He wasn’t certain how much time had passed, when he came awake again. He ached, from head to toe, and he was lying somewhere, and that somewhere wasn’t particularly comfortable. He let out a groan and opened his eyes, looking around at the sterile room he was lying in, trying to piece together what he could remember. The generators. The robot. Something about test subjects. What in the world had the company been doing in this place? He was lying on a bed with just a sheet and a hard mattress, and he felt sick. He assumed that was just the sedative wearing off of him, but the more conscious he became, the worse he felt. It was a difficult sensation to describe–at some moments it felt like pins and needles all over his skin–and also inside his skin, somehow, like they were trying to poke their way out of him. Other places was a deep ache, centered in his bones, a pain he’d never experienced anything like before, and which mostly made him nauseous. He couldn’t see very clearly–the entire room seemed…muted, somehow. Like someone had sucked the color out of the room, leaving it a dingy grey, with bits of green and blue. He could make out the robot against the wall, but it appeared to be off, at least. Carefully, keeping his eyes on the thing which had dragged him down here, he pulled the sheet off his body, tried to swing his body up and off the bed as quietly as he could, but his body wasn’t working like he was used to, and he crashed to the floor instead.
That sent a long howl from his mouth–he’d tried to scream, but the sound he’d made hadn’t sounded like something that should–or even could–come from a human throat. His vision was blurry, but looking down at his hands, where he landed, something was wrong with them, or rather, one of them. They didn’t match. One, when he focused on it, looked…normal, he thought. But the other one didn’t…it didn’t even look human. He raised it closer to his face, trying to puzzle out what he was looking at. His eyes didn’t seem to have the detail they’d been capable of before, but he could see the hair, the back of his hand running up the arm, and when he flipped it over, his palm and even the underside of his fingers were covered with rough pads. With his other hand he felt them, and the dark claws at the tips of his fingers which had replaced his nails, but before he could do anything else, he felt something metallic wrap its way around his leg, rolling up his entire leg and yanking him backwards.
“Test Subject E1 has been displaced. E1 will be returned to bed and sedated.”
Kerry rolled over onto his back and saw that the robot had awakened. He tried to speak, tried to tell it to stop, but nothing close to human speech would come from his mouth. His head…ached. It didn’t feel right at all, and in a reflective cabinet along the wall, he could see why, as he fought with the robot. It was…the face of a dog, looking back at him. The face and head of a dog attached to his body somehow, or what was rapidly becoming not his body. One of his legs, the one the robot had wrapped up, had changed similarly to his arm, while his other leg was still human…but he could see the hair was thicker across the surface, his human foot…contorting somehow, that deep ache in his bones. He clawed and bit at the robot’s tendrils, but he was immobilized in a matter of moments, hefted up into the air, and put back on the bed. “Administering sedative,” the robot said, and again he felt the sharp pain of an injection, the same drowsiness flooding his system until he could barely move, the tendrils relaxing away from him, the robot retreating back to its corner as Kerry fought to remain awake. He heard a door open and then close nearby, but he couldn’t quite open his eyes to see who, or what, it was.
“How is the patient, X-9?” a male voice said, but there was something…strange in the words, like the mouth speaking wasn’t quite a human one, “I received an alert?”
“Good evening, Dr. Sondew,” the robot speaking, “There was a minor incident. The patient was displaced from his resting position. Cause was due to the subject regaining consciousness. The patient was returned to resting position and sedated again 98 seconds ago.”
“I see,” the voice said, and the sound of heavy footsteps coming closer. “Do try and relax, if you can still hear me. Trust me when I say that this is all for the greater good.” the footsteps receded, “How long until Serum A’s effects are complete?”
“Approximately seven hours and fifteen minutes.”
“Keep the subject sedated until then, but make a note that I will be present before and while serum B is administered. The poor thing should at least have the courtesy of someone explaining this to him, I think.”
“Noted.”
The voice spoke to the robot for a few more minutes, but Kerry had already stopped being able to understand their words, and had fallen back into a restless, aching sleep.
Bracken's Corner 