Work Text:
There was a distracting drip in the room, the sole source of sound in an otherwise silent space. Dimly lit from necessity more than anything else. Alexander could not afford to be caught. He wasn’t even certain what he would say if someone witnessed this, or if he would be forced to do whatever was needed to escape scrutiny.
His eyes narrowed as he watched the prowler pace in its cage. He’d been generous with its living conditions. Ample water, natural light during the day, space to burrow and nest. It drooled often, snarling and swiping at the bars of its cage. Hungry. Starving, in fact. From his charts it was on the ninth day without food.
Even with such a simple beast, the data was astounding . The first few days it had been far more animated. Mindlessly trying to nip at him. It was easily excited by any stimuli, and the sound of fresh water being added to its bowl seemed to cause extra excitement. Behavior similar to a dog.
Day one of the study. The prowler was captured with a full stomach. Estimated age is eight months based on samples scraped from scale. Subject has spent precisely three hours attempting to breach containment. Subject has been unsuccessful. Subject at moderate risk of mutilation, further research is needed to find a sufficient observation cell.
Day two of the study. The prowler has ceased attempting to breach containment unless provoked by exposure to stimuli. Subject consumes a large amount of caloric reserves by frequently pacing. Potentially lacks sufficient stimuli to stave off boredom. Further testing is needed to determine if the subject is capable of experiencing boredom.
Day four of the study. The prowler lashed out at the bowl when it was refilled, causing 92.4% of the water within to be wasted. Unclear if the prowler is aware of this judgment error or not. Reducing water rations for the next two days.
Alexander’s brow furrowed as he reviewed his previous data. The prowler’s behavior was far different now. It lay on the floor of its cage, not so much as raising its head as Nox approached. He slowed to a stop at a small mark that he’d made on the floor to indicate the closest safe space to stand.
When it didn’t move, he slowly crouched down to observe it more closely.
It was breathing shallowly, its eyes wide.
Alexander’s eyes widened in turn, eagerly pulling out his recorder. “Day nine of the study. The prowler has ceased all unnecessary movement. Estimated caloric reserves are dangerously low, dissection will confirm once the subject is deceased.” He had to compose himself, licking his overly dry lips as he paused the recording. Once he’d taken a shaky breath and let out a quick bark of a cough, he rose to his feet and went to refill the water dish.
The prowler reacted, a flick of the eyes. But it didn’t move to the dish. He started recording once more, unable to hide the excited tremble in his voice. “The subject is unable to approach the water dish. It is no longer capable of satisfying its basic needs.”
He moved to crouch down next to the cage once more. With an impassive stare, he produced a small piece of meat. The prowler turned its head to look, sniffing loudly as it smelled the blood dripping from it. A rodent that Nox had butchered. Messy and unprofessional, but he needed it to be as fresh as possible to guarantee the strongest reaction.
“The subject has acknowledged that it has line of sight nourishment.” He felt his heart skip a beat. “It is too weak to attempt to obtain the calories that its body needs. Death is imminent.” His throat tightened, another tiny cough threatening to spill out.
Suddenly, he was bathed in light.
Alexander rose to his feet in a panic, turning his head to glance back. A security guard. It seemed that the largely abandoned factory was not entirely abandoned. He remained frozen, unable to quickly muster any sort of rational explanation for what he was doing. He was a graduate student, no more than a month away from graduation.
Mercifully, a bribe was enough to get the guard off his back. Less mercifully, he was forced to abandon his study. In the time that it took to get the guard to leave him be, the prowler had expired. A frustrating setback, but he hoped that his research up until the moment of death would be sufficient to impress his professor.
It did not.
He had to sit in the dean’s office, staring unblinkingly at the man that was ripping up his work. A waste of research time, he was told. Pointless. Cruel and unusual. The words were verbose and florid without purpose. Alexander argued the merits of his work, yet the dean effortlessly swatted away every explanation that he offered. He was not being given so much as a chance to prove himself.
That he could not summon a proper reason was irrelevant.
The same desire to witness a death remained. Killing rodents was intriguing at first. They were frail and readily available to the scientific community. That had been the appeal of the position he eventually took. Testing various pesticides on vermin. Insects and rodents. His job was considered one of the lower ones. A glorified internship. That suited him fine. He was tasked with recording how long it took for each pesticide to terminate all of the vermin within a testing chamber.
Insects were a disappointment. Movement, and then none. He would record how many died and how long it took for them to die. There was nothing to linger on. No data to observe. No variables that were unexpected. Ten percent survival rate. Seven percent. Eleven percent. Tedious, but fast. Setup. Return the next day. Count the living.
Rodents were more exciting. They would attempt to escape, cannibalize one another, paw at their faces. Alexander would breathlessly record his own personal notes as he watched them die. Sometimes the shift in potency would lead to resistant rodents who would outlast the pesticide. Once the last of the fumes had been filtered out, he would extract the surviving rat and dissect it. It humored him to know that the ones that were the strongest would still be snuffed out.
All the while, his cough grew a little more noticeable. A pity that no one at the lab took much of a liking to him.
Gradually, the rodents became mundane. Routine. Poison, examination, removal. Poison, examination, dissection. Their behavior, which had once been thrilling to examine, had been revealed to be utterly trivial. Rodents lacked the complexity that he sought. Their small bodies meant that they had a short window of time between initial lethal blow and death. Nothing like the prowler that he had painstakingly captured and attempted to study.
He began to argue with his superiors. Prowlers were a primary nuisance. Developing a pesticide that extinguished them would allow Gaea to expand its agrarian empire beyond crops and into livestock. He used every carefully crafted excuse that he could muster. He emphasized the economic boon, the self-sufficiency, the export potential, the ability to combat an invasive species, and even the ability to tailor pesticides so as to make them harmless to livestock and people.
Suggestion after suggestion was dismissed as irrelevant. Their company specialized in pesticides that would remove small vermin. Prowlers were massive. They weighed hundreds of pounds and were so adaptable as to survive on transport ships in cargo rooms with no breathable air. The ultimate pest.
Reality set in. He would spend the remainder of his life counting dead rats and dead insects. He had spent decades of his life buried in academia to be reduced to a glorified machine. A MRVN could complete his job reliably. Count the still-moving objects. Discard. It was robotic, repetitive, and demeaning. Worse, his constant efforts to rise above his rank were seen as overstepping boundaries.
Humiliation burned brightly in his chest. Day in and day out. The lead researchers hardly seemed to enjoy their work. They were trapped in the daily cycle of meeting metrics. It was a paycheck for them, and one which required minimal work. They never checked in on Nox, even when his numbers were no longer accurate. He would supply a number that was close enough, they would accept it without scrutiny.
On his lowest days, Alexander would fantasize about what that might mean for the companies that would use the product. Perhaps their yield would be pathetically small for the season due to too many rodents surviving. Perhaps the pesticide was rendered pointless already, with more than enough surviving to breed an entire generation of resistant rodents.
Perhaps, by chance, the pesticide would mistakenly be used on humans.
A happy accident.
His heart still hammered when he thought back on that day. A reflection on perfection. The haunted expression on the lead researcher’s face, a man so near his death bed that his desperate attempts to cling to life utterly fascinated and confused Nox. Why bother fighting so hard for the pitiful few drops of life remaining in a well utterly poisoned by tedium? None of the researchers strove for anything of value. They worked on a product, and they shunned any attempt at progress.
Why did they fight for their meaningless lives?
“I-I don’t know you sick fuck! Let me go!”
Alexander paused, turning to look behind him.
The dripping was distracting. The room was dimly lit. The man was thrashing against his restraints.
“There is no need for vulgarities.” Alexander’s voice carried no emotion as he began to assemble his instruments. “Though, I will be certain to notate your hostility. Subject is not dissimilar from the previous subject. Strong reaction to stimuli.” He stepped over and more thoroughly restrained the man’s hand. A leather restraint with sufficient padding to ensure that he could not damage his wrist, and individual restraints to keep him from bending his arm.
“You are free to move the rest of your body as you see fit. I am inserting your IV.” He ignored the hiss that came from his test subject as well as the higher-pitched panic that followed. There was no need to soothe the test subject as that may interfere with the results.
Alexander made certain that the body was receiving fluids correctly, then stepped back and began to observe. Every insult imaginable was thrown his way, some so colorful as to cause his eyebrow to quirk at the curiosity of it. It was obvious that a human had far more complexity to bring to the table than a prowler.
He wrote his notes and promptly left the testing chamber. The man’s cries echoed off of the walls. This time…this time there would be no interruptions. This was his lab, specially made for the games. His win record was sufficient enough that Blisk had agreed to look the other way so long as he stuck to removing undesirables.
A term that Nox would use for the boy, but that Blisk meant differently. Begrudgingly, Crypto could not be touched. A random drug dealer could be, however. Low level. No name. Easily replaced within society.
“Day three of the study. The subject reacts strongly to stimuli. The subject switches between pleading for his life and utilizing crude language to attempt to incite a reaction. Subject has complained of headaches from lack of eating and has also described his family. Subject is attempting to establish an emotional connection.”
Alexander paused his recording, playing back footage from the lone security camera in the room. “Subject’s behavior shifts dramatically once alone. Subject speaks to himself. Goal unclear. Potentially aids with anxiety. Extraction suited for removal of needless variables relating to anxiety.” He paused the recording once more, chuckling to himself before continuing.
“Subject appears to be searching for methods of escape. Similar to the previous subject, escape is desired. Unlike the previous subject, this subject is aware that it is unwise to waste energy on frivolous attempts at escape.” He noted that the man appeared to be testing his restraints for any give. Any weakness.
This made it all the more exciting to approach him the next day.
Alexander had been on one of the first teams to be eliminated. Unfortunate. His teammates had been utterly incompetent, failing to provide him the cover that he had needed in order to acquire a weapon. One of them, Witt, had insisted that Alexander was at fault for their loss, a statement so ludicrous as to be truly insulting. His superior intellect had been hindered by the incompetence of his inferior team. Nothing more, nothing less.
He entered the room in a hurry, breath fogging up his goggles as he examined his test subject. The man had urinated himself, something which Alexander took care of immediately. The man even had the manners to thank him for it. Nox made a note of that, amused by the way that polite society still bound man to a social contract in even the most extreme of situations. He grabbed his recorder from the nearby table to record one simple observation.
“Subject is still lucid.”
The man’s eyes were on him. Mercifully silent today. He likely knew that today was different. Alexander was still in his combat gear, after all, and appeared to be rummaging through an overly large assortment of tools to find something. A soft ah emerged from his mask, muffled and breathy.
When Alexander turned to face him, the man tensed up. He was holding what looked to be a mess of wires, almost similar to a chain link fence that had been unwound and clumped up. The man tried to shy away, though there was little that he could do to escape it. His resistance, token as it was, was noted.
Alexander worked methodically, holding the man’s head still with one gloved hand while the other slowly unwound the contraption. It wrapped around his head, a mechanical spider, or perhaps a simulacrum’s hand, forcing his mouth open into a sexually suggestive position. He noted the subject’s fear, and despite the stimulation such an emotion provided, he was above crass displays of sexual dominance.
This served a more specific utility.
With the mouth pried open, he could peer inside and observe the tongue. It writhed and shied away, as if embarrassed by the things it had aided in conjuring. Vulgarity. Pitiful, pointless vulgarity.
Removing it would be sufficiently useful for his experiments.
Alexander returned to his table and procured a pair of pliers and a scalpel. The scalpel, he noted, was not as sharp as he had initially assumed. A grave error that would be corrected for subsequent experiments. When he returned to the man, it was clear that he was already experiencing sufficient distress. His chest was heaving from the fear.
He reached in with two fingers and lifted the tongue out of the mouth and through the o-ring. He had chosen a rather thick o-ring, one which he imagined was either meant for a rather slim cock or to keep someone hydrated. Neither application would be used. Instead, he used the pair of pliers to clamp down on the man’s tongue, chuckling darkly at the cry of pain that came from him.
With a look of practiced disinterest, he brought the scalpel to the patient’s tongue. The cries were more prominent now, as was the resistance. Alexander needed to press down with significant strength to hold the man’s tongue in place. His hand shook, blood trickled around the metal teeth of the pliers. The man understood that he was about to lose his tongue, along with his easiest method of maintaining communication.
Alexander pressed the scalpel to the man’s tongue. There was only mild resistance before the blade began to pierce flesh, a higher pitched scream reverberating from his throat. His eyes were only on the delicate work for as long as necessary before they shot up to look at his face. The man’s eyes were wide, his pupils pinpricks as he looked around frantically. Tears were streaming down his face.
Gradually it became easier to hold the tongue in place. Fewer connections to the body. He had worked methodically as the intent wasn’t to swiftly remove the man’s ability to communicate. He wanted to observe what his test subject was feeling. What he would do. This was important data.
It also had the “unintended” side effect of ceasing all conversation.
Alexander lifted the severed tongue up to show to the man. By now, he was openly sobbing. The sight of his own tongue served to only intensify his emotional reaction, something which Nox immediately wrote down in his notes. He briefly entertained the thought of feeding it back to him, but discarded that. It would interfere with his progress.
Instead, he carefully sealed it and placed it in a freezer in one of his sample rooms. Perhaps he could cook it to offer to the man later.
He was forced to stop his examination on day seven. A coughing fit overtook him, one so severe that he spat blood and nearly collapsed. Winning, cruelly enough, was always harsher on his body. As he ran from building to building, his lungs burned worse and worse. Fluid that never quite seemed to leave. He used to take advantage of the medical facilities offered by the games. Tests, studies, experimental drugs, surgeries. Nothing had helped.
By all measures, he should have died roughly two years ago. The cancer clawing at his throat had since eagerly burrowed into his lungs. Tumorous masses that hindered his breathing. Yet his organs continued to insist on functioning no matter the agony that they brought their master.
He could not so much as enter the room with the test subject. Data was being wasted, but his coughing fit was relentless. His muscles ached. His jaw ached. His back felt stretched thin as he bent over, his knees popping as his hands squeezed at his clothing in a feeble attempt at something . It was insulting. Out of his control in every way.
Alexander sat at his desk instead, his eyes begrudgingly on the security camera. The occasional half-hearted cough forced its way past his lips, his throat tasting so strongly of iron that he could only imagine how much blood his lungs were swimming in. He took notes.
Day seven. The subject has adjusted to his new “life”. Subject primarily sleeps when unobserved. Subject is reserving as much energy as possible. Curiously, the subject appears to need less water. Further medical equipment may be necessary to fully track organ failure.
He let out a frustrated sigh that devolved into another coughing fit. Tears pricked at his eyes as the sensation of glass shards shredding his lungs overtook him. He lacked any other data to write. Without a closer examination, the day was lacking. Returning later in the day would be unacceptable. Miss Paquette wanted to have dinner, and he needed to have his fits under control by then. A return to the lab was out of the question.
So frustrated was he by this setback that he simply did not return to the lab the next day.
On that day, he witnessed a vehicle crash. Some transport vehicle that had taken a turn too sharply, causing its payload to tip over and-
His breath caught in his throat as he hurried over, insisting that he was a doctor to clear the crowds faster. One of the massive steel crates had toppled over, partially crushing an innocent bystander. An older woman, from the looks of it. Her hands were pathetically clawing at the uncaring concrete of the path she’d been walking on mere moments before.
Alexander looked at the crate and idly tested the weight of it. Too heavy for him to lift. He briefly made a show of examining her. From where the crate had hit, her spine had likely been fully severed. Her lungs were likely struggling to fully expand, caught between a rock and a hard place. His eyes drifted to her face.
Blood dribbled from her lips. No tears, though she was clearly terrified. She looked into his uncaring, impassive gaze and sought something. Mercy, kindness. Assurance that what came next would be gentle and soothing after the cruelty of this. He offered nothing. Kneeling down, he watched as her life slowly emptied from her terrified eyes.
It was an exquisite, agonizing sight that gave him more questions than answers. She had assuredly been in great pain, and she was still capable of speech. Yet unlike so many others, she made no effort to plead and beg for her life. She had desired something else. Something intangible and utterly fruitless. She had craved knowledge that humanity could not achieve. Some sort of spiritual assurance, perhaps, or perhaps even an assurance that death would truly be the end.
It vexed him. By the time that the paramedics had arrived, he had long since left. Rumors swirled of Dr. Caustic showing a touching and surprising amount of compassion for a dying woman, offering her comfort in her final moments. There was no sense in correcting that record, nor did he particularly feel like tracking down some idiotic reporter for an interview.
Instead, he returned to his apartment and mused on what he’d found. A new variable that he had not considered.
By his measures, day ten would serve as an anniversary of sorts. Not only of the death of Alexander Nox, but of the death estimated by the finest doctors money could be. He had died twice, it seemed, and there was little worth celebrating in that.
When he entered the room, the stench made him sneer. The subject had urinated himself multiple times without a nursemaid to tend to him. Alexander sighed and cleaned him up, disinterested in the muffled gibberish the man tried to produce with his mouth. Infection had set in within his bacteria infested mouth, giving his breath a foul odor and his stump a hideous green and white sheen.
Once he had cleaned the subject, he grabbed a catheter. He would put an end to this.
Whether it was the distraction of the pain in his mouth or the inevitability of it all, there was no resistance offered for the insertion of the catheter. Alexander observed the man’s mouth for a moment, then fetched a needle and thread. His patient had an IV, there was no need to keep the mouth open.
The subject protested. Fresh tears, more guttural noises. There would be no muting of that unless he split open the throat and severed the vocal cords entirely. Tempting, yet not the purpose of his study. Alexander snipped the thread as he finished sealing the subject’s foul smelling mouth, and after a moment’s thought he grabbed some duct tape and further sealed it shut.
“Day ten. The subject has an infection. Pain is severe enough that the subject no longer protests milder intrusions.” He paused to examine the subject’s body. “Subject is lethargic and no longer lucid. No signs of attempts to escape.” He glanced up, finding that the man had already closed his eyes again. “Subject appears to require an increased amount of sleep to conserve dwindling energy supply. Consumption of stored fat is clear.”
He paused as he considered his options. “Forcing the eyes open may be necessary at a later stage.” He needed to tread lightly with that. Interfering with the study would diminish the results.
It wasn’t until day fourteen that he opted to cook the tongue.
He seasoned it with a salt and pepper packet leftover from takeout that Miss Paquette had left for him on a late night of his studies. He had applied for another simulacrum program, a process that made his heart race for reasons that he could not quantify. His life had been reduced to an hourglass that had long since emptied, spared only by the scant few grains of sand sticking to the glass. He could die at any moment. A coughing fit could become so severe as to steal his breath, until his last few seconds were wasted trying to draw breath that could no longer be drawn.
He did not fear death.
He hated death.
When he entered the room, the man immediately reacted to the smell of cooked food. Alexander had not attempted to hide what it was. The shape of it, coyly draped over the plate, made it abundantly clear that it was his own severed tongue, grey from being cooked. He looked ready to retch, his stomach heaving. Not that he would be able to vomit. At best, he would be forced to swallow that down.
An unmistakable growl rumbled from the man’s stomach.
“Day fourteen. The subject is fully aware of the source of food being offered to him. Subject is fully lucid and has shown significant activity.” He paused the recording, looking at the man. A question came to mind, one that had never before graced his thoughts.
“Do you still want to live? Your body has suffered severe, persistent malnutrition, and what remains of the tissue of your tongue is badly infected. The infection may kill you, even if I release you as you are and you meander to the nearest hospital that would treat a drug dealer who has no money.” He leaned in, expressive, vibrant eyes locked on the man’s dull grey eyes. “What’s more, should you even survive, the condition of your mouth means that the odds of you ever being able to speak again are quite low. I believe that you were illiterate, based on what cursory research I applied on your records, and you will surely never make enough money to be able to afford the technology that could offer you a serviceable prosthetic.”
Alexander paused, watching the man’s expression shift. Resentment, horror, sorrow. Acceptance. He cleared his throat. “I will ask again: do you still want to live?”
The man did not cry. His eyes were ringed with red from the tears he’d shed earlier at the sight of his own tongue. Very slowly, he shook his head, never once breaking eye contact. That made Alexander’s heart skip a beat. A variable that he had not uncovered before. This man was easily half his age, and had been in good health prior to being grabbed by Nox. By all means, it was possible that he would make a full recovery, though his limitations in society would permanently bar him from being able to achieve much. Nox’s untouchable status meant that he would never have vengeance.
Slowly, Alexander fetched a pair of scissors. He ripped the duct tape off of the man’s mouth, then snipped the thread that kept his mouth shut. The man’s mouth hung open immediately, the stump within beginning to have a blackish hue to it. Wordlessly, Alexander took the cooked tongue and shoved it down the man’s throat. There was some resistance and some retching, but it appeared to be entirely reflexive.
He grabbed a syringe and filled it with a sedative. No resistance. If anything, the man looked relieved. Perhaps he thought that Alexander would kill him now. It did tempt him to consider it. He could throw the man into one of his immersion tubes and watch as the chemicals he relied on in combat slowly ate away at the man’s body.
Instead, he unceremoniously dumped the man near enough to a hospital that he would either wander his way in or someone would find him. Nude with signs of trauma befitting a drug dealer, frankly.
He sat in his office reviewing his notes. Unlike previous subjects, this one had wanted death. Not unlike the woman he had witnessed mere days ago. However, this one was different from her. She had truly had no hope of surviving her wounds. A mercy would have been to bash her skull in as quickly as possible, or to shoot her.
Alexander sipped at his coffee as he glanced from his notes to the news on his datapad. Buried around the tenth page was a story about a drug dealer who had been left for dead after a deal gone wrong. Stable condition. He would survive. Another sip, and Alexander opened the hospital’s records. His legend status gave him extra access, a perk that Blisk had been all too happy to provide. The man’s records were abundantly clear that he would need to have significant surgery done to his mouth with potential for his lower jaw to be removed entirely. A prosthetic would be needed in that case, one which Nox made a point to anonymously donate some of his winnings to. The man would be bedridden for months while he recovered with a tube shoved down his throat to feed him. Unable to move, unable to even try to speak. The treatment would be nigh-identical to the torture.
He wondered if the man would consider suicide after this, or if he would become similar to Nox. Eager to defeat death even while yearning for it, fighting for survival against a decaying body and a fracturing mind. Alexander made a note to keep a close eye on the drug dealer moving forward. A fascinating test subject.
But time always marched on, and whatever grains of sand remained would surely drop at any moment. Alexander closed up his research and made his way down into the belly of his lab. Within was a young woman, a drug addict who had been recently evicted from her apartment due to nonpayment.
“Day one of the study. Subject is partially lucid. Withdrawal is currently distracting the subject from the situation. Inserting IV and preparing restraints.” He paused the recording to begin setting the stage. There were always new test subjects, after all, and new data to be gathered.
Alexander intended to find his answer before his time ran out.