Deliquesce

Chapter 11: Experiment

Rated: T

Warnings: Violence, gore

Disclaimer: ayy lmao

A/N: Anzac biscuits are great.

Turrislucidus:

Your reviews are lovely,

Never a bore.

I'm bad at poetry,

Thank you, endure.

Sad Sabrin: All in good time!

The group was gone when I woke. The first thing I did was take a shower, with the help of a wooden stool I'd shoved in there to sit on. I crawled over to the wardrobe, looking for clothes once I was done. Crutches were too much effort for such a small distance. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shreds of jeans I had to cut off myself last night, unable to get them over my ankle. I rummaged through the drawers, looking for sweatpants or something. I found an army-green pair, but they were a large mens size that would fall straight off me.

"Fuck it." I mumbled, and pulled out the XL mens t-shirt. It could work as a dress or something, it was pretty big. I put on the washed bra I originally came to the factory with, and a pair of underpants before throwing on the shirt. I put a coat on over top of it, scrambled for the crutches and made my way out to the kitchen holding the comb in my mouth. I turned the kettle on, hoisted myself up to sit on the counter, and yanked the brush through the knotted mass of wet red hair.

I heard the elevator ding as I poured the water into the cup.

"Morning." I said, stirring the coffee round. Wonka brought in another box full of food, and placed it on the counter.

"Top of the mornin' to ya." He replied. "How's yer leg feeling?"

"Sore. Swollen. Bruised. I'll survive."

"No luck with the pants?"

I'd forgotten. "Oh right." I laughed, cheeks warming a tad. "No luck."

"Well hey, that works." He looked at my shirt.

"So, what's this secret business we're going to get up to today?"

"We'll head over once you're ready, 'kay? Now, this is super-secret stuff we're talking about. So I'm gonna need you to pinky promise that your mouth will stay zipped."

"Well, that all depends what it is. Why are you telling me if the rest of the group isn't allowed to find out?"

"You're different to them, aren't you?" The childish manner in which he always spoke dissipated suddenly, and he looked at me in a quizzical way. "Separated. You only joined them a few days ago, so naturally your loyalty doesn't belong to them yet. Although, you don't really trust me either, do ya? I can understand that. But all things considered, I can see you're just kinda doing your own thing. And you strike me as the type of person who won't jump to conclusions, freak out and murder me as soon as you find out. So that's why I'm deciding to let you in on it, and not the others."

"I have no clue what the fuck you're on about, but I'll bite. Not gonna lie, I'm not super keen because it's sounding... not good. Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back, and I'm a very curious person. So let's get to it."

We took the elevator and arrived in a brightly lit, spotlessly white hallway and walked on for a few minutes before turning into one of the rooms. It was labeled '023'. The doors in this hallway were different from the others I had seen around the factory. They were metal, with no windows. The labels only had numbers instead of names, like the others.

Wonka opened the door, and the smell hit me with the force of 37 bricks.

"Fuck!" I yelled, scrunching up my face. There was a cage at the far end on the room, with five of the infected inside. Near that was a metal slab with another one, tied down with restraints. There were a few other benches and shelves, filled with paper and clipboards and pens. Everything was perfectly organised, right down to the pencils, all exactly the same length, arranged to fan out evenly. The whole room was insanely neat, not a single thing out of place besides a few splatters of blood and bits of loose skin that had fallen of the thing on the slab. The zombies looked so ridiculously out of place, I almost felt embarrassed for them.

"What the hell is this?" I asked, disturbed. Confused. Angry. Confused.

"Experiments."

"This is what you do in your free time? You fucking experiment on dead people?"

"Kinda."

"What are the experiments for?"

"Lots of things. Classified information, I'm afraid. What I need you to do, is take note of everything I say. Got it?"

"This is sick, Wonka."

"I know."

"Why should I help you?"

"Are you forgetting the ways I helped you?" He said with a sickly sweet smile, voice dripping with honey.

"You are a douche."

"Okay, yeah, that was pretty douchey. And yeah, it's sick, but we live in a world where morals do nothing but make survival all the more difficult. I promise you that this is for a good thing, Ember."

"I don't have a reason to trust you, but I'm going to." I said reluctantly.

"Thank you. Let's get started then, shall we?" He walked over to the bench, got another thicker pair of gloves from the drawer beneath it, and pulled them over his already gloved hands. He began to hook up wires to the corpse on the slab, connecting it to monitors. It struggled against the restraints, groaning and grunting. Another restraint was strapped over its mouth and the sounds were muffled. He passed me a pen and the clipboard, told me to write down what he said, and went back over to the slab.

"Subject 0334. Female, approximately 26. Source of contamination, bite marks on left shoulder that display discolouration and prominent veins."

I wrote down what he said, while he produced a few test tubes and syringes out of the cupboard.

"Compound number 8, administering to medulla oblongata."

He sliced open the forehead, and began to pry out the already shattered pieces of skull. Once the brain was exposed, he made a long, careful incision.

"Subject remains unresponsive to incision. Further evidence of absence of sensation."

"I thought fucking up the brain killed them?"

"Nope. Or, not really. The medulla oblongata is the part of the brain that is active in these things."

"What?"

"The brain stem. The rest you can do what you want with. Just as long as the brainstem remains intact." With that, he pulled apart the two sides of the brain and stuck the syringe into the center. Beeping started going off, and the thing started jerking around violently.

"661. 661. 665. 662. 663.667." Wonka was shouting. One of the restraints came loose on the leg, and he held it down. I wrote down the number. "671. 675. 690. 690. 690. 691. 310. 147. 90."

It stopped moving suddenly. It was dead still on the slab, surrounded by pieces of its skull and the much that came from inside. The beeping was quiet and even now. It wasn't a heart monitor. I wasn't sure what it was.

"Holy shit. What was that."

He took the clipboard off me, and wrote down some notes of his own after taking off the thick gloves.

"Top secret." He winked.

"You can't just fucking… do that and not tell me what's going on. What did you inject it with? Why? Is it dead?"

He looked up from the clipboard, raised an eyebrow. "It's not dead. Unconscious. I promise I'll tell you, but not today. I still have more work to do."

"Why did you get me to write it down if you're not going to tell me what it is?"

"Well I can't very well memorise all of those numbers as I'm trying to keep it from breaking the restraints. They're not very strong, y'know. The last subject broke my damn voice recorder. But thanks! Progress was made today thanks to you."

I stared at him. "You better tell me eventually."

"I will. I'm going to need your help again tomorrow. I'll see where it goes from there."

"Fine."