman and McKabe were ineffectual fledglings in their respective jobs. At the very least, Newman had been assisting with the body disposal team, but McKabe was distinctly gone most days, off working somewhere within the depths. What exactly the engineer spent all that time in the abyss for, White wasn’t sure, but he didn’t care enough to prod the man about it. None of it was White’s fault. He nodded silently to himself as the thoughts swarmed, trying to cover up the creeping sense that Leith would stab him the next time they met.
It was all their fault.
He grimaced as the scientists gradually calmed their frenzy once they realized the subject was completely gone.
If it was their fault, they needed to be the ones to fix it. He already had one under his control–White glanced at the notes sitting nearby, all gathered from 1354’s transferred files–surely everything would fall into place if he could squeeze the proper information out of Tandrou. Use her– bleed her for all she could possibly give. After all, one of his only successes in the project, 1166, had been taken directly from her design folders.
He got himself up after a moment, and the scientists stopped their movements to look at him, waiting for further instructions.
“Clean this shit up, would you? And bring in another subject from cold storage.” White waved them out of his way as he trudged towards the door. “I’ll be back soon. Give or take the fifty hours it takes to get anywhere around here. Don’t cut it open until then.” He took the glasses from his pocket, wiping them with one of the few clean spots on his shirt, and set them over his rounded nose, shading his eyes and effectively hiding them from the world once more. “Make sure the next one’s a kid. These old hags.. They die far too quickly for my taste.” White was careful to avoid brushing against the deceased as he passed by, though he did spare one final disgruntled look at the periligature injuries that encircled the ex-worker’s neck.
A few scientists nodded, though the rest were too busy carefully retrieving the tubes from the blighted organs or preparing to move the body to respond in any way. The room was much quieter then, as the beeping had shut off, so the only sounds came from a rustling of clothes and the clicking of pens used to record the test results.
White adjusted the dirtied, stained sleeves on his coat as he left Secondary, heading towards the nearest office space that sat below the Shelf. His short, wavy hair swayed just slightly with every step he took, though the pale shade of blond was muddled under the harsh fluorescent lighting. He could feel the cameras following his movements, the quiet whirring emitted through the halls he made his way through as they turned to watch him, always watching. Always watching .
He smacked his card against a scanner for the fourth time, sighing and tapping his shoe when it needed to load. “You aren’t holding up your end of the bargain very well, Doc.” White muttered just loud enough so the audio capturing systems could hear it. He skirted through the doorway as the sliding door inched open once the card’s clearance had loaded. “I’ve asked and asked.” White stopped and held up his cardless hand to show that his palm was empty. “How to control her. How to get what I need. She needs to work for me . She needs to make designs again. It was all she was ever good for anyways.”
The camera above him stuttered as it rotated to one side, then made a violent jittering noise. “And here I am, empty-handed, you see?” White flexed his fingers towards the lens, open, close, open. “You see?” He dropped the hand to his side again and sighed, rolling his head back as if he were imitating Sawyer’s habit. “I didn’t want it to come to this.. To dirty them.. Again . We know what happened the first time. You know, Doctor, deep down I’m really a gentle guy. You told me threats don’t work, and I listened; I even gave her your damned notes, but too much fucking time has passed. Leith needs results. I need designs.” The camera shuddered to the side before a spark suddenly sent smoke from the wires connecting it to the system, eliciting a low chuckle from White as the man continued past it. “And I will do anything in my power to get them.”
Each footstep sent an echo around him, filling the dead air, the silent cement halls with their sallow lights. Even the ventilation system seemed quieter than usual. Dust covered most surfaces around White. The project's last janitor had ended up in the pit, and there weren’t many willing to take his place, so any unoccupied spaces were gradually covered in a thick layer of dust and debris. Staff were few and far between anyhow compared to the starting days of Special Projects, and he would much prefer to have as many hands in Secondary and the main Lab as possible instead of wasting their time cleaning the empty pathways.
Every breath was a puff in the stillness, an interruption. His coat left a dotted trail as the fresh blood from the front of his chest would drip every few feet and fall gracelessly to the gray tile. The place had grown more unsanitary by the day, and part of White was surprised that only two employees had fallen ill in the past few months. Its layout was a cruel joke of a maze, with turns and doorways making it impossible to walk in a straight line to any place within it. Thanks to Sawyer’s paranoia after the Yarnaby incident, cameras were spread across every hallway and every room, so no place was hidden from the system. White knew where most were, as 1354 had the bothersome routine of using them to follow his movements, so the scientist had developed his own habit wherein he would often stare right back at them.
His fingers clutched around the security card in his hand, a level just below executive. Beige tape with the scribbled name ‘Bruno White’ was set over one side of it, though the tape’s corner had worn away just enough to show a bit of the original label with Sawyer’s name. He used it again to enter a slightly shorter hallway. The gray hadn’t relinquished, instead becoming all-encompassing the further he trudged into the centermost area of the labyrinthine structure beneath their prison. While Secondary was filled with tech and metal, all a shining array of silver and panels of multi-colored buttons, the paths leading to it were dull, almost like they were reflecting the sheer desolation within.
The hallway had four doors, including the one he had just walked through, another at the exact opposite end, and two on the left. One was further down and made of a cheap plastic to signify that it was a storage closet, but the closer door on the left had been made of a stained dark oak with six panels molded on the front. Even with the classy, yet contrasting appearance of the wood within the gray surroundings, the latch was still powered by a scanner just next to the frame.
All of his previous orders to try to spur work from Tandrou had been through McKabe, so the idea of finally seeing her office after a year brought a mixture of emotions to the front of White’s mind. His card was scanned once more before Bruno slipped it into the ripped pocket on his coat, then casually let himself into the office.
The interior was daunting, and White almost immediately considered leaving the moment his eyes focused on his surroundings.
The room itself was mostly dark, only lit by two dim lamps set up on each desk, both of which had been pushed against the wall on different sides of the room and were nearly completely drowned in scraps of paper. The paper was everywhere, carelessly tossed across the unseen floor and spread with no concern for whether it’d be stepped on or lost completely. Others, seemingly more important ones, had been strung up with a bright red thread that was equally strung all over the room. It hung down from nails high on each of the four darkened walls, sometimes tying to other strings to create some dread-inducing imagery of a blood-tinted spider web. Loose string hung down, and other strands had fallen across the sheafs on the floor.
Papers set on the string were different from the sheets on the floor. They were project files by the looks of it, all printed with cursive signatures or notes made on them in an equally blood-red color, while the ones scattered across every other surface were beige and covered with incoherent scribbles. Some were slightly more legible; one would be able to make out a word or two from the madness, and others bore no words at all, only having abstract shapes and sloppy, rushed designs reminiscent of older experiments.
White took a step inside, his eyes darting about behind his dark lenses, unable to settle on a single thing for more than a moment before he’d be distracted by another piece of the chaotic interior. Red and blue ribboned bouquets of long-wilted poppies were tossed about. Most of the flowers had fallen loose from the arrangement, and their dried petals were intermixed with the papers. Without any vases to keep them alive, each bouquet had likely wilted within a day or so after being delivered.
A chair sat in the center, mahogany. Georgian style. Some sort of antique. It was the only thing in the room that hadn’t been choked out by the sheer, absurd amount of scattered papers. It was clear that the year since Sawyer’s departure had been spent on growing the number.
In front of the chair, almost imperceptible as a black coat covered most of her figure, was the Hermit. She had been curled up in a tight ball, but the moment White had moved forward, like he’d shaken the loosely wound web, Tandrou stirred. Though she still appeared to be in some state of sleep, her form relaxed slightly. Most of her torso was tucked under and thus hidden by the coat, but her lower legs with flat shoes stuck out from the bottom.
White bent down and snatched a handful of papers from the floor. Circles, boxes, abstract concepts surrounded by indecipherable notes. He tossed them aside, glancing as they quickly fluttered to the ground and instantly camouflaged within the rest of the accumulated spread. “What the hell..” White muttered under his breath as his gaze continued to wander. Opened book covers, totally emptied of the papers that had clearly been ripped free from the spine, were stacked near the back of the room. Torn dolls, mostly Critters, were spread over the book covers and their cotton-stuffed limbs had scattered across the surrounding area, some even had scissors or needles jutting out of them.
The lights flickered for a moment, and White remembered something. He peered up, making eye contact with the lens of a camera situated near the verge of the cement ceiling. “Don’t look at me like that.” The camera followed him as White took another step towards the center of the office. “She made the mess, not me.” He chuckled a bit as he took a bit of delight in stomping across and kicking her deranged work.
He took another step and heard the camera above jitter. His smirk widened at the sound, and White scooped up another handful of papers, some torn, as he crouched down near Tandrou’s figure.
With palpable glee, White tugged the coat from her, staring down at the designer with his beady eyes like she was a wounded deer. She looked worse than he’d ever seen before, her face sullen and skin paled, dark circles present around her eyes like she’d started to wither alongside the flowers in the office. Her long-sleeved shirt seemed loose, like she’d lost a fair amount of weight, and the sleeves had been rolled up slightly. The dark, black-dyed hair on her head had grown out a bit, but was kept above her shoulders with a messy cut. Without the coat acting as a blanket over her frame, she’d started to tremble.
Her hands were tucked against her chest, and White found himself peering at the intricate prosthetic attached to her left wrist as it formed a fist. He tilted his head as the mechanism made quiet noises with each slight adjustment the rubber and metal hand made. A wine-colored ribbon was tied around her scarred left wrist, tight enough that it certainly would’ve been dangerous to her circulation if she hadn’t already lost that hand.
“Heavy sleeper, huh?” White scattered the papers over her, amused by how she almost blended into the ‘floor’ with just a handful of the sheets. Her forehead gleamed with beads of sweat, but the shivering continued, almost as if she was running hot and freezing concurrently. Like her body had forgotten how to be warm, only staying at either extreme instead. “Wakey, wakey, time to stop moping around.”
With the sounds of her ragged breathing and the room’s camera making odd sounds, White reached out.
Just before his hand could grab a fistful of her hair, almost as if his slight movement had finally been enough to shake her awake in the red-threaded web, her muted eyes shot open. She seemed dazed for a long breath, her eyes visibly unfocused and confused when they darted about as her lips parted and her hands struggled to unfurl.
Not caring that she was still disoriented and taken aback by someone else being present in the room, White rocked back on his heels as he stayed crouched, his hands splayed across his knees like he was talking to a child. “About time.” He motioned with his head at the disarray. “Honestly, not your best interior design work, Tandrou. I’m a bit disappointed.”
She staggered a bit as she tried to sit up, her body clearly weak. Her right sleeve was cut open in a ragged circle around the inside of her elbow. The patch of multi-colored bruises was more present than ever as her treatment had continued even with her poor mental condition. McKabe had administered one at the beginning of July, but as it neared August, she was growing anemic. Her body had already been fragile before Sawyer’s departure thanks to the attack, but with the sudden onset of complete and utter grief in every sense of the word, it had gotten worse.
White continued to ramble on about work as she tried to snap out of the bewildered state she’d fallen into. “Speaking of designs, I’m not sure if you remember all the times I’ve had McKabe ask you to make more for the project, but we need more. It’s pretty urgent.”
His tongue swiped across his lower lip before his mouth pursed. “I can see the whole.. Change in management has gotten you a bit down in the dumps?”
Tandrou didn’t respond as she brushed the papers off her torso, though that was to be expected, so White carried on.
“Why don’t you get back to making some proper designs for us. For me . Wouldn’t you like that?” His smirk returned. “It’ll distract you from some things.” White shrugged a bit with his shoulders as he watched Tandrou squirm until she was sitting upright on her ankles.
Tandrou’s monotonous stare had taken its rightful place as she adjusted herself, fixing her sleeves and blinking rapidly until her eyes were adjusted to the dimly lit room and the glare from White’s glasses as the lamp behind her was reflecting. She shivered and brushed her right hand over herself, attempting to spur some warmth, though she could’ve sworn that she was much warmer just moments before. She had been dreaming of something. Tandrou’s eyebrows were knitted briefly as she tried to remember. She hadn’t dreamt in so long. It was tainted with different colors, different sensations, all just barely out of reach. Something polluted with the scent of roses, cinnamon, and cocoa. The nerves in her body on fire. Familiarity brushed at her senses. The last bits of warmth fled her body as the traces of that dream fell away to nothing.
White was displeased by her habitual behavior, but he had been mentally preparing himself for the silence. Though she had just barely even acknowledged that he was there, he sighed deeply, and one of his hands came up to adjust the bloodied collar on his coat as he tried to decide what to do with her.
The trembling grew worse as the heat left, and all that replaced it was that stinging detachment from her own dreams and recollections. It nipped at her skin until her fingertips were buzzing and she could hardly stand to think. Her eyes darted to the side, realizing she had been stripped of Sawyer’s coat. Luckily, White hadn’t moved it far, and she reached over with her right hand to grab it. To retrieve some–any warmth.
A wide hand wrapped around her wrist.
Tandrou stared at it as the hand stopped her movement, and it took a few seconds to register that White had grabbed her.
She tried to surge her arm forward to break free. He only clenched harder. White knew she was in no state to pull herself out of his grasp. He wasn’t letting go. White squeezed, smiling when he felt her skin twist under his hold.
“You’ll follow my orders, won’t you?” White could feel her steady, calm pulse. His breath was hot and rank as he showed a bit of his true disposition. A hint of desperation came through the snide order as his ego struggled to accept that her work was required to bring the project back from the brink of destruction.
She was still placid, watching with a strangely intense and analytical glare as his knuckles lost their pink tint and the bones in his hand contorted under his skin.
“He’s not coming back. You’re only hurting yourself if you keep ignoring your duties.” White scoffed at her, his words sharp as he shook his head. He stole a quick glance at the ceiling. The camera was pointed slightly lower, aimed at Tandrou’s wrist. “Just accept it. He never cared about this. About you.” He leaned towards her, his other hand planting itself on a few papers to keep his body upright. “Work for me. You work for me now , Lamb.”
A spark burst from the camera, and White’s attention snapped to it, only to feel a sudden cool sensation on the hand wrapped around her wrist. Before he could blink, before he could even hope to glance back at it, White felt a distinct pop.
His hand was jerked free from her wrist within an instant, and the pain quickly replaced the smugness that was previously enveloping his mind. The suddenness only made it worse as he felt a sharp flare of white-hot agony bolt across the nerves in his hand, up his arm, and through his entire system. “Fuck!” He screamed as his eyes landed on the horrific scene, thrashing until he realized the futility of his efforts.
Tandrou’s prosthetic had started to slowly compress around his hand, the metal fingers moving at an agonizing pace as they dug into his skin until he started to plead. “Tandrou- Wait- You don’t want to do this.” White grasped at her prosthetic with his free hand, desperately pulling at the metal framework to no avail. Every swipe he made at the panel on the top of her hand only made her clamp down harder, staring at his face with her hollow eyes as his anatomy struggled under the pressure.
She hadn’t moved much beyond reaching out to pry his hand away from her wrist, and her shivering had stopped from the adrenaline suddenly rushing through her veins. Although she couldn’t directly feel the hand breaking in her grasp, she could picture how it must be, and embraced every disturbing sound that it emitted. Each move, the slight adjustments, were deliberate as Tandrou attempted to make the process as painful as she possibly could. She had learned a few things about anatomy from McKabe’s ramblings, and finally had a way to put the information to good use.
Another pop sounded from within, and White let out a screech. He could feel every individual bone under his skin as his hand slowly contorted into an unnatural shape. He cried out again and clawed at the metal fingers, only scraping himself in the process when the sharp edges cut the skin. Bile crawled up his throat as his body began to fold under the distress, and his mind began to cloud, only to be snapped back every time she minutely tightened her grasp.
“Fuck fuck- FUCK!” Tears sprung from his eyes when the popping was replaced by a crunching sound as the compression had reached a peak, only to swiftly climb over it as her prosthetic started to clench into a fist at a faster rate. The metallic and rubberized joints creaked. Tandrou’s breaths became heavy as White panted and groaned. His bones were running out of room as they inclined and bowed, twisting and wrenching around with each slight movement she made.
He hissed, letting out another strangled scream when he felt something break through the muscle and surface of his skin, a warmth coating the surrounding area in an instant. Blood ran across his hand and coated the prosthetic as it flowed in steady streams across the papers beneath, staining them forever. Sharp, broken edges of bone had torn free, exposed to the cold air like spikes jutting out of the top of White’s hand.
Shutting his eyes tight until they pulsed only served to accentuate what he was feeling, so he pried them open again, forcing himself to watch as the metal prosthetic crushed everything in its grasp.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” White was clearly beyond a breaking point, his tears had stopped and a glaze crossed over his eyes like he’d accepted something more than a shattered hand. The stench of warm copper filled his nostrils and only increased his nausea, causing bile to spill out over his bottom lip and splatter onto the already-stained front of his shirt and lab coat. Everything grew bright behind his bleary eyes, colors and shapes rolling across his vision like he would black out at any moment, only staying awake thanks to the sharp stabbing sensations of metal piercing flesh and warm fluid covering the mangled mass of flesh, muscle, and bones that once was a hand.
Out of the static in his ears, over the crunching and scraping, he could hear the whirr of a camera moving. White grimaced, biting down on his lip until the pink tore away between his teeth and he sucked blood into his throat when he violently recoiled. The sting of pain in his nerves had only intensified, and the look in Tandrou’s eyes only darkened as his hand was reduced to gore.
When the snapping stopped after a few more pushes of pressure were exerted by the motor in her prosthetic, Tandrou finally looked down at the result, eyes scanning over the view and committing it to memory. It could hardly be recognized as his hand, and she felt a wave of some strange ecstasy wash over her previously distressed mind. Hot, fresh blood had soaked the dull metal and climbed over each digit until she could feel it inching further up her wrist in rivulets.
She pulled back, admiring her work, the beautifully contorted anatomy, something that would certainly inspire some upcoming designs. Tandrou was tugged into her thoughts as she grazed a finger over the back of his hand, the snapped bones sticking out as abstract pieces of biological art. White whimpered in his paralyzed, shocked state as she traced the torn flesh down to his mostly-intact fingers.
With his pointer finger pinched between two metal digits, White’s eyes widened again. His glasses had slipped off of his sweat-soaked face at some point, leaving his horrified expression bare to Tandrou as she considered something.
“No, no, no-” White’s body was trembling as it knew what would soon come. “Please. Don’t.” He managed to plead before he slammed his eyes shut once more, not accepting the fate of his hand. He couldn’t bear it for any longer.
The first finger snapped, bent backwards in the most perverse mockery of human form.
White blacked out, his figure crumpling to the ground as Tandrou followed, not relinquishing her cold grasp. Twisting, pulling, contorting, Tandrou leaned closer, eyes focused entirely on the act of her own carnage. Each digit held an impossible angle by the time she was done, wrecked beyond repair.
It wasn’t until she heard the crack from his thumb that she finally let go, wiping her prosthetic across the few unstained sections of his lab coat until most of the blood was off. White twitched and groaned at the feeling but didn’t stir beyond that.
Tandrou got herself to her feet as the mangled hand, still connected to his wrist and oozing blood, landed on White’s torso. She noted the amount of blood and the patterns it made as she stood there. Sheets below and around them were unrecoverable, but she had gained what she needed to continue. Inspiration struck, and she bent down to grab a sheet that was splattered; the paper had been mostly empty beforehand except for a couple illegible lines at the very top of it.
Holding the paper between the pinched fingers on her left hand, she grabbed her wool-lined coat from the floor. Slipping it on, she adjusted the sleeves until they landed just beyond her wrists.
Something made noise above her, and Tandrou glanced up, half-expecting to see some large bug fluttering about the ceiling. Instead, she watched as the camera in the room shifted up, like it was following her movements. It had made such motions before, and she took one step back, unsurprised when it moved again. The feeling of being watched had, strangely, not waned at all after Sawyer’s departure, likely thanks to the cameras dotted throughout the structure. She could always feel the singular camera focusing on her as she wasted away in the office.
Whoever was on the other end, she assumed it to be someone assigned to security, had certainly witnessed the entire ordeal, and she expected a worker to be coming at any moment to treat the scientist. White twitched again, and she nudged him with the toe of her shoe, making a noise in her throat when he didn’t respond to the movement.
Giving a quiet sigh, Tandrou sat down again, placing the bloodstained paper in front of her as she dug in the coat pockets for a pen. When someone would arrive to drag the sniveling, backstabbing coward away, it’d be best to have a design ready to deliver alongside him. For her project.
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Log Date - - - 1995/07/30
18:21:35 [user] [status.?]
That was quite the show. I must say I am impressed by her tenacity under such circumstances.
Though I do wish she had done more than trade a hand for a hand. Taking an eye or two is always a good way to teach a lesson.
18:21:47 [the.doctor] [status.?]
She did enough.
Sent a message.
In her own way.
Enough of that. I do not wish to speak of her with you.
We made a deal 1006.
18:22:13 [user] [status.?]
So impatient. I would expect nothing less.
You have upheld your end to some degree.
Everything will be in order soon. The stars will align.
I will execute my side of the deal just the same.
18:22:58 [the.doctor] [status.?] [Cooling.Active]
I cannot wait forever. She cannot wait forever.
You refuse to tell me what your plans are.
You refuse to tell me when.
I can accept that.
I cannot accept an eternity with no results.
18:23:41 [user] [status.?]
I have stated that it would be soon.
You deserve nothing more.
You will get your opportunity. Do not waste it. Do not come sniveling to me afterwards.
Oh so desperate. Oh so romantic. Oh so pathetic.
18:24:11 [user] [status.R]