Vital Communication Chapter 13
DISCLAIMER AND WARNINGS: Ok, this is where stuff gets real, and dark, VERY DARK. Proceed into this and the rest of the next 4 chapters CAREFULLY, please. I have in this one, graphic depictions of torture, and betrayal (of trust, and love), medical devices in the commitment of abuse, abuse in general, gore and vivisection. I'll warn in specific instances of truly nasty stuff, but take it as given that the whole chapter should be viewed very carefully.
And we begin...
Bruce regained consciousness, to find himself naked, chained to a metal chair that was bolted to a metal grate set in a concrete floor. He rolled his head, trying to loosen his neck muscles, while his mind cleared from the drug.
'Hulk?' he pressed into the mindscape, hoping to rouse his other self. Eerily, there was no response. "Great", Bruce muttered.
A door opened on a wall some twenty feet away, and Bruce saw Betty Ross sauntering towards him. He knew he should be angry with her, but his older regard, his love, overrode that.
"Hello Bruce," she fairly purred, approaching him.
"Betty," he replied neutrally. She laughed and touched his face, in a loving manner.
"I bet you are confused by my actions, aren't you? Well, Daddy was tired of disobedience, so, he fixed that," the smile on her face chilled Bruce to the bone. This was not the Betty Ross he knew.
"What did the General do?", he carefully asked.
"Oh, just had a special treatment for me. These lovely little pills that took away all my insecurities and doubts," her hands were expressive, as she pulled away from him, lightly scratching his cheeks as she did so.
"Well, I hope to have the opportunity to tell him how I feel about that," Bruce said.
Betty's eyes went dark with anger as she snapped, "You'll have plenty of time to reminiscence with Daddy. But first," she clapped her hands twice, and a man in a lab coat came in the room, wheeling in a long table with several devices on it. Bruce recognized an electro-stimulus machine, a box of acupuncture needles, a case that resembled that which held chef's knives, a clear box of bamboo slivers, and other devices he could not name. On a small shelf below the top, he saw a box of nitrile gloves, and a couple bottles of isopropyl alcohol, and one of hydrogen peroxide; there was also a small stack of cotton gauze squares next to the bottles.
"Thank you, Mr. Leeds. You may prep his body for the electro-stim, while I explain what will happen," she told the lab coated man. He nodded and quietly went to work. He pulled on a pair of gloves, grabbed the gauze and a bottle of alcohol, then began to wipe down Bruce's body. When that was done, Mr. Leeds began attaching electrodes to Bruce's chest. This was when Bruce realized he'd been shaved at some point while unconscious – the electrodes having no issues sticking, where they normally would in the previously thick thatch of chest hair he normally sported.
"Now then, this first round will be rather simple Bruce. I'm going to test the levels of TENS against your endorphin levels. We might use the acupuncture needles as assists, to see if the monster responds. Everything will be recorded. We'll also be taking samples of various fluids as we go, so needles and the like. You aren't still phobic, are you?" Bruce actually flinched to hear Betty call the Hulk a monster. She'd been the first to acknowledge that he was more than that, after his creation.
"And please don't throw our tests off with reactions like that, Bruce," she chides, "We'd just have to start all over again." And Betty pouted. The effect was ruined by the frank, evil look in her dark eyes.
The other man finished his task, and stepped back to wait for his next command. If he wasn't breathing, Bruce would have sworn the man was only an automaton. Betty pulled on a pair of the nitrile gloves and cracked the seal on the box of needles. Turning to Bruce, she held the leads to the TENS unit in one hand.
"We'll start the current off low, and increase it by fives. Where necessary, we'll change to the needles," she told Leeds. He grabbed a clipboard from the shelf on the cart to keep notes on.
"Okay Bruce, now remember, this is for science," she giggled, turning on the TENS unit. The first 5 levels were merely a soft, growing buzz in Bruce's muscles. The unit performed as designed. In another setting, he'd find it quite relaxing. Here, well, he'd rather be elsewhere.
After about an hour, Betty stopped, and stepped away. "We'll give you a little break, all right? I need to talk to Daddy," Betty told her ex, stepping away from her work. She and Leeds left him alone for a long while. After that break, Betty came back, and spent time inserting the acupuncture needles along various meridians in Bruce's body until his body fairly bristled with the fine gauge, steel needles.
"There. Now, we'll just attach a few of these leads to the needles, and record some new information," she gently tells him, as if he was seeing her for therapy, instead of being her prisoner in some strange twilight zone.
As she left him be again, he took the chance to drop fully into the mindscape.
"Hulk? C'mon man, I know this isn't usual, but this isn't at all normal for us. Not since we started out," Bruce called out. The door to the house in the mindscape creaked, and Bruce turned. He saw the electric green eyes peering out of the shadows.
"What's wrong, Hulk?" he asked, slowly approaching the house.
"Betty is wrong. Wants to hurt us," Hulk responded, his voice so soft, and full of hurt; it reminded Bruce of when he was very young, and trying to figure out why his own Daddy was trying to hurt him.
"I know buddy. I don't know why or how. It's only going to get worse the longer we're here, you understand that right?", Bruce explained. He wasn't sure Hulk would help, if Betty was involved in this. Truly Ross had learned something in all their encounters.
Hulk nodded, completely dejected. "Go now?" he asked.
"I..." Bruce didn't finish. His consciousness was ripped from the mindscape, something they'd been unaware could happen. Hulk roared, surprised as the image of Banner flickered out of existence before him.
Bruce came back to himself, as Leeds backhanded him, again. His face felt pretty bruised, so he was certain the tech had struck him a few times to his attention.
"Dr. Ross has been delayed. I will continue the experiment until she returns, or my orders are countermanded. We are raising the current to half again as high as it was last. And making things more interesting by applying the electrodes directly to the muscle fibers. You'll forgive me for not having a proper medical degree, won't you?" And Leeds grabs up the knife case to unveil a set of butchering tools the likes of which Bruce hasn't seen outside the meat market in Chelsea.
**GRAPHIC CONTENT AHEAD** for blood, gore, vivisection
Leeds took out the long, thin skinning blade and the honing steel. He checked on the edge unnecessarily before putting the steel away. Walking toward Bruce, a sinister light gleamed in the man's otherwise dull, hazel eyes that made Bruce's heart stutter a bit in fear.
"Of course, we are fresh out of lidocaine or other locals, this will be quite painful, I hope," and he grins in a dark manner.
He wields the knife as though he's had practice behind a counter, deft cuts along the biceps and deltoids of Bruce's arms that quickly leak vital red liquid that stains the air with the tang of iron. Once the cuts are made, Leeds puts the knife aside and reaches for more electrodes and leads. He slowly, and yes, painfully inserts them into the cuts he made, creating pockets out of the fibers of muscle in Bruce's arms to insert the electrodes.
The lead wires dangled from the cuts like marionette lines, before Leeds connected them to the TENS unit. Once that was done, he turned the machine on, and turned the current up. Bruce hissed from the jolt he got as the machine kicked on, but otherwise did not react. Leeds frowned.
"This just won't do. Be still, I will return momentarily," he snapped, leaving the machine on, and leaving Bruce alone.
Not too much time passes, and Leeds returns. Bruce has come to ignore the buzzing sensation skating across his body from the TENS. Leeds has a new device in his hands, it's not something Bruce recognizes.
"This might work better. These therapies are supposed to be beneficial, not harmful. We'll have to make it up as we go along, I suppose," the man says, turning off and disconnecting the TENS unit. He hooks up the new device and turns it on. Fiddling with the controls, he ratchets up the volts on it to the highest possible setting. This new device causes actual pain along Bruce's arms, contracting the muscles, and forcing the blood to flow faster, bathing the chair beneath him in red.
Leeds ended up pulling many of the needles out of Bruce's skin, the pinpricks sluggishly bleeding in comparison to the rents in his upper arms. Eventually, the man wises up, and turns off the new unit to mop up the small rivers of blood. But the cuts are left open to the air.
"Hm, let's see, what else would Dr. Ross like us to try? Well, we do need to collect samples of various fluids, as she requested," and he looked for the collection vials and syringes necessary for that task. They weren't on the cart, so he had to go find where they'd been left.
Betty eventually returned. "Well, that was unfortunate. Leeds took initiative he did not have, Bruce. I'm sorry," she giggled insanely. "But what's done is done, I'm afraid. Let's take a look at the experiment, shall we?" She approaches him slumped over in the chair and deftly runs her gloved hands over the cuts in his arms, probing the injuries. Each touch is lover-soft, as if she still cared, somehow. Bruce almost dreamed that was true, but the horrific reality was the only thing beating on his senses at that moment. At each cut though, she hesitates, then her fingers dip into the openings, testing the depth and width of the incisions. Bruce grunts at the new waves of pain.
"Hm, I think I can work with this. Let's try...ah ha!" and Betty turns to the cart and picks up the clear container of bamboo. Bruce tries to push down the pain, to focus on what's in front of him. Just as she opens the container though, Leeds comes back in, carrying a series of syringes on a shiny metal tray.
"Dr. Ross, you have forgotten these," he said, proffering the tray of drug filled syringes.
"Ah yes, the sedative. Have to record the levels necessary to keep the monster down, now don't we?" she said, picking up a single syringe. She injected it into Bruce's neck, drawing a hiss of pain from the physicist. The newly emptied syringe is discarded through the metal grate and Betty goes back to the bamboo. The container holds slivered pieces, cut in such a way as to be easily picked up, or modified in some extra fashion. This Betty does, taking pieces out one by one, and roughing them up with a small steel brush heretofore ignored on the cart, to make the short, inside fibers bristle, before inserting those pieces individually into the cuts along Bruce's arms. She made other pieces much smaller, and went for the traditional slivers under his finger and toenails approach. The bamboo succeeded in wrenching actual pitched cries from Bruce.
The sound only made Betty smile. The Hulk did not come.
After she placed the last bit of bamboo, she reached for and opened the knife case to take out the honing steel again to work over the skinning blade once more. Neither she, nor Leeds had bothered to clean the thing after the first time.
Bruce eyed the blade warily. It gleamed in the harsh light of the halogens of the room as Betty honed the edge against the tube of steel in her left hand. It took her 10 minutes before she was completely satisfied with the edge. Then she put the steel away and advanced on Bruce's manacled form.
"I know Daddy tried this experiment before Bruce, but we're going to do it slightly differently this time," she told him, caressing his cheek softly with the flat of the blade.
***EXTRA GORE WARNING***
He had nothing to say, knowing it would make no difference to the outcome of the endeavor. She smiled, and turned the blade edge on into Bruce's skin, high on his cheek bone. The degloving experiments had never involved his face. This would be interesting.
The cut was quick, and initially not deep, just enough to pull off the top layer of skin.
"Well, the gamma overload didn't affect the color of your blood any," Betty said, reaching out ever gentle fingers and tugging on the newly made flap, drawing it down past the slits and tearing another inch into the flesh. Bruce took to breathing deeply so he didn't flinch. His hands closed spasmodically into fists as his sides at the pain.
Still the Hulk did not come.
Betty carved strips down Bruce's face, across his shoulders; avoiding the previous wounds, and down his arms. Rivulets of blood joined the earlier rivers and dripped down his wrists and fingers. He grunted and groaned, biting clean through his tongue in an effort to stay silent in the face of this new torture. He clenched his jaw against the rising tide of pain as Betty moved to peel strips off his legs and feet.
Still the Hulk did not come.
After ten minutes of this, Betty sighed and stepped back, disappointed. "This will never do. Daddy will have to let me step things up. What do you say to that Bruce?", she said, letting him sit there, strips of flesh hanging like strings of ribbon. She put the filthy knife back on the work table, stripped off the gloves and walked out of the room.
Bruce shuddered and moaned, falling into shock. Still, the Hulk did not come.
***END GORE WARNING***
He lost track of time then, drifting in and out of consciousness as more was done to him. None of it was enough to bring on an appearance of the Hulk, not with the weird sedative they injected him with every other hour, and it only confused his tormentors. They wanted the Hulk to make an appearance, or try to at least.
During one moment of lucidity, he thought he heard Betty discuss with Leeds meat hooks and how much chain would be needed. He faded back into the mindspace shortly after, looking for all the world like he was unconscious.
He appeared on the mindscape, and stumbled to the firepit. He couldn't manage the tree stump, just collapsed onto the forest floor.
"Banner?", Hulk asked, from the safety of the house. If he'd been more aware, he might have noticed it looked shrunken in on itself.
"I'm here, barely," Bruce panted, "Not for much longer though."
The next thing Bruce was conscious of fighting, and the vaguely familiar sound of the repulsors in the armor. He caught a feminine scream, and then...
"We've got eyes on Banner!" a voice shouted. It might have been Hawkeye.
Bruce thought his mind might be playing tricks on him, as he thought Tony was now in the room with him.
"Oh God, Bruce. I'm here. You need to let the Hulk out."
And Bruce remembered nothing else.