The screaming was horrendous, yet the six pairs of eyes did nothing to help the suffering creature. The noise grew louder and shriller until it reached deafening proportions and with one final heave of her lungs, the thing that had originally been a human woman collapsed to her knees, clawing the glass that separated her from the only people who could save her.
And still, not one of them moved an inch.
"P-please…" she begged, tears falling freely from her eyes and pattering down onto the cold steel floor of her cage. "St-stop it… please!"
Nothing, not even a sympathetic blink in those soulless eyes even acknowledged she had spoken. With the last of her breath escaping her, the mutated form shivered wildly and slid to the floor, before all that remained was a half-melted, half-twisted, shrivelled shape contorted in indescribable pain.
Gazing over her dead carcass, one of the beings finally sighed.
"Another failed experiment…" he muttered in disappointment as he walked over to a large terminal nearby and pressed a series of buttons. The body was instantly washed away as a cleansing mechanism was activated in the cage.
"That's the fourth one this week…" another of the men added quietly as the first pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and folded his arms.
"This won't do…"
"Face it, Xehanort… it can't be done," the smallest and youngest of the gathered group turned to the silvery haired man who was still watching as the woman's remains were washed away in a puddle of black ooze. "It seems any theories of creating an artificial heartless have been just a mere dream…"
"Maybe Master Ansem was right…" a dark-haired, pony-tailed man agreed. "I mean… he said so himself it was too dangerous to mess about with things like this…"
Xehanort didn't answer, the memory of yesterday's confrontation with Master Ansem was playing back over in his mind.
That old fool. He had denied him the right to continue his research into the hearts of worlds and the darkness lying within one. And right in front of a guest as well. To think he used to adore that man as the father he'd never had.
Well, he'd show him.