Chapter 3

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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. - Anon

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The scientist watched the red numbers blinking on the blood pressure screen in horror. They kept ascending, picking up speed. All he could hear was the beeping of the heart monitor, so fast now it was almost a whine, and you could barely distinguish one beat from the next. Although he didn't want to look, his eyes were drawn to the cause of this phenomenon; the Avian Hybrid.

At least now the screams, that had echoed so distressingly around the room, had stopped. The hybrid was now silent, but it's eyes were open, and staring blindly. Apparently it was still conscious, but some dead look in the eyes made him doubt that, and still they weren't stopping the procedure. He wasn't the kind to go for moderation, but even he thought, wasn't that enough now?

The Hybrid's body was shining with sweat, his dark, damp hair flopping into his eyes as more convulsing spasms shook him. He was shaking and quivering continually, so that the constant clinking of the chains that held him there was added to the din. There were tiny pinprick spots of blood dotted up and down his torso where some of the needles had slipped, their wires now dangling forlornly in stringy tangles.; although the Hybrid was unable to rip them out as he had desperately tried to before, the amount of movement they had allowed meant that some had come loose, as he had twisted and writhed in agony.

The scientist raised a tentative opinion, "Do you think it's enough now? Should we stop?" Can we stop?

Miss Darthmoore looked down upon the scene impassively from above. "No," she said, without emotion, "He's still trying to fight it. A little more should suffice,"

Hating to watch the reaction he knew would come from this, yet doing it anyway, the scientist filled another medical plastic bag with the toxic serum they were flooding the hybrid's system with. He carefully punctured and held the bag, before feeding the numerous wires into it and letting it drip.

The hybrid's reaction was immediate – he had thought it was impossible for the heartbeat to go any faster, but it increased by half a millisecond yet again. The hybrid's eyes slammed shut, his face screwing up in pain, his breath coming out in sharp ragged bursts that made his chest rapidly rise and fall in a jerky way that was unsettling. Then the hybrids body actually jolted and shook violently against the bonds, looking as if the movements were only the body's reaction, that the mind had no part in and he could not control. His arms wrenched against the cuffs, his mouth part way open, eyes wide, staring with a burning fever. Then suddenly calming slightly, new beads of sweat broke out on his brow as the shivering slowly became less and less.

And, at the exact point that the shaking stopped, the scientist heard something that, despite his years of training, sent a shiver down his spine.

The heart monitor had stopped.

There was no endless bleep, because they knew the hybrid's heartbeat was faster and under stress would be so frequent it could sound like the dead tone; there was just the long seconds of silence. The scientist saw the hybrid go limp, sinking down into the dip where his back and wings were, ending so that his hands were held above his head, which had hung forward onto his chest, the drifts of hair covering his face, that was now tranquil; although the scientist could still picture all too clearly the tortured expression it had worn moments before.

He started to remove the wires and hanging poisons from the hybrid's corpse, when he felt a determined hand pull him back. Miss Darthmoore was at his side.

"Wait a moment," she ordered, her eyes on the hybrid.

And then, the scientist heard, with a wave of relief he was not accustomed to, a single, solitary beep from the heart monitor. And a couple seconds later another beep, and then it began to pick up momentum, forging out it's steady rhythm. The heartbeat was regular... for a human; for the hybrid it was frighteningly slow. Having almost gotten used to the frantic beeps of before, the scientist found himself expecting the beat sooner, and it gave him an unpleasant jump of surprise each time it was half a second later than usual.

"Good," Miss Darthmoore said, a grim smile darkening her face.

She walked over to the hybrid, pushing aside the wires that hung down like a curtain, not caring about cutting the skin as she pulled them out. Then she, startlingly, but with an almost comforting touch, ran her hand smoothly down the unconscious hybrids arm. It was an odd gesture, that seemed misplaced, especially considering that as she did so, the spots of blood that were welling up were smeared in sickening stripes along the olive coloured skin. She reached the shoulder, her hand darting away quickly. Instead she grasped a clump of fringe and dragged his head roughly upwards. The hybrid focused dazedly on her with dilated pupils, as she pushed the sweaty fringe back off his forehead.

"Can you hear that Fang? Your heartbeat. Slow isn't it. So, tell me, how do you feel?"

The hybrid only moaned pitifully. "Too bad Fang," she said lightly, using his name almost playfully, "You were quite impressive up until now," Then speaking to the scientists, "Take him away,"

The scientist, handling the wings awkwardly, deposited the weak Hybrid in a dog crate next to the other experiments. He paused for a moment, watching, and the hybrid looked at him with dull, dark eyes, but there was an intense... accusation there. In his dreams that night it flicked between that expression of 'How could you?' and the image of it's body racked with pain and twisted with wires, and he wondered if any of the other scientists spared a thought for their victims, or if they truly didn't care.


"Fang,"

For the longest time he thought he was imagining it, shushing it and preferring to return to his world of numbly receding pain, but the persistent little voice just wouldn't go away.

"Fang."

Fang opened his eyes, how many times had he had to force them open now? Wouldn't it be easier if he just didn't bother, and they stayed shut... forever?

"Fang!"

He managed to force himself to his elbows, trying to focus on the little shape in the cage next to him. He tried to open his mouth to say something, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, but as he did so, a startling pain crashed up and down his body, and the world shot away from him, disappearing very fast.

Fang slowly came to, because someone was poking him repeatedly on the top of his head. He returned to consciousness far more smoothly this time, slumped against the side of the crate. He righted himself carefully, and stared up at the little boy in the crate balanced on top of his, who was reaching down through the mesh to poke him.

"Hey," Fang mumbled, half in greeting, half as in 'stop freaking poking me.'

"Are you Fang?" The little boy asked uncertainly, "From the flock?"

"Yeah," Fang managed the word, but it didn't sound like a word as more of a groan, he realised in shock. He felt like he didn't even have enough energy to move his mouth, to speak. Even the slightest movement felt like too much effort, but it wasn't the heavy feeling of the drugs before, it was just that he felt so tired – like he wanted to sleep forever.

"Dude, you're like famous!" the little kid exclaimed in an excited whisper. "Hey guys, It's him!"

There was a sudden stir among the crates, as every single experiment and hybrid in the place began whispering to each other, and turned to look at him.

"You're here to get us out, right?" The little girl one on his right was almost vibrating inside her crate.

"Yeah, sure,"Fang murmured, slumping lower down in his crate. He felt very hot all of a sudden, and sort of like... like his bones were throbbing. He shifted his weight slightly, trying to find a position that made him feel slightly comfortable, and not like he wanted to sink lower and lower through the floor and into the earth – weird thought, but that was how he felt – like even lying, even being, and touching surfaces was too much, and he just wanted to find a place where he could float.

And then the questioning voice said, "H...Hey are you okay?" Fang didn't answer. He could feel every single vein and artery in his body; he was aware of his entire circulatory system, and the blood it was pumping round felt cold, like ice, and very slow. "You...er... You've gone white,"

"Oh no," Said the other voice, the one from above. "They did that thing to him,"

There was a deathly silence, as if everyone in the room knew what that meant. Fang wanted to ask, What? What did they do to him? Why did he feel like his body was dying without him?

The next time, Fang opened his eyes to see hundreds of other shining eyes peering at him out of the darkening room.

"He's awake again," The girl next to him said, still watching him through the crate with adoring admiration.

"Damn," Said the voice from his other side; it sounded New Yorker. Fang turned his head to see an older looking kid, his head shaved and something stuck to his arm, like a tag. "You're nothing special," he spat at Fang. "You're stuck here just like the rest of us,"

Fang didn't react to it; he'd heard those kind of insults so often now they had no meaning for him any more, but he wondered if only he was sensing the trace of bitter disappointment in the kid's voice.

"What's so great about you, huh?" He continued with venom, "You're reacting to their freakin' tests exactly the same way as all the others, and you'll die soon, just like they did, so what's so special about you? Nothing that's what!"

It was almost like amidst the insults he was saying, 'You can't save us. Why does everyone say you can?'. Fang wondered dimly, as the drowsiness took him what it was like to be so hopeless, because he still had that; he hadn't given up yet.

"Hey! Don't go back to sleep!" The two littler ones said in synchronised, high voices, but he ignored them.


A/N: I'm actually rather scared of the beginning of this chapter. It's almost too awful to read. Good god, what the hell is wrong with me? Why do I torture him so? That's why I did it from the scientist's view, because I don't think the kind of pain Fang experienced there is even describable, unless you just put, aaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhh! And that woman, Miss Darthmoore is just plain weird, right? I think she has... hybrid fetishes. Don't worry. Fang'll get his fire back, and start being badass again in the next chapter or too.