Chapter Text
Heather has barely moved since the vivisection.
Time is difficult down here, but judging by the slowly dulling pain in her chest and the angry growling of her stomach, it’s been a while since the procedure. Doctors or guardsmen will occasionally come in to try and offer her pain medication, be it through IV or pill, but she refuses to let any of them get close. As nice as relief sounds, the fear of their touch is overwhelming. With every snarl, kick, and bite, however, she can feel herself growing weaker. She’s barely eaten, and is barely able to keep her eyes open for more than a few hours at once. She’s woken up with the bitter taste of medication in her mouth more times than she’d like to admit. If she’s being honest, she’s surprised that they haven’t remembered to use that damned control collar that they clamped around her neck months ago.
...
She just jinxed it, didn't she.
Judging by the hiss of the hydraulic door as it slides open, yes, she fucking did!
A small squadron of guardsmen enter, one clutching a painfully familiar syringe, no doubt filled with sedatives. She’s too weak to offer much more than a growl and a pathetic nip as rough hands roll her over. The guard swears under their breath and, unbeknownst to her, nods to another.
She registers the collar heating up just a split second before lightning courses through her body
An inhuman screech tears from her throat, echoing in the pathetically cramped cell and out into the winding hallways of the facility. No one bothers to investigate or stop them. Screaming is to be expected in a place like this, after all. A stitch near her sternum snaps as she writhes on the cold floor, but she doesn’t have time to react before the same gloved hands force her face to the side, while another plunges the syringe into the side of her neck. She can’t tell if the blur in her vision is from tears or the effects of the drugs as they slowly worked their way through her system.
She can’t help but feel grateful that they managed to provide the correct dosage this time, though she’s still left just barely conscious enough to feel movement as she’s loaded onto a gurney. She tries to keep track of each turn to gauge where they’re taking her, but her head feels as though it’s stuffed with cotton and she quickly grows disoriented.
Mercifully, she passes out at some point. When she wakes, however, wonted fluorescent lights sear into her eyes, leading her to shut them just as quickly as she opens them. She dimly realizes that her shirt is gone, leaving her pathetically small chest bare and on display for all to see. Her ear flicks as someone approaches and rests their hand on her shoulder. Her lips curl in a snarl and her eyes crack open to see a man she only vaguely recognizes as one of the surgeons that frequently works with humanoid experiments. Her hands ball into fists around the flimsy sheets and her head jerks to the side as she tries to bite at the hand, only to be choked and held back by leather straps. The man is unbothered as his hand ghosts down her arm, coming to rest at her navel. She tries to swallow back a wave of revulsion, but she knows that her fear is painfully obvious.
“Come now, you’ll rip your stitches!” he tuts. “Be a good girl, won’t you?”
Howard’s fingers trace from her navel, dancing above each of the many stitches lining the subject’s midsection. The wound is almost healed - lovely. He can get back to the things that matter.
Heather’s face curdles, fear quickly giving way to rage and disgust. If she’s being honest with herself, she’d take being aggressively misgendered by Preston over this any day. Her arms snap up, once again restrained by the straps. She wants so badly to slap that smug look off his face, and it pains her that she can’t.
Howard clicks his tongue disapprovingly and reaches into his pocket for an unseen remote. She hears the click of a button a split second before lightning arcs through her body once more, the collar searing into the raw, tender flesh of her neck. “NGH-!”
Her back arches and her eyes squeeze shut, but she doesn’t dare scream - not in front of him. It’s what he wants, and she’ll be damned if she ever willingly indulges.
The man eventually deigns to shut off the current coursing from the collar and she collapses into the bed, breathing heavily as she glares at him with the heat of a thousand suns. He doesn’t deserve her words. He’d just muzzle her, anyway. That’s what they always do.
He frowns, dissatisfied, when she doesn’t cry out like he expected. May as well change tactics. “Well. We’re gonna have to get those stitches off you. No fun, are they? We’ll have to change that.”
Heather’s face pales, even more so than it already has from years without sunlight and the standard vitamin D supplements being withheld. Try as she might, she can’t hide the fear as it returns to her eyes. She isn’t sure how much of his touch she’ll be able to handle. She already feels ready to hurl, and he’s barely touched more than her arm. A pitiful, terrified whine escapes her, and she desperately wishes that she could take it back. Fear is what he enjoys, after all. It’s what all of them enjoy.
“Oh, hush, you’re fine. Hold still," Howard huffs. If he sees her discomfort, he doesn’t make any effort to rectify it. He grabs a pair of surgical scissors, snipping the thread of the sutures. He decides tugging them out by hand will be good enough. The sinister smirk on his face is enough to show anyone the giddy, morbid glee he gets from this. His words are deceivingly gentle as his grip tightens around the thread, and he meets Z-095’s fearful gaze. She immediately breaks eye contact as their eyes meet, a disgustingly primal gesture of submission - a gift from the prey ungulates that have been forced into her. She senses the tension in his muscles and knows exactly what he’s planning, tensing her own in anticipation for the inevitable pain that comes with snapping stitches. Try as she might to stay still, she can’t help but squirm as he cuts the sutures one by one.
“Hold still, dammit!” he snaps. “You’re only making this harder.”
He pulls out the stitches of the branching cuts on her collarbones one by one, dropping each into a small tray with a dramatic flourish. Heather’s jaw clenches as she fights the urge to flinch as each is yanked out with far more force than necessary.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he coos, caressing her cheek with a glove coated in a thin layer of blood. Another wave of revulsion washes through her and she shudders. Despite her earlier resolve to refuse to meet his eyes (both out of sheer stubbornness and that damned primal urge to submit), her head whips around and she snaps angrily at his hand. Consequences be damned, she wants him off. Her fangs sink into his skin and she tastes blood around the latex. She doesn’t care if it’s his blood or hers - whatever gets his hands off of her.
Howard’s expression of sadistic glee melts into one of pure, unfiltered rage. He spared no more than a glance at his hand, his sterile glove now marred by the puncture marks from Z-095’s fangs. While she broke the skin, the wound isn’t deep by any stretch of the word, though his own blood has begun to well up and mix with hers. He turns primly on his heel to retrieve a simple cage muzzle. He grabs the subject by the horns and yanks her head up as he begins wrestling the muzzle over her head, easily overpowering her as she tries to fight him off.
“Don’t- don’t fucking touch me!”
“Shh, it won’t hurt a bit. Hold still.”
The subject is weak from malnourishment, making it considerably easy to fasten the muzzle into place. He tightens it far more than strictly necessary, eliciting a strained grunt of irritation. He strokes her tangled hair in a mocking facsimile of comfort. “That’s not so bad, now, is it? None of us have to get hurt.”
A low growl rumbles from her chest. She doesn’t bother to dignify him with a response - he doesn’t deserve it.
His eyes narrow at the sound, silently daring her to keep challenging his authority. She stubbornly meets his eyes, unwilling to back down. That’s alright - he isn’t planning on relenting either. “Now, let’s get the rest of those stitches out, shall we?”
He cuts through the rest of the stitches and plucks at the one at the base of where the incision splits into two prongs. It slips out from his grasp and he curses under his breath, promptly yanking it out in irritation. Heather bites down on her lip to stop herself from crying out, eyes firmly fixed anywhere but on his face. It’s what he wants. Don’t indulge him. Don’t let him know you’re suffering.
Howard’s eyes glint with a sadistic glee as he watches Heather tremble beneath him. He snaps the stitches one at a time, dropping them one by one into the small tray, watching as the paper beneath it slowly becomes spattered with her blood. He watches her, amused, as her chest, slick with blood, shudders through each breath. Her eyes squeeze shut in a feeble attempt to pretend everything is okay. Surely it’s over? She can’t imagine what other business he would have with her now that the stitches are all removed. She doesn’t dare to hope, but her relief is clear as day on her face. God, she just wants her shirt back.
Howard watches her carefully, brushing her sweat-streaked hair away from her face as she struggles to get her breathing back under control. It’s truly a pity that their time together is up. Perhaps he can request to take the lead on another procedure from Preston? He doesn’t doubt it’ll be approved, the poor chap is overworked, considering the three projects he’s saddled with. Howard wipes up the blood from Z-095’s chest, discarding the gauze, before summoning the extraction team with a lazy wave of his hand. The small group of guardsmen funnel in without a word. One takes pity on the girl and pulls a thin blanket over her. She visibly relaxes as her chest is covered just before the small group disappears from view.
… He really needs to get in touch with Preston.
Three weeks later, he gets his wish, and Z-095 is marched back into his operating room. Surprisingly, she doesn’t protest when she’s instructed to remove her shirt. She does so without a word and lies stomach down on the bed when asked. She barely even blinks when the leather straps are fastened around her wrists and ankles.
Howard can’t help but muse what could have finally broken her as he pulls out a surgical marker and dots out a short line just to the left of her spine. She shivers beneath the touch, but remains quiet. He does, however, notice her hands as they curl into weak fists. She knows better than to fight against the restraints. She’s just… too tired to fight back anymore. This is her life now, and nothing she does will bring back any sense of normalcy.
Howard smiles and draws a hand down the subject’s back, careful to avoid smudging the line of the surgical marker. He will make her perfect. “Z-095. How are you doing?”
He runs his fingers through her tangled hair, tugging it apart from the rest to gain easier access to her ear, which flicks as he brushes against it. She doesn’t respond. She wants desperately to remind him of her name, to be treated as human, but that’s not in the cards for her. Not anymore. He picks up his scalpel, inspecting it briefly before setting it back down and retrieving the provided syringe of sedatives. “Ah, how could I forget…”
Heather’s amber eyes lock onto it as it is unceremoniously plunged into her upper arm, but she shows no reaction other than a slight furrow of the brows and flare of her nostrils. Her fists uncurl and all tension leaves her body as she lays limp against the thin sheets long before the drugs begin to take their course. She knows that she’s not coming out of this unscathed. She can only hope that it will all be over soon. It never is with him, but a girl can hope. Howard smiles as the subject goes limp, offering no more than a shudder as the sedatives slowly begin working their way through her body. He admires her resilience, but he supposes that’s merely a result of the DNA integrated into her. The sedative is meant to be light, only intended to take the edge off the pain, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it’s triple that of an average human’s dose. “Good. Hold still, and this will be over sooner,” he murmurs. He picks up the scalpel once more and rotates it, admiring the way it gleams under the fluorescent lights.
A weak voice rises from the bed. “... Just get it over with.”
Howard looks down at the subject, brows raised in amusement. Her voice is monotone, clearly a result of exhaustion, but there’s a clear note of pleading buried deep within it. She’s terrified, but far too burnt out to do anything other than comply. Perfect. He doesn’t respond - not verbally, at least. He makes a small incision just between her shoulder blades, watching the subject’s reaction carefully - not that it has any effect on the procedure. If the cut hurts her any significant amount, she doesn’t show it, offering nothing more than a passive flick of the ears. He supposes that makes sense, considering the thin shell and chitin spanning her back. He slices deeper to make room for the small device he was instructed to install, eliciting a pained grunt from the subject. The chip is nothing special, by any means. It’s cylindrical, no more than an inch long, with simple tracking capabilities for monitoring location and vitals. He dabs at the wound with gauze as blood begins to well up within it before nestling the chip inside before sewing it up with practiced efficiency.
Heather doesn’t dare to move, even as he tugs at her skin as he pulls the sutures tight. If she cooperates, he’ll have no reason to keep her there. He’ll have less time to touch her, less time to fawn over her like she’s some prize hunting trophy. Also, the sooner this finishes, the sooner she can get her goddamn shirt back. Howard runs a hand down her back, relishing the smoothness of the shell. She shivers beneath his touch and he smiles. “Good girl. You must be freezing, huh?” he murmurs, tone condescending. A sinister smile spreads across his face, well practiced to be able to pass as amicable, as he grabs a thin blanket and places it over the subject. “One more thing before I let you go.”
She doesn’t dare to move. She hates the fact that she shivered, that she gave him the reaction he wanted. Somehow, having the thin blanket covering her aching back feels more insulting than having nothing covering her at all. All of her prior exhaustion, however, seems to have evaporated. Her eyes bore straight into Howard, pupils constricted into no more than pinpricks and filled with primal, animalistic terror. She can’t help but flinch as he reaches over to stroke her hair and brush it away from her ear. She knows he can feel her trembling. “Hold. Still," he growls.
Heather swallows, freezing like a deer in headlights. Her breathing is shaking and shallow, each one coming far too quickly after the other. If she wasn’t tied down, she would have bolted long ago. Her muscles are locked, instinctually preparing for pain. She doesn’t know where it will come - she just knows that it will. She squeezes her eyes shut as Howard pins down her head. He doesn’t waste any time in picking up a biopsy punch and placing it along the outside edge of her right ear. He waits for the subject to twitch before he punches the device down and sharply rotates it, cutting a neat hole into the sensitive cartilage. A strangled yelp tears from Heather’s throat and she bucks against the restraints, yanking her head as far away from Howard as the straps will allow. Blood quickly wells up in the wound, dripping down her face to stain the pristine white sheets.
Howards lets out a quiet growl of frustration as the subject cries out. No matter. He removes the severed tissue from the punch and seals it away for transport before returning with gauze and medical tape. He grabs a fistful of hair and she lets out a choked sob, but she doesn’t make any further attempts to pull away. Good. She knows her place. He makes quick work of bandaging the sample site. It’s difficult, considering the ear insists on flicking any time he grabs it the wrong way, but he gets the job done. He takes his sweet time in wiping off the blood from her face, each touch a caress. She’s not perfect yet, but she will be.
Heather shudders beneath his touch, barely able to hold back the tears. She knew this was a risk when she began her transition, but it’s never something that you can truly prepare for. She can’t even fight back. She’s furious at him, furious at Preston, but she’s also furious at herself for accepting the goddamn proposal.
She just wants to go home, but she can’t. Not anymore.