DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I just borrowed and slobbered over these character for a short period of time. Don't worry, I wiped them off.
"You working on John W?" one soldier asked to a doctor. He kept his voice low; the Baskerville testing facility had a tendency to make words echo into ears they shouldn't.
"I am," the woman responded, nodding.
"How's it going?"
"He's very receptive, he is like putty in my hands. He seems to be holding onto free will while wireless, though." The soldier pursed his lips, obviously displeased with this.
"Is there a way to get rid of that?" The doctor smiled and nodded, a glint of evil in her eyes.
"Oh yes. We'll continue treatment." The doctor clicked her manicured fingers against her clipboard. "He'll bring just the right kind of hell to the battlefield when we're done with him."
"Good," the soldier looked over the doctor's shoulder, into the one-way window. A short but sturdy man stood stiffly, staring at the white wall, as if someone had pressed a pause button on his existence. The only sign he was still alive was the miniscule rise and fall of his bare chest, and the blips on the screen in the corner of the room, keeping track of his vitals (and non-vitals) from a thin cord, passing into the man's body from a plug at the nape of his neck.
"We're moving him to a more reinforced area of Baskerville later today." The soldier swore he saw the man in the room twitch at the statement, but that couldn't be. The line was in his neck, he didn't have his own volition while plugged in, so the soldier shrugged it off, focusing back on the doctor.
"How will that be done?"
"We'll have him walk - with all of us around, of course, and he'll be plugged in." The soldier nodded.
"Very good. What does the W stand for?"
"Nothing, actually. W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet, he's the 23rd attempt at this. The first was John A." The soldier nodded. He was paying too much attention to the curve of the doctor's breasts, he didn't see the dangerous smirk play across the John W's lips.
The soldier shifted his weight to his other foot, staring into the room with a question on his lips.
"Can I-" he said, and sighed. "Can I see the plug?" The doctor smiled, and looked around.
A few workers milled around, but no one was paying close attention.
"Sure," she responded, leading the soldier to the thick door. She swiped her card, put in a long passcode, and gripped the handle, pulling it open with all her strength. They entered the room.
"Hey W," the doctor greeted. She walked to the machine that controlled John W, and pressed some buttons on the touchscreen. A soft beeping echoed in the room, and she wrapped her fingers around the cord erupted from John W's neck. The soldier stared on in wonder as she took it out slowly.
It's five inches glinted silver in the bright light of the room, but the soldier wasn't looking at the cord's plug-in. He was looking at the plug.
He walked up closer, staring at the puckered scar tissue around the hole before finally looking in.
"Here," the doctor mumbled, handing him a small flashlight. He didn't even look at her as he took it, staring with bug eyes into the hole. "The skin's transparent in the plug. It doesn't add to anything, it just looks cool. It was a little pet project by Doctor Stapleton. It's open at the bottom though. A cluster of nerves are there, and we control him through that."
The soldier could see the the blood and muscles out the thin wall of skin.
"Does it hurt? For John W, I mean." The soldier asked, still staring at John W.
"Not that we know of. There was a little activity in the part of his brain that dealt with pain, but not anymore. We think he's gotten used to pain, or at least has shut it out."
"Does he even know we're here?"
"Oh yes," the doctor looked back over the screens in the room, reading exactly what was going on inside John W. Heart rate normal. Breathing normal. Various brain activity. "He's been listening this whole time. One of the current programs running now is he won't respond." The soldier finally looked up. "You could bend 'im over and take him right now, he won't flinch. He won't respond in any way."
"Really?" The soldier asked, a bit too excited. The doctor grinned, pressing her fingers against the touchscreen again.
"Oh yeah," the doctor quickly set a simple program: FIGHT BACK. DO NOT INJURE.
The soldier grinned stupidly, moving his hands to touch John W. But John W spun around quickly, grabbing both wrists in one hand and the soldier's neck in the other. His face remained stoic.
"Check-up all done, sir?" the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow. "Let him go, W." John W immediately let go of the soldier, stepping back and standing straight, his eyes on the wall again. The soldier gasped even though no pressure was put on his windpipe. He nodded wordlessly, and scurried out, mumbling 'I can show myself out'.
"Sorry about that W." The doctor sighed, fingers dancing on the touchscreen. John W wordlessly turned around, ready for the reinsertion of the cord. He lifted his chin just barely, a soft show of defiance.
But then the cord was in his neck, pressing awkwardly down into his body and taking control of his mind again. He'd been practicing though, practicing for a long time. He could move even when he programming told him otherwise. He could think when his programming told him not to.
The doctor programmed him for hibernation, and he didn't fight the warm calmness seeping through him. He was reawakened for transport late that evening.
"Okay John W, walk." The doctor ordered, glancing up over the screen that listed his vitals. The genetically-engineered super soldier straightened, and started moving forward at a regular pace, the team of workers swarming around him, ready if something bad was about to happen.
But they weren't really ready.
He was plugged in, they didn't expect any sort of resistance. So the workers around him consisted of two petite women, one fat old man, one younger man, and one burly soldier.
The small group moved, tension thick as they passed through the facility, making their way towards a bigger, more reinforced room for John W. But they wouldn't make it there.
They approached a covered hallway, and John W calmed, feeling the beating of his heart as well as hearing it from the machine trailing behind him, connected through the line from machine to neck. He prepared himself as they entered the hall. He'd have 3.7 seconds to do this.
He took a breath, twitching against his programming, just to test.
He exhaled, squeezing his hand into a tight fist a couple of times.
He began his motions.
He reached behind himself, squeezing his eyes shut as he tore the cord from the plug in his neck, and his brain was free. He was still for a millisecond, before he burst out the side of the group, and through the plate-glass window of the hallway. His bare feet felt the strange pleasure of running on grass. A smile tugged at his lips.
His breathing was even as he shot off, built to be faster than the fastest. Built to endure.
He shot off through the minefield, dodging mines as if they were marked with neon signs. The ones stupid enough to chase him, however, were not as lucky. John W felt the heat of explosions on his back, but he didn't stop. He felt no empathy towards his creators, his captors. Empathy was a concept that was taught to him, but not one he felt.
He tore through the forest with even breathing, slightly accelerated heart rate, but not too much to hinder his breathing or efficiency. His eyes caught sight of a man, a man with dark curling hair, who obviously didn't work for Baskerville. He dodged him, and continued running, feeling the man's eyes boring into his body. But he continued. He continued until he got near the more inhabited part of the woods, and he found an abandoned shed. Not what he was used to.
The wood was rotting, holes let the chill in, as well as mice and other small creatures. John W had never hibernated in anything that wasn't government built, and built very carefully. Of course, during some tests, he'd been forced to live out of one of these, but he didn't sleep. 'More like the battlefield,' one doctor said. Another insisted he'd have to survive sometimes with no shelter at all. That prompted another test, a less pleasant one. Not that any of the tests were pleasant, they were awful. But they were what John W was used to. They didn't matter anymore. The tests didn't matter. John W was dead set on never doing what the doctors had built him to do. He held onto his fading free will, his fading conscience with white knuckles that never relaxed.
He lay down on his side inside the shed, unconsciously moving his body to accommodate the cord that wasn't there anymore. He closed his eyes and waited for the programmed hibernation to come.
But it didn't.
There was no one there to program it. No one to turn the machine down, press the buttons, bring on the uncomfortably silent sleep.
As he was running, he felt like he was running towards his freedom. His free will. But now, laying in this rotting shed, he felt more like a small child, unable to survive without its mother. He second guessed himself, second guessed his powers without the machine to guide him.
And for the first time since he was chosen for the program and his blood was made a hybrid, since his brain changed, since he became John W instead of whatever he was before, he fell asleep of his own accord.
Well! Here we go! Second chapter should be up within the week. Hope you enjoyed! Tell me what you thought in a review, please!