2: Monster Warehouse
The holding area was a much sparser place than the laboratory it had been "born" in. Heavy benches lined two of the walls—which were solid concrete and windowless. The only other thing inside was a group of other Tyrants; the bioweapon paused upon entering to study them.
Each was roughly as large as itself, though there was a lot of variance in exact height, width, and build. These Tyrants, however, had Limiter gear in a shade of dark army green, as well as a few which had their faces obscured by a loose, bag-like covering. Two of them turned slightly from where they were perched stiffly on the benches to watch the newcomer; T-00 locked eyes with them each in turn, though it was unclear even to itself how aware they were of their shared origin judging by the glassed-over, rheumy gray of their pupilless eyes. The thought crossed its mind that it may look the same. Silently mulling this over, the creature moved over into one of the open bench spaces to join its own kind.
Several hours later, the heavy steel of the door slammed open again and two men stood in the entry. One was in body armor and had a hefty automatic weapon slung across his back, which the other was suited and had his eyes obscured by shades. This second man scanned over the several dozen Tyrants all turning towards the intrusion.
"Hm." The man in the suit's attention hovered over T-00 as it stared expectantly back. "That's the new one?"
"Yessir," the armed man nodded. The suit seemed to frown slightly, then looked further over the row of B.O.W.s before pointing sharply towards two of them.
"T-020 and T-071. Get up and come with us. You're going into combat testing."
The two rose with creaks of leather and clinks of metal, the older of the two (the one with the lower-numbered designation, with fewer prefix zeros) tromping ahead. Hours passed in their absence; the Tyrants resumed their stationary habits, each keeping to themselves despite the sheer numbers of them packed like sardines into the room. The one directly to T-00's right spent ninety percent of its time apparently dozing off, and the one to its left seemed more… vocal. It was one of the few with a facial covering, and unlike any of the others it wheezed with each inhale and exhale and every so often it disturbed the peace of the others with a string of unintelligible grumbling under its very loud breath. There were words in there… or halves of words, but T-00 was unfamiliar with these fragments and could not decipher anything of it.
After what must have been almost half a day, the door opened again and Tyrant designated T-071 was ushered back in. T-020 would never reappear—at least not as long as the black-clad bioweapon was kept in this room. Even more hours later the door creaked open and a pair of extremely nerve-riddled lab techs snuck in, hauling an unusual wheeled contraption. This arrival stirred all the other Tyrants, drawing their interest faster than anything else had. The newcomer to their ranks watched with mounting curiosity as they stood and began to crowd towards the terrified humans. The lab techs hastily unlocked the top latch on the metallic box and began to pull free length of tough plastic tubing. The tubes were all anchored in place at the same point of origin in a deeper layer of this box, and their outer ends narrowed considerably into a rigid, funnel-like device. Tyrants began to lay claim to tubes, grabbing them out of the flinching hands offering them up.
"Is that all?"
"No, hold on—" One of the techs pointed directly at the puzzled bioweapon just standing to approach, "—there's the new one."
"Well, come on then," the other human's tone flipped from cowardice to annoyed overconfidence in a split second as he held up the final tube, "Nutrient fluid. Hurry up, we don't have all night."
T-00 humored the request, clearing the space at a powerwalk and looming nearly two feet taller than him, one immense palm out to take the strange tube. The tech choked back whatever else he was going to say and stuffed it into the B.O.W.'s grip. The creature stepped back, as the others had, and peered over to its neighbors for a clue about the thing's purpose. The loud, wheezy Tyrant had jammed the funnel end under the edge of its facial covering, from the sounds of it gripping the tube in its bared teeth and sucking noisily on it. The suction was drawing a cloudy, greenish liquid through its length. "Nutrient fluid" the tech had said. Did it… need this? Not entirely convinced, the new Tyrant nonetheless copied the others and bit down on the funnel, siphoning the stuff with force and bracing for this to be another unpleasant occurrence. To its relief, when the substance flooded its mouth and throat it was mild, lukewarm, and dredged up another sense. Almost olfactory? It did not know what this was, only that it could detect the nutrient fluid was full of a cocktail of mineral salts, amino acids, and saccharides. Good things—necessary things. Soon it fell in with the others at guzzling the stuff until the volume inside the steel cart ran dry and the two techs ordered them to stop. They packed the tubes away in a rush and escaped the room as quickly as they'd entered, leaving the bizarre warehouse packed with satiated bioweapons, keeping to their rows and (for the moment) deceptively docile.