There's nothing quite like a sociopath. A killer, a mad scientist; both of them make for excellent stories. Though it's not directly related to my story, I think a couple of the key elements-the island and the Doctor, for example-were influenced by Dr. Franklin's Island by Ann Halam. It's an excellent book, so long as you have the stomach for it. You know, there's a bird girl in that book too... but there's a whole lot more bird than girl, if you know what I mean. *chuckles ominously*


7

Meeting the Doctor

"The reason doctors are so dangerous is that they believe in what they are doing." – Robert. S. Mendelsohn

Fang couldn't remember exactly what happened when he woke up again. He vaguely remembered being led to a bathroom and then crawling back onto a table, but he had been too loopy to register any real details. He had fallen asleep again, and then had woken up an unknown amount of time later. As the drugs wore off and he regained consciousness, however, he realized that he was back in the room he had been kept in previously—this time the light was on. Looking to the table next to him, Fang grimaced. Iggy was gone.

Just then the door opened, revealing a doctor-looking man wearing a white lab coat over top of green scrubs. At first glance, the man looked like the average family doctor, the type of guy who would check your heart rate and examine your mouth with a tongue depressor. Fang knew better than that, though; the man's eyes alone were a tip off to this particular doctor's intentions.

No sane person had a glint like that in their eye.

"Hello, Target B," Dr. Evil said, looking at the notes on his clipboard, "Or should I call you Fang?" he shook his head. "No, I think we should keep our relationship strictly professional. Target B it is, then. How are you feeling?"

Fang didn't say anything. Instead, he glared daggers at the doctor, making it very clear he wasn't in the mood for small talk; he rarely was, especially when he was being held prisoner by the person trying to initiate conversation. Shaking his head, the doctor sighed, "You're the strong, silent type, aren't you? I really should have read those memos on the human-avians they kept sending me." He shook his head and muttered something about the number of emails he received marked urgent.

Walking further into the room and closing the door behind him, Dr. Evil stood directly over Fang and stared down at him, making Fang feel terrifyingly small and helpless strapped down to the table. "You really are a wonderful specimen, aren't you?" the doctor cooed, staring intensely at Fang's physiology, all the while taking notes. "How fortunate it is to have two healthy male hybrids of the same approximate age and build... what is the age difference between you two? Please refresh my memory."

Fang scowled at the doctor. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What do you want?"

"You may call me the Doctor," he told Fang, "and I am what you would call the 'head scientist' around here." He smiled a sickly smile, "And you, as well as your friend, are the first human-avian hybrids to take part in Operation Unwind."

Though outwardly Fang's face was as blank as a slate, inwardly he rolled his eyes. Wow, what were the chances? He and Iggy were going to be the first bird kids ever (because there's so many of them to choose from) to be guinea pigs for the Doctor. How flattering.

"Your friend, Target A, should be back from his basic testing soon. Then we'll be taking you down the hall and run some tests on you too." The Doctor stared down at Fang excitedly, as if he were a child staring a brand new toy he couldn't wait to use. In a twisted way, Fang was the Doctor's toy—his toy to test and manipulate and push to the limit. What worried Fang the most about that was a simple fact about children's toys: they often got broken in the frenzy of playing games, sometimes ending up damaged beyond repair.

Sure enough, Iggy was wheeled back in a few minutes later by some nurses, looking very poorly indeed. He was lying on top of a gurney, drenched in sweat and tossing back and forth restlessly, panting and digging his nails into the bed sheets he was lying on top of.

"Strap him back onto the tabletop," the Doctor instructed his nurses, "then help me un-strap Target B and place him onto the gurney." Fang was suspicious. They were going to un-strap him from the table and they thought that he wasn't going to make a run for it? Just how did they plan on getting him to lie on the gurney without giving him an opportunity to run? Of course, Fang soon figured those questions out. As soon as the straps were off and he could move his limbs again, Fang tried to jump up and make a run for the door...only to find he couldn't move anything from the head down.

"Don't bother trying to move," the Doctor told Fang, "it's an anaesthetic agent I've invented for surgery. It keeps the patient awake during the entire procedure while numbing the body at the same time." He grinned another unholy grin, "It makes it easier to get feedback from my patients." Fang could barely feel anything as the Doctor and his assistants lifted him onto the same gurney they had used to wheel Iggy into the room. If he could have moved, he would have shuddered; this Doctor was bad news, and if security was always this tight there was next to no chance of escaping without help from the outside.

As Fang was wheeled down the hallway towards "basic testing", his mind went back to the schedule he saw on Jeb's computer before he was taken. Iggy was Target A, and clearly he was Target B. An unknown amount of time had passed since they had been delivered to their current location (Isle Invidia, presumably), and now they had advanced to Day 2 of Operation Unwind, the testing phase. Did that mean that tomorrow would be Day 3? If so, what procedures were going to happen to them? Also, the last scheduled surgery was for a Target C. Who was Target C?

For the next few hours Fang sat parked in a laboratory, unable to flinch or squirm on his gurney as the lab technicians and nurses swarmed around him. The lab technicians swarmed to take samples and ask questions, but the nurses seemed to be there just to try and cheer him up.

"We're almost done the blood tests," Cheery Nurse #1 declared spritely.

"You may feel a poking sensation when Glen inserts the needle into your arm," Cheery Nurse #2 informed him a few minutes later.

"You'll be able to move around for a while after this last swabbing," Cheery Nurse #3 chirped, causing Cheery Nurses #1 and #2 to chatter along excitedly as if it would make things better.

Fang wasn't buying any of it; these nurses were sincerely trying to make him feel better, but there was no cheering him up. He thought that it was kind of strange that such cheerful people would be involved with dark science institutions like Isle Invidia and projects like Operation Unwind, but Fang had suspicious feeling that, if this place specialized in transplant research, these nurses probably were in for the medical benefits; more than likely some of them had ailing relatives who needed the illegal transplants desperately. Or maybe they had gotten in over their heads and were too scared to quit.

Finally the testing was completed and Fang was wheeled out of the lab. However, instead of being returned to his room, he was transferred to another floor in the elevator and wheeled towards another room. "We have one final test for you, Fang," the Doctor said as he walked alongside the gurney, "and then you can go back to your friend." The nurses wheeled Fang's gurney into a large white room, which was empty except for a panel of glass set into one wall and a door-shaped panel in the other. There were several scientists standing behind the panel of glass and sitting in plush chairs, all of them holding pencils and clip boards.

"Here's an agent to counteract the anaesthetic," The Doctor told Fang, pulling out a syringe and injecting it into his arm, "You should be able to move in about thirty seconds or so." Then he turned around and left, taking his nurses with him.

After a few seconds Fang sat up slowly, his limbs still feeling slightly numb. Carefully, he stepped down from the gurney and walked around trying to regain his balance. The Doctor, who had now joined the other scientists, was sitting in his chair and smiling strangely again. Fang scowled; that man's smile was now officially on his personal Top Ten creepy list.

Suddenly there was a loud, quick sliding sound from across the room, followed by an angry snarl and the emergence of a large hairy animal as it rushed towards Fang in a blur of fangs and fur. The creature jumped and tried to pounce on Fang, but he was able to grab the gurney and throw it up at the creature as it jumped, knocking it down in mid-air. As the creature recoiled and prepared to charge Fang was finally able to get a good look at the creature: it was an Eraser!

The Eraser stood up on its two legs and lunged towards Fang, who quickly dodged the wolf man again and began to throw punches and kicks frantically. The Eraser, who, despite being out of practice, proved to be quite a formidable challenge for him, was relentless in its frenzied attempts to rip Fang's head off, leaving Fang with little time of reprieve in between attacks.

The battle lasted for what seemed like hours (though in reality it only lasted about fifteen minutes), and Fang found his body and mind seriously drained of resources as the battle dragged on. However, this Eraser was set to kill, and there was no way Fang was going to let this oversized dog overtake him. Taking a running leap, Fang used his wings to glide into the Eraser and deliver a hard kick to the base of its skull, killing it almost instantly. The Eraser fell to the floor, a menacing yet confused expression still painted across its face.

"Excuse me!" The Doctor's upset voice echoed throughout the room, "Did you really have to kill it? That Eraser was difficult to obtain!"

Fang looked over to the glass panel to see that the Doctor was standing in front of the glass, holding some sort of microphone. He scowled at him momentarily, and then turned his attention to the scientists behind him. He couldn't believe it; they were taking notes! They had locked him in a room with a practically rabid Eraser and forced them to battle to the death so they could take a few notes?

Fang was about to yell some angry words at the Doctor when there was another hissing noise in the room. Fang groaned, "Another gas, really?" The Doctor waved to Fang as he grew dizzy and fell to the floor, and even though the microphone was turned off, Fang was positive that the Doctor had been laughing maniacally as he watched Fang lose consciousness.

Fang woke up strapped to his table again, sweating profusely and feeling extremely groggy. It was dark in the room again, and Fang could only see the dark blur that was the ceiling. The noises in the room were muffled too; Iggy was saying something from across the room, but it sounded like he was talking from under water.

"Fang...awake...long..." Fang struggled to listen as Iggy said something about him and the tests they had both gone through. Suddenly the sound returned with a pop, and Fang was able to hear him say, "...he keeps using his weird drugs on us, and not just one type of drug either. All of these drugs he's using on us have different side-effects—like the one they gave us earlier. You were muttering all sorts of things earlier."

Fang moaned softly and tried to clear his vision by blinking several times. "I don't remember anything after collapsing... that freak Doctor is insane."

"Yeah," Iggy agreed, "I mean, I've met some sick people in the science world, but this is one big game to that guy. It's like we're a couple of dolls and he's jabbing us with voodoo pins." Iggy and Fang exchanged stories about their encounters with the Doctor, and they talked about what they should do next. "What can we do?" Iggy asked, "We're pretty much at the Doctor's mercy this time. There aren't any easily provoked Itex goons or crazy German scientists to manipulate around here; we can't even move our limbs without permission! This guy's insane, but he's smart. He's used to keeping people confined, I guess."

Unfortunately, Fang had to agree. It was so frustrating having to wait around for someone to come to their rescue when it was usually their job to help with the saving. "I hate feeling so helpless," he complained aloud.

"Me too," Iggy agreed, "but Max and the others will save us." There were a few moments of silence, and then, "So, do you want to know what you were babbling about in your drug-induced state?"

"Um..." Fang wasn't quite sure what to say.

Iggy grinned mischievously and told him, "It involved housecoats, Wal-Mart, and your desperate cries of longing for a certain someone." He winked at Fang.

Fang shot him a warning glare, but it was lost on his blind eyes. "Iggy..."

"You were crying out her name, begging for her to come back so you could see her beautiful eyes one last time."

Fang growled, "Iggy!"

Iggy smirked. "What exactly are Faxlets, Fang?"

"IGGY!"

Iggy, however, just cackled at Fang's flustered reaction. "Haha, Fang's one weakness discovered!"

Fang scowled at Iggy and snarled, "I sure hope you enjoy life as a eunuch, Ig, because when we get out of here you're as good as a girl." Iggy was fairly quiet after that.