Part One: Subjective
Tiny fingers, warm and familiar, curled around his own. Dark eyes just like his gleamed playfully as they tracked across his face, and he smiled through the crimson tears that stained his rough cheeks.
"This is a silly park, Daddy," she giggled. "Lots of balloons to play with. You like balloons, don't you, Daddy?"
"Yes."
"It's a shame you have to go."
He blinked, but the eyes that blinked back weren't like his anymore. They were the gray-blue of an overcast sky, and filled with angry tears.
"I have to go," she rasped, blood spilling from her lips as the crowd swallowed her whole. "I have to go."
"But-" He reached out, fingers wriggling like worms as her face crumpled with a tinny sound.
"At least I left when I was supposed to," she shrieked. "You could have left, too. You could have-"
"Here, Daddy," the oozing gremlin at his feet wheedled. "I brought you a balloon."
It was shiny, reflecting his face back at him, but he didn't look, didn't want to see. He watched as it floated up and up, bobbing bright yellow in the too-blue sky. It stared down at him mockingly, drifting until it was beaming down like the sun, hot and peeling. It giggled with her voice.
"You love me, don't you, Daddy?"
The balloon burst with a mighty pop, and the universe went black.
:::
He would never be sure if it was the alarm that woke him, or the dream. He could hardly ever tell anymore, and had long since stopped wondering, just as he had stopped trying to grasp at the tattered tails of the dreams, to drag them back, to remember them.
These days, remembering usually hurt more than it comforted.
With a groan, Leonard rolled out from under the thin sheet, kicking slightly when it seemed to tighten around his ankles, shivering as the cool air of his quarters chilled his sweaty skin. Absently, he tugged at the thin tank top he'd slept in, peeling it away from his body and tossing it into a dark corner.
It would still be dark out, he surmised, though it had been so long since he'd so much as imagined having windows that for all he knew, Earth had suddenly developed 24-hour sunlight. He could just picture the Councillors on the holo, smiling slimily as they promised more summer for everyone.
"We care about The People," they'd wheedle. "Sunlight for all, round the clock, for the good of the Earth!"
Snorting, Leonard stumbled into the locker that Stratos was trying to pass off as a bathroom, sidling around the wobbly toilet to edge into the shower. It was barely big enough for one, and the water was only ever cold. It left a smell, copper-iron like blood, that would follow Leonard for the rest of the day, but he found himself ridiculously glad of it. Better a cold shower than forced to test Stratos' new sonic technology. He'd personally had to piece together the last few test subjects - there hadn't been enough left of earlier test subjects to piece together.
Leonard wasn't one for dawdling in the shower - wouldn't have been, even if it had been clean, hot water that didn't smell of blood, even if he'd had good soap that didn't crumble under his fingers. Today, though...something about today had him lingering, leaning back against the cold metal wall and letting the shower beat a mass of prickles across his chest.
He knew what this was, of course. He'd known from the moment they'd shown him to his new accommodations what they were trying to accomplish. He'd seen the results shivering and empty on the biobeds in his ward, back before. Back when his job was to heal people. He'd read about it in history classes, seen slides of concentration camps and prison torture.
He was lucky, he knew. He was smart, smarter than the majority of the poor bastards who got pressed into service at Stratos. He was useful. That made him special, made him one of the fortunate few who escaped the true dehumanization. He wasn't like the others, who were only useful as lab animals and pack animals and labor animals. He was most useful with his humanity intact, and Stratos knew it.
So he got his own quarters, his own little six-by-six corner to shiver in. He got a shower, and a toilet. He got fed replicated bread and fruit, got more than one set of clothing, got to talk without being disciplined, so long as he never spoke the wrong thing to the wrong people. He was allowed a bed, allowed a sheet, allowed a name. He was lucky, they told him. He was a step above the rest of humanity, which meant that he got to keep whatever humanity they left him.
He wondered, sometimes, if they knew how dangerous that was - to never fully break the smart ones. To let them speak, to remember, to dream. To let them hold on to the memory of sunlight and the taste of peaches and the voices of their children. But, then, the gargoyles that ran Stratos had never put much store in the strength of humans. There was no such thing as a dangerous homo sapien.
As he tugged his scrubs on roughly over damp skin, Leonard mused that, perhaps, they weren't so wrong about that. He turned the thought over in his head as he caught sight of his own face in the cracked mirror over the desk, bile rising at the tangle of black and silver that webbed out from his left temple like a roadmap, curling around his eye. His silver eye, gleaming unnaturally in contrast to the hazel of its twin.
Did he even count as human anymore?
The walk to the lifts was silent save for the soft whisper of his moccasins against the steel floor. The chill permeated the soles of his feet, and he paused at the lift doors to gather up the memory of the feel of solid boots with thick soles. Jabbing his thumb against the scanner, Leonard didn't smile, but the ghost of warm feet that didn't ache soothed him.
He'd only been with Stratos for two years, he remembered idly as he waited out the lift journey. Two years of bare essentials and brainwashing that never quite sank in. Two years of pretending he felt blessed when he knew better. Two years without his baby girl.
The thought of Joanna nearly undid his blank expression. He hadn't been given notice of her in three months. He wondered if perhaps he was playing it too complacent. It was always a thin wire he walked when negotiating for news of his daughter - too cooperative, and they saw no need to bribe him with updates - not cooperative enough, and...
The delicate twist and snap of tiny, familiar fingers and the shrill scream of a child in pain rattled in his brain, and Leonard let his eyes slide shut for a breath too long for it to be a blink, the only outward sign of his distress that he could afford to show.
Yeah, he knew what being too belligerent would get him.
The bunker where his workstation was housed was cavernous, stretching out beneath what Leonard knew to be several city blocks crowded with shops and cinemas and parks. Large areas were screened off - weapons design, sonics technology, warp improvements, environmental studies, etcetera. He wasn't allowed in those sections - no one was, save those who worked there.
The section that was his destination was by far the largest, the electrified cages screened off from the rest of the room, biobeds and dissection tables lined up along one wall. There were drains here, set into a slightly sloping floor at regular intervals for easy clean up, and a bank of computers, each one designated to a busy worker bee, just like Leonard. In spite of the nature of this section, it was usually the quietest, save for the soft tones of the computer functions and the vitals monitors. Except, of course, when one of the test subjects got riled up, which invariably meant Leonard would spend his day hosing chunks of what had ostensibly been a person down the drains and sterilizing the newly-vacated cage.
The steel beams supporting the ceiling curved high overhead, looming, and Leonard had entertained many fantasies about the entire structure collapsing, high-rises crumbling in on them, the whole operation laid bare to the sun like a cyst being opened, pus and death oozing out.
It never happened, and never would, but Leonard could dream.
His eyes traced the familiar forms of his 'coworkers' as they slid into their stations, pulling up the timetables for the day, mapping out the procedures they would be performing to get the results their overseers were looking for.
They had been like him, he remembered, slipping into his own seat and pulling up his to-do list and trying not to think about the life he'd had where breakfast had been a real thing. His fellows had been human, too, at some point - normal, scared, bending under the weight of what was being demanded of them. He hadn't known their reasons. He assumed they'd had reasons, like he did, but maybe they were just cowards in the end.
Now they were vacuums, scrubbed clean of everything but instructions to be carried out. They were useful, like Leonard, because they were brilliant at what they did, and their brilliance was about all they had left. The spidery lines stretched across their foreheads, crawling over the bridges of their noses, making their quicksilver eyes stand out. Blank eyes that didn't question or doubt, that flickered over everything analytically, taking in every detail and storing it for future use.
Walking hard drives, he'd heard them called by their overseers. And soon, Leonard would be like them.
As if to confirm this, his timetable opened with only one heading.
SUB. 02006-A-68-6J
0600: REPORT TO ROOM AP-774
Swallowing grimly, Leonard closed out of his terminal and stood. A sensation like pins and needles ran up and down his spine, and he could feel his stomach rebelling, but he schooled his features into his usual emotionless mask. He'd known this was coming - it had been a while since the last procedure - but that didn't make it any less terrifying.
Would this be the one, he thought. Would this be the procedure that wiped everything that was Leonard McCoy from his mind? Would this be the moment he became Subject 02006-A-68-6J? He rubbed his palm over the numbers and letters he knew were inked onto the back of his neck and sighed through his nose nervously.
He thought of Joanna as he strode with forced confidence towards the door to the corridor he loathed more than any other. He thought of her smile, her eyes that looked like his, her hair that curled like her mother's. He thought of the bedtime stories she'd liked best, and of summers at his mama's house, and of splitting a secret chocolate bar in the haze of an early morning, when everyone else was asleep but the two of them. He thought of the way she kicked her legs while she colored, and of all the things she'd do when she grew up, all the brilliant, wonderful things.
The corridor was long, and tight, and blindingly lit. There was only one door, at the very end, plain steel with no knob. It swung open when he reached it, like it always did, and slammed shut with all the ominous timing of Old Hollywood.
Leonard snorted mentally as the lights flickered on, illuminating a room empty except for a modified biobed. It sat in the middle of the space, its various attachments jutting out from it like an insect's legs - a device Stratos had developed that would scan a lifeform and record data, six mechanical arms with pads on the ends that Leonard knew from painful experience contained needles, long tubes leading to globes of differently colored fluids that would be injected into him through the pads, and, of course, steel restraints that would leave ugly bruises that faded quicker than they ought to have from a human.
What does 'human' even mean anymore? Leonard wondered as he toed off his slippers.
"Subject," the feminine computerized voice instructed as he removed his top, "remove all clothing and move to a reclining position on the biobed."
He was already hoisting himself up by the time she'd reached the end of her instructions, lying back and trying not to flinch when the restraints activated.
"Keep still during the procedure."
He swallowed again, closing his eyes and trying to force his heart rate to slow as the computer scanned him head to toe, recording vitals, nutrient levels (he knew those had to be shit, he hadn't eaten since midday the day before), brainwaves, whatever Stratos felt they needed to know about him.
This was the fifth procedure he'd had like this. Whatever they were doing to him seemed to be more involved than whatever his fellows had undergone - they'd been done after the second treatment. He wondered what was different about him.
"Don't suppose you're gonna tell me what you're doing to me this time," he drawled quietly, relaxing with a conscious effort as the pads arced over the sides of the bed, pressing against his chest and abdomen and neck. "Didn't think so," he muttered.
"Stand by to begin the procedure."
Joanna, he thought. She'd be five. Probably learned her letters and numbers already.
He remembered teaching her to ride a horse. Showing her the constellations and laughing when she made up her own. Pancakes with strawberries on top and whipped cream smiles. Her eyes, just like his eyes had been, his other eyes, from before-
Fire rippled over his nerve endings, and he must have screamed, but it melted into the splash of a toddler learning to swim.
"Don't let go, Daddy! Don't let go!"
"Never, Sweetpea. I'd never let you go. I've got you."
Rocking her to sleep after what happened with Jocelyn.
"Shhh, Sweetpea. It's okay. I've got you."
"Don't go, Daddy. Don't let me go."
The robotic voice buzzed at the edge of hearing, the words jumbled and garbled in his ears. "Proc...re is 50%...98...augm...jected."
Joanna. Joanna, he reminded himself, pushing the pain to the back of his mind. Joanna singing Jingle Bells as he lit up their tree. Curling up with him to watch the rain trace patterns on the window, her little head tucked up under his chin. How proud he was when she said she wanted to fix people when she grew up, just like him...
"You love me, don't you, Daddy?"
"Procedure complete."
As the electric burn of whatever they'd done faded into a maddening itch, Leonard shifted, tensing against the restraints that hadn't released when they should have. "Hey. Hey! You gonna unlock me?"
There was a pause, and then a nearly normal voice murmured over the intercom.
"Please be patient, Doctor McCoy. We shall release you shortly."
Several thoughts raced through Leonard's mind at those words, not the least disturbing of which was the use of his name and title. He hadn't been called anything but 'Subject' since shortly after his arrival here. That, plus the use of the word 'please', was enough to stun him.
The voice itself had been unfamiliar - not one of the overseers, then. Leonard always remembered them. This voice had been deep, resonant, and carried some kind of UK accent. It had made the hairs on the back of Leonard's neck stand up.
He tried to relax, blinking as the vision in his right eye went fuzzy at the edges. It cleared, though, and kept clearing, sharpening until he could see tiny dust motes floating past several feet above his head.
Leonard scowled openly. It had been exactly what had happened just before his left eye had bled into that inhuman silver color, leaving him with the odd gift of enhanced sight in only one eye. It had definitely played hell with his depth perception, he recalled, shoulder throbbing in memory of being run into more than one doorway. He was certain the overseers had gotten a hell of a good laugh out of that.
That had been the last procedure. The two before that had ended up improving the hearing in his right ear drastically, which had made orienting himself in unfamiliar locations oddly headache-inducing. While being able to hear the heartbeat of whoever was under his scalpel was certainly a useful ability, it had taken some getting used to. Not, he reasoned, as much getting used to as hearing the heartbeat stop had taken.
The first procedure had been what ended up leaving the road map to hell traced all over his face. It had also, he'd been informed, increased his reasoning abilities, allowing him to draw quicker conclusions. The more complex technical aspects of his work had become as simple as two-plus-two, an advantage his colleagues shared.
Until now, he'd honestly believed that the reason he'd undergone so many more procedures had been because they were doing something different to him. This, though...this spoke of something going wrong, something not working the way it should have. And that would mean that the other procedures hadn't worked properly, either. Something was fucking up along the way, Leonard considered, an icy chill tripping up his spine. Something big, if it had prompted one of the people running this project to speak to him directly.
"Doctor McCoy. You will return to your quarters until further notice. A meal will be brought to you at midday. Do not leave your quarters at any time. Do you understand?"
"Yeah...yes." Clearing his throat, Leonard sat up as soon as the restraints released him. "Yes, sir, I understand," he elaborated obediently.
He needed to be obedient right now, because if something was going wrong...if it was him, there was every chance they'd consider him unfit for further procedures. And if he was unfit, if he was gumming up their works, then he was probably more trouble than he was worth. A walking corpse, essentially. And without him, what reason would they have to let Joanna live?
He clung to a sliver of hope that told him that they would want to study him, find out what was going wrong. He wasn't expendable just yet, he reminded himself as he yanked on his scrubs and padded barefoot back down the corridor. They would keep him alive so long as he could give them information. He wasn't dead yet.
Joanna wasn't dead yet.
He tried not to run through the bunker, tried not to fidget in the elevator, but by the time he reached his quarters he was a shivering, hyperventilating mess. Stumbling to his bed, he crawled onto the tiny mattress and curled up in the middle, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes as they misted with tears of helplessness.
"'M not dead yet," he whispered. "'M not dead yet. 'M not dead yet. Not dead yet. Not dead yet."
As he drifted off on the cold little mattress, shaking too hard to grasp the sheet and pull it over himself, Leonard admitted to himself that he'd been a dead man walking the moment Stratos had noticed him.
He dreamt of balloons and whipped cream smiles and bloody teeth gnashing at him angrily, and a baby crying somewhere, just around every corner, but never there when he looked.
Slowly, the cries became louder, shriller, until it was a persistent wail, and lightning flashed behind his eyelids as he was dragged over the edge of a cliff, and...
The second he hit the floor, Leonard jerked awake, one hand already fisted in the shirt of the one who'd dragged him from his bed. Gasping, he stared wildly up at his attacker. Blue eyes, bright like the summer sky over Georgia, stared back, hard and uncompromising. The lights of the Code Red alert system seared across Leonard's enhanced vision, sparkling in the stranger's eyes as the klaxons screamed.
"Let's go, Subject," the man behind the eyes spat, a contemptuous sneer emphasizing the word 'Subject' until it was a vicious slur. "Time to face the music."
Leonard barely had time to mumble, "Don't know the words," before a slim, dark hand reached around the blue-eyed man and jabbed a hypo into his neck, and then the universe went black.
