==Content Warning==
Contains Mild Gore, Upsetting Imagery, and Mild Peril
(Read Author's Notes After Reading)
-November 13th, 1996-
Cattle Prods speared in between the bars. Flashes of electrical charges zapped out. Screams and bellows shrieked out in a chaotic frenzy.
"WHERE ARE THE TRANQ GUNS!?"
"Shit! Watch the claws! WATCH THE CLAWS!"
"How the fuck is it still awake?!"
"There's enough narcotics in it to drop an elephant!"
"GET BACK! GET BACK!" Two of the guards stumbled back - just in time to avoid a set of red claws snatching through the bars that could slice their flesh to ribbons - they tripped and fell over one another.
On the opposite side, another guard writhed on the floor - blood spilled from his mouth, the left side of his face a sickening deep purple, his mouth now forced permanently open "He bwoke muh phucking jaw!"
"DON'T LET IT TOUCH THE BARS! JESUS, IT'S BREAKING THROUGH!"
The right side of the industrial cage had had its three inch thick steel bars bent and pulled apart like cheap plastic - Something meant to contain poached Bengal Tigers was about as useful as a dog kennel.
More zaps of electricity flashed out. Every stab into the cage to stun the creature ran the risk of it grabbing the wielder's arm, yanking them in to smash their faces against the bars and leave them as unconscious as the three prone guards on the concrete floor - all with broken, bleeding noses.
"God Dammit! Just shoot it! SHOOT IT!"
"NO DON'T! OR WE'RE ALL DEAD!"
Three stun batons speared into the creatures chest as it managed to force its shoulder through the ever growing gap it made, singed flesh smoked out, it let loose a piercing shriek and scrambled back into the cage - but not without raking its claws over two of the guards chest and making warm blood spill out in streams.
The red creature stumbled back. It's long ivory hair flew back with a snap. His taloned feet rooted himself back into place. His beak let loose a terrifying roar, he charged forward and slammed his shoulder back against the bar with enough force to make the whole thing shake.
It's eyes burned an unholy white with fanatic hatred - Brooklyn bellowed out "I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
-November 13th, 1996-
-6 hours earlier-
Brooklyn had never broken free of Stone Sleep in anything other than refreshed. But with so many narcotics in him, he wasn't even conscious when he turned to stone. Even now he still felt the aftereffects of the drugs running through him.
He groaned with a pounding head, still trying to come awake. He was chained to a modified hand truck dolly, no not chained, practically welded onto it. Nearly a dozen chains were lashed over him from his ankles all the way up to his neck; his forehead was pinned into place with a leather headband bolted to the back. His beak had been tied shut with a ratchet strap. He was so thirsty, he could be convinced to kill a man in exchange for a sip of water.
His head pounded so heavily that he prayed to whatever god could hear him that he was still in his stone sleep, just having another nightmare. None of this felt real. His vision was blurry. He was being wheeled down the hallway of an – he had no idea. His attempts to get his bearings were useless. He was inside a dark, concrete hallway with the buzz of old ceiling light strips droning out a sickly yellow. Maybe a warehouse? No, this was way too long of a hallway to be wasting space in a storage facility. An abandoned prison? Maybe a hospital? Could be a subway maintenance shaft for all he knew.
He was wheeled silently around a corner – a service elevator at the end. Instantly, his stomach dropped. He didn't know what it was, but his gut gave him every command to run for his life. Right now.
Run.
It was the feeling he got when coming across a rabid wolf's den back home in Scotland – or going down a dark alleyway, just dialed to a million now. His muffled barks and furious thrashings did nothing against his bindings. Whomever was pushing him didn't slow.
Blood.
Thin trails of blood were now coming into view on the floor, a serpentine, congruent pattern of wheel marks (with the same dimensions as the dolly he was one). They were all slithering to the elevator, the trail thickening and becoming more putrid as he was brought closer. He could make out the blood marks of someone's handprint marking the rusted frame of the elevator as the human pressed the call button.
Brooklyn thrashed as much as his drugged body could, the cacophony of unmaintained elevator lift gears shrieking out heralding the coming elevator. He tried to form words, but even if he could gurgle, his jaw wasn't strong enough to snap open the band welding his beak shut. The half-dead chime of the elevator's arrival creaked out, the old metal door squeaked open.
Death.
The smell of iron and bile. The suffocating level of bleach and disinfectant couldn't disguise the fact the lift reeked of death and body parts as he was wheeled in. The doors behind him hissed shut, sealing him inside his tomb – that now descended. The drop in the stomach told him they were going deeper underground. Much deeper. Bearings or not, the humidity, the zero windows, the reinforced pipping, they were already under the earth... and now he was pulling dragged down deeper into the concrete tomb. And further... and further... and even further. The elevator slowed to a stop, then hissed open.
Brooklyn's blood ran cold.
They groaned. They convulsed. They screamed. They laid still.
Some were unresponsive and drooling yellow and brown spit onto themselves. Some screamed in schizophrenic episodes, tugging so hard at their leather restraints that they broke their wrists or rubbed their skin so much it now dribbled blood. Some had defecated what looked like days ago and hadn't had it cleaned up. All their naked bodies were all bloated and stapled in every manner of place.
Brooklyn thrashed in horror "MMPHF! MPPHF! MMM! MMMMM!" The 'patients' on the tables not seeming the least bit interested in seeing a living gargoyle brought in. The discord of agony and cries were barely absorbed by the thick walls. The wheels squeaked through the thin layer of blood. The hum of generators kept what little lighting existed on. Body bags on top of wheeled hospital beds were unceremoniously stacked upon each other against the wall. The stench, Dear God, the fucking stench.
"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The blood curdling shriek of what sounded like a five-year-old being ripped in half pierced through the groans of the damned.
Brooklyn's eyes zeroed in on the blood-soaked divider curtain across the room, the blinding light of a surgical light casting the shadows of a few 'doctors' on it. He squirmed and kicked his drugged legs, demanding they move. He-
"Holy shit… they weren't lying!"
Brooklyn snapped his eyes back forward as a gas-masked clad guard shouldered his rifle and stepped aside. He pulled back the curtain to let his escort pass through. Even more bodies.
They didn't thrash, they didn't groan. They didn't seem very much alive either. They were all horrifically malnourished to the point of their legs and arms had bones visible: but once again, their stomachs were horribly over bloated and... pulsating? A thousand IV's and chords were stuck into them. Viscera and blood on the floor were hosed down by a medical hand to a drain in the middle of the wing. It didn't matter, the red stain was permanent.
"Thank Christ..."
Another armed guard, mask and all, pulled back on another blood-soaked curtain to let Brooklyn and his procession continue.
There was no end. More people. More bodies. More medical equipment. More glass cabinets full of drugs. The stray medical personnel could be seen in every 'wing' of a dozen or more patients. Syringes, scalpels, tweezers, scissors. Security cameras above blinked red lights. He locked eyes with a human who was barely conscious, looking up at him with a haggard plea "...K... Kill me..."
There had to be a hundred people in this place, maybe more. Some cries were muddled, some cries were clear. Some screams were silent, some screams were ear piercing. It was a cacophonic orchestra in hell. The stench, th- Brooklyn gagged and the nausea bubbled to the surface. His gag reflex wanted him to vomit what his last meal was, a damn energy bar before he went out on the stakeout with Goliath, but there was nothing left in his stomach to puke out. His sealed shut beak made what little bile there was to spew out his nostrils and dribble out the corner of his lips. He swallowed it back down, what he could at least.
He tried to focus on the burning sting of stomach acid boiling in his throat, anything else to think about, ANYTHING. But something caught his eye. Then his red face turned pale. Children. Ten years old, maybe eight – they were on operating tables too.
Brooklyn was brought through another set of curtains; he lost sight of them.
They were leaving the massive room that was housing all the operating tables. He was now being navigated down another dark hallway, WHERE WERE THEY TAKING HIM!?
"Authorized Personnel Only" read the sign over the double doors, the end of the road. Piping on the left side of the wall. A closet door on the right reading "Painkillers -" on it... with an arrow pointing back the way he came. The doors opened towards him on their own.
It was a morgue, the remnants of one. Individual rooms for dissection and surgery were bogged down with the suffocating scent of bleach and cleaners. He had less than a split second to see into one out of the corner of his eye, boxers of coolers and barrels were stuffed to the ceiling in one. The red lights from every room beckoned like the gates of hell - and one called him in. The wheels of the dolly squeaked as they turned into the final room on the right.
Brooklyn's skin crawled.
The only working light overhead showcased the two cement mortuary tables - one stained red, the other completely soaked in blood to the point it caked a full inch high. Black trashbags were piled into one corner and pooling red.
"Ah. I never thought I'd see the day." a grizzled jeer rejoiced. Waiting for him inside was a human he could only describe as a sickly ghoul. Skinny as a skeleton and wrapped in flesh as sickly pale as one too. His face and head were devoid of all hair, eyebrows included. His sickly yellow lips were pinned up in a demonic grin "Please please, right in here. Still coming off the Propofol, is he?" he said as he placed down his clipboard and flapped aside his labcoat.
"We pumped this guy with FIVE doses, Dr. Calvert. Metabolism must burn fast, cause he's still pretty lively."
The sound of feet scampering into the room clicked an echo against the steel walls "Oh ho ho! You finally got one and didn't even think to tell me?" a feminine, raspy voice cheered. Brooklyn tried to turn his head to see the face from whence the voice came, but he could move nothing but his eyes. He flinched when he glanced back to the first one before him.
The ghoulish 'doctor' was on Brooklyn in an sunken eyes looked him up and down like a prized possession "Ahhhhh, just as I thought." he cooed, his boney hands curled before his chest "He may not be Goliath, but Brooklyn will be the perfect creature all the same."
The man who had wheeled him in grunted "One of the gangs east picked him up, basic smugglers, head was Radar. Got him in perfect condition."
"LOOKS, to be in perfect condition." the female's voice from behind corrected sharply "The outside isn't tainted…" Brooklyn flinched as he felt her cold fingertips stroke him inspectingly, the one who had just entered into the room from behind him came into view "...but the true quality will be more than skin deep; the tendons, the bones, the muscles, the organs. Once we open him up, we'll make the decision."
Brooklyn thrashed against the chains, trying to knock the freak back. The inch he could move only made her leap away with a laugh "Oh ho ho! A feisty one, aren't you?"
"Enough, Brannigan, you'll have him in a minute." Calvert said with a raised hand.
"Oh, you take all the pageantry out of this!" Brannigan complained as she exited
"Robinson, take off the muzzle." Calvert requested.
"SIR?"
"Take it off." he repeated casually "Can't have much of an appointment if the patient won't speak."
"Take these chains off and I'll do a lot more than just speak." Brookyln snarled the instant the strap was swiped off his face with a terrified yank; (not before he attempted to bite off the hand and missed by only a few inches).
Brooklyn's eyes weren't a shade of white, this wasn't animalistic rage, this was personal hatred that was entirely his own "WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE?!" he spat. All sense of self preservation and fear were overridden by a well fermented rage now spiked by adrenaline.
"Patient: Gargoyle, Brooklyn. Session one." Calvert said, a police tape recorder now spinning it's reels. "Good Evening, how are you this evening?"
"Unstrap me and I'll show ya."
"Wonderful." the human cooed, his words methodical "I was afraid too much sedation had dulled your senses - such drugged state would have us wasting so much time. Well then, in that case: let's get straight to business. Do you know why you are here, Brooklyn?"
"Cause you're sick?" a snarl shot back.
"Oh no no, not HERE here, per say. I mean-" a slow spreading of his hands gestured above "HERE, I mean - on Earth, why are you here? In the grand scheme of things."
Getting wheeled through Hannibal Lecter's butchery, and now being asked theology? Brooklyn fought against his bindings again "What, want some philosophy? Gimme a few minutes and' I'll teach ya some Machiavelli!"
"Ah, as fiery as the dossier promised." Calvert chuckled, waving a hand down dismissively "I know you must be as eager to begin as we are, Brooklyn - trust me, I do understand. This meeting has been awaited for so long, after all."
Brooklyn caught his breath after his eleventh failed attempt left him exhausted "What are you talking about?"
"Oh, right, I do believe introductions are in order." he admitted "My name is Dr. Emery Calvert, a long time admirer of you and the rest of your gargoyles." he said with a casual touch to his chest "I, as well as the other researchers here, were all members of Anton Sevarius's team employed at Gen-U-Tech Systems. You may have seen the results of several of our endeavors: Project Thailog, Project Mutation, Project Wolf and so on."
Brooklyn's eye twitched "...YOU?"
"Well-" he lazily drew his hand in a circle "-to an extent. Sevarius certainly led the charge, but you can't expect one man to do all the work when breaking new territory."
The red gargoyle caught his second wind in an instant. He thrashed against the chains, eyes white and chops gnashing in anger - identification of another hand in his family's aggressors never boded well with his temper.
"Of course, I must emphasize 'WERE' members of his team." he dismissed "Once he called Project Immortal a fool's gambit and shut it down, we had to… 'branch off' on our own. But please, let us get back on topic." he cleared his throat "WHY are you here?"
A click of a remote lit up a projector, X-Rays and schematics of Goliath next to a human popped up on the concrete wall "You gargoyles are unlike an carbon based life form. You have nervous systems as complicated as ours, yet possess regeneration skills as quick as single celled organisms. You are solid boned, upright bidepals, yet are strong enough to go airborne on the wind. Your metabolism burns at over thirty times the rate of a human, yet you live twice as long." He looked back "To give praise where it's due, you gargoyles are quite frankly the epitome of evolution."
"Glad it scratches your fetish, now again, let me go and I'll give you a live demonstration of it."
"But this." Calvert continued "THIS is something not even the great Sevarius could replicate." a click of the projector showcased the entire Manhattan Clan in stone sleep upon the clocktower, how they got such a photo didn't fill Brooklyn with warm feelings "Stone Sleep. The greatest boon ever gifted by evolution."
"Before the invention of tools, it must have been the greatest defense mechanism in the animal kingdom - to turn into a substance that could not be damaged by claws, nor fangs, nor venom. To restore your strength with thermal energy during the day time, sourcing even the smallest of creatures with beyond superhuman strength" a grainy picture of Lexington lifting a car engine overhead made Brooklyn's rage dull in a pang of sickness… He really wished he had Lex with him right about now. Calvert clicked again "But what's most impressive, is the fact it's the most sophisticated regeneration process in history. Simply stand in the sun, and be cured of all sicknesses and poisons… You could be on death's door, but merely make it to dawn, and you'd be free of all ailments as sunset."
Calvert grunted in disappointment "But humans? Twist the wrong way on accident, you suffer permanent damage to your spinal nerves. Bump your head even slightly and fall asleep afterwards, you die of a concussion. Receive even the slightest scar tissue, and you won't even be able to regrow your sweat glands afterwards… all this to lose the prime of your strength by thirty years of age, and be a feeble creature waiting for death by sixty."
The doctor stood up with a hum, his up until now stoic gaze now almost ravenous "But you… YOU!" he hummed whimsically "In your flesh is the secret to fixing all the weakness and fragility in the human body~"
His pale, thin lips perked into a grin "THIS is why you are here, gargoyle. THIS is why your kind exists! We humans have spent millenia building society and civilization, trying religion, superstition, and science to find the cures to our mortality - yet we have not even been able to cure the common cold! For centuries, we have looked in the wrong place! We invented empty things like faith and religion for eternal life, when the keys to it were already here in nature!" Brooklyn flinched as those boney fingers dragged over the veins on the underside of his forearms "In your tendons and veins, right HERE lies the secret to the cure!"
Brooklyn's rage was thawing quickly, he tried to hold onto it to burn away the chill he felt rushing down his spine "...The… cure?"
"The cure to MORTALITY." Calvert purred with conviction "The cure to severed limbs, to all the sicknesses and cancers in the world, the cure to the evolutionary failure of AGING, everything that's made us weak!"
"Yeah, glad you enjoy it…" Brooklyn dismissed, now head pressed as far back into the metal as he tried to twist away "But…. but I can't do anything like that, gargoyles are just as mortal as humans. Stone Sleep lets me patch up a few nicks and scrapes, that's it, it can't do anything you're asking."
"Not YET~" the words slithered from Calvert's lips "That's why YOU were such a wonderful find, Brooklyn. We had hoped for Goliath, but you were a close second. For the secret lies in more than just your Stone Sleep…" he pulled back on Brooklyn's brow to inspect his eyes "That beautiful Feral State of yours… that will be the catalyst to your growth"
Brooklyn found himself wheeled around "This Brooklyn? All of this?"
The doctor propped the door open, the sound of distant groans and shrill shrieks of live dissections returned like the parting gates of hell "-It's all for YOU~!"
Brooklyn's chest heaved as his heartbeat quickened, the survival adrenaline of fight now being replaced with flight. Brooklyn's chops curled back in disgusted horror, slowly shaking his head in petrified disbelief. Absolutely nothing this doctor had said made the least bit of sense "What the actual hell are you people…"
"We're doctors, Brooklyn." he said with a vile smile "And doctors cure~"
Brooklyn's heart stopped. The door parted further as carts were rolled in… the blinding glint of scalpels, surgical tools, and a dozen other blades and machinery were stacked to the limits. He knew full well those were for him. Brooklyn began to desperately thrash, he yanked and tugged against his chains until the skin started to rub off his ankles and wrists, causing them to bleed.
"Oh ho ho ho! Well that resistance didn't last very long!" Brannigan, the more animated 'doctor' from before sung as she pranced in behind the handful of other researchers "A shame, really! I was hoping you'd make it more of an ordeal!" she said, snapping on a surgical mask and gloves "Now come on! I've waited over a YEAR to finally dissect a real one!"
Brooklyn screamed out in horror as he fully began to grasp what was happening, the wheels on his hand truck dolly began to squeak him forward to the 'operating table'. The doctors began to turn the surgical lights above it "GOD! PLEASE NO!" he bellowed, the stinging pain of his bleeding wrists and ankles only making him MORE desperate to try to break free. He screamed out "DEMONA! DEMONA! DEMONA!"
A raised finger from Calvert ordered Brooklyn's handler to stop rolling him.
"DEMONA! There's Demona! She's the one you want! She's ACTUALLY immortal!" He bargained to be spared the scalpel "She's everything you're looking for! I've seen it! She's over a thousand years old and nothing can kill her! Blow her head off and she'll grow a new one like nothing happened! Let me go and I'll HELP you get her! Trust me, I hate her! I despise her! I know where she hides out, too!" desperation slurring his words "Plant me with a tracker or whatever as insurance, I'm not lying! I'll lead you straight to her!"
A few groans and laughs were his only response. Calvert was buttoning up his coat and dawning his gloves as if that was the most uninteresting tidbit of information "We went back and forth on using Demona for a little while, but her ability is magical in nature not… well." he chuckled with an innocent shrug "... Natural in nature. When Thailog gave us her DNA to make Delilah, we were sad to see her blood reacted no differently than any other gargoyle's. No, any gargoyle shall do."
Brooklyn thrashed like hung from a meathook, he screamed and begged to be spared. Two pricks of needles pierced into his arm, he flooded with narcotics, and everything went dark.
—-
—-
A brief second of consciousness. He drearily stared at the blinding surgical lights above - a squad of arms were reaching into his open torso.
—-
—-
He laid face up on a cart, wheeled down the hallway
—-
—-
He rolled over on an ice cold sheet of metal.
—-
—-
*SNORT*
Brooklyn came to with a jolt. The ice cold of the poaching cage he had been thrown in had chilled him to the bone. The rusted overhead of it paired with the thick bars made him grimace - caged like an animal, when could he or his kind at least be given the dignity of a regular cell?
He instinctively reached to test the strength of the bars; he yelped out in agony at the slightest movement.
Brooklyn clutched his stomach and convulsed into fetal position. Immediately, he felt sick. He didn't know if it was because of the sheer excruciating soreness that he felt to his very ribcage or if it was because of the setting in reality. He didn't want to look - dear god, he didn't want to look. He knew what awaited him.
But he did. And all color left his face.
Brooklyn's surgery had been completed. His chest and stomach now were bloated with extra mass and meat, just like the humans on the operating tables before. A thick and deliberate set of incisions from his collar bone to his navel had been stitched and stapled shut. Blood had dried at the seams.
They had been inside him.
Brooklyn didn't cry out. He scurried backwards on his heels and palms, as if trying to back away from the mangled flesh that was part of him. His back slammed into the back of the cage "Mmmm! Ngghh - mmnggh - nggghhh." his over bloated chest heaving shallow, accelerating breaths. His hands fidgeted between trying to reach for his scar and keeping their sweaty palms rooted to the cage's floor. His legs and tail spasmed wildly, his locomotion deactivated in panic. His eyes began to water, his agape beak quivered. The tiny pits of his pupils shrank "Ah…. Auh… Auhhh." His overclocking heartbeat felt like it was going to split open his surgical seams and make his organs spill out..
So this was what a panic attack felt like.
His attention was snatched by the sound of a chair squeaking outside the cage. His frantically shaking eyes counted half a dozen of the armored guards stationed around his cage - a cage that sat in the center of an empty, almost pitch black, concrete chamber all for him.
His hyperventilating was beginning to slow with focus, focus of a cornered animal. A caged animal. A desperate animal. He grit his teeth, his convulsing legs skittering to push him to his feet. The guards took notice and looked up from games of cards or drags of cigarettes. One hand holding his stomach together, both eyes snapping white, and a heart full of rage. Brooklyn attacked the bars.
"God Dammit! Just shoot it! SHOOT IT!"
"NO DON'T! OR WE'RE ALL DEAD!"
Brooklyn bellowed out "I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"
The zaps of electricity from the cattle prods numbered well over 50 by now, his spare flecks of skin on his stomach now singed a darkened burgundy.
"Well, I see you're up and about." Calvert's sickening voice came from behind.
Brooklyn whirled around, the waning effects of his feral state taking the dulling of his pain with it, he clutched his stomach and sank to his knees. But he still screamed out: "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO ME!?"
Brannigan was at the other side of the cage without Brooklyn even noticing "Oh ho, I wouldn't do that if I wear you!" she cackled "Moving around with fresh stitches in just makes the pain ten times worse~"
Calvert sniffed and wiped his thumb across his nose "We were going to just watch from the camera feed, but after seeing you move around so lively, we just HAD to come see it in person." he mused "Even after we pumped you up with six times the anesthesia we usually need, you were still regaining consciousness on the operating table. Heh, a feisty one, aren't you?"
Brooklyn's hands slamming on the bars made the whole thing shake "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!" Bile spewing from his gums "STOP WITH BEATIN' AROUND THE BUSH! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS PLACE?"
Calvert reclined back on a folding chair that had be pulled over for him "Patience, Mr. Brooklyn. It's not healthy to have high blood pressure right after surgery~." he purred. He pressed his shriveled fingertips together and casually bounced his knees "Well, you're in an organ factory, of course."
Brooklyn's furrowed brow and agape jaw conveyed the confusion yet knowing horror he needed.
"Black market trade, Brooklyn. I'm sure you're familiar with human trafficking, after all you've busted up a few of my adjacent vendors. But do you have ANY idea how expensive of a market that is to run? You've got to find a pretty enough girl that's good enough for the sex market. Find a body strong enough to be sent overseas for slave labor. Or find a kid no one's going to be able to track so you can sell him to a pedophile off on a private island somewhere. All that costs money, runs the risk of getting intercepted, and is a logistical nightmare- and at the end of the day, you're only able to sell them for around half a million each."
Calvert hummed "Now ask yourself this: how much does a human heart sell for on its own? A liver? And then a pair of kidneys? Maybe even a set of lungs just in case?" his sickly yellow cheeks tensed as he giggled "People are far more valuable in pieces, then whole."
Brooklyn looked down at his chest… and thought back to the hundred or more humans that were underground with him… and their overly bloated torsos. His hands snatched over his sternum.
He didn't have just one heartbeat anymore.
"We clone and harvest organs here." Calvert said perfectly openly "Using the human body as living test tubes, we are able to clone and grow organs right inside their own bodies." he waved his hand as if he was dismissing a bad product "Of course, we only harvest and sell off organs and skin tissue that meets standards.. Every now and again organs don't grow properly, have a defect, split open and burst, or just don't work. If that happens, we just leave them in there and try again."
"Simple and efficient. New York has no shortage of homeless on the streets that no one is going to notice missing-" he chuckled into his palm "-It's how we found all our subjects for Project Mutate, after all. Sure, most of them may be drug addicts who nobody has use for, but their bodies still operate just fine. And as long as the body is warm, it's a valid test tube."
Brooklyn's vision was filing, his knees gave out from under him.
"Oh! But don't you worry about a thing, Mr. Brooklyn~" Calvert crooned as he rose from his chair "We saved only the BEST for you. As I said, all of this is for you! Now that we've the capital to run this venture, we're able to use all these test tube humans for what they're REALLY here for: to make you into the first subject of Project Immortal. The operation to create the first ever functional immortal!"
"You were right earlier: Stone Sleep can't cure everything… But what if we could 'overload' it? What would happen if we were to open a gargoyle up. Fill him with all sorts of redundant organs, nerve endings, and over crucial functions - stitch him back up - then let a stone sleep cycle incorporate his fresh, spare organs?"
Branigan chimed him "At that point, what would it matter if you shot out a gargoyle's heart? Ripped out an intestine or two? Who cares? He'd have backups while he regrew the others!"
Brooklyn's heart, no HEARTS, were beating out of the chest that he now clutched "You… You fuckin' basta-"
"But what good would it be with having to wait for sunrise everytime you so much as stub your toe?" Calvert groaned "If my theory is correct, you gargoyles actually don't turn to stone WITH the sun, but in turn with an internal clock your body has created… which gives us a target-"
Brannigan leaped back in "-Activating the regeneration of Stone Sleep ON COMMAND. What if we could make it so you had full control of the biological clock AND could partition it off? Say if…. Someone amputated an arm or a leg, and you could just grow them back instantly~? Maybe grow vital organs as naturally as the rest of us grow fingernails."
"Oh right! I forgot to mention-" Branigan flicked a finger to him "Your body is almost certainly going to reject all the organs we put in you just now. Crossing human biology and gargoyle biology is still uncharted territory. So we just stuck 2 hearts, an extra pair of lungs, two kidneys, and a few other goodies in you to get a benchmark on where you're at. Once we take enough cells from your actual heart and other body parts, we'll be cloning those for you instead~" she chortled "So when you feel like your body is starting to rot from the inside in the next few hours, don't worry, it's perfectly normal!"
Brooklyn's eyes watered, all the movement he had just done in his escape attempt was now taking its toll. He pressed his forehead into the floor so intensely that he was shouldering most of the weight on the crown of his skull. He tried to press the seams of his flesh together "F-Fuck… I…" they didn't stitch him up right, for some reason he felt like his stomach was about to rip out and burst out with his overloaded torso. His skin was just too stretched out right now!
Is this what fucking Coldsteel felt like? To have foreign pieces inside your body? How did Lexington even deal with an enigma like that!
God… Lexington. Last two times he was in a cage, Lexington was with him - he'd do anything to have him right about now. He'd do anything to have ANYONE with him right now!
Brooklyn clutched his stomach. God- WHY DIDN'T HE KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT!? He… FUCK! Regret was a whole different kind of pain inside him right now! He wasn't supposed to be here! He was supposed to go home! This had to be a nightmare, or some sick joke by Puck! He just couldn't have been cut open and stuffed with organs from other people and sewn back together! How did this happen? Had he just kept his mouth shut when Goliath was screaming at him, he'd be back at the castle! He wouldn't have been thrown out of the clan by him! So what if he lost his Second in Command billet and was disgraced, at least he'd be home! More than anything in the world right now, he wanted to be back at the castle playing video games with Lex like he promised!
So what if he couldn't get over the fact he wasn't loved as a child anymore, he should have just accepted it and dealt with it! He was no one's child anymo-
Brooklyn grit his teeth and struggled a glare "W-Why…. Why do you have goddamn CHILDREN here?"
"Ah, ever the vigilant one, aren't you? Stem cells." Calvert said bluntly "Younger bodies contain a far better potential for growth and resilience. And with us planning on getting you to full regeneration of limbs and complex organs, they'll be far better samples to experiment with your mutations."
"I-I can't… *shit* I…. Fuck, HELP ME." he begged, gasping for air as his torn apart body was no longer being muted by anesthesia "P-Please! I-It hurts too much! I… I-I need painkillers, PLEASE!"
"Ah, I'm afraid I can't do that, Brooklyn~" Calvert hummed. "Remember what I said? - 'Your Feral State will be the catalyst to your growth'? Adrenaline can do incredible things, my friend… can fool the brain into doing all sorts of incredible acts and feats. So while we'll handle the scientific side of your improvements… your brain will need to handle the mental side of things. Meaning, comfort won't be on the list of priorities. Quite the contrary, in fact." He inhaled with a fake hiss of concern "In order for your feral state to be activated, and I mean TRULY activated… We'll need to have you constantly subjected to stress~. Physically, Mentally, Emotionally."
Brannigan kicked her feet cheerily "After which, your body will start producing the adrenaline to FINALLY start moving you the direction we need it to. Eventually your feral state will FORCE your regeneration to keep up with the damage being taken out on your body. And with your redundant organs there to help pick up the slack, I'm sure we'll be able to start finger amputation trials in just a few weeks."
"And once all is said and done, and you're the biological masterpiece we want? Well… then your blood, organs, bone marrow, and cells will be harvested just the same~ Cloned, replicated, and spread over the world as the cure-all to every medical issue to have ever plagued humanity."
He tapped the roof of Brooklyn's cage and shrugged at the convulsing gargoyle who thrashed so violently on the cold ground, it was as if he was about to have a chestburster explode out of his sternum "Who knows, if we run out of things to cure, we might even try to see if we can replicate your wings onto humans." he chuckled.
The two scientists exited and waved the guards in. An order was made - ensure Brooklyn knew the consequences of attempted escapes. Tasers and stun batons were charged and raised, then stabbed into the cage. The vibrating shrieks and sobs of the gargoyle pleading for his life were as shrill as the children being dissected in the next room over.
Calvert closed the iron door with a slam "Brooklyn, you are going to be… SPECTACULAR~"
The screams did not stop until sunrise.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
*Claps hands together* So, prior to writing Vilomah. I didn't realize "Brooklyn gets tortured for 40 chapters straight" was such a popular genre in Gargoyles Fanfics DX
Like, literally, there's dozens of stories of the poor dude just getting abused and experimented on the entire time. SOOOOOO, because of that, I had to DRASTICALLY do a ton of rewriting and re-planning on the rest of the whole story. (No joke, this chapter was originally going to be 20K+ words alone - I had to cut out all the intense scenes and scary stuff). Don't worry, this is not a snuff fanfic, I need to emphasis that. He's not getting tortured for the sake of getting tortured. This is a pseudo-spoiler, but this torment SERVES A PURPOSE. I swear! I'm going somewhere with this, pinky swear!
ANYWAYS. Time to finally start earning this 'Explicit' rating!