Every inch of sinew in Jaime's body shook and contorted with rage. It came on suddenly like a tidal wave of fury, drowning him in an unexplainable desire to shed the blood of a stranger. His fingernails dug themselves into his palms as he slowly began to move from the bed, tides of crimson leaking down his white knuckles. His breathing was ragged and hot, his chest almost bursting from the pressure building up in his lungs. Doctor Caulder's ugly, wrinkled visage seared itself upon the forefront of Reyes's mind like a hot iron; only one, singular desire accompanied that picture: to see his face battered, bruised and broken into a hundred pieces like a mirror shattered against stone.
Dr. Caulder's grin faltered, his fangs receding at the sight of the boy's twisted, wrathful expression.
"Mr. Reyes?" He asked, his voice cracking slightly.
"Are you alright?" The old man's concern was shaded with hints of panic. He looked over toward Brenda and Paco in a silent plea for them to explain what was wrong with their friend.
"It...it was you." Reyes muttered between gritted teeth, his feet hitting the cold, tiled floor as he tossed the blanket to the floor.
Paco stepped forward first, placing a palm against Reyes's chest. "Hold on, buddy, just calm it down." He placed himself directly between Jaime and the doctor. He was nearly a foot taller than Jaime and several degrees heavier. Despite his skittish nature, he was the last person Jaime would ever want to fight. "He's the guy that fixed you up. I really wouldn't recommend trying to knock his teeth in,
amigo."
"
What?" Jaime's gaze shot up toward Paco's, meeting his older friend's eyes. Indignation burned behind Reye's eyes.
Paco shifted uncomfortably, glancing back at Brenda. "What'd I say?" He whispered, confused and a little frightened by the look his best friend was giving him. Jaime being mad at him-
really mad at him- was an entirely foreign concept. "Come on, Jaime, just get back in bed-"
A fist slammed against Paco's nose before he could finish. He stumbled backward, reaching up to grab his face as blood leaked down his lip. "What the hell, man?!" He shouted, turning to face Reyes.
Jaime took the bigger boy by the collar, channeling all of the anger coursing through his veins to shove Paco back into Brenda, sending the two stumbling back into the wall in a heap of limbs. They both cried out in confusion, the doctor's expression darkening all the while.
"You would assault your closest friends?" He inquired, his tone accusatory and sharp.
"No." Reyes plucked the IV from his arm, tossing it to the side as he made for the wheelchair bound man. He could tell that something was off immediately, but it was only just becoming clear to him what was going on. His memories were still clouded, yet Jaime still felt a sense of clarity and purpose as he marched toward the seemingly defenseless doctor.
"But those aren't my friends-" He countered, reaching out to grab at Dr. Caulder in an attempt to drag him to the floor.
His hands passed through nothing but air, finding no purchase in the illusion set before him.
"Huh-" The most confusing week of Jaime Reyes's life only got more so as the hospital room around him melted away, the tiles shattering against the ground and revealing nothing but a sheet of blackness behind them. Sheer, unrelenting nothingness surrounded Jaime in less than a second.
"No no NO!" The voice of the doctor rang out from every direction, both near and far, echoing through the void.
"I was so close. So close. We almost have it- damn you, you stupid...stupid boy." He spat, vitriol flowing through his shouts. "Your friends proved as useless as I dreaded they would."
"I don't know what's going on here," Jaime breathed, doing his best to keep from puking. Floating in an endless void of black was hell on his senses. He couldn't tell which direction was up, down left or right. Was he floating upside down? Was he sideways? There was nothing for him to measure that by. No horizon to level himself. No light to ground him. Everything was just miles upon miles of nothingness.
"-but those weren't my friends." He repeated. He could feel the fog over his mind lifting, memories forcing themselves through the cracks. Jaime held tight to even the smallest detail- even the tiniest shred of what had happened to him after he lost consciousness in the museum.
"And how, pray tell, could you possibly know that?" Caulder sneered.
"Their minds are more mine than their own. I know everything they do, and I copied them to the tee."A flash of anger filled Jaime's chest once more at the implication that this freak had somehow gotten to his friends.
"Really? Because your Paco impression could use some work." He fired back into the darkness.
"He couldn't speak Spanish to save his life, and he's Catholic: his mom would tan his hide if he ever said 'hell' like that."He must've angered the voice in the darkness, because Jaime was suddenly and abruptly reintroduced to the concept of gravity as he began to fall into the void. As terrifying as it was to feel himself sinking rapidly toward a floor that wasn't there, Jaime felt a small sense of relief. He was beginning to remember. He was seeing what had brought him here- the battle he had already fought in his mind two days prior. It was a small victory was that quickly eclipsed as the scenario was quickly changed by whatever force was working his surroundings to Dr. Caulder's advantage.
Jaime landed on his back inside a massive room with a vaulted ceiling, easily more than a hundred feet up. The room itself was shaped like something of a donut, with walls of concrete well over a hundred and fifty feet away all around. Pulling himself to his feet, Reyes turned his gaze toward the center of the room. A strange, pointed obelisk sat inside of a gargantuan, spiraling cylinder.
"The hell is this?" He coughed, moving toward it. The railing along the side allowed him to lean safely over, getting a better look at the bottom of the cylinder. Several dozen massive cords snaked from the bottom of the monolith, connecting to a variety of machines and tubes surrounding the interior of the hole. It almost looked like a nuclear silo converted into some kind of...giant lab.
"We're ready to begin, chief." A young man with a slight French accent called, drawing Jaime's attention away from the strange object in the center of the room. His hair was dark and matted with sweat, an eager smile spread across a tired, handsome face.
"We're finally ready.""Excellent news, Dr. LaSalle!" Another voice called from the opposite side of Jaime. It sounded vaguely familiar, yet he couldn't place where he had heard it before. "Let's begin, then.
Time is wasting!" The man known only as 'chief' was broad-shouldered, with a mane full of bright, auburn hair and an alluring sort of confidence in his eyes.
Jaime followed after them as they made their way across the massive room, toward a small section of sensitive electronic equipment and a number of machines set up near the central obelisk. Around a dozen technicians in lab coats were working on what appeared to be a rather complicated chair, of all things; there was a helmet portion attached to the top, with several large tubes and wires running from it and to some of the equipment nearby.
"What is this place? Why did you bring me here?" He asked, looking toward the sky. There was no reply.
The Chief and Dr. LaSalle paid no mind to Jaime as they approached the work station, each exchanging words with the rest of the staff as they prepared for whatever it was they were experimenting on here. If Jaime were a betting man, he'd say it had something to do with the giant, alien-looking piece of obsidian behind them.
"Alright, Niles," LaSalle turned to his bearded friend.
"it's ready. Climb on in."They exchanged a quick, tight hug before the Chief- Niles, apparently- sat down in the odd looking chair. The helmet came down onto his head, lights blinking to life across it's metallic exterior. LaSalle stepped over, his hand resting on a lever attached to one of the machines. "Here we go. Look alive, people! We only have one shot at this." He warned before pulling down on the switch. Almost immediately after, a thunderous screeching noise reverberated out from the obelisk. It's one hundred foot tall, thin body shook with the sound, it's strange material seemingly the source of that obnoxious racket.
Jaime furrowed his brow, confused by what he saw, but he didn't have much of a choice other than to continue to stare in wonder until he figured out why it was being shown to him.
"Uh, sir, the energy levels are spiking." One of the attendants said over his shoulder. "What should we do?"
"Continue to monitor it. Let me know if we reach the red zone, but stay on task. We can do this." LaSalle ordered, looking back to his friend in the chair.
"How're you holding up, chief?" He asked. Niles had a pained look painted across his face, but he was gritting his teeth and taking it. He offered a thumbs up in response, but he didn't appear capable of verbalizing that at the moment.
"We hit the red!" That same man called out a moment later. "We should pull the plug-"
"-are you sure it won't stabilize?""It's getting worse!" He called, the sound coming from the monolith now near-deafening. The floor was beginning to vibrate, the equipment shifting and bouncing under the power of the sound waves. Niles let out a scream, his fingers digging into the chair's arm rests. "If we don't stop, it's going to kill him!"
"NO!" The Chief bellowed, blood seeping down from inside the helmet, leaking into his hair.
"It's working- I can feel it! Do not stop!" He ordered, trying his best to swallow down a scream. The pain was near impossible to endure, but Niles was going to do his damndest to try. He had worked his whole life for this. He had done the research for decades. He knew it would work- it
had to work.
"Shit. Shit.
SHIT." Panic rose up through the various technicians as they all came upon the same conclusion: it was getting worse, and it wasn't going to normalize anytime soon. None of them knew what would happen if the obelisk's power reached such a level, but they knew it wouldn't do anything good to the chief. They started the process to shut it down, starting for Niles with the intent to pull him out of the chair before he went brain dead. "Get him outta there, get him out-"
"CAULDER!"It was too late. Sparks exploded out from the helmet, showering the doctor in hot embers. Other machines soon followed, fires sparking to life across a number of pieces of equipment. Tubes were blown off or torn by the sheer pressure of the energy travelling through them, sending waves of crimson light through the room. The sound of the obelisk's whirring had Jaime Reyes on his knees, his hands cupped over his ears as he tried to take in the meaning of what was going on around him.
There was an explosion, a bright light blowing out from the center of the chamber that turned Jaime's vision white.
Jaime once more floated in silence, though the void around him was a great deal brighter than the last. It burned his eyes, even when he shut them as tight as he could.
"That...that was you, wasn't it?" He asked quietly. He wasn't sure if he had figured it out or if the thought had been placed into his head. With how much control Dr. Caulder appeared to have over..wherever they were, Jaime wouldn't be surprised.
"It was to be my greatest achievement." Caulder replied, his prideful voice infected by a bitterness only failure could spawn.
"That obelisk you see- we found it in the deserts of Bialya, but the language written on it wasn't ancient Bialyan; it wasn't even of this world." The doctor's echoes dipped, losing the fury that he had spoken to Jaime with before the whole ordeal was forced on the boy's mind.
"It promised enlightenment if we could unlock it's secrets. We were so, so close...Emile and I, we were going to change the world, boy! We were going to bring humanity to the stars with power no one could imagine!""Is that what crippled you?" Reyes rather bluntly asked. He was curious, but something in his clouded past stole all respect he could possibly have away from 'Niles.' Something he had done had affected Jaime on a level he couldn't quite comprehend.
"It destroyed me." He snarled.
"It took decades just to gain the feeling back in my hands. If it weren't for my brilliance, I would've been paralyzed for the rest of my life; trapped in a husk of a body. But it wasn't a complete failure. It gave me...abilities.""No shit." Jaime scoffed. "Why're you using them to go after me? The hell did I ever do to you?"
"Believe me when I say this, Mr. Reyes, what happened to you in that museum was an accident. A horrible, horrible accident.""I had a feeling you screwed with my head. That's why I can't remember anything.""I'm repressing it for your benefit, child. You...you do not wish to remember that." Caulder warned.
"I am going to fix my mistakes, however. All of them. To do that, however, I need you to let go of something. It is the cause of your pain. If you allow me to take it, your life can return to normal- you and your friends can return to your homes and forget all of this ever happened."Jaime felt the anger returning, flowing hot through his veins once more.
"What did you do to me? What're you trying to make me forget?" He demanded to know.
"I'm not helping you with anything until you get out of my head.""That would not be advisable." Caulder sighed, his patience thinning.
"I am using my abilities to suppress your nervous system at the moment. You would be in indescribable pain if I left.""What're you doing to me?!" Jaime howled. He heard his own voice echo through the void with the same power that Caulder's had. It reverberated violently against the white walls, sending dark cracks crawling along the endless space of nothingness.
"I want out. Do you hear me?! I want the hell out!" The cracks grew larger and more numerous. Dark splotches began to suck the light from the void, tearing away at Caulder's hold over Jaime's mind as he struggled against the binds.
"How're you doing that?" The doctor asked, alarmed. "You're a child. A powerless child. You shouldn't be able to-"
'Do not underestimate me, fleshling.' Another voice joined in. Jaime knew it immediately, though from where he could not say. Another memory being hidden away from him, perhaps?
"Who...who are you?" Reyes stammered, unsure what in the hell was going on, or who had invited two voices into his head.
'Jaime Reyes. My name is Khaji Da. You are in mortal danger- let me help you.'And the Scarab forced it's tendrils deeper into it's host mind, expelling out the foreign presence that had invaded it's space.
And Jaime was made to remember.
He woke up screaming, an agonizing pain flushing through every nerve in his body as he was torn in half.
Jaime had been lain on his back on an operating table, his arms and legs strapped down to the table by massive cuffs of titanium; they were strong enough to hold down a raging bull with little trouble, but the moment Reyes had awoken, the bolts could already be heard straining to keep the patient down.
There were two large objects suspended above Reyes via large, mechanical arms: an incredibly bright light to provide clarity to the surgeon, and a laser diode with a lens powerful enough to turn a block of steel into a molten puddle in a handful of seconds. Each was being remotely controlled by a pair of technicians in black and crimson scrubs, their faces covered by surgical masks, though the panic in their collective gaze was easy enough to see.
"God damn it!" The largest figure in the room was a man in what looked like a hazmat suit. He was standing over Reyes, his bulky form leaning down as he assisted in melting through Jaime Reyes's chest piece with his acidic touch. Otto Von Furth's beady, pupil-less eyes stared down in frustration at the boy through his helmet, clearly flustered by Jaime's sudden waking.
"Put him back to sleep, doktor! He is going to break ze binds!" Otto's thickly German voice roared over the general commotion, his finger still held over the squirming form of the parasite as he let bits of acid drip down out of the suit and onto the creature's living metal body. The chitin screamed and fled from the burning chemicals, allowing the laser to carve small chunks out of it while it was in it's transition form.
It was a delicate process, to say the least, and having the patient
awake and
moving made it near impossible for Otto to do his job without turning Jaime's stomach into a crater. The host was needed alive if they wished to keep from permanently breaking the scarab that had infected him.
"I can't!" Caulder shouted back.
"That damned alien broke my connection to him. You-" He pointed a finger toward one of the technicians.
"-Activate the toxin! Keep it from reforming!" The chemical cloud he had used to originally capture Jaime was meant to detach the parasite from it's host completely, but they ran into numerous complications during the process. Once Reyes lost consciousness, Khaji Da was seemingly able to take over his body remotely and dug itself even
further into Jaime's form. It was damned aggravating how persistent the little monster was; it refused to let go of the boy no matter what they tried. The current surgery was working while Jaime was under telepathic influence, but now that he was awake, there was no telling what would happen.
A spray of cream, off-color fog fell over Jaime as the designated attendant brought over a canister and administered the cloud. It was only coming out in short, controlled bursts to keep it from damaging the equipment or- God forbid- breaking Otto's containment suit. The living metal reacted positively to the introduction of the concoction, receding back and staying in it's liquid state since it was under duress; this allowed Otto and the laser technician to continue peeling away parts of the body. Once bits were removed from the whole, they were sucked up with a powerful vacuum and deposited in separate, thick containers that kept them from forming back together.
"Get off of me!" Jaime screamed, pulling at his restraints with all of his alien might. The bolts whined and screeched in protest, trimming away bits of metal with each violent tug. The pain he was under was worse than any he could've possibly imagined. It felt as if they were burning a hole straight through his chest, melting away at each layer of skin with careful precision, carving him up like a science project. There was no anesthetic. No attempt to lessen the pain; not that there was any they could give that would lessen the agony that they were putting the teenager through. He screamed and screamed until his throat bled.
Under any other circumstance, he would've lost consciousness at
best, suffering any number of other things at worst. The scarab was the only thing protecting Reyes from the torture he was being put under. It's protective shell was frantically moving to cover up where the acid and the laser were pointed, despite the fact that it was slowly being chipped away at because of it. Any sense of self preservation that Khaji Da might've had was superseded by it's need to protect Jaime from harm.
'Our blades, Jaime Reyes. Cut through our bonds. I cannot...hold for much longer.'It took every ounce of willpower Jaime had left just to understand the words reverberating within his mind. He gripped his hands into tightly balled fists, focusing fully on them. He felt their every movement. Their every twitch and shake. And he willed them to change. He forced his fingers together into his palms and knuckles, letting the armor tighten around them and shift into something entirely different. A sound like breaking bones popped in each of his ears as his hands turned to long, wicked blades. The serrated edges- sharper than any a human hand could forge- made quick work of the titanium shackles keeping Reyes pinned to the surgical table.
With a wordless, indignant cry Jaime cut them away, swinging the blades through the air with wild abandon. Their razor sharp edges sliced right through the blinding light and the laser projector, destroying both in a shower of sparks. One of the technicians let out an ear-piercing screech when the tip of a blade cut straight through his chest with next to no resistance, tearing a line straight though his flesh.
Otto was quick to retreat out of the way of the wild swings, letting out a string of curses in his native tongue as he cast his gaze on the boy.
"You vill pay for that!" The giant of a man howled, holding up both of his hands. The rubber gloves he wore each had a cap on the end of all ten of his fingers. Through some unknown mechanism, Otto seemed to be able to pop them open at will, exposing some kind of rust-colored acid that filled the interior. His scarred, skinless face contorted in a look of concentration as he spewed forth streams of hot, burning fluid in Reyes's direction.
He was quick to turn his body away from the incoming projectiles, very aware of his exposed chest. Numerous dark, red streaks had already been made on his bare skin where the chitin had been separated during the procedure. The containers storing the rest of Khaji Da hung on the far wall, attached to a series of tubes that had been used to sort the mess of living material out in such a fashion that it never had the opportunity to bunch together and reform into one whole unit. Jaime needed to break those and rebuild the armor if he wanted to stand any chance of surviving this encounter.
The only problem being that the German in the hazmat suit was standing directly between him and the rest of the Scarab. And that angry German was spewing acid from his fingers.
'You can form a shield if you press your arms together, Jaime Reyes.'"That'll work." Reyes let the blades melt away back into his normal limbs, slapping his arms together. Simply imagining a barrier was enough for the chitin to bend to his whims, melding into a large, full-body shield that covered his entire front half. He spun around, letting the streams of acid bounce off the much thicker body of metal. It wouldn't hold up to the acid forever, but it would last long enough for Jaime to get what he required.
He charged the other man, barreling at him as fast as he could with the shield held up before him. Otto, now aware that he couldn't easily put the boy down, leapt out of the way of Jaime's charge.
"Your struggle is meaningless. All it does is extend your pain." The mechanisms in Otto's gloves turned and shifted, changing their mode of release. When the acid left his fingers it instead flowed out into ten thin strips, flowing together like a chain of water contained within an invisible field. He flung them like tendrils, letting them whip against Jaime's back. The streams cut straight through the chitin, drawing deep, ugly cuts along Jaime's exposed back.
Reyes tumbled to the floor, quivering in pain. All he could do was hold the shield up before his body, shrinking himself to keep the whips from digging into any exposed parts. "Shit, shit, fuck-" He heaved, panicked and trying his hardest to keep from completely losing it. The searing pain on his back was almost too much to handle. He could still feel drops of that stinging stuff clinging to his bare flesh, even with the Scarab armor moving back to repair the damaged section of armor.
'Continue using a single arm to shield yourself, but form a plasma cannon in the other. Aim for his aim.'"You want me to kill him?" Jaime winced. He still couldn't believe any of his memories. part of him knew it was the truth, but he wished so desperately that he was still stuck in some kind of nightmarish illusion the doctor had thrown together to torture him. He didn't want more blood on his hands. They were already soaked as it was.
'He is a sadistic killer, Jaime Reyes. You see how he enjoys attacking a mere boy. His life is worthless.' Khaji Da was quick to reply, it's words harsh and vengeful. The Scarab did not appreciate being tormented any more than Jaime did.
After several moments of thought, Reyes relented, removing one of his arms from the barrier. It was made significantly weaker and smaller, the acid immediately going to work at burning through the thinner layers of chitin offered up to protect Jaime from the whips. His other arm was brought down, the balled fist changing and transforming into a glowing cannon. It whirred with a menacing sort of hate- an eagerness to see it's foe destroyed. He didn't want to do this, but...but he had little choice in the matter. Reyes lifted the weapon, feeling it's heat grow until it unleashed a lightning-quick blast of plasma.
Otto's helmet exploded in a burst of that rust-colored acid and rubber, bits of his hazmat suit flying through the room and sticking to the tiled white walls. Jaime had to swallow down the urge to vomit at the sight of the German's headless body remaining standing, unmoving and lifeless. He slowly stood back up, his arms returning to normal as he stared ahead at his fallen foe's corpse. It took a few seconds for Otto to fall over, sprawling out over the ground. There was no blood, brain matter or melted flesh left behind. His head was simply...gone in a burst of powerful energy.
"I'm gonna be sick." Reyes whispered, spinning around to get his eyes off of the brutal scene. It didn't stop it from being burned into the back of his mind, even as he went to grab the rest of Khaji Da that had been stolen away during that barbaric excuse for a surgery.
"You're making a mistake." The doctor rolled out from behind cover, his gaze tracing along the damage and destruction that the parasite-possessed Jaime had caused. It was hard to imagine a sixteen year old boy was capable of so much; and to think, Caulder knew the Scarab was capable of so much more than wrecking a single room.
"That creature has done nothing but cause you ill, child. Give it to me. Let me take away this pain."Jaime shattered one of the containers lined up on the wall, letting the living metal slide up into his armor and be absorbed into it's ever shifting mass. He didn't respond to Caulder for several seconds, his attention focused on breaking free the rest of the Scarab's missing pieces.
"He didn't do any of this." Reyes retorted.
"We didn't kill those people- you did.""It is as a I said before: it was an accident. And I apologize for the part I played in your trauma. But I assure you, I didn't do any of this because I wished to see you hurt. My actions-""Really?" Reyes interrupted, turning about on his heel. The armor was still snaking together and repairing itself on his chest as he started to move toward the wheelchair bound telepath.
"Really? Explain it to me, then. Explain to me how you accidentally turned me into a fucking murderer-" Almost without realizing it, Jaime had shifted one of his hands into a plasma cannon, the gargantuan gun whirring and clicking as it charged up a shot.
"-And maybe, just maybe..." He could barely keep himself together. His voice was ragged and cracked. His arm shook near uncontrollably. Reyes had been running for his life...fighting to stay alive...all in an effort to find this man. This was the man that had taken control of his body and his mind and used him in an act so deplorable that it was impossible to truly describe. A massacre. Innocent blood shed, and all Reyes could do was watch, helplessly, as he participated in it.
Jaime pressed the weapon against the side of Dr. Caulder's head, tears running down his cheeks underneath his mask.
"Maybe I won't blow your head off."
