The unsung hero pt. 2
part two of the unsung hero story I'm writing.
In the last chapter, Acchan was telling his story from the very beginning, ending with being tossed into the reject bin. This is when the story gets gruesome...
I saw the paws of my twins, the half-decomposed, twisted carcasses, tails ripped off, limbs bent in seven directions at once, eyeless sockets with an eternal scream etched onto their faces. I could smell the gas, the gas they tried to use on me, the sweet, honey scented mist...a facade for the most painful of deaths.I could feel my eyes widening in horror, a twisted scream rising in my throat. 'They're all me..' I thought, wondering if this is the first step down into the death of insanity.
Before I could scream again, I heard footsteps coming closer. Then voices. It was Lee and the Colonel! Using every ounce of courage I could muster, I burrowed myself deeper into the bodies of my siblings to hide from these monsters. "I'm telling you sir, he was the most successful subject so far! And he was the youngest to be tested on, he hasn't even begun PT yet!" I could tell that this was Lee. "How could you discard him when we didn't even get to the marking yet?"
"Because, Mr. Lee, if he couldn't even get to the call box to begin, how could we know the educational systems worked? How would we know if he is truly superior to all of us?" The Colonel began to raise his voice. I knew I couldn't take much more of sitting in those bodies, I hoped that they would keep walking. "How about this, Lee. If I open this bin, will he be looking back at me with life in his eyes, or a cold, dead stare? If he's alive, I will leave him alone from this type of punishment...unless, of course, I see it necessary."
The lid was then opened, and I could feel both men jerk away. "Good God! That stench is horrid!" I saw Lee look in at me, and his eyes lit up. "Well...I'll be damned..." He reached in and pulled me out of the corpses. "Specimen number 37, surname Acchan, you are a miracle unto itself!" He lifted me up in the air by my armpits and laughed, and I looked over at the Colonel, who was staring at me with a stupified look on his face.
"Lee..." The Colonel said, "Take him to the Marking room."
The trip to the Marking room was a short lived victory, from the nightmare that was the past versions of myself, the freedom from the honey scented mist that was so lovely. The Marking room was a small, cramped room with a big machine in the back. Lee sat me down in it, and strapped me down. He put a disc to my face, almost mooshing my snout. It was another display, showing an outline of what looked like an omega symbol with Poseidon's scepter pointing into it. There was the number 37 on the center, obviously for me. I sighed and kept looking into the display.
Suddenly the most painful sensation I've ever had the misfortune to experience burned my skin, on both biceps, my chest and cheek. I felt my fur singing, all over, my tail shaking uncontrollably. I grit my teeth, and my ears became teary, it hurt so bad. This pain continued for about 10 more seconds, then just like that the machine stopped. The pain was still existant though. It hurt to move, to even think was tiring.
The dish went up, and I could see Lee sitting at the desk on the computer. He tapped in some keys and a picture came up on the screen. It was me, on the left, a normal fox Anthro, the picture on the right still buffering. "You see, Acchan, since you have shown true, uhh, endurance, we have decided to keep the program focused on you. As you will see in a moment, we have altered your features to become more...cutting edge against your foes, visually. We have altered your fur color to be more difficult to see, and your unit markings on your arms, face and torso, as I'm sure you've figured out."
A picture finally came up, and it looked nothing like the picture on the left. The only similarities I could pick out were the shocked expressions. The symbol from earlier, the omega and scepter, was part of my fur now, a permanant symbol imblazoned into my DNA.
I was theirs now. I was theirs before. Only now, it's a whole lot more obvious.