Unity by Carl Stubblefield (epub read online books TXT) 📕

modern-day equivalents to medieval torture devices. Gus was stretched like he was on the rack, feeling his bones pull out of their sockets. One time Mengele crushed his hand in his godlike grip, then leaned close to watch the restorative process, making notes on a virtual keyboard reminiscent of Yuki’s. Upon comparing it to Gus’ other hand, he noted the ring.

“And where did you get this little trophy?” Mengele stopped as he must have analyzed it, then slowly looked at a ring on his own stone finger. He looked up at the ceiling and muttered, “You will pay for that one, gamesman.”

Mengele continued with his work, with even more severity, if that was possible. Long incisions were made and Gus heard the *pat-pat* of his blood pumping out and dripping onto the metal table. It collected in grooves and was collected in samples vials.

With all he did, Mengele had a sixth-sense of just how much psychological strain Gus could take before passing out. He would skirt the edge of it, and then pull back at the last second when Gus had almost succumbed to oblivion.

Then the injections. All colors of materials with huge needles that looked more like the types used to inflate basketballs than the thin, smaller ones for giving immunizations. While some of these carried some kind of healing infusion, they were almost the worst of all.

The infusion stimulated his Nth into a supercharged state, and they snapped into action to repair torn cartilage and re-affix muscle ripped off his bones. He saw bruises form on his naked body, then shift in unpleasant colors as they went from reds, to dark purples, turning a sickly green before fading into yellows and browns as if he were watching a time-lapse video.

The Nth must have been so busy repairing the extensive damage that they had no resources to mollify the pain, because wave after wave of the excruciating process repeated in different areas as the damage was managed.

In the brief moments when the intensity began to wane and Gus’ breathing began to slow, Mengele would reappear and put Gus through a new battery of tests. Mengele seemed unaffected by Gus’ screams and went about his work methodically and systematically. Each horror was worse than the next.

Mengele extracted tissue samples, first by cutting a large section from Gus’ quadriceps muscles. And then he removed a wedge of bone afterward, with some tool that resembled a small jackhammer. Then there was the needle that extracted some of the fluid from his eye. He even winked with the eye Gus had temporarily damaged right before the needle went in.

Gus’ desperate thoughts hoped for someone in the Crew to come in and rescue him, but after what felt like days, that brief hope guttered and went out. It was clear Mengele would keep him here as long as he served to satisfy his curiosity, although the grin on his face showed he enjoyed inflicting pain for its own sake.

When the tests began to take brain biopsies, Gus was on the verge of breaking mentally. A cranial drill removed small sections of his skull and samples were taken like core samples from the earth. The smell of burning hair and probably bone was sickening. The noise was deafening, amplified a thousand times as the drill buzzed against his skull.

After every injury, again came the injections and the Nth knit Gus back together again. Mercilessly healing their host according to their directives, despite their facilitation in the endless torture.

To cope, Gus reached out for Nick, but found the communication blocked and staticky. Something in those damn syringes created a disconnect between him and his powers as well as with his NIC. He wasn’t sure which was occurring; he could sense them but not access them. Shapes behind an opaque glass, dimly seen. They obviously were working, since his body was being healed, but perhaps Mengele knew how to tax them to their fullest so they had no capacity for anything else besides keeping him alive.

Left to himself, Gus tried with limited success to erect walls to shield himself from the pain. He began to accept that he was all alone and that this was his new reality. The walls were the only thing that seemed to help to a limited degree.

Burrowing down into himself, he could escape a portion of the pain. It was by no means perfect, and often Mengele found ways to pluck him from his mental lair and drag him out into the searing sunlight of agony. But he scrabbled back in as soon as he was able, and the pain was less acute.

At some point, Mengele tried to ask some questions, but Gus was either too deep in his mental fortress or too exhausted to think straight. Mengele simply shrugged and continued his work, whistling distractedly. He never became perturbed with Gus’ lack of response, flailing about when in pain, or any reaction Gus had to the tests. At times he just stood back and observed until Gus expended his energy, at which point he would approach again and continue.

Time became an unknown concept. Gus couldn’t tell how long he had been here in the lab as each cycle seemed interminable. There were no windows or clocks, and nothing to indicate the passage of time.

Mengele did not seem to ever need to eat or sleep, he would just move out of sight until Gus had recovered and he would be there again. If he did rest or eat in those windows, Gus never knew or saw. He felt like he was always nearby though. There never was a gap between restoration and experimentation.

Gus longed to pass out, hoping that the loss of consciousness would trigger his Leech ability to overload and shock his system into death with all those latent absorbed powers. Why he had fought so long to avoid death had become a blurry concept at this stage. Death would be welcome. It would be rest. An end to struggle, an