FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.
IT HURTS. IT HURTS. IT HURTS—
—but no sound leaves his mouth.
Not anymore.
His jaw trembles, muscles spasming like a glitching machine. That's all he can manage. A low, pitiful whimper, wet and cracked, barely audible over the hum of machinery.
The scream is there — not just waiting, but thrashing inside his throat like an animal trapped in barbed wire.
But it can't come out.
The experiments did something to his voice — severed something, burned something. Maybe nerves. Maybe just the will.
He remembers when he used to scream. God, he screamed. Until his throat bled. Until they adjusted the pain to make sure screaming wouldn't relieve anything.
Now all that comes out is air and blood.
Sometimes he still tries. Just to feel like he's still human.
He isn't. Not anymore.
They erased his name, rewired his body, fed him chemicals through tubes and wires until he didn't know where skin ended and sensors began.
Subject K, they call him now.
Nothing more than a file number in a research log.
The chamber smells like disinfectant and rust and himself — sweat, rot, cooked flesh.
His wrists are strapped to the table — thick leather cracked from dried blood. The restraints are too tight, digging through skin to touch bone. He can't feel his fingers anymore. Maybe that's a mercy.
Pain comes in waves now. Engineered waves.
Cold shocks first — then heat — then the voltage climbs again, sparking along his spine like lightning wrapped in razors.
It burns. Not metaphorically. Literally.
He can feel his back blistering under the electrodes. Can hear skin popping.
He smells himself cooking, again.
A voice, filtered through the cold buzz of the intercom:
"Subject K shows unusually high resilience."
The voice is flat. Professional. Like they're reading off a recipe.
"Neural resistance increasing despite heightened voltage. Begin next phase."
There's a click. A hum.
Then—
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—
(still silent)
His body jerks.
His spine contorts like it's trying to break free from itself.
Muscles seize, twist, lock.
His teeth shatter against each other from the force. Blood trickles from his gums, warm and metallic and wrong.
He bites through his tongue.
Doesn't feel it.
He tastes copper and bile and something bitter, chemical — like battery acid coated in vomit.
Every nerve in his body is screaming, even if he isn't.
His vision flashes black-white-black-white.
He wants to pass out.
Wants to die.
But the drugs in his bloodstream — green, luminescent sludge pumped through reinforced tubes — keep his brain awake. Keep his consciousness alive while his body begs for death.
They said it helped gather "cleaner data."
He can't move. Can't fight. Can't even cry.
So instead, he thinks.
Somewhere, buried under all the pain, there's still thought.
A flicker. A memory.
A question:
What was my name?
Not Subject K. That's not who he was. That's who they made him.
But the memory is gone.
Charred.
Erased.
…Only one thing remains:
A single thought, etched into what's left of his mind.
Lucen.
That bastard.
He started it.
"Mercy is a lie, kid."
The voice echoes. Mocking. Burned into the meat of his memory.
They're going to pay.
All of them.
But not today.
Today, he just survives.
Barely.
The table hisses again — coolant floods the metal to keep the equipment from melting. He's not sure if it's for the tech's sake or his own.
Probably the tech.
They need him alive, not stable. Not whole. Just functional enough to break again tomorrow.
Tubes slither out from under the slab, one coiling up to his neck like a snake before stabbing into a port embedded beneath his jaw.
Another fluid injection. This one cold. Ice crawling through his veins.
His vision twitches. Eyes stutter open and closed like blinking hard drives.
A screen flickers to life across the room. Too far to focus on. Too familiar to ignore.
Rows of data flash across it:
Subject K
Neural Stability: 41%
Physical Integrity: 62%
Vocal Reconstruction: TERMINATED
Memory Lock: ACTIVE
Compliance Score: INSUFFICIENT
He stares at the last line.
Compliance.
That word again.
He's not sure what they want him to comply with anymore.
There's nothing left to agree to. No rules. No goals. No mission.
He's just a screaming system in a meat body, waiting to be shut down.
But not yet.
Somewhere, behind all the burning and shaking and static, there's still resistance.
They haven't broken him. Not completely.
Not yet.
He's still here.
And if he's still here... they haven't won.
The lights overhead shift. Sickly green. Then red.
That means they're coming in.
Protocol 9: Internal Analysis.
He's had it before. He remembers the sound.
Sawing through his ribs while a machine whispered lullabies.
The reinforced door hisses open. Footsteps enter — rubber on steel. Three. No, four of them. One always stands back, watching. Taking notes.
He can't see their faces — they never let him. Just masks. White. Expressionless.
Like ghosts pretending to be doctors.
"Vital systems are holding. Commencing layer-3 biopsy."
"No sedation."
"Naturally."
Of course.
Always awake. Always aware.
That's part of the test.
A buzzing sound starts. Low and cruel — a bone saw spinning up.
He doesn't panic anymore. He just waits.
The restraints shift. They don't release him — they tighten. The slab tilts forward slightly, forcing him to feel the gravity of his own weight pressing against the clamps on his wrists and ankles.
A hiss.
Something sprays across his chest — antiseptic?
Doesn't matter. It won't stop what comes next.
ZZZZRRRRRRRRRRRRZZZZT—
The blade bites in.
Right below his collarbone.
It's precise. Surgical. They're not trying to kill him — just harvest.
They don't even flinch when his skin splits open like wet parchment. His chest cavity begins to quiver, nerves raw, blood pumping up in rhythmic spurts with each heartbeat.
He can't scream. But his body trembles, twitches violently as the saw drags downward toward his sternum.
"Pectoral integrity is still above threshold. Take the sample from under the third rib."
Cold metal pries his ribs apart. He hears them crack. Like snapping branches under snow.
A needle arm — long, segmented, almost insect-like — stabs into his exposed muscle. It twists, drills, retracts with a chunk of him still attached.
Something vital.
He doesn't know what anymore. Just knows it's gone now.
How many pieces have they taken? How much of me is left?
What happens when I'm all parts and no person?
...Lucen. Did you know they'd do this?
Did you laugh when they cut into me?
The machine buzzes again. More cutting. More carving.
Blood drips in thick streams down the edge of the table, pooling beneath him. The floor's stained — always has been.
They never clean it.
Why would they? He's not a person to them.
Just a self-repairing resource.
Eventually, they'll weld his ribs back shut — they always do.
They like watching how long it takes for his tissue to grow over the metal.
Like watching moss reclaim ruins.
"Specimen shows accelerated healing of thoracic cavity. Initiating ocular rupture test in 30 seconds."
Oh. Eyes this time. They haven't done those in a while.
Thirty seconds.
He closes what's left of his eyes.
Or tries to.
His right eyelid doesn't respond anymore. Nerve damage. They said they'd fix it. They didn't. They don't care.
Footsteps approach. Lighter than the others.
Different gait. Hesitant. Unpracticed.
The assistant.
One of the newer ones. Young. Probably just out of med-school or training or whatever fake pipeline they use here.
"Go on," says one of the doctors from behind the glass.
"The specimen's reflex responses have been dampened. You're safe."
Safe. Funny word for someone about to destroy his vision.
He hears the assistant swallow. Nervously. The sound cuts through the silence like a siren.
Then, the tray clinks. Scalpel. Syringe. Something heavier.
The assistant speaks for the first time. A whisper.
"I'm… sorry."
That's new.
Subject K's remaining eye twitches toward the sound.
For just a second—
He sees himself reflected in the chrome surface of the tray the assistant holds.
And what stares back at him isn't human.
It's a thing with skin like torn canvas, an eye filmed over with blood, jaw cracked slightly off-center. Stitched lines cross his neck, collar, scalp — some faded, some fresh. He's bald in patches. Something has been grafted to the side of his skull, like a piece of machinery trying to become brain.
He can't stop staring. He almost forgets what's about to happen.
Then the pressure starts.
The assistant slips a gloved hand under his eye socket, tilting his head slightly, positioning him like a prop.
"Pressure application ready," a voice confirms.
"Target: left optic nerve. Manual rupture."
The assistant hesitates.
"Do it," the voice orders.
"Now."
And then—
Crunch.
A sharp tool drives down.
And Subject K feels it. All of it.
The pressure behind his eye turns to white heat. Then to a pop, a wet schlurp sound, and a burning stream of fluid.
He doesn't scream. He can't. But his body convulses again. Blood leaks from the socket in rivulets, flesh hissing as the injected chemical burns through nerve endings.
Colors he can't describe flash across his mind like fireworks inside a grave.
He sees it.
A campfire. Orange light. Gentle.
He's younger. Not broken. Sitting beside a man in old robes with a tired smile.
"You don't trust him."
"No," he answers. "I don't."
"That's not wrong. But sometimes we save people not because they deserve it... but because we do."
"You really believe that?"
The man smiles. Eyes full of warmth.
"If we lose compassion, we've already lost the fight."
The image flickers. The fire goes out.
And the last thing he hears before it fades is:
"Mercy is a lie, kid."
Lucen's voice.
Same campfire. Same night.
After the blood.
Back in the Lab – Present
Subject K jolts violently as more fluid floods his socket.
The assistant stumbles back, dropping the tool, breath sharp and shaky.
The intercom cuts in again.
"Specimen's neural load reaching instability threshold. Recommending pulse dampener."
Another needle slams into his spine. The pain doesn't stop — just changes. Slower. Deeper.
His body stops thrashing, but his mind? His mind is screaming.
The assistant backs toward the exit, eyes wide. Not saying a word.
But before the door closes, Subject K sees it:
the look of horror.
Not pity. Not disgust.
Guilt.
He'll remember that. He remembers everything now — even when they tell him he shouldn't.
Lucen started this. But this assistant?
They just confirmed it's still not too late to break the cycle.
Or maybe… Maybe it's too late for that.
He opens whatever is left of his eyes. Not for the first time. Not for the last.
"Stay alive. That's all I ask." A whisper, flickering in the back of his skull like a broken radio.
Too soft to be real. Too warm for this place.
Whose voice was that again?
A friend? A lie? A memory stitched together from scraps just to keep him breathing?
Another hallucination?
Another mercy his brain invented to survive the next cut?
"Does it even matter anymore?"