The Last Night
Rocket had been left on the operating island, which was now functioning as an intensive care unit. The nurse and an assistant took shifts.
This time, the patient was kept under sedation for the recovery process. It was necessary to keep the brain in a reduced state of activity to prevent damage while the swelling hadn't set yet. They wanted to keep the critter as motionless as possible to ensure a fast healing process.
A programmable semi-autonomic medical device repaired damage at cellular and micro tissue level. It simulated new cell growth and removed scars by rearranging cells. An intravenous feed supplied nutrients to give the ruptured, mended and almost completely cleaned out intestinal tract a rest. The accelerated restoration process required a constant stream of supplements.
Meanwhile, the test team had an early morning meeting. The doctor reported about the medical situation, the operators about the suit calibration and the force field program.
Everyone had forgotten about the incident on the first day. They had a tiny generator that could reduce the lethal impact of a 400 G nonlinear force field to a lousy 12 G. A follow-up suit was to be developed for Kree soldiers to wear. 12 G can cause quite some damage, but they would persevere.
Two more test programs had to be run. Number 3 was about micro damage, incursions from a few cm to a few micrometres. Experiment 4 would test impacts of atomic particles and high-energy photons. In this last session, they would just open all registers to the max and use the shattered corpse of the test subject for final analysis.
Another day went by. Rocket had been patched up as far as this vastly superior technology could regenerate a road kill victim. On the outside, there were no traces left of the ordeal he had been put through. Most of his bone fractures had healed. He needed this day and the next to fully recover. He would even be able to walk again, if he could tolerate the pain. Every organ in his body had been traumatised. Every cell in his body had been traumatised. Even cells need some time to recover from such a battlefield before they can function normally again.
His brain was no longer swollen. In the ICU, the temperature of his head had been restored to a normal level. He was transported back to his cell. A counter-drug was not necessary. He was given time for the anaesthetics to wear off.
This happened very gradually, as the day turned into night. The traumatised sentient had been lying there with his eyes half closed; having periods of total absence, falling asleep, being struck by nightmares, waking up sweating and screaming. Lying there like a zombie, feeling very confused, not knowing which day it was or where he was. Falling asleep again, awakening in terror.
After the sun had set, he came back to his senses. His senses told him that he had been ripped apart and somehow glued together again. His right hand slid over his belly, his sides, his back, his head and any part of his body that he could inspect. Everything felt sore, smashed. There were so many pains that he wasn't able to single out one in particular. It was not unlike an orchestra in which every instrument played at the same time, a cacophony of false notes.
He used the time to do some thinking. Twice now, he expected that he wouldn't survive, but he still lived. Two test rounds had forced a demented torture on him. Two more would follow.
He guessed that they would progress to finer incursions. It would be like being perforated by bullets from all directions, like a Mafia liquidation. But he would not die from it, no, he would be dragged back to live again.
He expected the physical pain from the next experiment to be so severe that he would loose consciousness soon after the start. He wouldn't even need an anaesthetic. Unless they planned to do some other sadistic business in between. That worried him a lot. Being cut apart is bad enough, but seeing himself being cut apart, unable to move a muscle was ... a torment he just couldn't put himself through again.
He needed to get out or to kill himself. Suicide would paradoxically count as an act of self-preservation in such an extreme situation, he realised with morbid cynicism.
It wasn't just the pain that made getting out an existential need. What freaked him out most were the strange things that the humiliation and the torture had been doing to his mind. The time lapses, the absent memories and the depressions. He had experienced drastic personality changes. He felt alienated by the total loss of power over his mind and body, as if he was some kind of shoe people can slip in and out at will. The dreadful nurse ... the fact that he debased himself to plea for mercy and didn't even think it was a bad thing.
No matter how much they had intruded and damaged his body, the damage to his soul was the worst. He really didn't know who he was anymore; what he was, or what he was supposed to be. Even if he could get out, which he was sure by now wasn't going to happen, he had no idea how he ever could fix himself from ... what he had become. He figured he would be waking up from nightmares for every nigh to come, screaming like a pig being gutted alive.
Self-pity and despair, his companions for the last days, engulfed him once more. He sighed, then sighed again. He rolled his head to the left and to the right. Again he sighed, flexing his body, giving the four chains a yank. Then he sunk back into apathy, breathing audibly and rubbing his forehead. There was a very discontent expression on his face. He was utterly unhappy and longed for ... someone to help him.
He felt so left behind and alone. If he would die, nobody would even know it. He could use a friend right now. He made a note to himself: 'Make more friends'.
But it was too late. In these final remaining hours, the last privacy he had in his life, the last time that his body would be more or less intact, he wanted to have at least these moments for himself. Alone with his thoughts, contemplating, overseeing his far too short life.
He didn't even notice that tears had been welling up again. That was just another thing. He had been crying a lot. At first, he fought it. Men don't cry, he said to himself, being so macho and all. But now, things were different. He just let the tears come; he had made peace with it. It helped him relax. He thought, After all I've been through, I'm entitled to a bit of comfortin'. Even if I've to do it myself.
The tears kept flowing. His head sunk backward into the pillow. His jaw hinged. He whined. Nobody was here; nobody to judge him, nobody to humiliate him. And even if there were ... he didn't care anymore how he looked and what people would think of him. He yowled and it was good. His last complaint to a world that didn't listen anyway.