Lightside

Interment
 

                       Wha…What am I doing here?  This thought was in the forefront of Allen Rouge’s now conscious mind.  He slowly retraced his steps through the torn memories of his corrupted psyche.  The day had started out normal enough.  Yes, he remembered now.  He was part of the 08^th search unit assigned to find out what had happened to the recon team that had been sent to scout the area.  He mentally nodded his head.  The recon team that had gone missing was a detachment of the 133^rd mechanized reconnaissance team.  Their mission was to map a small facility and its surrounding area in the Ural Mountain Range.  However they failed to check in by the allotted time frame.  Without their knowledge of the enemy’s forces (they had put up some sort interference field) the planned attack could not proceed.  After a time of about four weeks they had managed to drive out the enemy forces from the surrounding area and circled around the facility.  But all the details seemed lost.  Even the basic briefing was seen through fogged glass.  All he knew was that they had arrived at the facility and found only one building left remaining.  An experimental facility, yes, that was it.  But what happened next? Arrival…then nothing.  He tried to shake his head violently but found that his head was…restrained by something?  His eyes sprang open in an instant, realization hitting him like a 20000-pound weight.  What he saw was indeed something that looked like it came out of sadistic nightmare.  Allen was inside a cylindrical tank that looked like something out of an experimentation lab…EXPERIMENTATION LAB?!?!  His eyes scanned the room frantically as panic started to set in.  They fell upon something cut him to the quick.  There, on a type of autopsy table, was his unit leader, 1^st Lieutenant Steven Anders, dead with multiple dissection tools, tubes, and other things common to morgue sticking out of him; the table painted a macabre crimson with countless victims’ innocent blood.  Allen instantly felt the bile in his stomach rise into his throat as he fought back the urge to vomit all over the place.  He ripped his gaze away from the ghastly sight and focused on himself instead which was incredibly difficult after seeing your friend of seven years dissected before your eyes.  In his scarred mind Allen managed to find that his wrists were bound by metal restraints to a ring that ran around the tank he was in and that his feet were secured in the floor of the tank.  Looking up and to his horror he saw what seemed to be either vents, drains, or both that could flood the tank he was standing in with any sort of terrifying substance.  The panic-stricken soldier slowly looked to his left warily avoiding the gruesome sight in front of him. 

                 Allen’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as his eyes focused on what appeared to be a tank similar to his own except for the fact that a white gas permeated the air inside.  The hair on his neck stuck up as little by little the gas was vented from the chamber.  A morbid fascination and a large amount of disgust filled him, as he became curious as to what would appear.  Allen’s curiosity was turned into terror at the sight that was revealed.  A ghastly figure appeared through the glass.  It was covered in the tattered remnants of clothing it had been wearing though not that it helped.  The figure had grown some sort of snout and a long tail that hung lifelessly behind it.  The entirety of the person’s body was covered in what seemed to be reptilian hide though at the moment he really couldn’t care less.  All he was concerned with was what the tattered remnants of clothing were. It was a military uniform.  This burned one thing into Allen’s mind besides the urge to puke over everything; get out alive and unchanged.  Allen madly threw his weight against his arms, foolishly placing his hope in the unlikely possibility of breaking the cruel and unyielding metal braces that held his wrists steadfastly in their vice grip.  Feeling the hopelessness descend upon him his attempts grew into a fevered storm of frantic attempts at freedom, not thinking of the bonds that held his feet or the glass prison he was confined in at the moment.  Soon his wrists were covered in small gashes from the metal and the force of his weight upon them.  The bindings resolutely fended off the attack upon their integrity and once again Allen slowed to a state of stillness.  The heavy weight of impending doom made it difficult to fight and gradually tears of defeat ran down his dirty cheeks as he was forced to accept this internment in what he thought was to become his coffin.  To die here…after all this…and to die from this mutilation….  He looked back to the cadaver of his leader on the mortuary table in front of him.  He would have saluted his fallen comrade if he had movement of his arms.  His knees buckled beneath him as the burden of realization struck him like that of a cement block.  He was going to DIE in here.  He cried out in anguish.  He was only 19!  How could he die now.  Through his tears he looked to his right and gave another cry of torment.  Like on his left there was a glass tank that held another captive but he knew this captive.  It was his best friend Andreas Barcklay with whom he had enlisted with.  No…
He mind sank to an even farther madness.  It was his fault that his friend was going to suffer a fate similar to the two horrific scenes around him.  If Allen had not insisted upon telling Andreas to enlist this never would have happened.  My God.  I killed him.  What was left of Allen’s resolve died as the thought struck with the force of a warhammer.  Just then he heard a door faintly open and saw a figure in a white lab coat stained red enter the room.  The person walked up to Andreas’s tank and smiled the vilest smile Allen had ever seen.  He wanted to the rip the throat out of that person.  The person sensed Allen’s eyes upon them and they walked over to his tank instead and smiled that same disgusting sight.

                 “It seems that our newest subject has awoken.”  The person stroked the glass of his chamber lovingly not unlike that of a lover.  “I’ve been wanting to process you and,” they looked back to Andreas with a malicious grin, “your friend.”  They took off the garment covering their head.  It revealed orange locks of hair that flowed down her shoulders and around her face.  The dark glasses protected her eyes but he knew that behind them they flashed with evil stronger that that of Satan himself.  She continued with her introduction.  “I am,” she chuckled evilly, “Dr. Sturtz.  I will be leading your, for lack of a better word, experimentation.”  The grin she cracked made Allen wish it would split her face in half.  Her tender caressing of the tank had ceased and she grabbed a small clipboard at the base of his prison.  She wrote a few things down with the silver pen she had taken out of her pocket.  “I dare say I will get to know the more intimate parts of you in the coming days.”  A stirring to Allen’s left caught her attention as the victim inside was roused from unconsciousness.  The Doctor set the clipboard back down upon the aluminum table and walked over to the tank as the reptilian captive inside slowly opened their eyes.  The good Doctor then proceeded to check the clipboard that was present on the table in front of the captive and inspect what was written.  The slight smirk on her banshee-like face sunk into a deep frown and her brow furrowed.  “What the hell?  These results are not quite what I had planned on.”  She glanced upward at the reptilian figure comparing what was predicted and what had actually happened.  “Hmph, no matter.”  She set the clipboard down with a loud smash, her calm outer appearance belying her deep-seated anger.  “I will find out what went wrong.”  She turned back to Allen and brushed the hair from her face.  “In the meantime you will undergo basic procedure.”  She smirked.  “Until then,” she walked back over to the door and opened it, “tah tah.”  She closed the aluminum door with a noisy crash causing all the instruments in the lab to rattle.  Allen cursed under his breath and realized that that was the first time he had spoken the entire time.  He hung his head.  Now what was going to happen?
                 “H-hello?”  The voice seemed to come from nowhere; a whisper in his mind.  Probably from exhaustion.  “Hello?”  The voice came again, louder this time.  He lifted his head and looked around only to find the reptile in the next tank staring at him.  Surely it can’t-  “Hello?”  Allen’s jaw dropped as the words came forth from the apparently sentient reptile.  “Can you hear me?”  This speaking did not help further Allen’s comprehension of things and only served to convince him he was crazy.  “I said can you hear me?”  He shook his head violently to ascertain his sanity as words again passed from the reptile’s snout.  Noticing his lack of composure, the person took that as a yes.  “Good.  It’s been lonely without someone to talk to.”  The transformed being looked down and Allen noticed tears well up in their eyes.  “I-I was really hoping to find someone else.”  They looked back up at him before restating.  “I don’t mean to wish this fate,” they shook themselves, “but I was thought I would go crazy without seeing someone who wasn’t that insane doctor or her technicians.”  She visibly shuddered in her bindings.  Allen shook himself in order to regain his grasp on what was going on.  Here was a lizard reptile thing talking to him in a genetic lab that was run by a group of psychotic ‘doctors’.  Anyone at this point would be questioning his or her mental state.

                 Without any warning red lights inside the room went off along with a voice that simply stated “WARNING!  EXPERIMENTATION HAS BEGUN.  ALL NON SUBJECTS LEAVE THE AREA.  REPEAT…”.  His blood chilled, as he understood what that meant.  The captive in the tank also seemed to recognized to what the statement was obviously stating.  “Don’t try and fight it!” the captive yelled, “the gas keeps you conscious through the transformation!”  Gas?  As he thought it the gas billowed into the chamber in thick black clouds.  He remembered what his chemistry teacher had said once.  Any gas besides clear gas was toxic.  The effect was immediate and as the gas filled his lungs he started to shake uncontrollably not unlike a man having a seizure.  Pain ripped through his body as his bloodstream absorbed the chemicals in the gas changing his DNA’s code irreversibly.