.:Dexter:. The First Treatment
#3 of TF-Atavism
A multidisciplinary scientific genius, Dr Darke is the proponent of a type of study he had called unrestricted experimentation. He has found a location beyond the reach of governmental control and carries out the kind of experimentation otherwise deemed unethical. He is the leader of the operations at New Eden and lives in his own quarters built high on the mountain and shaped to look entirely like a slice of britain, replete with flower gardens and stone decor. Dr Darke is not good at social interactions on the whole and relies on his staff to interact with the inhabitants of the island. He is a theif who is not above benefitting from the research already laid down by othershttps://pyroth.wixsite.com/atavism
Dexter needed proof of concept for his transformation research and with permission being denied to him to carry out human experimentation and with every alternative avenue exhausted he'd decided at long last to use himself as a test subject. If it failed, he wouldn't have to worry about it any longer one way or another, if it succeeded then no one would ever be able to doubt his genius again as it would be writ large on his body. He'd done as much groundwork as it was possible to do, he'd retrieved what information he reasonably could from previous experiments in other locations and he'd created a series of treatments entirely tailored to himself.
Normally he ran his experiments alone, unwilling to have the kind of errors introduced that the uninitiated brought to the table, and unwilling to deal with other human beings at the best of times. Unfortunately, for this particular investigation, he needed help to impartially measure the changes he could potentially undergo and make calls on when intervention was required. He set the date for the first shot and informed his staff what was happening, disregarding their cautions and appeals to self preservation. Sometimes genius had to take its first steps alone, burn brightly where others dared not tread. They complied eventually, because there was no option but to do so and he was placed into the habitation rooms within the labs under controlled conditions. The first injection initially went without incident, it stung and the serum burned like fire up his arm, and then he felt fine, his vitals remained unchanged and there was something a little smug in the way his staff reported this to him. He was undeterred, the first treatment had always been designed as a primer, as a means of preparing the body for the strain it would soon be placed under. He didn't worry at that point, it would be the second treatment that would make or break the experiment and it was the second one that he most anticipated. That day came more quickly than the first had and before he knew it he found himself in the chair again, arm extended. The second time he was nervous and his hand shook as he held it out, aware that if this particular stage went wrong he could absolutely die. He didn't want to die, he had so much more to give, but the risk was one he had no option but to take. That injection stung, it stung more than anything else he'd ever felt, the fire spreading through his veins until it roared in his ears, until his heart felt like it was straining against the weight of it all, thudding in his chest.
He didn't remember falling to the floor, but when one of the assistants tried to help him up from his knees he waved them off forcefully because their touch alone felt like knives in his searing skin. He felt like it might never end, that he'd die like this, burning up from the inside out, but gradually the pain seemed to centre itself on his spine, pulling back from elsewhere in his body to nestle like a vast beast between his shoulders. It made breathing difficult, and he could feel movement under his skin in a truly terrifying fashion, as if some great swelling had taken hold there and that catastrophe was imminent. He couldn't even reach it to soothe the tension or to gauge how bad it was.
He tensed his arms and braced himself against the pain, only for the muscle tension to be just too much. He felt skin tear and rather than agony he felt nothing but relief. "What is happening?" he demanded of the grey looking assistant who was staring in horror at his boss. He opened his mouth but no words came out at first. "Speak!" he snapped. The man stammered. "L... limbs." He said, gesturing. "From your back." He stepped back a little at the madly triumphant gleam in the other man's eyes on hearing this, ignorant of the open wound on his back, of the pain and the blood and the mess.
"Wonderful." Dexter exhaled. "Truly wonderful."
And then he slumped forward onto the floor, unconscious.
He woke what felt like an eternity later, aware distantly of drifting in and out of consciousness now and then, when he came to he was face down on a hospital bed, looking at the floor. All of him ached, as if he'd fallen down several sets of stairs, and when he tried to move his back screamed its protest. Still though, there was a new and heartening set of sensory input, the feeling of air in the room moving against limbs he'd never had before, able to feel the wings he knew he had now, even if movement for the moment was painful.
He buzzed an attendant, even in the most compromised position speaking with absolute authority. "I want a report on the success of the treatment." He said. "How am I doing?"
This particular staff member was a little less nervous than his companion had been in the treatment room and nodded to him obediently. "Yes doctor." He said. "At the moment all your vitals are regular, your calcium levels are slightly depleted but it is nothing that presents any concern, we suspect it is due to the metabolic demand of the bone growth. There was some degree of blood loss, but we stemmed the bleeding where your new limbs breached the dermis on your back and with time to heal this has all recovered without the need for grafts. Motion appears regular on your new limbs and as far as muscle structure, tendon and bone, this is indistinguishable from the target organism other than in scale and muscle development, it has even anchored itself in the intended ways to your own skeletal structure. At present however it has not differentiated itself from your skin, it is still definitely hairy rather than feathery."
Dexter was not at all phased by this, this was exactly as he had intended, taking it in stages so that his body could recover from the trauma in between large changes. He'd let it mend and then he'd schedule the next treatment.
Recovery itself was tolerable, it was far from comfortable as his body closed up the wound he'd ended up with, but within a few days he was up and about, investigating the new limbs he'd gained and learning to move them. He would stretch the featherless wings out like a fledgling, figuring out how to flap them and move them independently of one another. Many of his exercises were under laboratory conditions with set parameters in order to measure the connection between his brain and the new limbs. It was all incredibly exciting and he had frequent visitors from higher up in the company looking to see the success story in action. Besides the mending across his back and the odd muscular pain, he was completely and utterly healthy.
The CEOs gave him permission and funding the week after, and his dreams started to really come true.
He could have left his own treatment there and went forward with the plans he'd been hoping for, but he wasn't one to leave any task undone and as the very face of atavism labs, he wasn't about to present to visitors with a set of incomplete bird wings. He set the date for his last injection and finalised the details of his magnum opus. He would be his own triumph.
Once again he braced himself for an injection and once again the familiar fire leapt across his body, this time though he was just as ablaze with ambition and he let it consume him without fear. He stood only to gain, he stood only to prove everything they'd said he could never achieve and instead of terror, this time the burning across his nerves was the burning up of the last of his hesitations, doubt and fears. The agony faded across most of his body but lingered on his new wings, with a stripe of pain along the edge of his arms and down his spine. Even this faded to a painful prickling sensation in due course, replaced with a sharp twinge as hundreds of pinfeathers pushed themselves out of his skin, rows and rows of them. He wanted to scratch but he didn't dare, just letting it happen, holding out his newfound wings obligingly as it did.
He was less pleased to find that the feathers also made their way along the edge of his arms and neck where the beginnings of pinfeathers now protruded from his skin like tiny, sensitive spikes. It would do though, and he was happy with that much. He waited for the sensations to subside patiently, except, in spite of his hopes, they didn't, the fire of metabolic changes lingering stubbornly in his extremities, his hands and feet feeling strange. It wasn't good, an unintended, uncharted change, and he could only look on in horror as his skin blackened. At first he was terrified it was some kind of accelerated necrosis, terrified to lose his precious hands to this, but the colour change was followed by a shift in the bones of his hand, not painful but difficult to endure nonetheless, blunt claws protruding from his fingers and rejecting and displacing his fingernails. The same happened with his feet, and he sat down in horror as it happened. Subtle scaling replaced his smooth skin and when everything finally abated, he was left with hands and feet that lay somewhere between avian and human, flexible but very far from their original appearance.
Well, it was only to be expected that slight overshoot would be possible, all that mattered to him was that he seemed to have feathers, just as he'd intended and needed to see how they developed and whether they were structurally equivalent to the creature he'd drawn his treatment from.
Feathers, as it turned out were incredibly uncomfortable, and the sensation of them all growing in was more than a little bit uncomfortable and kept him awake at night. It gave him sympathy for birds in a way he'd never previously had any, and while laying awake for the second day in a row on his chest, he began to regret a good slice of his decision to continue for vanity and completeness' sake.
When everything eventually grew in though he had a bona fide set of wings, truly impressive to behold and undisputable in their radiance.
And he was ready to get to work.