Sneak Peek: Scooter's Special Patient (Patreon)

A good week of writing so far.  Been tinkering with a very important scene - thought I'd share it with you here.  There's meant to be a noticeable shift in David's behaviour at the Clinic, from his belligerance at the start to greater compliance in the second half, all hinging on his experience outlined below.  Meeting Jonathon's special patient is meant to have a profound effect on him.  Scene is still in its first draft form - I'll be expanding and refining it over the week.

I'm not quite pleased with the PoV - it's an a sort of indefinte 3rd person, and I think it needs to be rooted within a character's perspective, either Jonathon's or maybe Katherine's (via camera feed?).  Having quite decided where I'm going to drop it yet, whether as a flashback in the second half of the chapter, or as the ending of the first half. 

Let me know what you think!

***

Rows of florescent tube lighting suspended from the concrete ceiling illuminated the chamber.  Under the sharp glare there were no shadows, nowhere to hide. Within this space deep beneath the Clinic stood a pair of connected transparent rooms, smaller boxes made of slabs of reinforced transparent polymer, nearly invisible and all but unbreakable. Their were no visible joins between the walls. Within one of the two rooms was a small cot and a short toilet, both made of the same plastic-like material, also seamlessly molded out of the polymer surface. Cameras overhead surveyed the room, and several sensors tracked temperature, air quality, and more.

A faint hum hinted at the presence of air filters recycling and scrubbing the air. The temperature was just slightly too low for comfort—at least for David, dressed as he was, in his chunky heels and tight shorts, bare arms and mesh top.

He shivered, arms wrapped tightly around himself, and stared, eyes wide, the hair standing at the back of his neck. “Why the fuck are you showing me this?” he asked. “-What- the fuck are you showing me?”

There was a woman in the transparent room. At least, it had the characteristics of a woman: too many of them. The figure writhing on the floor was an exaggerated caricature of a girl, a grotesque eruption of secondary female features. There were glimpses of something supernaturally beautiful, a refined expression of femininity pushed to its extreme: full lips and skin that nearly glowed with vitality, cascades of raven lustrous hair and fulsome curves. But that shape was all but lost beneath fleshy protrusions and bulbous sores sprouting from her curvaceous form. Breasts—but too many—hung heavily from her frame, large, well-shaped, some leaking. Fingernails like talons raked the floor without effect. One hand disappeared between her thighs, clutching at genitals beneath her furious palm.

“Specimen Zero,” Jonathon replied. “The first human specimen to emerge from the tank alive.”

David stared as the woman continued to scrabble at her crotch, feverishly reaching for a climax that eluded her. Her mouth distended in a silent moan as she squirmed on the floor, long hair swirling around her frame like a dark capecloak.

“Why are you—why is she locked away like this?” David took a hesitant step towards the transparent wall that divided him from the woman. Glancing back over his shoulder, he stared at the doctor in disbelief. “You can’t—”

“Yes,” Jonathon answered, his voice cold. “I can.”

As the woman twisted and flailed, David noted with horror a distended, malformed limb—a third leg, misshapen and underdeveloped, emerging from around the hip, boneless and flopping useless even as it twitched and scrabbled against the floor.

As the woman twisted and flailed, David noted with horror a bloated, malformed limb—a third leg, swollen and undersized, emerging from around the hip, boneless and flopping useless even as it twitched and scrabbled against the floor.

“This,” Jonathon said, with haunting clinical detachment, “is both out greatest success and our greatest failure. Clinically dead when placed within the Tank, the patient was the first to emerge fully healed and alive.” He held a tablet in his hands and tapped at a few buttons. “But sadly, not whole.”

The misshapen woman became aware of their presence. She looked up and hate-filled eyes locked on the doctor. With a face at once beautiful and horrific, she bared her teeth and screamed without sound.

“The walls are soundproof,” the doctor noted. “Initially we contained her in far simpler accommodations, but her screams and moans proved too disturbing.”

David looked at him in disbelief. “This is… wrong,” he said.

“Yes, it is.” The doctor’s voice remained calm though scored with anger and frustration. “This is what happens when mistakes are made, David. You’re very cavalier about things you know nothing about. ‘Put me back in the there,’ ‘I’d rather die.’” The doctor mimicked David’s words in a little-girl’s voice. “But what if going back in the Tank leaves you like that?” He pointed at the figure in the glass box. “That’s what happens when we mess around with a process we barely understand. That could have been you. It still could be.”

David stared at the doctor, then at the imprisoned woman. They made eye contact. Her eyes—beautiful, large blue eyes beneath thick lashes—widened; her mouth distended in a feral howl; and she launched herself at the wall between them. David flinched back even as she slammed into the transparent polymer. The palms of her hands pounded at the wall, and her many breasts and protuberant growths flattened grossly against the surface. She slammed her head once, twice, a third time against the surface, and with each dull thud she left a dark red splotch even as she bruised and tore her own skin.

“She’s angrier than usual today,” the doctor noted. “I better calm her down.” A tap at his tablet, and she almost instantly she sagged and went limp.to her knees. “Gas,” the doctor explained.

The woman slumped to the floor, and as her limbs drooped away from her groin, David saw for the first time the penis, glistening and engorged, suspended between the prisoner’s legs, over an inflamed and dripping vagina.

“Jesus.” David stepped back from the cage. “Christ. Christ. What the—what the fuck is this?”

“Those contusions to the head will be gone within the hour.” A hint of wonder crept into his voice. “The regenerative process never stopped. It’s out of control. Tumours and flesh, limbs and secondary sexual characteristics, hair and nails, the patient is in a constant state of healing and growth.” He shook his head. “Every week we operate on the patient, slicing away excess flesh and atrophied limbs. She’s… stunningly beautiful, beneath it all. An absolute expression of femininity.

“And she’s strong. Muscular and bone density well beyond norm parameters. At first she escape, more than once, and hurt colleagues—but we’ve learned to not underestimate her. She’s a dangerous one.” He walked up to the wall and tapped, like one might at a fish in a tank. “But you’re never going to hurt anyone again, are you?” He turned back to David “She been a constant source of fascinating data. We’ve been able to try all sorts of procedures on her.”

“You can’t do this,” David said. “You don’t have the right to….”

“Yes, I do.” The doctor’s voice was firm. “And before you get too high on your morale horse, I should point out that without her… sacrifice, let’s say, you may well have emerged from the Tank in the same state, or worse. We made correction to the process you underwent based on the data collected from her first trip into the tank.

“Besides,” the doctor added. ““She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

David glared at the doctor. “That’s not funny.”

“No, it isn’t.” Jonathon tapped at his tablet, and suddenly they could hear the patient within her prison. “Cindy Bellamy? “Here, let me introduce you. Good afternoon, Patient Zero. How are you feeling today?”

Her breathing was low and ragged, an angry hissing intake of breath. “Plea… please. No….”

“Answer the question.”

“Make it stop,” she slurred, shaking her head to and fro beneath its dark shroud of hair. “Stop—stop, please….”

“Answer the question.” Jonathon’s finger hovered over the tablet. Though his voice remained clinic and cool, it was clear he was being deliberately malicious, and taking pleasure in his victim’s suffering.

There was a sudden shift in the patient’s posture, and she slowly picked herself up from the ground, sweeping the hair away from her face to face the doctor. Though her eyes burned with hatred, her smile was suddenly saccharine and sweet, almost beautiful were it not for the cluster of cysts the deformed one side of her mouth and left it drooping. “I’m good today, doctor,” she said, and her voice was clear, soft and lilting. One hand sought out and fondled a full, pendulous teat hanging from beneath her armpit. “I’ve been good.”

“Have you?” the doctor asked. “Tell me.”

“Yessss…,” she hissed, and pouted. “Good. I’ve been a good girl.”

“Well, then,” the doctor said. “I’d like you to meet someone.”

The patient’s eyes fluttered and flicked between the doctor and David, before locking onto the latter’s feminine frame. “I’ll… Please. Help… me,” she purred as she lifted herself back to her feet. A ripple ran through the patient—lust, or rage, or both—and she spread her hand wide against the wall between them. Long curved nails several inches in length scrapped for purchase against the polymer surface, and up close, David could see the cluster of pustules and polyps that marred the flesh of her palm.

David glanced at the doctor, and back at the patient, and then back to Jonathon. “I get the message, doctor. Okay? I get it. Going back in the Tank’s a bad idea, but why—”

“Who are… you?” The patient took a deep breath, hand leaving the breast and sliding back down to her crotch. She began to rub again, slowly and with a sigh, before continuing. “Who?”

Smiling wickedly, and clearly taking pleasure in the revelation, the doctor spoke. “This is Cindy Bellamy, though perhaps you’re more familiar with her former name.” And the doctor turned to David, and with an expansive gesture completed the introduction. “David Saunders, I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of yours: Mr Adam Fosters—I believe you knew him as Agent Fosters—Steele’s man. The one who tried to kill you.”