DISCLAIMER: Metroid and Samus Aran are trademarks of Nintendo. The author acknowledges that they are the intellectual property of Nintendo Inc. and is not using that property as a commercial product.
Please don't sue.
Even before the modulated voice spoke, she was awake.
At first, her eyes opened reluctantly, exhaustedly, expecting to see the grey hues of her starship.
The roof was a pure white.
Even though not fully awake, she rolled to the side and concentrated, expecting her Power Suit to materialize.
It didn't.
Now fully awake, her eyes widened as she took in her uniform. It was a light blue spandex suit, similar in design to, but not her Zero Suit. Without her suit, she could not use her Power Suit. Without her Power Suit… well, she was not defenseless, but she was certainly vulnerable.
"Wake up, Miss Aran," a clean, genderless voice emitted from the walls.
As she searched for the sound, she also took in her prison. It was a box, with four glowing white walls and no sign of an exit. The only nonhomogenous object in the room were the four miniscule pores in the wall, where the voice was apparently streaming from. Her bed was a flatbed capsule, also white, save for the shadows in the imprint she had apparently made in the capsule.
She called out. Or rather, her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Frantically, she felt her throat. Her Adam's apple was markedly more pronounced. She felt the lump carefully. It was elliptical, indicating that her voicebox had been suppressed. She was familiar with the procedure, having performed it herself on a few bounties. It was a simple task; simply anesthize the patient, then make an incision in the area where their vocal cords were located. By placing an elliptical device called a suppressor(known more colloquially-and vulgarly- as the deepthroat) at the spot where air entered the patient's airway, the patient's voice could be completely muted. If said patient got out of hand, a quick electrical shock could be used to subdue them. It was common use on criminals deemed too dangerous to speak, considered more elegant than the standard electrotape.
At the moment, however, none of that mattered to her. What did matter was that she had been kidnapped.
But by whom? And why?
"Wake up, Miss Aran," the voice called again.
She lay back down on the capsule.
ZZZZ!
A scratchy, tingly feeling ran down her neck, which was swiftly replaced by pain. The slight buzzing noise emitting from her throat told her that she was being electrocuted. Or it would have, were she not too busy rolling around trying to tear the suppressor and her own throat out.
Abruptly, the buzzing and the pain stopped. She lay on the ground, having fallen from the capsule in her scrabbling.
"Please follow orders, Miss Aran," the voice calmly intoned. "Now, please stand up."
She gritted her teeth, but obeyed. When she was back on two legs, but feeling rather unbalanced, the voice came through the walls.
"Excellent. Now please look up, and then down."
She attempted to ignore the voice again, but was quickly buzzed into submission.
Having had excellent views of the floor and ceiling, the voice spoke again.
"Walk around the room."
Wary of being shocked again, she slowly paced a path around the perimeter.
"Excellent. Diagnostic test complete. Diagnosis: full health. In order to aid further diagnoses, you will be given an RX-3 full-body health monitor. Please stand perfectly still."
She waited, wondering what new trial she would be put through.
From the ceiling of her prison, a small port opened up, and a robotic arm descended from the port. She strained to see through the port, but all that she could see was black. The robotic arm itself was a basic arm, but the arm implant had been replaced by a variety of medical instruments. One in particular caught her attention. It was a corneal implant, a surprisingly large one.
"Please stand perfectly still," the voice repeated. The arm descended, and at the same time, electroclamps materialized around her ankles. She looked down in surprise, then a needle jabbed into her arm, and then she had lost all sensation above her waist. He arms flopped limply to her side. She stood stock-still, if only because she didn't want the surgical arm to drill into her skull instead of her retina. The arm switched to said drilling apparatus, and moved ever closer to her eyeball. Then it entered her right eye socket.
She was grateful that she couldn't feel anything. With her left eye, she was looking at the drill puncture her now-useless right eye. As the arm used a variety of instruments on her eyeball, she fought the urge to vomit. Then the arm moved back, and administered an electrical shock to her right eye.
Her vision came back suddenly. With it, however, was a throbbing in her right eye, and a heads-up-display right in her head. It was a simple display, with two numbers. In the lower corner was the number 100. In the upper corner was the number 1.
The voice came back online.
"Health monitor online. Now testing functionality."
The arm switched devices. Then it advanced on her with a large knife. Not an electroblade, a knife. She tried to move, but the anesthetic had yet to wear off.
It cut a large gash into her arm, which promptly started bleeding. In her HUD, the number 100 steadily but slowly began ticking down. When it had hit 95, the arm swiftly taped up the bleeding and then retracted into the port.
The number stopped ticking.
"Health monitoring functional. We will now begin the second portion of the test. In two hundred seconds, please walk outside."
Two hundred seconds later, her arms regained feeling and the electroclamps dissipated. At the same time, a door opened in the wall. She peered at it cautiously. The hallway the door led to seemed normal enough. It was the same shade of white, but at the far end of the featureless corridor, was a thumbprint scanner.
"Please walk into the hallway to begin the second test of the monitor."
She waited, trying to discern the purpose of the hallway.
ZZT!
Multiple brief, forceful shocks forced her to stumble through the doorway, half-electrocuted.
Her health number now read 87.
"Please follow orders, Miss Aran," the voice declared.
All she wanted to do was tell the voice to stuff its orders, but she knew she couldn't. This was probably why her voice had been suppressed.
"Walk to the end of the hallway," the voice spoke.
She made a last effort to scan the hallway, but finally she began creeping down. Slowly, she moved down the passageway. Ten feet from the door, her foot depressed.
SHWNK!
A cold feeling spread through her body. She forced herself to look down.
A wide electroblade had sprung from the wall and run through her sides.
In her HUD, her health number quickly dropped.
87...82…75…
She started coughing uncontrollably, both uncomfortably apathetic and horribly frightened. Despite everything, she didn't want to die. Far from it. Her parents, both Human and Chozo, had died horribly, and she was their only legacy. She couldn't let it end this way.
75...67...59….49…
Her vision started to blur. She tried to extricate herself from the blade. Pressed her arms to her wound to try to staunch the bleeding. It was useless, but she was frantic in her attempts to stave off her imminent demise.
49...38...27….
Her final thought was that her disbelief that it would end this way. After saving a galaxy from an extragalactic mutagen, obliterating several Space Pirate installations, and essentially removing them as a threat, and even annihilating a species, she was going to die in a blank hallway with nothing but a computer recording to know her demise. Then she sagged, held up by the electroblade.
27...15...2...0.
So, hello!
It's me, ARandomDay again!
Some of you may know me from my other, first work Experiment 505, also a Metroid fanfic and recently completed. For this project, I decided to go the opposite direction from my last work and hopefully remedy some of the problems I realized were present in said work.
Right off the bat, though, I want to clarify: My update schedule will be spotty at best. Frequently I will be trying to build a buffer or two before updating, incase of writer's block. I may deliver one chapter per month, or two in a single week. It's variable.
But enough about me. Don't forget to review and critique. But no bashing; it helps exactly nobody.
Cheers,
ARandomDay