AN: Lots of foreshadowing in here, if you can catch it! Also just gotta say that I've always loved Tyler Stone as a villain. He's evil enough to be irredeemable, but human enough to be realistic, and doesn't need to throw on a costume to be a pain. He's your typical, everyday CEO psychopath that you see all too often today, and that's the most frightening thing of all.
Anyone interested in seeing this continue? Review please! :)
Human Trial 01
Earlier...
Alchemax Archives...
"ESP, huh?" Miguel muttered to himself, flipping through the file he'd managed to scrounge up.
Information on the heroic age was so rare that even these dusty old papers and physical photos contained in his work place's archives were a gold mine. Presently, his inspiration for his newest project was none other than "Spider-Man". The spider-themed superhero had initially piqued Miguel's interest when he'd been assigned to a prestigious position in the corporate raider program. If there was ever a metahuman that would make the perfect corporate spy for Alchemax, it would be Spider-Man. Since he was long dead and his secrets buried with him, Miguel had had to improvise.
He ran a long finger down the list of powers that he'd contemplated so many times before, lingering on the entry on the enhanced senses and mysterious "sixth sense" that the subject had apparently demonstrated back in his prime. That bit would be particularly difficult to replicate, but if the key lay in arachnid DNA, then Miguel was confident in his ability to approximate the ability in a subject.
Rather than returning the file to its proper place, Miguel carefully pocketed it in his long lab coat and left the dingy record room. There was work to be done today if he wanted to stay on schedule, and it'd be convenient to have this and his accompanying notes on his person for immediate reference.
First he had to review the results of last night's initial primate experiment. He'd started with lizards, then gradually moved up to mammals, and now he was looking into slowly adding specific, small, spidery traits to chimpanzees. Not all at once, fortunately, only one trait at a time. However, last night he may have made a breakthrough. He'd left a female chimp inside the chamber for a new record of a mere thirty minutes to almost completely rewrite her genetic code, then let her rest until morning to see what she would manifest. He knew that Alchemax executives would expect his final, human trials to be much faster and efficient, but for now he was content to let the scientific process progress slowly in trial and error tests. Computer simulations using his own logged genome as an example of a typical human model had been promising...
There were quite a few lesser employees out and about, bustling to and fro like bees on a mission. A lot of their blank, senseless eyes and empty smiles indicated to Miguel that they were on Alchemax's most popular designer drug, Rapture, which was distributed primarily through the inner circle of the company and outwards. Not bothering to conceal his disgust, Miguel's nose wrinkled. Supposedly it enhanced one's intellectual abilities and made one content by calming high-stress emotions through brain chemistry, but Miguel knew the truth. While it may do all that was claimed, that couldn't change the fact that at the same time it made the user a complacent idiot. He would never be so weak as to rely on a substance that made him a slave.
Passing a few stooges who greeted him with snivelling waves and "good morning Mr. O'Hara"s, Miguel made his way to the non-human animal storage area. He strode by many habitats without a second glance until he came upon the units dedicated to housing his test animals. 099, or as he liked to call her, Margarete, was huddled in the corner of her large enclosure. It may have been large and filled with stimulating toys that Miguel had provided for her, but it was still lonely. Chimpanzees were social animals but the experiment required that she stayed isolated for observation.
At seeing Miguel, Margarete scuttled over, desperate for companionship after her ordeal. Miguel stared, brown eyes wide. She'd scuttled, alright, right across the wall. At least that part had worked. He opened the upper hatch in her clear door to slip her some food, and out of curiosity, tossed a bouncy ball at her. It'd been a lousy throw, since Miguel was a lousy shot, but she caught it with a single hand. So far this was turning out to be his most successful trial of the machine yet, and he was nearly giddy with pride.
The mutated chimp didn't appear to have any visibly secreting spinnerets, but those would probably show up after a few days of growth and organ reconfiguration. For the most part, he'd isolated and relocated the genes responsible for silk production, so that in bipedals it tended to manifest on the upper limbs. He was debating on removing those genes altogether, but only time would tell if they proved useful enough to keep in the main program.
"Any other physical changes...?" he wondered aloud, jotting something down on his clipboard. Maybe some fangs...? It'd been an unintended side-effect in most subjects, one that he was trying to eliminate through refining the genes he inserted in each subsequent trial. As far as he knew, the original Spider-Man had not used fangs, and in Miguel's opinion they seemed wholly unnecessary. In certain situations they might be useful, yes, but the success of a corporate spy depended upon the agent's ability to appear as normal as possible and remain undetected as a traitor. Perhaps later he would sedate Margarete and check to see if he'd finally broken the code on the fang problem.
Before taking his leave, Miguel stopped by the smallest enclosure of all, containing perhaps his fiercest asset of them all. An orange baboon tarantula crouched at the entrance of its hide, still as a statue. Miguel could swear she was staring him down, ready to pounce if not for the glass. He had named her "Conchata" after his mother, and not out of fondness, the crazy bitch...
He crouched in front of the tarantula, observing its fangs, the little hook-like toes, and its squinty eyes. She was a prime specimen of her species, and had been one of the initial donors in the early building of his arachnid-program for the machine. Various jumping spider species had come soon after, then orb-weavers, trap-doors... every conceivable species that could give his new Spider-Man an advantage in the field. Out of sentimentality, he'd kept Conchata on hand, a trophy of sorts to his upcoming triumph. He fed the wee demon a cricket, watching with some satisfaction as her fangs crunched into its carapace, then went to his final stop for the shift.
His machine. His pride and joy, his seminal work, his magnum opus. She was beautiful.
The machinery took up most of the room reserved for his work. It was circular, blossoming out like a flower from the egg-shaped chamber in its center. From above, everything was lit with light that transformed most surfaces into a brilliant, yellow-orange, like a sunset. The top of the egg had a round window in its top, for observation, energy input, and feedback. Eight leg-like structures supported the chamber in order to lift it, open it, and so forth. Around the machine's circumference was the large observation deck, complete with controls and a desk that Miguel had ordered in when the engineers had started on his basic blueprint. Back then he'd liked to watch them work, hovering over their shoulders to ensure that no short cuts were taken on his design.
A few people were already there, most of them fellow scientists and supervisors. Miguel's machine was the talk of the entire company, and with it and other such starting projects he'd made it big in Alchemax in a very short period of time, ascending the ranks at an alarming rate. Also present was Aaron Delgato, Miguel's assistant and self-appointed handler. The man was portly, in his fifties, and with the ugliest damn goatee Miguel had ever seen on a human being. As usual, Aaron looked less than happy to be there, and his expression soured further at seeing Miguel enter. He knew that Delgato was a jealous man, and would sabotage the machine if he could, but didn't dare. Aaron Delgato was a hasbeen, a loser, and utterly pitiful. The laws of the jungle were the same as the laws of business, and they dictated that it didn't matter how long Delgato was with the damn company. At the end of the day, Miguel was younger, smarter, and more valuable in every way.
"O'Hara," called Delgato, coming over to get Miguel's attention. He fumed when Miguel pointedly ignored him in favour of draping his outer lab coat on his desk's chair and setting down his clipboard.
"O'Hara," Delgato repeated.
"Yes, Aaron ol' boy?"
"Stone says he wants a fresh report on your progress on the spider-program."
Ty can suck a cock, Miguel wanted to say, but instead he replied smoothly, "I sent one out last night. Surely you knew?"
Delgato's face began to very much resemble a tomato. It was all Miguel could do not to laugh in his face. The man may be pathetic, but Miguel actually enjoyed his company. He was... entertaining, and in this day and age entertainment was worth gold to someone like Miguel. Like the rest of him, Miguel's sense of humour was cynical to say the least, so this dinosaur of a corporate lackey who'd survived in the science departments this long purely through his will to remain relevant was something of a hilarity to him. Messing with Delgato was a joy, and all too easy to do.
"You know that all reports are supposed to come through me."
"I figured I would just cut out the middle-man. It's a pretty pointless protocol if you ask me."
"It's part of my job."
"And we pay you... why?"
Miguel could sense a rant incoming, and his prediction proved true when Delgato next opened his mouth. "Look, O'Hara, you may be the project head, but I'm the one who answers to Mr. Stone, which means you answer to me."
"I'll try to stick to one-syllable words, then."
Delgato's voice rose as he forged on, but Miguel didn't interrupt him, opting to let him get it out of his system. "I don't care if you are one of the great hopes of Alchemax! I don't care if you were given the full university treatment and brought in to head this genetics program. You must have respect for the system of command!"
"I have respect for the system, Aaron. Just none for you."
"Listen, smart guy, I've kept my mouth shut up to now-"
"And don't think we haven't appreciated it," Miguel quipped impertinently.
"-for the company's sake, even though I can't stand smug 'geniuses' like you. But if you don't shape up, I'm going to break you."
"You break me, you bought me," said Miguel smoothly, once more flipping through the file he'd checked out from the archives. Threats weren't uncommon in this company of Judases and reprobates, and he'd learned to live with them. "Aaron Aaron Aaron, even you can't deny how well the work's been progressing."
"Of course, but-"
"We've achieved terrific success at altering the genetic structure of test animals, and I've even found some quality research material for inspiration." From the file Miguel pulled out some copies of surviving photographs and illustrations of the Spider-Man. Most pictures were taken by the same photographer, funnily enough. Someone called Pearson? Pedro? "Here, feast your orbs."
Aaron's eyes roved uncomprehendingly over the images. Spider-Man's poses consisted of inhuman contortions and crouches, his flexibility unparalleled. The superhuman looked striking in his outfit of red and blues, and the white eye lenses and spider-logo added the tiniest hint of fear factor to his look. Miguel knew that Aaron would be impressed.
"You don't think I chose spider DNA for fun, did you? His name was Spider-Man. One of the premier boys from the old heroic age 'round the turn of the century. Proportionate strength of a spider."
"What do you mean 'proportionate'?"
Miguel rolled his eyes. "It means he didn't get a swelled head about it. You want an ideal corporate raider? Imagine one that could scale walls, jump fifty feet, early warning detection system, strong, agile... That's the direction we're going, we just can't go too quickly, otherwise..."
"Otherwise what?"
For a second Miguel smirked, then he turned on his heel to stroll around the observation deck. "Otherwise we'd lose you. So we're taking it nice and slow, so that you can follow along. Enjoy the book, it has lots of pictures~"
So stunned was Delgato at Miguel's audacity that his mouth was agape for a what felt like a good long minute before he charged after him. The priceless pictures were scattered to the floor where he dropped them. "Alright, you little-"
Whatever Delgato had been about to say was silenced by the arrival of Tyler Stone. Aaron Delgato may have been a joke to Miguel, but Tyler Stone on the other hand was far from that. It was Tyler Stone who had first plucked Miguel from the mediocre masses of children, first inducted Miguel into the company, and first brought him into the fold. And yet, Miguel hated him, feared him even. The man was not to be trifled with. In terms of appearance, his hair was blond, maybe dyed, though Miguel wasn't sure nor could he find it in himself to care. He was clean-cut in both facial features and clothing, about six-feet tall, with eyes like ice. Though past his prime, Tyler was still an attractive catch for the ladies and a ruthless contender for the CEO spot. Miguel avoided crossing him at all costs, mostly because he hated interacting with the man.
A serious smile split Stone's face before he spoke. The other scientists on site seemed to cower and grovel behind him, anxious to be of service. "Gentlemen, I couldn't help but overhear-"
"Mr. Stone! Not long enough, no see," snarked Miguel with sickeningly false warmness.
"-But Aaron here is correct. Alchemax wants results."
"Alchemax can't want anything, Ty. It's a corporation, a legal 'thing'. Only humans can have human desires," he droned dully. Messing with Delgato was a game, but dealing with Stone was usually a drag. "And humans have to be aware that reckless testing on human subjects would be-"
"Mike, if my father were alive today, you know what he'd say?"
"Help, help, get me out of this coffin?"
"He'd say caution is the first refuge of the coward." Suddenly chummy, Tyler threw an arm around Miguel's shoulders. Then, he prompted, "And he'd say that because...?"
"He loves the sound of his own voice?" Miguel was not in the mood for Tyler's bull, and he was barely tolerating the physical contact with him. It was uncomfortable, but Miguel welcomed it inasmuch as it added flame to the fire of his contempt.
"Because it would be true, which is why we've brought in Mr. Sims here."
Two guards in Public-Eye uniforms entered as if on cue. Between them was a man, a former inmate if his prison uniform was anything to go on. It was a two-piece, made of green and with a white bullseye emblazoned on the front and back, marking him as a societal outcast and target. On the left side of his chest was his tag with his identification number and name. His hair was carrot-coloured, slicked back and with a receding hairline. He certainly looked the part of an inmate, too, with muscles bulging through his clothing. Still, the man called Mr. Sims looked fretful more than anything, like a rabbit caught between a fence and a predator, ready to flee if his courage would allow him.
Miguel was furious. The day had finally come. Alchemax was strong-arming itself into his experiment. It was just like them to prey on the desperate in order to get a test subject, too. "Mind telling me what sort of warped joke this is?"
"No joke. Rather than face aging forty years as his court-assigned punishment, Mr. Sims has volunteered for the raider program." Tyler was as cheerful as a child on his birthday. To him this was just another game that he had to play and win in the course of his career.
"This is insane. We're not ready for humans yet. Mr. Sims, it's far too dangerous," Miguel started, gesturing with his hands imploringly. The last thing he wanted was this idiot's death on his conscience.
"Look, Doc- I want to do this. I really, really don't want them to make a doddering old man outta me. I gotta chance here to get my sentence commuted, so I'm taking it." Mr. Sims' voice was a perfect match to his burly exterior, gruff and deep. However, when he next spoke, it dropped into a sort of half-whisper that maybe betrayed some misgivings. "Just... do the best job ya can for me, okay?"
/
Everything was set up, and Sim's was properly situated, naked in the recently installed seat of the chamber. Yellow light from the top of the chamber bathed his body. Needles and tubing were applied to his neck. Airtight glass walls had descended around the rails of the observation deck for safety. The final checks had nearly been done, and now all that was left was to start.
Miguel had taken Mr. Sim's small request to heart, and was doing the best he could to delay the process as much as possible to look for any final fixes. He'd been forced to use the latest update of his general primate-spider program as his base, mixed with the human-spider simulation using his own DNA, and had scrambled for time to make sure that it would all mesh well with Mr. Sims' genome sequence.
"Nice how you stood up to Mr. Stone, Genius-Boy." Miguel couldn't tell if Aaron Delgato meant it or if he was just being snide as usual. Could've been sarcasm, too. His tone of voice when he said it was surprisingly neutral and hard to place.
Aloud, Miguel tried to justify it all to himself. "If I walk, Stone would go ahead without me. Then Mr. Sims' life is in your hands, Aaron. That puts his chances somewhere between zero and none. I'm his only shot." Taking a deep breath, Miguel spoke into the microphone that projected his voice from behind the glass to the speakers pointed inwards to the machine.
"Mr. Sims, can you hear me?"
"Y...Yeah."
Nodding to himself, Miguel started to explain. He figured it was only right, and in his experience it tended to make subjects more calm if they at least knew what they were getting into in technical terms, no matter how disturbing and unknown it may seem. "What we're trying to do is tinker with your genetic structure. We have a variety of different imprints we could be using. At the moment, I'm trying something simple involving spider DNA, that would ideally give you augmented strength."
"What about that full spider-imprint program you were talking big about?"
Miguel threw Delgato a dirty look over his shoulder as he loaded up the appropriate program, hands gliding over the controls. "One step at a time, Aaron. I don't want to try and totally rewrite the man's genetic makeup, especially when I'm under time constraints. We could end up with a hideous, mutated freak. Or even worse... you. Alright, gentlemen. Let's bring it to full power."
Engineers in the lower level of the observation deck began to feed in the energy necessary to run the machine's functions. Up top, Miguel activated the command to lower the "egg's" upper half, and drop it down to bask in the crackling energy the machine was projecting. This was in order to kick-start the changes. Inside, he knew that the program was being inserted in liquid form.
While Miguel waited, he continued to taunt Delgato. It was the best medicine for calming his nerves and passing the time. Eventually he was aware of Tyler Stone lurking somewhere behind them, also waiting patiently for the results.
"Like the design of the transformation chamber, Aaron? Got it off an old holo... 'The Fly'. You'd like it. It's about someone who turns into a totally disgusting creep. I bet you could relate to it."
"You can't fool me, O'Hara. You're keeping up the flip remarks, but you're terrified you're going to fall flat on your face this time."
"Well, ya got me, Aaron. Here I am, scared about a human life at risk. What could I have been thinking?" Miguel spat just as the timer ran out. "Okay, men. Open her up."
For a moment Miguel allowed his heart to hope. After all, his first, full-gene overwrite of Margarete had gone exceptionally well, and humans shared ninety-eight percent of their DNA with chimpanzees. Sims would probably be fine. When the glass panels had moved away, he personally strode down the steps to see his handiwork. The transformation chamber had returned to its regular position as though to meet him halfway. The egg split in half, and Miguel put his hands on the lid as it lifted upwards to hurry it along. He didn't want Mr. Sims in there a second longer, and he was sure the man felt the same.
"Mr. Sims? Still with us? Now you'll probably feel a fairly sharp tingling. That should pass in a couple of-AAACK!" Miguel screamed in pain and naked terror.
A large, powerful hand lashed out and closed around Miguel's neck. It closed swiftly, and it was all Miguel could do to breathe at first. Mr. Sims made a low, guttural sound, and in close quarters Miguel was able to see with startling detail what the machine had done to him. His body was swollen, twice its original size in mass, and through his horror Miguel was reminded of Conchata's rotund abdomen. Two pairs of vestigial limbs hung uselessly from his hips. The top half of his muscled body was covered in a thin layer of fine, near-transparent hairs. In tandem with the rest of him, his eyes were blown up, with large black pupils that nearly took up his entire sclera. On the outside, the eyes were rimmed red. Sims, or what had once been Sims, shook with seizures. The hand around Miguel's neck occasionally loosened or flexed as Sims experienced loss of muscle control, only to regain it later. This allowed Miguel to speak, however briefly.
"Get him-accchhh," he choked. Distantly he could hear panicked yells, but it was getting harder not to black out. Delgato was shocked and silent, and there was no help forthcoming from him.
"Get him off me!" Miguel finally managed to get out, heart nearly leaping out of his chest when Sims leaned over like a wounded animal, face-to-face with Miguel. The sight was scary, but also sad, somehow. Miguel would have to get through to either him or his coworkers and soon if he wanted to survive this.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Sims," gasped Miguel, moisture gathering in his eyes from either emotion or the strain of breathing. For once, he was sincere. "Mr. Sims, I'm sorry, I tried-! I-!" Another squeeze of the hand and Miguel's rare supply of sympathy waned. "Will someone shockin' shoot him with something?!" he demanded.
When the thing held Miguel, there was no hint of humanity left in his blacked-out eyes, nothing that Miguel could discern other than the suffering of an animal clinging to its last vestiges of intelligence. At the same time, though, he seemed to be pleading, begging for something... If it was the release of death, he found it soon afterwards.
"I- ...Sims?"
With a final sigh, the creature keeled over. Miguel managed to scurry back in time as the creature collapsed in on itself, melting, slowly forming a thick pile of body parts that became more and more of a liquid as minutes passed. Rubbing his aching throat, Miguel took two more steps back to avoid stepping in the now-puddle of ex-human waste. The smugness was practically pouring off of Delgato; Miguel could feel it in waves where he stood. Tyler said something, and even if Miguel caught the words he couldn't bring himself to give a damn.
"Hmm... dead. Still, he broke his restraints effortlessly. From an accelerated strength scenario, this was very positive. Very positive. I'm proud of you, Mike."
Miguel O'Hara's employee ID card clattered to the floor. Spooked, disgusted, and done, he turned on his heel and left like there was a fire at his heels. If he moved fast enough, left that place, maybe he could erase the memories from his psyche before they became permanent, convince himself it hadn't happened.
"I'm gone," he grunted, voice hoarse, Stone's protests following his retreating back.
End of Chapter
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