89P13

Subject 89P13’s incredulous face glares at you, it’s wet sniffing nose inches from your own.

“Don’t think about it, don’t even think about it,” it snarls murderously. “Get whatever sick thoughts you have out of your head, or I’ll blow them out the back of your skull.” It waits a moment, appraising you with those beady red eyes. With no pupils it is impossible to tell exactly where it is focusing. You squirm, your tongue trying to work its way around the device in your mouth. P13 smirks, you think it is a smirk. It is hard to tell. “Heard they let you out after everyone came back,” it reaches for device in your mouth and removes it. You cannot help but a shiver of fear. A grenade, or at least some version of one.

“Your….your vocabulary has improved,” you observe. P13 raises a brow, twirling the key to the explosive around its finger. It wears clothes now, a utilitarian looking jumpsuit, and it bares more fur then last you saw, silky and thick. Healthy. Though you can still see the two cybernetic implants on its collar bones. You try to move your arms, but the flora colossus holds you fast, your arms trembling with the effort.

“Say Groot, how do you think you make a humie into a monster?”

“I am Groot,” the creature rumbles. You can feel its deep voice vibrate through the bark that holds at you no matter how hard you try to wriggle free. P13 nods,

“That’s right,” it praises. “Go ahead.” Whatever the flora said is lost to you, but you sense its hesitation as P13 glares up at it.

“C’mon Groot, you said you’d help me out!” There is a moment of heavy silence. You cry out as white snapping pain shatters through your arms and legs. Your vision swims as you fall to the ground. Both your arms and legs broken with a simple tightening of vines. P13 grins, its pointed teeth reflecting in the light through the open window. “Don’t dry doc,” 13 mocks as your eyes fill with stinging tears, “I’m just trying to make you feel better.” It steps closer to you its claws out…out of every modification you made why didn’t you ever take the claws out? You wince as it climbs up on top of you, its weight pressed against your lower back. Your limbs twinge with burning agony the arms and vines of the flora colossus clamping down is the only reason you don’t topple over. “Tsch, tsh, tsch you humies are scrawny.” Its little claws puncture through your sides drawing blood where it crouches. “Your gonna need some enhancements.”

“S….st…stop…s” your words are lost to the sharp slicing of flesh as P13’s tears at your shoulder blades. You scream, and nearly fall to the floor but the wooden arms hold tight. You can feel your blood running down your sides, watching it glide down your arms. You hear the tear of flesh P13’s claws ripping at you.

“Now, now, now what do we say to people who are just trying to make you feel better?” You bite your tongue against the pain, and you let a shriek as something cold is wedged into your open back. P13 hops down and faces you again, those soulless eyes gleaming. “What do you say?” 13 demands and lifts its arm up, a shiver runs through your spine. A wristband, nearly identical to the one you once wore. You let out a low moan “use your words!” The moan rises to a cracking scream when you feel white hot branches of electricity fire through your tender swollen muscles, striking against your bones. Your vision blurs and your stomach revolts. “We’re gonna play a little game,” P13 continues as the electricity ebbs. It pulls yet another firearm from its belt. “Can you identify this weapon?” You stare at the gun in its paws, small, black and brown metal, you realize with a start that you have no idea. Your blood runs cold, face paling.  “What is it?” P13 asks again, examining the weapon with a chilling fondness. You muster a sniveling laugh,

“Your impressive P13,” you raise your exhausted head to look at it. “You’ve advanced far beyond anything I thought capable. I ought to congratulate myself.” A vicious hiss and you let out a wail as P13’s claws grab a fistful of your hair and wrenches your head up, neck cracking. You twist feebly but the Flora colossus still holds you hostage. 13 hisses something indistinguishable putting the gun under your chin.

“Why’d you do it?” It growls in your ear, holding your head up, the darkness twirls before you. “Why?!” 13 cries, you can feel its arms shaking the gun clinking lightly.

“Why did I create you?” You laugh a little, of course…it is only natural that such a thing would begin to inquire about its own existence.   “Why not?” You smile through the numb aching in your limbs, the crick in your neck. You manage to angle your head to the left, so that you can barely see P13’s red eyes in your periphery. “I wanted to see if it could be done,” you grin at your own youthful naïve dreams. “There was no purpose,” you force the words through your teeth, “no great plan or scheme for you or any of the other subjects.” The grip on your hair constricts, the gun pressed hard against your flesh. “You weren’t made for anything but my own amusement 89P13, and for the glory of scientific and technological advancement.” You suck air through your throat over the pain in your raw back, “what greater purpose could there possibly be?” P13 shudders beside you, tightening its paw around the grip of gun. “It wasn’t easy either,” you reflect. “Your heart stopped over twelve times during the procedures. I kept having to revive you. And that one time an intern snipped some nerve endings and you were brain dead for four days. You were no easy feat to create.”

Silence. Only your own breath, and its own breath, both wheezing.

“I died?” It wonders, “I should have died…” it thinks allowed. “I wanted to die.” You recall subject 89P16 who unbeknownst to it or not, succeeded in that endeavor when it clawed out its implants.

“Oh yes 89P13 by all accounts your brain and heart stopped functioning a total of seventeen times in the procedures or during conditioning.”

More silence.

“Can yah undo it?” It finally asks, that same small low tone you heard so many years ago. Timid and filled with a longing hope. Your body lists as the flora colossus grip loosens for a moment. You force yourself to turn looking at the wooden face. Those large watery eyes laced with hurt and sorrow, looking at 89P13 with unyielding empathy. “Can you undo it!” 13 begs, wrenching your hair so that your head bends to the side, neck strained. “Undo it! Undo all the shit you did to me! Turn me back!" Tears prick at the edge of its eyes. "Turn me back to whatever I was before…you fucked me up! Before…before…” and with that something seems to break inside of it lowers the gun, letting go of your hair. You rub the back of your neck though your arm protests with shoots of pain. A cool haunting breeze teases your hair through the open window, goosebumps puckering on your skin. P13 stands before you, tail lashing. You haul yourself to your knees.

“You’d give up all you’ve learned?” You challenge, “you’d have all your strength and knowledge and abilities stripped of you to be a…a mute dumb animal groveling in the dirt?” 13’s eyes shift from its feet to your own gaze and you feel your spine twinge in fear. “Even if I could….” You smother your fright under your ego, “I would never forsake a lifetime of work to unmake you, a perfect weapon…a perfect little monster.” P13 flinches and the flora colossus rumbles. It lifts the gun once more, aiming squarely between your eyes. Though your mind and adrenaline compel you to run your body is too tired, to swollen and nauseated with agony. P13 glares at you, its stance firm but its body shakes, the gun rattling. Its feverish eyes burn with vitriol, every hair on end. You wait for it, expecting it, it is fitting really like all the tales. The creator destroyed by their own creation.  

You shake, your heart thundering, breath heaving. You think you break a rib from the effort, but you cannot feel it through the ocean of other agonies. You look at P13, its red glowing eyes boring into you and that is when you realize it with a blood curdling horror that this animal has created you as much as you have created it. 13 whispers something, and you watch the gun clatter to the floor. All is slow and silent then, your own uneven breaths in slow motion.

“I am Groot,” the flora rumbles with vitriol. Something sharp slices through your neck, splintering. You gag, hands going to your throat and feeling shards of bark slick with something sap like but too thin. Your vision wanes as your gurgle something red and liquid, tongue tasting something warm and metallic. Your vision tunnels, head in a fog, at the end of that tunnel is P13, it stares down at you as you fall. This pathetic little specimen, this pulverized beast, this freak of nature. All it knows is how to kill and reign destruction, its paws will never grace another’s hand. It will never know love or affection, there is nothing it can conceive but instruments of pain and death. It will never make anything beautiful. You have made it so. You think with smug satisfaction even as your eyes grow heavy and your breath light, blood slicking over your fingers. If 89P13 attempts to go against its nature and reach out to another, if it tries to form connection or feel compassion or empathy, it will only be because it is trying to rebel against its natural tendencies, and it will fail of course. Even its efforts to be something more than what it is will be because of you. Even if it tries to prove it is not a monster. It will always be a monster. There is not enough blood going to your brain. Your heart beats out of rhythm with the shock of losing so much of the vital substance so suddenly. You are chilled. You see those red eyes glowering down at you see them until you cannot see anything anymore. But you die knowing Subject 89P13 has made it through its development. You have succeeded.