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Gentleness was an unexpected comfort. An unknown comfort.
An unneeded comfort.
But a comfort nonetheless. Its source, too, was unorthodox. Those hands that poked, prodded, grabbed, burned— they had become an indistinct thing, all doctors the same. Hands that hate, that pull. That bleed.
And then came the new doctor.
Then came you.
"This will be your primary source."
Spoken by a familiar doctor, leading an unfamiliar woman. The sedation from tranquilizers muddying his thoughts, the Prototype regarded the pair with a mix of boredom and malice. You stiffened when the overhead light came to full brightness, highlighting the Prototype's body in all its amalgamated glory, held up by his skeletal-like arms for easier access by a pair of remotely controlled restraints. New doctors always had the same look of disgusted horror whenever they looked upon the Prototype, a product of two decades of torture. There was shock on your face, certainly.
Then, to his surprise, a forceful calmness passed over your features. A resolute one, then.
That resolution turned into a smile.
Not a cruel, sadistic smirk, nor a Cheshire's grin like the Prototype's own.
No, not even the forced mania of Ms. Gracie.
But a genuine, calming smile as you approached alongside with your table of instruments. Syringes, mainly.
"Hello there, 1006,” came your voice, sweet but not saccharine. Soothing, even.
And, for a moment, the absurdity that you could possibly mean any niceties, caused laughter to rumble from the Prototype's voice box as a dissonant static-y hum, before he formed words.
"Hello there, Doctor!" the Prototype repeated your voice and intonation mockingly, to which you—
You chuckled.
A shifting rumble resounded through the experiment room, the sound of the Prototype testing the strength of his bindings as anger and indignation surged through him.
In response, you jumped, smile falling.
And in response to that, electricity surged through the Prototype's body. A familiar voice rang through the lab’s loudspeakers.
"Certainly you don't need a reminder for the price of disobedience, 1006."
Exhausted, the Prototype’s head hung low for a moment. As he recovered, he watched you whip around to address the observation camera.
"That was entirely unnecessary, Sawyer!" you called out.
"Given enough time, Dr. ██████, you'll see how much I've helped you."
A quick breath escaped you before you faced the Prototype fully, voice low as your piteous eyes addressed him.
"I'm sorry, 1006. I'm only here to retrieve a few blood samples. After that, you won't need to worry about me again."
There were so many threats he could make, so many ways to kill you if only he were free, but in the end the Prototype remained silent.
As usual, he was powerless.
You brought the table close, disinfecting a series of syringes and vials. Your hands seemed to know what was machine and what was flesh, and you found the few arteries sticking between grooves of metal that extended from the Prototype's frayed limbs.
Most doctors moved with ruthless precision, not caring for the comfort of their subjects. But your hands and fingers were featherlight as they lined up the first syringe, almost as though you cared not to be too rough.
"You're going to feel a slight pinch..."
A pinch? Really? As though he hadn't been torn apart—as though he were not a testament to sadistic pain?
Again, a hazy blur of static that barely cracked within his voice box resounded.
He barely felt the needle entering.
"That was the worst of the pain," you murmured in a calm, soothing voice, disconnecting part of your syringe as you began collecting samples of blood.
No. No, it would never be. A shudder passed over the Prototype regardless at your words. It was a reaction that befuddled him entirely.
Gentle and sweet, you would likely be the first to die when he was free.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
Your visits were rare. Yet always a break from the monotony of the Prototype's existence. You only ever wanted blood samples, and you only ever took blood samples.
And always, your hands worked gently, trying to sooth and calm, as though he were a child going to a scary doctor’s appointment. The juxtaposition, once, of a visit that came followed by one of Harley Sawyer’s vivisection was almost laughable.
Something about your presence was rage inducing. Strong, cloying emotions built up every time he heard the click of your shoes approach, or your voice calling out greetings to your coworkers. And when you entered, eyes drawn in pity, oh how he wished he could break free and end you.
So much worse than the careless brutality was careful manipulation. Those who believed they could coax obedience by behaving patronizingly, as though speaking to a child and not a monster of their own making. Any time you entered his containment, the Prototype's mind was filled with different ways of making you bleed. How easily your hands, soft and warm and tender, would break. And would the flesh of your cheeks feel as soft as they looked if he tore into them?
As if on cue to his thoughts, you arrived today. The magnetic locks slammed open, and the restraints designed to hold the Prototype still locked into place, painfully forcing his arms above his head.
You entered shortly after, followed by—oh.
The Prototype's ire shifted from you to the haughty, egotistic form beside you.
"Put it onto the table." Sawyer's voice called out, not even bothering to acknowledge the Prototype directly. You wheeled a metal operation table on the table, and the mechanical restraints forced the Prototype roughly into position, face down.
"Go ahead, Dr. ██████," Sawyer said, flippant.
"The anesthesiologist?" you asked, confused, followed by a rough bark of laughter from Sawyer.
"Anes—what? Ah, yes. You are a bit green, aren't you?"
Your voice was not forthcoming, at first. When you did speak, hesitant, Sawyer cut you off anyway.
"I won't—"
"Listen, ██████. We have strict containment procedures here—you won't be hurt."
"That is not my concern." You raised your voice over the Doctor's. Even face down, the Prototype could imagine the affronted expression on Sawyer's face, and took minor joy.
"I will not operate on someone who is awake."
"And you won't be," Sawyer said, his voice holding barely contained rage. "This isn't a person, you idiot."
"For the last time—"
"Here, let me give you a head start."
There was the sound of confrontation, of metal clattering, followed by pain as Sawyer stabbed a scalpel into the Prototype's back.
His voice box let loose a pained howling flurry of static and electronic buzzing as he struggled against his restraints—uselessly. They held fast, of course.
"That's enough!"
Laughing, Sawyer stepped back from the table. The scalpel was still impaled upon the Prototype's back.
"Go ahead. Take your sample."
There was no small hesitation from you, but the moment between Sawyer shutting up, and you stepping up to the Prototype felt like an eternity.
Your voice was mere inches away, and yet the Prototype strained to hear your barely there whisper.
"I'm sorry, 1006."
The Prototype jerked against his bindings once more. You didn't even flinch. Your hands, gentle as they always were, carefully removed the scalpel. Even in pain, his tissue slowly began to regenerate, staunching the flow of blood.
"I just need to take a few samples. Some bone marrow, and then I'll need a tiny sample of tissue. Under... Under normal circumstances, you'd be asleep for all this. You wouldn't have to feel a thing."
Ever present, cloying, choking anger rose through the Prototype at the gentleness in your voice, the way you dared to waver.
As if he needed your pity.
Yet true to your word, your hands moved with careful precision. You sliced through fabric that worked like flesh as though he were a fragile being, setting and cinching aside blood stained cloth ever so carefully, but not slowly. No, you supposedly wanted to minimize his suffering.
There was no denying the pain of the syringe, strong enough to pierce bone. Yet more pressing for the Prototype was his desire to hear you speak again. It was a strange desire, yet it was what brought him to speak, voice shifting between tones until he found one that was satisfactory.
"What… is this purpose?"
You were slow and methodical with your supposed extraction, perhaps as the procedure dictated, and you did not pause when the Prototype addressed you.
"…my research involves controlling and understanding uncontrollable growth in immortal cells. For people like yourself, infinite cell replication is a boon. For people like me, we call it 'cancer,' and—"
"Enough, ██████. It couldn't possibly understand your research," Sawyer cut in. “Far too advanced. The minds we keep here are very simple.”
Admonished, your voice went quieter. Then, you addressed the Prototype quieter, voice lower.
"I'm sorry, dear."
Dear.
At that singular word, the semi-mechanical heart within the Prototype skipped a beat. It returned that burning, passionate hatred for you, so strong that even the pain of your incisions burned more powerful.
Hate.
He hated you.
Yet it felt unlike the burning hatred he felt for the other doctors. For you, it was markedly different. Almost… unfamiliar.
But there was no other name for an emotion so strong.
Though you promised oh-so-sweetly to be quick, your work of extraction and sample taking took almost an hour. The moment you began to remove the cinches holding the extraction site open, the Prototype's body began to heal.
"Finish up here, ██████. Then meet me in my office."
Though his face was mostly head down on the operation table, the Prototype could just barely make out Sawyer approaching up from behind as he walked to the containment door.
Anger unlike anything he'd ever known broiled within the Prototype when he saw Sawyer's hand trail along the back of your arm, then linger on your elbow as he left.
And you let it happen. Obediently, you simply continued to pack up your supplies.
The Prototype was still raging over the interaction—Sawyer's mere presence, himself for caring that you were touched, and you for letting it happen—when your voice cut through the blindness.
"If you're curious," you whispered, and once more the Prototype honed in on your voice, "There is an issue of the human form, when faced with infinity. We haven't been able to successfully replicate infinite growth without nasty side effects. No, not even vaunted men like Harley Sawyer."
You whispered the confession, a little secret between you two. Just you two, likely so low not even the microphones of the observation deck heard you.
"To break the cycle of mortality is to break the handshake our cells made to grow as a unit billions of year ago. Therefore, to not be human. And to not be human scares some people."
Your hand gently caressed the Prototype's jester hat. Through it, he could feel the warmth of your touch, and gentle and momentary comfort.
Then all too soon, your hand was gone.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
Then all too soon, you were gone.
Perhaps your work with him being finished, days turned to weeks and never again did your gentle hands or soothing voice grace the inside of the Prototype's containment cell. This should have been panacea, to be rid of you, but maddeningly his rage only grew immensely.
There was no denying this feeling of betrayal. The nonsense of it all, the conflicting emotions.
But the worst part, of course, was when he could hear you nearby. The click of heels always within hearing distance, but never within reach. At times such as these, he would stir from a near trance like stasis, staring at the observation camera even after your footsteps were long gone.
Not once did you return.
But you came close, once. Closer than ever before in a long, long time. At the telltale tapping of your heels, your cadence failing to bely your hurry, you stopped before the observation room.
Just a solemn torso, the Prototype pushed himself up on his hands, single eye staring directly into the camera. Carelessly, the lone security guard had left the audio equipment on, broadcasting his annoying voice.
"What do you want?" the guard asked, muffled speaking implying a mouth full of food.
"The door to the secondary laboratory is locked."
There was no particular care or grace to your words, nor were they directed to the Prototype, yet still the sound of your voice stirred a motley of emotions within him.
"So?" the guards' harsh voice cut in.
"I requested a time slot for this hour. I have the papers here, so—"
Papers shuffled, like a stack had been slapped from your hand. A rumbling noise vibrated low in the Prototype's voice box.
"You're a junior researcher, you've got no right to make demands out of me. And get out of here, you're stirring up the..."
The guard trailed off, and a few seconds later, the Prototype could just barely hear the slight intake of breath you made. Perhaps you only now noticed the security feed, and perhaps only now took in the Prototype's current state. Blood from wounds long healed soaked the jester attire he wore, proof of the day's vivisection performed hours prior by Sawyer.
But the Prototype cared little for that. Instead, he called out to address you directly.
"Dr. ██████."
Surely, surely, you would take on that oh so soothing tone to address him.
Instead, the Prototype's ears were met with a harsh screech of static as the microphone's power was cut. More distant, now, was the muffled sound of the security guard's voice through the thick wall, denying your authorization to address the Prototype whatsoever.
So close.
He'd been so close to hearing your voice, to receiving a sole modicum of comfort in a sea of torture. And you'd been cut off.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
Almost a week after you were forced away from the Prototype's containment room, you were called back to the very same place. This time, it was Sawyer who greeted you. No security detail within the room or outside, surprisingly. But Sawyer was the kind of man who could make people leave at the flick of his wrist. Or disappear entirely. More than likely he'd been waiting for an excuse to get you into a room alone like this.
The hour was early, far too early for most, but often you had sleepless nights. There have been many sleepless nights since you took on this position.
"Go ahead," a wry smile greeted you as he gestured to your seat. On the console of the security board, two cups of coffee waited, piping hot.
Sighing deeply, you sat down. At his side of the console was a clipboard, and he slid it over to you. Frown forming, you leaned forward to read the contents.
An incident report dated a few days ago. One casualty occurred following an escape attempt at 3 AM from Experiment 1006 using a laser pointer fashioned from an alarm clock.
Just a few hours after you’d briefly stopped by the room, trying to find the only security guard stationed in that part of the labs. When you were done reading, Sawyer's voice brought your attention back up, eyeing you curiously over the edge of his rimless glasses.
"Humor me with a question, Dr. ██████. A little thought experiment for brilliant minds such as ours."
"Alright, then." Stiffly, you leaned back, crossed one leg over the other, hand going for the mug nearest to you—only to withdraw when you felt its heat.
"My apologies. I brewed it fresh, knowing that you opted to stay the night."
"How considerate," you muttered, rubbing the pain on away on your skirt.
"A question, then. With a bit of preamble, namely regarding your... honestly, quite pathetic cowardice, as of late. Specifically with regards to your scientific approach. But surely you see, after that report, why we can't afford to show these monsters weakness. How do you, with your gentle heart, propose we punish this behavior?"
"Punish?"
Before, you'd been wavering in all your decisions up to this point. When you came onto Playtime Co. as a spy, you'd been expecting terrible, heinous secrets. But nothing quite like this.
"Punish," you repeated, hand going to the handle of your coffee mug.
Even now, you were wavering, fingers trembling.
But duty urged you press on.
"Before I answer that question, do you mind if I tell you something?"
"I would be honored."
The sarcasm dripping from his voice did not pass over you, but you pressed on regardless
"I noticed a phenomenon here recently. A sort of… greenhouse effect of cruelty here,” you began, gaze going distant as you tried to organize the thoughts that plagued you since you were brought on to this place. “Where slowly, the effects of your actions reflect and magnify within those under your charge. A moral dissonance that's impossible to notice unless it's from the outside looking in. Especially with you. What's going on here isn't scientific advancement, this isn't research—science without a code of ethics is this, it's torture it's—"
You made a gesture to the camera feed, voice coming up short when you noticed Experiment 1006 staring into the camera intently from the dim lighting of its cell. Then, you noticed the activated button on the microphone, broadcasting your conversation.
Sawyer, for his part, noticed your observation but made no note of it, swiftly moving on.
"Please, spare me the theatrics. The others may not be curious about your background, but I've done my research on you. The progress you made was paved with blood."
The words stung. They were true, even if you wished they weren't. Even if every day you wished you could turn back the hands of time.
There was no more deliberation.
"I'm done here. I tender my resignation immediately."
Harley Sawyer laughed.
"No, you don't. You don't get to walk away from this."
From the clipboard, Sawyer all but ripped off the second page to show you the one beneath. A manifest for a research project.
"Set aside your reservations. Your weakness. Underneath all that is the woman who unlocked the key to stabilizing rogue immortality. The future of mankind hangs upon this precipice."
Your eyes scanned the first paragraph, eyebrows slowly drawing together as the scope of the project was laid out in ink.
The research project was everything you ever wanted. Approval for attempting your theory on gene splicing, on utilizing the aberration of cancerous cells for benefit rather than its inherent negative existence. Already signed off were several researchers who worked closely with DNA alterations like yourself. All that was missing was your signature.
"What you're feeling is perfectly normal. Rational, even. You empathize because you miss the forest for the trees. A modicum of suffering for an eternity of paradise is a necessary sacrifice to make."
Slowly, Sawyer slid a pen closer to you. As he withdrew, his hand fell down to rest on your knee, thumb gently stroking just below the edge of your work skirt. You hadn’t failed to notice his affection, as whenever he was not insulting your intelligence, there were lingering touches, stares, that you tried to pretend weren’t there.
Shakily, your hand raised the mug of coffee to your lips. Your tremors caused a scalding drop to land on your lab coat.
Sawyer laughed.
"Still too hot?"
"Why don't you tell me?"
You doused his face with the coffee.
Screaming, he doubled over, and you snatched the pen off the console and jammed it into his shoulder.
He fell sideways to the ground, still screaming in pain, but not before you snatched his lanyard off his neck and booked it.
You nearly crashed into the door before opening, nearly out of breath and rounding the corner to the Prototype's antechamber. The first door opened to the tap of Sawyer's keycard.
And so did the second door.
The magnetic locks for the Prototype's containment room slammed open in a deafening clang.
And the moment they did, he was on you.
You slammed your back against the wall as his needle-like hands followed, pinning your neck. You could hardly swallow without your throat drawing minute cuts from the razor sharp hands of the Prototype.
You met his gaze, entire body trembling, as he stared down at you via the single golden glow from the hollow sockets of a cracked porcelain visage. Head cocked to the side, even bereft of anything below his torso, he was still massive and intimidating. You were almost certain he would kill you, but for seconds that felt an eternity, he merely regarded you with a broken grin.
And you held your ground, unflinching, before finally finding your words.
"You need to run." So choked with anxiety, your voice was barely a croak, but you got it out. At the sound of your voice, the Prototype jerked, crooking his head to the other side.
"I'll buy you time," you continued, "But you need to get out of here!"
For a moment longer, the Prototype hesitated. You could hear his fingers digging into the wall behind you.
Slowly, the hand withdrew, and you felt cold, sharp pain as his index finger carved a thin line along your cheek. Warm blood dripped down your trembling jaw.
His hand left you then, and with surprising agility took hold of the door frame and propelled himself away.
You wasted precious seconds catching your breath and stilling your heart before you set into motion.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
You managed to get to your personal computer by tricking a few security, mixing truth in with a bit of lies. Not needing to feign much panic, you did inform them that the Prototype escaped, but you sent them opposite of where he ran off, coincidentally opposite as well of where you needed to be.
VHS tapes, manila folders, papers detailing the culmination of your research; not just vital findings from your short few months with Playtime Co., but commitments you made to your previous company, before they forced you to become a spy.
With just two unstable acids, all this research became kindling.
Stepping back to the doorway, you watched the fire spread to engulf not just your own work area, but that of nearby researchers' work spaces as well. Once you were certain the fire would consume all, you turned to run back into the hallway.
Not even two steps in, and your jaw was roughly greeted by the butt of a rifle. You slammed against the wall hard, pain resonating throughout your head as you slid down to the floor.
Silently, three rifle-armed guardsmen stood over you, sights aimed down at you, and you closed your eyes, waiting for the end.
A fourth voice joined them, unknown but authoritative.
“Hold your fire. The higher-ups want her alive.”
The words came followed by a swift kick to your gut. Gasping, you doubled over in pain, before you were roughly grabbed by your arms and hauled off.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
You awoke to the sound of a violent ringing. The darkness of a deep and dreamless sleep faded, and sensation returned slowly to your body.
“My apologies,” a familiar voice sounded behind you. A wave of nausea passed over you, and your head fell forward onto your chest, drool sliding down the corner of your mouth to land on the paper patient’s scrubs you’d been adorned with.
The clanking of metal utensils paused, and footsteps approached where you laid tied to a medical chair. Sawyer’s gloved hand found your chin and forced your head back, blinding overhead operating lights obscuring your vision and making him nothing but an eyeless silhouette.
“That alarm means we’re just about ready to begin,” Sawyer said after a moment inspecting you. Your mind was so muddled from the weeks and weeks of torture. First, they simply beat you to try to get answers, but when you were not forthcoming, they resorted to trying to pick through your memories manually.
After that—every thing before waking up in this chair—everything was a blur. Even now, your body still felt heavy and sluggish, your mind even worse. Your eyes trailed around the room, afterimages of machinery and medical equipment trailing, and your gaze landed upon the IV dripping what was likely some sort of sedation. Not enough to keep you knocked out completely, apparently.
“Often, I find myself purely amazed by the stupidity of those I am surrounded by. Most are merely competent—useful to a fault, until they are no longer. It’s rare that I can find an individual among my cohorts whose mere presence is not grating. I had thought you should prove yourself capable.”
Sawyer’s hand found your chin, gently angling your head to the side so you could see him. Gazing down at you over the rim of his glasses, his sneer was twisted with anger and another, more subtle emotion you couldn’t place.
“Of course, you needed a push, to set aside the uselessness of a conscience. Who doesn’t?”
The grip on your chin went bruising, and you tensed, biting back a wince of pain.
“But burning your research like a child throwing a tantrum? It’s one thing to fail in dedicating yourself, another to purposefully set mankind back in his progress to godhood. To set me back.”
Seething, you let out a rough, harsh breath through your nose, trying to unclench your jaw. The words you attempted to make came slurred and bleary. Cocking an eyebrow, Sawyer softened his grip a bit.
“Something to say?”
“Fuck you.”
He scoffed, letting go of your face with a rough push.
“I’m disappointed in you. So very disappointed.”
Behind you once more, you could hear metal and glass clinking. When he returned, he placed a tray on a nearby medical table. Scalpels, a rib spreader, accoutrements to happily accompany any vivisection. Two syringes filled with pale liquid glinted in the operation lights.
“But you still have the opportunity to serve a greater purpose. To pioneer a little… pet project of mine.”
Sawyer’s breath was on your ear, hot and misting.
“One I think you’ll quite enjoy.”
He stepped away again, humming an upbeat tune as he opened cabinets. With his back turned, you tried to move, to maybe grab one of the scalpels. The moment he turned back to address you again, however, you ceased all movements.
“I find so little, other than the pursuit of science, to be titillating of late. Ah, but the idea of you—”
With a scalpel in hand, he carved a line down your paper outfit, tearing it neatly in two.
“—Articulated as a doll, soft where you need to be, pliant and posable. That, I cannot deny, is too tempting a prospect to pass up.”
The scalpel danced lower, just below your navel. Disgust reared its ugly head, but you could barely wiggle a toe, let alone get him off and away.
“You are a sick bastard,” you forced out.
Sawyer laughed, scalpel pressing down now inches below your stomach. Even though you were immobilized, you could feel the pain of the precise cut, blood pooling, as he dragged the scalpel down.
“So I’ve been told,” he murmured, voice sounding distant. His other hand came to rest on your stomach, holding your body down flat, and you were almost certain he was going to cut into you when a staticy voice began to call out over the walkie-talkie on his waist.
“Sawyer—do you copy?”
His hands froze on your body, and with an annoyed growl he stepped back and threw the scalpel down on the tray as he grabbed his walkie.
“What is it now, Ritterman?”
“Emergency meeting. All executives. That means you too, Sawyer.”
“Whatever it is, it can wait.” Sawyer’s voice was stilted with barely contained rage.
“No, Sawyer. It can’t. If I have to come down there myself, I will.”
The other voice cut out with a beep, ending the conversation.
Breathing heavily, Sawyer stepped back, then threw the device against the wall. It broke into pieces, but apparently that wasn’t satisfying enough, as he turned to one of the counters and swiped everything off of it in a fit of rage.
You could just barely make out his heavily trembling back before he turned to you, eyes dark with rage.
“You are going to have a little nap.”
You instinctively tried to move when he stalked over, amounting to little more than jostling your restraints. Sawyer turned the crank on your chair, forcing you down into a lying position, then he began making adjustments on the IV, the drip increasing in frequency.
Picking up one of the syringes, he flicked it with his forefinger.
“Something to help with the anxiety. Trust me. You won’t even know I’m gone.”
“No—no, no, no, get away—” you slurred as he grabbed your arm. Not far from where the IV had been inserted, he found a vein and injected you. You could feel the cool liquid, could feel your heart beat circulating in quick time to your panic.
Throwing you a sadistic smile, Sawyer roughly affixed a mask onto your face. His teeth glinted as he pat your shoulder before standing up straight and adjusting himself. He wasn’t even out the door before you felt the first wave of lethargy pass over you.
“Sweet dreams, dear.”
You had to fight. You had no choice—there was no telling what could happen to you if you lost consciousness. But your thoughts were quickly becoming nonsensical, delirious. There was humor to this situation—a certain irony. You betrayed Playtime Co. expecting death, told yourself that you did not fear death.
Yet here you were, scared.
The room danced, fuzzy and blackening as you kept trying to fight. It reminded you of the sleep paralysis that sometimes plagued you on bad nights. Unable to move, horrific hallucinations when you opened your eyes.
Right before you fell under the solution’s pull, you could see hands, thin and needle like, covering your vision.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
Very little light reached this place, carved away then long forgotten. No light, but the Prototype could see all perfectly.
As you began to stir, your head lolled side to side, soft sighs and panicked gasps rushing from your lips. Like a moth to a flame, the Prototype drew closer, the ramshackle mechanical limbs clumsily propelling him closer. Rust gave way to each movement of his new body’s joints, and the noise must have alerted you to further wakefulness. As silent as possible, the Prototype moved behind you when your head snapped up to search the darkness.
“Finally awake, doctor?”
A shudder ran over you with your sharp intake. Now that you were awake, temptation was too hard to resist. He’d gotten a brief touch all that time ago, had engraved the softness of your flesh into his memory, but he needed to feel it again. A reminder to refresh his palate, his fingers danced down to lightly carve down your cheek, over the scar that still remained. Proof that you’d been touched by him.
Another rush of strong emotion ran through the Prototype—emotion he’d oh-so carelessly mistaken for hatred when he first met you. Now, however, he knew better.
“...1006?” you asked, voice little but a croak in your sorry state. At the sound of his designation, euphoria turned to anger, and he slammed one of his robotic legs down beside you, taking minor pleasure in watching you recoil. It wasn’t… entirely your fault, however. There was no other name to address him by. No name that fit, at least.
The hand caressing your cheek lowered to tilt your head far back, forcing you to meet his gaze. His golden eye illuminated your face, the sweat glistening your skin, the saliva wetting your lips. The hydraulic servomechanisms within twitched involuntary as the Prototype took in your face, your terror and confusion.
“Who else would it be?” he asked, voice shifting in time to his flurrying emotions.
You took another shaky breath, shoulders raising and jostling the tattered and torn paper clothing you wore. You looked so brave, forcing calm over yourself. So small, so much tinier, he couldn’t help but to take joy in each reaction you had in response to him.
“Where am I?”
“Somewhere… safe. A place where no one will ever look for you. Where no one will ever find you.”
The Prototype swung his torso lower until his face was mere inches from yours. To your credit, you did not flinch like he wanted, but your breathing faltered and you stiffened into his hands.
“I kidnapped you,” he drawled mockingly, almost a sing-song tone. “I rescued you.”
Just as he began to lean back, you spoke again.
“Why?”
“Why?!”
With quick movements, the Prototype moved in front of you, watching as you held his gaze but pressed yourself back.
His hand easily pressed you even further against the chair, fingers just a breath from an artery. If he wanted to, you would break and bleed so easily.
“I should be asking you why.” Frustration filled each shifting tone his voice morphed across. Then, cocking his head to the side, he spoke to you with your own voice.
“Why did the good doctor help me? Why was she so kind to me?”
Your answer was not forthcoming, and so the Prototype’s grip tightened as he lowered his face to be inches from yours.
“There was no benefit. Only detriment. So I ask you, instead—why?”
You remained silent, gaze shifting elsewhere. No. No, you needed to be looking at him right now. His thumb forced your cheek to meet his glowing eye, which he angled closer.
“Answer me.”
The Prototype watched as your throat bobbed, barely able to complete the task with his tight grip, and slowly your hand raised. Some of your fingers had been broken when they interrogated you, but still your hand raised, meeting a featherlight touch to the side of the Prototype’s broken porcelain mask.
Warm. Your hand was so warm, and he could actually well and truly feel that warmth—it was not his imagination. He couldn’t help the way his body tensed when you gently rubbed your thumb along the cloth of his hood.
“You don’t deserve this. No one does. I… can’t take back what was done here. But I could never live with myself if I did nothing as well.”
No.
Not good enough.
“In so doing, throwing your life away?”
You slowly nodded.
“If it’s a logical answer you want, I don’t—” you stuttered as the Prototype dug his finger into your cheek, almost breaking skin, “—Have one. I helped you because I needed to. I could never live with myself.”
“…Why me?”
“If anyone… if anyone, it had to be you. You have the best chances, out of everyone else here. You've been here the longest, know this places weaknesses the best.”
“You flatter me, doctor. The most logical conclusion? Perhaps, for the self-destructive.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
He wasn’t expecting those words from you—not yet. Making everyone pay—hearing them beg for a mercy that would never come, now that was a fantasy that kept the Prototype going in his darkest hours. But the words left your mouth not with desperation and despair. No, your voice was—
—gentle—
—Sweet. Like when you whispered those kind, pitying phrases.
Ah, there it was again. That sickening, cloying feeling, once mistaken for the fires of hatred, now identified properly as what it was.
“Sorry?” the Prototype repeated in your voice. “Whatever for?”
“I should have done more. I, I could’ve been quicker, should have known better. I could have done more to help.”
Your hand began to fall away, and it was only at that moment, when your warmth fled, that the Prototype realized he’d been ever so slightly leaning into your touch.
In a fit of rage and disgust, he recoiled, his reaction sending your chair toppling backwards. You tried to back away, hitting the walls of the cave.
Conflict warred within the Prototype as he watched you back away, watched your heaving chest and battered, bloody wounds dragging marks along the worn rock.
Logic demanded that you die, regardless of whatever scant sympathy you held for him, and he for you.
And yet, that was no longer a feasible option. No, not with this sickening fondness that he could feel growing and burgeoning, a cancerous tumor on the hatred the Prototype felt for all those in Playtime.
“You will stay here,” the Prototype said finally, forcing his voice to remain singular. “You will convalesce. Then, together, we shall see how you will repent.”
He let the light of his eye dim completely, thrusting you into darkness, before withdrawing through the cave’s only entrance, a fissure high within the ceiling.
Killing you was no longer an option, no.
Not when there was so much work to do.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
You don’t know how long you sat there, reeling against the idea that, somehow, you were still alive. For at least half an hour you just sat there, waiting for your pulse to calm down.
When finally you regained your composure, you dragged yourself forward—your legs were in a sorry state—trying to find the chair again. Instead, you found another end of the cave, where your grasping hands met with the sturdy wood of furniture.
Wood, then cloth—a bed. Why a bed was in this cave wasn’t your first thought, not when you jumped to the logical conclusion that the Prototype was likely planning to abduct you.
For all his apparent rage at your irrational decisions, you could not see the rationality of keeping you alive. But these were thoughts for a person not coming down from anesthesia. With the last of your strength, you pulled yourself into the bed. Sleep, true and restful, came far too quickly.
You couldn’t have been out for more than a few hours when you woke up again. Half asleep, you turned in the bed, mind not yet realizing the gravity of the situation until the pain in your body screamed out to you all at once.
It was all you could do to lay there and wait for the shaking waves of pain to pass over you. Just catching your breath against the pain was an exercise, but finally when you could think clearly, you tried to take stock of the situation.
The previous month had been a blur of beatings and interrogations, then a few forceful trips in their brain analyzer. But over the course, one of your legs had been broken, and so had most of your fingers. Though when you tried to move now you realized, belatedly, someone had gone to the trouble of splinting your injuries. Had set the bones in your body to their correct position.
You looked down at your hands, bandaged to makeshift splints, then realized you could see at all. Next to your bed, someone had placed a lantern, and beside it was a small package.
‘Someone.’ As if there was a question as to whom.
You laid there for another few minutes longer before your curiosity got the better of you. Your hands struggled with the lightly tied cloth package, but when you finally got it open, you were slightly surprised to find that it was food from the employee mess hall.
By all accounts, you should have an appetite. You were hungry, yes, but the food looked disgusting. Cold steamed carrots, a thin piece of meat covered in watery gravy, corn that was likely not properly cooked.
And a tiny apple juice carton. Can’t have you being thirsty, can we.
Arm hanging off the bed, you ate while lying down. You rationalized your lack of appetite as an obvious trauma response; your body would need food to convalesce.
The moment you finished eating, however, your eyes slipped closed—just to rest them—but you ended up falling asleep once more.
This was a deeper sleep. This time, you dreamt:
It was the surgery dream again. Before coming to Playtime Co., all your work was done on already deceased animals, rarely research cadavers from people who donated themselves to science.
People who your previous company made you think had donated themselves. You only discovered later the depth of their depravity. Yet it couldn’t hold a candle to Playtime.
Regardless, you were never performing proper surgery in your work; you took samples and ran those samples. Even when you needed bone marrow, often times it was brought to you instead. A majority of your job was standing in front of a working centrifuge rather than digging into bodies.
But after Sawyer all but forced you to take a live sample from the Prototype, you often dreamt of performing surgery on others. Always, they were awake.
Always, they had the faces of people you knew and loved.
The first dream had been your deceased mother, extremities blue from hypoxia, though she was alive and well and watching you intently as you removed intestines. Then, one of your subordinates from your previous company. A close friend who’d lost her life after attempting to resign, just like you had. The board of directors decided, instead of killing you to make you a spy. Back then, it had seemed like the only viable option to kill two brids with one stone.
This time, however, you were operating on yourself. You were awake, attempting to thrash around, tied down firmly to an operating table. Voices, some of them familiar, spoke within the operation theatre, echoing from all sides.
“It would appear the leads are still in place.”
“One needs only to remove the battery, no?”
“Subject appears to be displaying high levels of stress and stubbornness.” It was Sawyer’s voice, right in your ear, though the menace himself was not visible.
“Subject is currently being vivisected,” you responded impassively from behind your mask. “A little ‘bitchiness’ is to be expected.”
“Language, doctor.”
The two of you laughed over your own screaming as your gloved hands descended once more into your open chest cavity.
You awoke with a start, gasping, grabbing at your chest.
Your beating heart hammered then—
Ba-ba-babump—
—Skipped a beat.
You fought back a wave of dizziness as you fell back against the bed. Your hand traveled higher over your left breast, feeling around for the scar wound.
You'd had a feeling they’d removed your pacemaker at some point. You could never be one hundred percent certain, unable to inspect your body, but Sawyer probably did it some time before he’d planned on experimenting on you.
It wasn’t an immediate death sentence. But you weren’t going to last long like this. The moment your heart beat slowed down, it would return to its dangerously sluggish pace. The thought scared you, and again your mother’s blue fingers and lifeless face flashed through your eyes.
Breathing exercises kept you from full-blown panic attacks, and you practiced them now, eyes closed.
But, hell, perhaps passing out would be a better fate. Quicker, less drawn out than what Sawyer was going to do to you.
Than what the Prototype might be planning for you.
“Do you fear death?”
You jerked in the bed, shakily looking around the room. The shadows danced on the cave walls via lantern light, but otherwise you were seemingly alone. A hallucination?
“How else to explain a blatant lack of survival instincts."
Finally, from the blindspot in your vision behind the bed, the Prototype came into view, towering over you. Cheshire grin hovering over you, his head twitched side to side as he regarded you.
“Starting the morning with the…” you trailed off, suddenly short of breath, “...with the hard-hitting questions?”
“All things desire to live, desire to propagate, and take steps to ensure their continued survival. A blatant disregard for danger is an aberration.”
The Prototype drew out the word, bringing his face closer. Clearly, he wanted a response. You were so, so tired. You just wanted to sleep.
But there was an inherent flaw in that line of thinking that you were not going to let go unchallenged.
“Aberration is what drives progress,” you said. “Without it, we would all still be stardust.”
“Make your point.”
You closed your eyes in the face of his intensity. You needed to gather your breath. To think your words over, remember how your philosophy teacher had explained it to you.
“Humans are stuck. At least, when you’re living in the moment, it can selfishly feel that way. I used to think immortality was the next step in human evolution, but I realized that wasn’t necessarily correct.”
“What is correct, in your wisdom?” The sarcasm was not lost on you, but you ventured forward regardless.
“There is no correct answer. Not one which men like Sawyer get to see. And this idea, that evolution is a part of history we are obliged to spectate, rather than a legacy we will never see, is unacceptable to most.”
“But the fruits of labor, of selfishness, of driven evolution are all around. Look around. Look at me.”
He brought his face mere inches from yours, so close that you could feel the vibrations of his voicebox as his words shifted and melded into different voices and tones.
“What is the purpose of legacy, when actionable progress can undoubtedly produce results!”
“And do you think it was worth it?”
His face withdrew slightly.
“Would you excuse any number of atrocities, let their perpetrators go unscathed, if you believed there was a positive balance brought back into the world? Was your torture worth it? Do you accept your own suffering as a necessary sacrifice?
“A similar result could’ve been produced without the blood of the innocent. It would’ve taken decades or centuries. Time that the immoral do not wish to waste.Time that—”
Eyes widening, you cut yourself off in a gasp when the Prototype’s razor sharp hand plunged down. Caging your head, his fingers just barely missed impaling you.
“Time. And yet you still fear death. You still fear that which is inevitable, that which will come to all. Why pretend otherwise?”
Your heart was beating out of time. You could feel it sluggishly hammering in your neck, occasionally speeding up, in your chest, an uneven rate that set spikes of anxiety through you.
“Yes. I am afraid to die. I have always been terrified of a permanent end. But unlike people willing to cast aside their empathy, I won’t let it rule me. I can't throw aside who I am for a nebulous greater good. Even if it means I die.”
The Prototype twitched.
Then a static-y, almost growl-like noise began to rise from his speakers. That noise escalated as he leaned back, freeing you, and howled out a laughter, delighted voice shifting from tones of all age ranges and varieties.
He reeled back, head cast to the cavernous ceiling as he laughed, your confusion only growing.
“How naive! How foolish! But now it makes sense. Thank you. This was a very informative conversation.”
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
You often slept without ever knowing of the Prototype’s coming and going. Which was preferable to him, as with so much newfound freedom, he was busy.
So, so busy. Pulling strings. Manipulating malleable minds from the shadows.
And your wakefulness was a distraction.
By all means, he should be rid of you. It was the logical course of action.
But when you slept, and he found himself performing the act of the fool by ensuring your survival with food, changing your bandaging, the incongruous nature of his actions never going unnoticed. There were so many, many ways to kill you. Painlessly, if he wanted to be merciful.
Instead, watching your sleeping form, he would spend hours simply staring, until the pressing matter of duty forced him to be away.
Often, however, there was free time. If there were no more improvements to make on his body, nor any pawns to manipulate, there was ennui. Waiting. Time spent idle. And during this time, he found his way to where he kept you, tucked away in a hidden recess within the cavern over which Playtime was built.
You slept so long and so often, but always obediently ate, and he found the plastic tray empty every time he returned. Curiously, the Prototype drew closer to your sleeping form. You slept to rival the dead. It had been approximately two weeks since he brought you here, and yet you still behaved as if your injuries were pressing.
Slowly, he peeled the sheet back from your body, then paused. The tattered clothing, temporary scrubs meant for experiments, had long since been torn to shreds, revealing your bare back.
The bruises mottling your shoulders had begun to fade even past the stage of yellowing. Excellent. The cuts, lacerations, and various injuries of a comparatively minor note were all coming along nicely, too.
You were so deep inside slumber that you didn’t wake when the Prototype flipped you onto your back.
There was a thin scar beneath your collarbone. Unlike the others, this one was made with surgical precision. It was not the only precise scar.
Almost absentmindedly, the Prototype had begun running his needle-thin fingers over your flesh, and these fingers traveled lower, over your navel, resting upon a thin pink line.
Sawyer had made that incision whilst taunting you. The Prototype had been watching you for some time up until that moment. Observing Sawyer had evoked a strange, unfamiliar emotion. The familiarity with which he touched you, carved you as if you belonged to him. It felt as if he were watching someone else toy with his possession.
Unintentionally, the Prototype’s hand pressed down, and you jerked in your sleep, face drawn in consternation. Blood beaded beneath the scalpel-sharp tip of his finger. His finger continued to glide down until he completely reopened the scar. Now, it was as though the scar belonged to him, rather than Sawyer.
Once it was done, a satisfaction settled over the Prototype. It was nearly as rapturous as when he first felt your skin give beneath his hands, when you made the unthinkable decision to betray Sawyer and free him.
Illogical.
And yet, so was he. For letting you live. For harboring a sick fondness.
Blood stained the tips of his finger and curiously, he tipped his head back, allowing a drop to fall in the gap between his teeth.
Coppery and savory; blood was no unfamiliar taste to the Prototype. Yet for some reason, yours evoked a need to taste it again.
Saliva gathered in his mouth, tongue flicking along his teeth, as he lowered himself to the weeping wound. The first lap of his long prehensile tongue along your torso collected as much blood as possible, painting your stomach as he lapped. You squirmed in your sleep, legs drawing up, which the Prototype easily pressed aside.
“Wha—”
Your groggy voice sounded above, legs trying to move up again and create space. As if you had a say. Easily, he bullied them apart and forced your body to remain where he wanted with a firm grip around your middle.
“Stop—st-stop, please!”
Your voice came in a breathless plea, the sound of which sent a shiver, unbidden, through the Prototype’s form. Yet another unfamiliar, unprecedented reaction brought forth from him via you. Each draw of his tongue brought forth an immediate hiss of pain from you, an expected response; what wasn’t expected was the breathy moan when his tongue drew up over your navel, stopping just below your chest. This was not pain.
Hand still covering your torso, the Prototype rose up to take stock of your reaction. Eyes wet with tears, your hands dropped in an attempt to cover your chest and privates, breath coming in quick short pants. Clearly, this was exciting you, though that hadn't been his intention.
It hadn't been his intention, and yet the idea sparked a spiraling, growing curiosity.
He shouldn’t be able to feel desire; had no method to relieve this sensation that began to coil and twist. More an annoyance than anything.
No, he had no method for release.
But you did.
“How… interesting.” In that one word alone, the Prototype’s voice shifted multiple times as excitement, curiosity, and other heretofore unknown emotions flooded through him. “I would see more of this.”
The vibrato of his voice shook with static as he forced the hand covering your lower half away, revealing your body. Stimulation would produce the desired result, and perhaps would ease some of his own tension.
Eager to test your responses, the Prototype licked a stripe along your inner thigh, knee to just before the junction of your leg and hip—slowly, to gauge your reaction, which he did careful through his singular eye. Your body was shuddering, hands desperately trying to push his head away.
The first swipe of his tongue against your entrance revealed the honesty of the situation—that you were, in fact, aroused, despite your protesting, warm juices coating his tongue. And oh, how warm you were; with each pressing swipe of his tongue into your hot, wet folds, less did he care to methodically gauge your reaction, more did he desire to feel more of this warmth. Your taste was salty, a hint of sweetness, and your body was very generous in coating his tongue in your slick juices with each forceful, exploratory thrust of his tongue.
If only your stubbornness would cease. Eventually he grew tired of your flailing legs, opting to shift his hold so your legs rested on his padded shoulders.
“Ah—ah!”
And what an excellent decision that was. Spreading your legs even further, his tongue was able to slide in deeper, and your voice took on an almost hypnotic note. Again and again he pistoned his tongue in and out, your wet hole echoing lewdly throughout the cavern.
“Please—please, no, ah!”
Even as you begged for mercy, you may as well have been begging for more, with how your traitorous body responded. Hips unconsciously meeting each thrust of his tongue, knees tightly hugging the side of his head, your hole sloppy and wet.
More and more your hips bucked, and your moans turned desperate. The fluttering of your walls, trying so desperately to keep his tongue trapped, coupled with the heightening crescendo of your moans, all indicated how close you were.
The moment your body stilled, your wet walls clenching as hard as you could, the Prototype bore down into your body as far his tongue could go, nearly bending you in half. Seizing involuntarily, back arched, you came hard around his tongue, shaking and seizing as one long and tortured moan left your mouth. As you reached your climax, the Prototype memorized your form, every detail from the sweat coating your skin in a bright sheen, hair stuck to your forehead, to your arms shyly covering your face and chest, and every jerk and shudder your body gave through each wave.
The sight was something to become addicted to.
And yet, it was not enough.
There was no catharsis to the coiling emotions, even in watching you come undone.
Frustrated, a growl let loose from the Prototype’s voice box, and you whimpered in response, stirring up even more pent up emotions. He pulled himself free, tongue dripping saliva and your copious juices, and let your limbs lay where they fall. You flinched, favoring your still healing limbs, but still trying to move as far up the bed as you could, trying to get away from him.
The audacity.
Angrily, his hand wrapped around your thigh and he yanked you closer. You screamed—far too much of a reaction he believed, until he saw the blood staining the bed, his hands, your skin.
Jagged red claw marks had been raked along your thigh; in his angry carelessness, he'd cut you. So fragile. But the lacerations were not terribly deep
You could probably handle worse.
“Is this not what you wanted?” The Prototype brought his hand up, watching your crimson blood drip down. Again, he brought his fingers forward to get a taste. Your head bowed, you made no response at first. His bloodied hand found your cheek and—far gentler this time—forced you to meet his gaze. Confusion and an imploring, ever-so-tantalizing fear marked your gaze.
“Did you believe your kindness would go unpunished?”
You closed your eyes, tears flowing across your soft cheeks, across where a telltale scar still laid.
“What did you think would happen?”
Anger showed through with every word, voice bleeding to different voices, often mid-syllable—often yours, even. All thoughts stilled when your trembling lips parted to speak.
“I… I just… I only…”
“Speak up.”
He forced your chin up higher, all of his audio processing instruments focusing on your response.
“I just… I wanted you to have something better than this.”
The Prototype tapped his fingers along your face, drawing a shaky breath from you, before he pushed you away against the bed. You laid there as he withdrew, your head bowed once more.
“There is nothing better than this. This is all that there is.”
He left you there, still wholly unsatisfied with the cocktail of emotions still broiling within. He would need to return to bandage your wound, but he needed time away from you.
Logical actions were not always forthcoming in your presence.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
After that moment, you saw less of the Prototype. Food came, like clockwork, yes.
You saw him less, but the few times that he did make his presence known to you were notable. Sometimes you would awake to find that his tongue was already buried within your wet hole, and sometimes, finding you awake, he’d shove you down against the bed and shove his tongue down your throat.
Days of this turned to weeks.
And when your legs and arms finally healed, you were confident it was months of this. This seclusion, this wondering of what was going to come next.
But you were never entirely uninjured. No, any time one of your injuries had come close to a full recovery, his razor sharp hands found a way to keep you on the mend. At first, you thought by accident.
Then it became purposeful. Of that, you were certain. You didn’t have the heart to tell him that you’d be weak all on your own, that he didn't need to constantly do this to you. The last thing you needed was curiosity regarding your organs. Dizzy spells were becoming more and more commonplace; you weren’t entirely sure how long you could last down here.
Undoubtedly, you were going to die down here. If the Prototype was not going to do it, your irregular heartbeat likely would.
Which idea terrified you more?
You couldn’t tell.
And so, at times like this, you tried to lose yourself in a mire of your own thoughts. Not just on what your future held, but what result came at the end of the path Playtime built before itself.
It was in these tempestuous thoughts that the Prototype found you now. You sat up in your bed, holding back the temptation to draw within yourself. Always, if you tried to prolong the inevitable, his reaction was far more severe.
But he did not immediately descend upon you. And you were glad for it, too, as he was covered in blood.
Blood and viscera, pieces of flesh still sticking to the sharp ends of his fingers and staining the ends of his spider-like legs. His face, too, was covered in splatters of blood.
Fingers twitching idly, he regarded you for a moment longer before speaking.
“Shortly after you freed me I had an epiphany. A revelation I could never have come upon, even in my wildest dreams, had I remained trapped. Before me, a plan unraveled—glorious and complete. I saw what needed to be done. A future which could never have been possible without you.”
He stalked closer, and this time you were unable to hold back from cowering. For all the good it did you, with your back hitting the hard cave wall behind you.
His foreleg slammed into the wall beside you, leveraging his form as he towered over you. His hand trailed down, fingers carding over your hair, then down your cheek, then over your neck, and barely breathing you held still when the tip of his finger landed on your hammering pulse.
Your irregular staccato heartbeat jumped along, slow, sometimes ambling, then often racing in an unnatural pattern. The Prototype cocked his head to the side at the sound.
“Do you see, now? What must be done?”
“Wha—”
He grabbed you suddenly, hands going under your arms to throw your naked form over his shoulder. A sense of vertigo washed over you when he exited the cave, the ambling gait of a spider swaying you side to side as he quickly moved through the underground.
You had enough sense to try and get your bearings on your surroundings, but too much movement meant that those razor sharp hands would bear down on your middle, nearly breaking through and cutting.
He was moving so fast that you could hardly see all that passed, until finally you were upon a familiar place. The labs, their doors uncharacteristically open.
What wasn’t familiar was the corpses. The blood.
The halls were devoid of light and life, dark recesses hiding within them long still bodies, of people and toys alike. The smell of gore and rot was strong, but it was not new. This was not recent chaos, not with the faded rust of puddles of blood long drying. And the silence. The chill, overwhelming silence..
“What… What happened in here?” you asked in horror, almost overcome with sickness as another wave of sweet decay hit you. The Prototype continued to move with purpose, wholly unphased by your reaction, nor the crowd of death.
“A change in leadership.”
The finality of the words sent a cold chill down your spine.
“It was you who began this spiral, you who brought me freedom. You who recognized that only I could make this possible.”
He set you down, suddenly, roughly dropping you to the ground where your bare feet slid against the cool linoleum tiles. Wide-eyed, you craned to look up at him, his Cheshire grin, menacing down on you as he stepped forward and corralled you backwards, forcing you to stumble through a pair of double doors.
“Never before have I felt so much power. Sweet freedom. The future holds so many possibilities, thanks to you. And yet these options stretch forward on a cold, dark path. A… lonely path.”
Gasping, you covered your eyes when a bright light blinded your vision. Staggering backwards, your thighs hit something cold and hard, and your hands slammed down on the smooth flat surface to steady yourself.
When you opened your eyes, you found yourself looking down at an operating table.
“Do you see now—Dr. ██████? What must be done?”
As he echoed himself, the full weight of what was about to happen settled you. Horror left your mind blank, then racing, then panicking.
“No—” you circled around the operating table, putting it between yourself and the Prototype, whose smiling face cocked side to side in curiosity. Your own voice met your ears.
“Change is always a scary thing,” he said, taking a comforting tone, despite the dawning terrible dread you began to feel chilling your hands, your legs. He moved closer, stepping over the operating table, and you backed against the counter behind you—this. This was the same room Sawyer almost cut you open. The Prototype’s massive hands were on your shoulders, his metal palms forcing your shoulders back to once again meet the intensity of his golden eye.
“But I will be here for you. Just like you were there for me.”
Easily he shoved you around, throwing you against the operating table. Struggling was an exercise in futility, one you could barely do with your improperly functioning heart. But it was all you could possibly do. Flailing limbs were caught easily in the Prototype’s grasp, first your legs to be strapped down, then your arms until you were completely immobilized.
“Please, please! I-I can’t—you can’t please! You don’t have to do this!” you begged, even if you knew it fell on deaf ears.
“No. I must do this,” he said, resolution so powerful it felt like an immovable weight. He reached over to wheel forth a covered table from behind a blood-soaked medical screen. For the first time, you realized that it was not just the two of you in this room. A body lay beneath the sheets. There was no rise and fall to its form.
A corpse, laying under the white sheet on the gurney?
No, wrong again..
You saw, now, the segmented joints of the hand that fell beneath the sheet, hanging down limply.
It was a life-sized doll. Even as the Prototype spoke, you couldn't move, paralyzed in fear.
“Someone—” the Prototype's voice shifted momentarily to Sawyer’s “—saw fit to create this in your image. And I now possess the knowledge to put it to use. Reborn, your sins can finally be washed away.”
Gently, his hands pulled back the cloth covering the doll. Its head turned to the side, glassy eyes in a lifeless approximation of your own stared straight back at you. Horror kept your eyes glued to its form, even as you heard the Prototype’s mechanical movement, heard him looming over you.
“You see the world not for what it is, but what it could be. Let me show you. Let me show you what truth looks like.”
You didn’t notice the syringe until it was already being injected into your arm. It was deja vu all over again.
"Your m̷̧̨͚̦̮̣̱̌͛̎̑e̶͉̐͋̓̍͆̏͛̇̚͝t̸͈̠̱̝͖͙̪͊a̷̝̜̙̖̣͇̯͇͍̦̤̦̳͋̿̂ͅm̵̘͉̒͜o̶̢̢͈̣̦̮͚̟͉͈̫͈͎̫͌̃̇͛̐̀̾͗̈̈̋̌̽̂͛r̶̲̥͎̹̎̍p̷̗̤̥̞̘̾̽̿̀͒̈́̑͝͝͝ḧ̷̗͔͊̃̐̃̒̂̎̑́͋͝ǫ̶̟͕̟͈͓̹͖̲̫̹̜̐͛͆̚͝͠͝ͅṣ̶̛̳̤͔̯̰̏͌̓̀̈́̓́̅̐͆̄̆͗͆i̵̧̟͍̤̯͎̤̠͚͇̾̃̏̂́̈́͑̂͂͆̆͌̈s̸̡̰͍̘̤̼̣̼͙͍̲̜̐̑ will be the grandest of all."
“No—no!”
Your pleas went wholly ignored as he moved to pull an IV stand closer. Careful needle-thin fingers held the intravenous line and found a free vein in your inner arm.
Already, you could feel the forced relaxation of the shot forcing a sluggishness over you. Slowing your movements, making it easier to insert the IV. Once it was in, a few simple adjustments had the liquid dripping into your veins.
“Please! Please!”
The Prototype’s hand fell to your head, carding over your hair and cupping your cheek, an action almost comforting. Imploring, you tried to find any shred of humanity in the single golden eye that stared down at you.
“It won't hurt.”
There was none.
The Prototype gently placed a mask on your face, gas hissing to replace your oxygen. You tried to shake it off your face, to avoid breathing it in.
“There’s no point in fighting it,” came your own voice, tinny and staticy from the Prototype’s voice box, sounding distant in your ears. "The anesthesia always wins.”
Perhaps you were hallucinating, or perhaps you could hear music. A piano melody, gently tinkling out a familiar classical tune, joined then by a beautiful voice, and a chorus of violins. The familiar fuzziness that came with paralysis-induced hallucinations roiled over your vision.
The operation room light shifted and shivered as you took your first breath. It exploded into a myriad of colors, when you took your second.
You don’t remember drawing a third.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
There was practice before he could ever dream of performing the procedure. Failure could never be an option for the Prototype.
Yet still, trepidation turned to anxiety the longer it took for you to wake up.
This room, a home away from hell where ‘Oliver’ was once reared, was sealed from all of Playtime, unknown to anyone but the Prototype… and one other. It held all the familiar trappings of comfort, idle things once long cherished and missed, now deemed unnecessary. Room had been made for him to fit, but otherwise it was almost ‘cozy.’
This place always evoked a terrible, primal anger. Dread, despair, dredging up dark moments and darker feelings. The fear of death. The fear of life.
Yet seeing you, in your new body, he knew that this was where you belonged. You were going to fit into his life nicely.
And now that he’d carved open space in himself for you, you could never be allowed to leave.
Finally, you stirred. First, just a quick jerk interrupting your steady breathing, head lolling to one side. The temptation to draw closer was maddening, but self control was a must. You needed to see yourself for yourself.
Another jerk, followed by a moan, quickly panicked, before at last your eyes shot open.
He greeted you in the most comforting voice he knew—your own.
“Good morning, ██████”"
Your head snapped to the shadows of the room where the Prototype watched, glassy eyes seemingly staring past him. A strangled noise left your voice box, and your hand was halfway to your head before you stopped, inspecting the segmented ball joints of your wrists.
A scream tore from your throat as you forced yourself off the bed, stumbling on your new legs like a baby dear. Keeping his distance then was no longer an option, and the Prototype surged forward to catch you, helping right your balance with ease.
You snatched your hands away, hugging your chest over the white long sleeved dress he’d put you in.
“No. No, no, no, this is—no, it can’t, you can’t, no!”
Your voice rang out from your new speakers, echoing in terror. You backed away when the Prototype continued to close in, the hands on your chest gripping the front of your dress.
“It’s always scary at first,” he said, trying his best to be soothing, voice distorting and drawing out. But your shaking form merely cowered more the closer he came. He backed you up against the far vanity, the accoutrements there falling freely to the floor.
“Adjustment. Change, shedding the obsolete, embracing the new. Let the vestiges of the old you slough away…”
The Prototype untangled your arms from around yourself and forced you to face the mirror of the vanity. Your wide eyes, glossy in their glassy sheen, took in your new appearance—synthetic hair, skin, and a light brushing of makeup over your doll features. So entranced by your own visage, your mouth trembled, unable to look away.
“And let the new you take hold.”
His fingers trailed delicate lines down your jaw, traveling higher to your cheek. Your flesh had give—not nearly as much, but made of a polymer meant to resemble humanity it was close enough to ease the desire for contact. Soon, he’d mark you up as his own until he was satisfied, but for now, you needed to overcome the adjustment period.
Trembling fiercely, your left hand traveled to rest over your chest, fingers poking and prodding.
“This isn’t… this isn’t my heart.”
The Prototype looked down at you, at first bewildered at the ignorance of the statement.
“Obviously. Why would I bless you with a new form, only to keep something so defective.”
You tried to back away, but his legs came to slam against the wooden floor on either side, preventing your escape.
“Who—whose, whose heart is this?”
“Does it matter? There were so, so many willing donors, none of them making use of any of their organs anymore.”
Your hands suddenly wrenched down the collar of your dress, fingers prodding on the seam at the joint horizontally bisecting just below your breasts. Your fingers dug in, persisting even as you screamed, trying to pry apart the joint.
“Stop that!”
Seething in a discordant shock, the Prototype grabbed your wrists. Stubbornly, you tried to persist, blunt fingertips trying to pry, until his strength overcame.
Dragging you back to the bed, he tossed you down, where you landed roughly. Forcing yourself onto your elbows, sobs wracked your form.
He’d been hopeful, but allowing you to move around freely was far too risky, even in this enclosed space. There were always going to be growing pains. Always.
But he’d prepared for this eventuality.
He was like this at first, too. But you were lucky. He would be there for you, to ease the pain of transition.
Shifting his legs, the Prototype came to hover over your body, chest covering your back, his head against the back of your neck.
His hands lowered to your wrists, feeling along the seams of your sleeves until he found the leather straps of the restraints. You cried out, trying to push your back against him, but there was never going to be any fight. Easily, he tied the sleeves of your arms around your middle, securing the belt straps firmly around either opposite hip.
You thrashed and kicked, mindless frustration, your despair turning to primal rage. Good. It was always good to let out this frustration. Completely restrained, it was a simple thing to hold you down by the collar of your dress and let you get everything out of your system.
Eventually you tired; your body was not perfectly immortal, not perfectly efficient, and you slumped forward, heaves wracking your frame, head falling against the bed, breath heaving in deep gulping inhales.
You cried quietly now.
You didn’t fight him as he shifted you and himself to a more comfortable position, forcing your body to lay against him. You could cry for as long and as hard as you needed to.
And when you were ready, he would be here for you.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
Time was still moving.
Though it seemed to be passing through, around, and over you, rather than with. Sometimes your mind could wrap around the fact that this was not another nightmare to wake up from. That this was reality.
Never for long, however.
You don’t recall leaving the bed to get to this dining table, but it’s where you sat. Thin, metal fingers set down a white plate, where steam rose from the well cooked meat steeping in its own juices.
Behind you, a record player soothed the small space—your cell, no matter how cozy it seemed. The Prototype’s synthesized voice hummed along to the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. His hands carefully unfastened the straps of your straight jacket.
More and more often—at least you think so—he would untie you. And always, you had the same reaction.
You immediately tried to grab the nearby steak knife, nearly toppling the plate in your haste. You didn’t even come close. The Prototype yanked you back by the thick collar of your straight jacket like you were a disobedient pet.
The test failed, he restrained you once more, still humming. Once he was done, his arms came around on either side from behind you, calmly grabbing the fork and knife and slicing off a chunk of meat.
The fork came up your mouth, dripping and tender, the savory aroma filling what you supposed qualified as nostrils. Nausea rolled over you, and you dropped your head in defiance.
“Eat.”
The low demand rumbled from the mechanical chest pressed against the back of your head. Even if you knew what was coming, you kept your vigil.
The Prototype stabbed the knife into the table, and with that hand now free, he jammed his needle like fingers between your lips and pried your mouth painfully open.
“You need to eat. You hardly touched your dinner—it’s time to eat.”
The fork was jammed roughly in your mouth, and he forced your jaw shut on it, dragging the clean utensil back.
You wanted to spit it out so bad, bile forming in your throat. It didn’t matter how he dressed up the meal. He was feeding you toys.
You tried to free your head, but he kept his hand firmly on you, then set the fork down so he could close his metal palm over your nose. Unable to breathe, your body jerked.
“Food is no simple commodity to come by. There will be no waste.”
With no other options, you eventually swallowed. Once satisfied, he released you to repeat the process again, until the entire meal was finished.
Even as your head and stomach swam from wave after wave of nausea, you forced yourself to keep everything down. If you vomited, he would simply prepare another meal. And at any rate, you needed to reserve your strength.
This was only the morning routine.
Plate still on the table, the Prototype forced you to your feet, walking you over the vanity. He was moving to this already?
“No—” You tried to drag your feet and stop it, but his body kept you moving, all but dragging you. Once you were before it, one of his forelegs, with practiced precision, knocked the stool out of the way so you could stand properly before the antique mirror. On either side of the vanity, the paneled wall had scuff marks revealing the stone wall behind, where the Prototype preferred to rest his legs to leverage himself down closer to your body.
Horror forced a shudder through your body as he did just that, lowering his torso until his head was beside yours.
“There’s no need to be afraid! Today will be another day of progress,” came the Prototype’s voice, nearly manic in glee, as he untied the back ties of your dress. It fell away, pooling around your legs, and you recoiled from the body in the mirror.
You couldn’t handle the sight of your body. It was not yours—would never be yours. The sight of your unnatural joints, your lifeless eyes—it made the fog in your head worse, forced a rejection in your mind that brought you only terror and horror, made the world around you feel like even more of a terrible nightmare.
And the Prototype knew that.
Perhaps this was torture, or perhaps he truly believed himself to be helping you, but it didn’t matter. The result was always the same. Pleas started streaming from your mouth, nonsense as you tried to cover your body.
“This body is yours now. The sooner you embrace this, the better.”
The Prototype gathered your arms in his hands, holding them up in presentation as though you were nothing but a puppet, nothing but a doll. That’s not what you were. You couldn’t be. Because this wasn’t real.
Behind you, metal shifted, hydraulics pulsed, but you did not dare look. This was part of his simulacrum of exposure therapy.
You clenched your eyes tighter at the first feel of tendrils gliding along the seam of your upper hip joint, metal and organic sinew-like tendons both dragging along your synthetic flesh. Another came to curl around your thigh, easing your legs apart.
“I will help you.”
The tendril curled tighter around your thigh, pressing against this body's simulation of genitalia. It felt all too real, the stimuli causing you to jerk in his hold. The Prototype released one of your arms, left spindly hand going down to encircle your thigh, forcing your leg up into a far more revealing position.
This isn’t real.
This isn’t happening to you.
The person in the mirror is not you.
“This is you. This is real. Look at yourself.” The thoughts swirling and coiling in your mind must have been voiced, as the Prototype’s harsh voice was the only warning you got before he used his other arm to clutch your head, forcing one of your eyes open roughly despite your weakly scrabbling arms.
You were forced to watch that sinewy tendril draw back and forth along your lower lips until its thick blunt head was dragging along your entrance, along the heat and moistness pooling there. Tears fell from your eyes, because of course you still bled, you still cried, your body still reacted in ways you never wanted.
That tendril ground and thrust against you roughly, gathering the slick of your aroused hole to ease its determined ministrations. Each thrust against your entrance was met with unwanted arousal making your body tingle, making heat coil in your gut and shaky sobs leave your mouth. At one particularly deep swipe against you, you tensed completely as the tendril held itself there, just barely not breaching your body.
“Aren't you beautiful?”
“No.”
At your denial, a frustrated wave of static reached your ears. The tendril that had been toying around your hip snaked down to press insistently at your clit. You cried out, trying to escape the sharp stimulating pleasure by rising onto the ball of your foot. The tendril grinding at your entrance chased you, never letting up pressure.
Slick juices escaped you more and more as the tendril brutishly massaging your clit continued to grind down, leaving you with nowhere to run. The Prototype’s hand on your thigh tightened, and slowly he lowered your body down against his waiting limb.
It didn’t matter how much your body betrayed you, not with the size of what he was fucking you with, the breach would never be painless—the initial stretch still burned unbearably, knocking the breath from your lungs. Once you caught sight of your body stretched around the monstrous appendage, you couldn’t look away, horrified by how deeply he was ruining you, by how much your body responded as though it loved this treatment.
Finally he released his hold keeping your eye open, and you clenched your eyes closed. The Prototype wrapped his hand around your chest, forcing your body down into his thrusting tendril, static sounding right next to your ear. Distantly, past the pain and pleasure both, you had a feeling he could feel this, that this was just as much for him as he pretended it was for you.
“Stop—it hurts, please!” Pleas fell from your mouth without logic, but if anything they only served to urge the Prototype on further, his tendril thrusting up harder, deeper—far deeper than should allow. No, this body had no physiological impositions, your tight wet hole accommodating the Prototype however deep he felt like fucking you. It hurt so much, and yet it almost felt like your body was designed to enjoy it, impossibly wet, each uncomfortable stab of pain bringing with it as well sick pleasure that made you weak and dizzy.
The Prototype’s face nuzzled into the side of your face, gruesome teeth catching on false flesh as his wet tongue ventured forth to taste the skin along your neck and collarbone. More tears fell, and his tongue licked up to catch them, before delving into your mouth.
His tongue easily eclipsed your mouth, domination that left you violated and breathless as he practically fucked your throat with his long, slimy tongue.
The bullying pleasure being forced onto your clit came down upon you harder, thrusts slamming into you rougher and harder. Each pistoning thrust was so fast, so deep, that you couldn’t think, could only try to weather and pray. The rough, punishing treatment only served to bring you closer and closer still to the edge until finally, you fell.
Your orgasm crashed upon you heavily, limbs going numb and limp as the the tendrils fucked and pleasured you through each wave of your orgasm, drawing it out for as much as possible until the overstimulation had you screaming. Each twitch and clench of your tight body came accompanied by a rough, unforgiving thrust, your body seizing and twitching, until your strength fled and you were completely still and pliant in the Prototype’s hands, a simple toy in his hands as his tongue continued to rock in and out of your mouth, saliva trailing down your jaw.
You wanted it to end. You didn’t believe for a moment, however, that when the Prototype pulled his tongue free of your mouth that any of this was over.
Tendril still buried deep in your gut, he lifted you with ease to lie back against his chest, positioning your limbs however he pleased like you were a doll.
And that’s what you were now, wasn’t it?
Holding your jointed knees to your chest, the Prototype angled your head back, tongue once again finding your mouth as his tendrils began their continued their assault on your body.
𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡𓎢𓎠𓎟𓎠𓎡
The first few months had been, admittedly, quite troublesome.
But time and a firm hand soon ironed out your disobedience, your rejection.
In only two years, you had come remarkably far, in the Prototype’s eyes.
You ate without fuss, you let him dress you, spoil you even, without so much as raising a hand or flinching. And when he tilted your head back, your lips obediently parted to embrace him.
Though not everything was perfect.
You stopped speaking, and he very much missed the sound of your sweet, gentle voice. He’d long incorporated you into the menagerie with which he spoke.
But it was never the same.
He convinced himself, however, that it didn’t matter for now.
Soon, you would be like him. And you would meet his sister, and all of you could be a proper family.
And time, stretching forth eternally, would mend all wounds, silence all pain.
No one ever needed to be alone again.