Castiel Status Update: 0029
The video began with MacLeod's voiceover, the footage showed a large white room with steel doors. "Castiel seems to be taking to the new drugs a lot better, he's been more docile and doesn't talk anymore. He doesn't like to communicate at all, but there's been a dramatic increase in his compatibility with his other splicing. As stated in a previous report he's been given preliminary sense and ability heightening. After giving Castiel our manufactured drug, a result of experiment subject 77, he has been significantly faster and his reflexes have improved dramatically."
One of the steel doors opened and Castiel wandered into the space, he approached the area where the camera was pointed and sniffed around. "As you can see he now senses that I am here, despite not being able to see me through the mirror." Cas placed a hand on the surface and stared forward, studying the face he saw in it.
"Castiel Novak remains the most resilient subject, though soon we'll be testing out experiment subject 84."
The video ended there and Sam didn't hesitate to click on the next one, the other two pulled up chairs and Cas sat at Dean's side happily patient but out of view of the screen.
"He didn't have wings in that last vid," Jet commented quietly.
Dean nodded absently, "Yeah, I noticed that,"
Testing: Subject 84
The same video footage started up, Castiel remained with his hand on a seemingly invisible wall and staring intently at nothing. "The purpose of the following events is to test out the changes made to subject 84. The subject has been spliced with the increased speed and mental altering of previous subject 52 and has been combined with the physical surgery to give 84 avian flight capabilities." The sound of papers rustling filled a 30-second pause before MacLeod spoke again. "Alright, open the door."
The second steel door swung open and Castiel turned around abruptly. An almost familiar figure stepped through the doorway, a second Castiel stood motionless at first.
Cas' immediate reaction was vicious, he screamed inhumanly, teeth bared and lowered stance. The new Cas screeched right back and lifted his arms, brown coloured feathers attached directly to his arms fanned out in a show of dominance.
"Hold up, pause that shit," Jet demanded after a few seconds of the two Cas' circling one another. Sam did as he was asked and looked at the other two with similarly wide eyes. Jet raised his hands to try and help him articulate his thoughts before he finally uttered "What the fuck?"
"There's two of him?" Sam looked at Cas who appeared immensely innocent.
"If you follow the numbers I'd say there were at least 84 of him." Jet muttered and Sam nudged him roughly for his sassiness. "What? I'm just sayin'."
Dean wasn't sure how he was taking the new information; the Cas sitting with him could very well be something else. What if he wasn't human at all? Was he just some kind of experiment in human skin? He turned toward Cas who looked up at him with a curious few blinks. Dean could still see Cas' hesitation the first time they met, he could hear the little sounds and, though he'd been paranoid about it, he remembered Cas hadn't shown any real aggression.
He'd never met the real Castiel Novak, he didn't have any way of knowing at that moment if the one beside him was the real thing, but did it matter? He'd grown attached to Cas, he cared about Cas an intense amount for how long he'd known him; would finding out that his Castiel wasn't human change anything?
"Keep playing it," Dean finally said, "I gotta see the end of this."
Subject 84 flapped his arms and ran at Castiel. Just before reaching, however, he jumped and avoided Cas' swiping arms. 84 leapt off the wall and landed several feet away from Cas, he hissed and crawled around in a circle, Cas mimicking the behaviour cautiously.
"So far it's an interesting match up," MacLeod mused, "Castiel usually takes his opponents down by this time, it seems subject 84 has a slight advantage with those wings."
As he spoke the two lunged at one another and collided in a noisy, ferocious grapple. Castiel wrapped his legs around the struggling clone and 84 realized immediately that it was in a disadvantaged position. It tried to fly away but Castiel wasn't so easy to escape. It took a few seconds of wrestling before 84 beat him off just enough to try an escape. Cas caught hold of his leg and yanked him back, crawling up 84's body as he struggled. Castiel snapped down onto his clone's neck and after a moment of thrashing, blood pooled around them staining the floor.
"Hmm," MacLeod's humming was an odd addition to the visuals of one man shaking around the body of another by the neck like a dog with a new chew toy. "Castiel still appears to have left over splicing from previous experiment 63, since their fight last week he's been killing his opponents by tearing their throats with his teeth. I'm beginning to think that he's somehow absorbing parts of the others' splicing-"
A loud thud startled MacLeod and shook the camera after Castiel hurled his clone's body against the one-way mirror. Blood was splattered over the surface, leaking from Cas' mouth and covering his torso. He snarled and screeched at the glass before grabbing the body and throwing it again.
"Is he reacting to his reflection?" MacLeod questioned, unsure of what Cas was up to as the experiment repeated beat on the glass. Castiel didn't stare directly ahead as if looking at himself though; he was looking toward MacLeod with each swing. "Subdue the subject, please." MacLeod stated before the camera shut off and ended the video.
"I have so many questions," Jet muttered without changing his expression or tone.
Dean ran his hand through his hair and looked at Cas again, there were a few answers but each answer gave another bundle of questions. How many clones had been made? How much of the experimentation was done directly to Cas and how much had he learned? What were the alterations made to Cas, how could he be cloned in the first place, but mostly what was the drug they'd been giving him? Of course there must've been many, but there was a manufactured one. What did it do to Cas? Was it the reason he couldn't talk anymore?
"Dean?" Sam's voice broke him out of his distracted state and he looked up.
"Hm?"
"I asked if you wanted to see another one."
Dean nodded, "Yeah, yeah let's do it." He felt a little odd, he'd seen many movies with all kinds of scenes but somehow it was different when he knew it was real. There were plenty of thrillers and horror movies with the psychiatric theme, Dean never felt so strange when watching those. He could enjoy it because it was fake, no one was really getting hurt but now he was watching real documents about Castiel, someone he'd met.
Sam picked another random video, none of them quite ready for a chronological order viewing.
Testing: Castiel Aviation Splice
The video started with the same empty room and MacLeod sighing heavily. He really sounded his age that time. "So," he started with another pause and a heavy breath, "God I'm tired. Okay," he then turned the camera around and showed himself, his desk and writing space beyond the one-way mirror. He rubbed his eyes and dragged his hand down his face, "Ever since we prepared Castiel's cells for cloning something's been strange. Long exposure to his presence wasn't much of an issue at first but over the years he's been getting into our heads. With each new subject that he absorbs it gets worse, he's been appearing in my dreams and turns them into nightmares." Another tired sigh and pause as MacLeod looked toward the testing room.
"To be honest I think I need a break from him, I don't know if it's guilt that brings him to my dreams or what, but I really need something completely different. I think I'll spend this summer in town, see if I can recover from this. We'll take this time to see how he does without tests for a short time, just study his long-term behaviour. Until then, of course, today is still another test so let's see…" he rummaged through his papers, looking at them through small reading glasses and squinted eyes. "Right, Castiel underwent a new physical surgery, he was given human-sized wings. They should be more than strong enough to support his weight, he's been recovering from the surgery for a few days and we'll see how he's doing."
The camera shifted back to the room and an order was given to open the door. Castiel shuffled out, slightly off balance and anxious he looked around the room. It was clear he understood the meaning of the room; he understood that he often saw an opponent appear and that was why he was so nervous. He wasn't in fighting condition; he was still in pain and he didn't want to do any kind of testing.
Castiel moved to a corner and perched there, his stance showed he was still ready to leap into action if need be but it wasn't the first thought. He looked anxiously toward the mirror, eyes piercing and glowing brightly.
"Castiel is nervous," MacLeod mumbled, "He's got his back against a wall for protection, his eyes are glowing pretty hard too…" the scribbling of notes filled the audio. "Alright, well so far he's not used to them. He's off balance but he's moving, that's a good sign. Other subjects didn't start doing anything for almost a week. I suspect he'll be using them very shortly." He clicked on the speaker and ordered they corral Castiel back into his habitat before the video ended.
Sam sat with pursed lips, as quiet as the other two as they all contemplated the last vid. "Okay, so Cas was starting to invade dreams already back then, it's not just us."
"I wonder if Cas has control over what we see?" Dean furrowed his brow, "I mean, we're all seeing the same thing. Did MacLeod see it too? Did he watch the first experiment and hear Cas' thoughts?"
"If he did it didn't stop him from continuing," Jet sneered, "This video was right before last year's summer break. He was going through Cas' nightmares for a while."
Sam stared thoughtfully at the screen before he looked at the other two, "But he said Cas came to him in his dreams, it doesn't sound like what we went through. We became Cas, it's different."
"So maybe Cas just wanted us to see what he saw?"
"Unless he can't control it," Sam pointed out, "then his will, his wish for us to understand him, is what's pushing it on us now. I got a feeling that MacLeod's nightmares were more about Castiel coming to get him."
Jet scoffed softly, "As they should've been."
"So Cas wants to talk to us," Dean smiled and put his hand on Cas' shoulder, "I can't wait until he does, but for now all we got are these videos."
"One more," Jet stated, "Just one more and I'm done down here for the fuckin' day."
"Fair enough," Sam agreed and found another one.
It immediately opened with a moving shot, the cameraman walked down the halls through the lab and into the lower levels where the experiments were kept. Immediately there were subjects jumping against their cages and shrieking at the passerby. Some of them were enormous and more animal than anything else, others were quiet and inquisitive. The camera moved past them all and down again, following the metal path to a dome with the name Castiel written across the door.
The dome appeared empty aside from scattered feathers and a pair of legs barely sticking out of a dugout. The camera zoomed in a little but ultimately passed by. They walked to a darkened doorway that was difficult to see just past the dome. The door opened to another set of stairs, lit by fluorescent lights all the way down to yet another heavy door. This one had several locks and as it opened it was clear it was heavy. The camera passed through, closed the door and switched on the lights.
Several familiar gurgles and growls rolled through the space as dozens of eyes adjusted to the lights. There were many visible cages all with a similarly pale individual, a dark mop of hair and blue eyes gazing up at the newcomer. Each one started to become aggressive as they realized what they could see. They all reacted strongly to seeing one another; some descended into madness instantly and became beasts of a different kind. Others became defensive but not quiet as violent, they hissed and spat but mostly stayed in their own space.
Cages started to rattle and screaming echoed throughout the facility. The cameraman hummed to himself, it was MacLeod again, and he walked over to a circuit panel across the room. "This room has failed subjects," he explained out loud, probably a habit after so many years of documenting himself. "They were more extras, didn't even get numbers. Something went wrong in the cloning process, they didn't retain enough of Castiel's original DNA to make them useful so we tested other ideas on them." As he talked he flipped a few switches and pressed a button.
"They're resilient though, we haven't fed them in ages and they're still functioning. I've decided that I want to know which of them is the strongest, we've reinforced this area and cut it off from everything else." He walked back to the door and passed through it again, closing it and locking it up entirely. "I set the timer and in about five minutes all the doors will open at once, we'll see who's standing at the end of it all. But I'll check on it later, I've got to get back to town, there's a gorgeous mocha boy waiting to work for me."
"Ew." All three uttered as the video clicked off.
"I'm out," Jet threw up his hands and headed for the stairs.
"Didn't you see that level full of Castiels?" Sam asked with wide eyes, Dean knew that look.
"We're not going to see if they're still there, Sammy."
"But what if they are?"
"Cas'll go ape-shit and rip their throats out, that's what." Dean grabbed Sam's arm and dragged him after Jet, "C'mon, that's enough crazy for one day. Internet's up, let's watch a movie or something."
Sam sighed but followed his brother's direction. All three of them felt a little too saturated in intensity, a lot of information was opened to them at once and they had no idea how to process it. The odds of any of them paying attention to a movie were slim to none.
Castiel leaned up toward the computer and looked around for what made those sounds, chirping cautiously as he found nothing. "Deeeeeeeeee," he droned and Dean looked back to see him perched by the computer.
"Come on Cas," he nodded toward the door as he let Sam walk ahead.
Cas huffed and looked back at the equipment.
"No one's there, buddy. Old dude is dead and you're the only Castiel in the area." He still wasn't sure how to stomach that whole cloning thing but he said it anyway. It was a weird mix of excitement for science fiction and disturbance over what happened to make it real.
As he stood thinking about it Castiel had approached him again, a light brush of his wing and a purr brought Dean back around. He smiled as Cas hesitantly tried to take his hand, as if uncertain of whether or not it was allowed. Dean held tight and led Castiel out of the basement again.
Author's Note:
Yo what up? Sorry it took me so long, I took a break this weekend. I also want to do an advent christmas thingy so I started one. It'll be made up of short stories and I don't think it'll take up much time, but I've been wrong before. So I hope it doesn't interfere with this one, but once in a while it's nice to switch back and forth. I hope you guys can forgive me lol
Otherwise I want to tell you how thankful I am for so much support. You guys are amazing and I feel very strongly about this fic so far because of you. I feel like it's interesting enough to keep going, even if I'm no science major. So thanks again for reading my work, I'm so flattered you'd pick me among all the authors out there :)