Diary of a lab rat Who: Counterfeit (Bryan Jensen) What: Narrative: A scene relived over the course of his capture, several times. When: [BACKDATED] Mid-week Where: Undisclosed Perfect Soldier Program location Warnings: Language, violence, torture of sorts Note: Reposted from his journal, since it should have been on the comm all along *facepalm*
"Subject 2406375M responding well to current cocktail. Formula MGH-6934 coming up for trials at 0800 hours. Recording the effects of sustained fatigue coupled with emotional distress on Day 4 of treatment. Note that same course of treatment should be tested on any subject of Category: Feral."
The man in the white coat finished recording his preliminary observations and then set to triple checking the recording and broadcasting software. He really wished they gave him better toys to play with. This child in the box was a distraction from his real work. He was barely a step above baseline human. He wished he had gotten Dr. Patterson's test subject instead. At least Fishboy had a unique physiology to make him more interesting.
"Doctor?" the intern piped in. "Should they be using excessive force on the subject? Won't it compromise the results if they kill him before we run the full battery of tests?"
"Who cares? The sooner they kill him the sooner I might get to do something actually interesting. Just do your job and don't bother me," the older man snapped at the intern, who gave him a murderous look for a fraction of a second before he turned his face away and fixed his eyes on the images coming from within the box.
Bryan stood in the dark, shivering. His muscles felt like molten lead, heavy and sluggish, but he couldn't stop because they wouldn't stop. He had called upon every move in his memory many times over, until parries and thrusts and kicks and strikes became one long, yet predictable pattern. His mimicry powers did not leave much room for interpretation, nor for improvisation. And yet, he'd been forced to improvise. He'd been cut so many times he had lost count. Once in a while he would be hit with a dart and put to sleep. They must have healers on the payroll, because he would wake up some time later with the sting of a needle still burning his arm or his thigh, and the worst of his wounds healed, just so he could start over again.
They had taxed his body to the very limits of exertion, his powers of adoptive muscle memory to the very extremes of their capabilities, but he was still breaking. He didn't have an adamantium skeleton or a healing factor like wolverine. He couldn't make his arms into blades like Scion. He couldn't command the elements, or magnetic powers, like Storm or Polaris. It was just him, and his five-foot nine frame, and his strong, but still human-weak muscles versus all the masked soldiers they sent at him every time.
"WHERE'S LAURA, COCKSUCKERS!?" he yelled more than once. "Let her go!"
But no one answered. The soldiers kept coming, silent and ruthless. Bryan didn't think a man could be kicked in the 'nads so many times and not vomit blood. There was no room for failure, no mercy, no way to raise a white flag or beg for parley. They came at him in ones and twos, then in threes, and so on until he was fighting a pile of them. Until muscle fatigue made it so he couldn't fight any more, and then they'd just beat him.
Just like those mutant hating bastards had when he had been outed as a mutant. God, it felt like years ago. But through the haze of pain it could have happened yesterday. In fact, it was happening right now. Every day or, as far as he knew, every couple of hours, the dance would start again. Eventually these partial healings would not be enough. His left eye felt like it was permanently swollen shut now.
They can break my body, but they can't break my spirit. They can't! Please, can't let them break my spirit. Can't let them... break me. Can't... Bryan clung ferociously to the same stubbornness that had gotten him through that hate crime years go, that had gotten him through physiotherapy, that had earned him his place in the Haven and on his team. But that had been a one time thing. This was every day, or every few hours, or every few minutes, it felt like sometimes. He barely had enough time to catch his breath, and he was tired. He was so tired, that he thought he would never feel rested again. His exhaustion was bone deep, cutting at him from the inside out as his body demanded rest that wouldn't come.
A few times they had injected him with different agents that had different effects on his physiology, but it felt like the men in white were losing interest in their latest lab rat. Sometimes they forgot, or simply failed to heal him afterwards, and Bryan would like there in a heap of hurt on the cold floor, his clothes a miserly shroud of tatters, covering nothing at this point. He would never tell, he would carry this secret to his grave, but these bastards had managed what the mutant-haters who had bashed him failed to do. They broke him. A few times, he even cried, nothing louder than a few mewling sniffles, calling for his brother, even though he knew Rube would never hear him. "Reed... help me."