Work Text:
The Secret Benefactors Institution, also named SBI has a small project hidden under the deepest darkest depths of their files, aiming for stronger bodies and longevity as their final goal.
Experiments were tested and volunteers were recruited, one who will not be missed and names forgotten, given a sizable sum of money and benefits to bait them into their grasp. There might be a small addendum about the free will of body experimentation, but it’s their fault if they missed it innit?
The first who fell for such a trap was a man with golden locks and a gaze as cold as the color of his own eyes, stubble filling his mouth and chin. He needed the money for his wife, who was dearly sick in the hospital.
Professors faked a car crash, handing so much money to his wife for compensation, then his identity was dead.
Now he was known as P-1, the only name he, no, it will be known by.
Scientists cut open his back, revealing string after string of muscles under the skin, backbones breathing the sanitizer air of the outside. No screams were heard when men shoved shards of greasy glass and sharp metal aside bones, no one heard the muscles of the man shrieking in agony as the muscle cells were torn apart one by one.
Reverse engineering they called it, revival can only happen if one is dead after all, bacteria needs to be inserted into a body before they could figure out a vaccine.
They all ignored its screams when it woke up agonized, tearing at glass showing his whole back on display, droplets of liquefied mercury replacing its tears. Someone didn’t sign up for torture, didn’t it?
The second was a young traveler seeking refuge for couch surfing, willing to sign the contract he had no idea what it contained.
Police declared the man missing after weeks of his disappearance after his parents said he should be back many days prior.
Cruel men injected soot and tar into the marrow of his bones, replacing narrow holes with the dusty mixture, ignoring how the young man coughed out bits of hardened tar every few hours, as P-1 comforted it over the metal walls that separated them. No one signed up for this behaviour.
And that was W-2, the second to succumb to the organization.
That was their first mistake.
The third was yet another man, pink long locks tickling his muscled back, eyes so hazel it could be mistaken for being beet red under the bright sunlight, seeking to find a job in the Institution who faked themselves to be a research facility in public eyes. The head scientists saw potential in him, blunt yet incredibly smart at the same time, yet so naive.
The young man found out things he shouldn’t have found in his status, the many experiments that dwelled in the basements of the facility, inhumane in his eyes, reporting to his higher-ups who he deemed trustworthy.
No one was on his side towards the fact, betraying the young researcher in a heartbeat, throwing him to the rabid dogs that were the head of the secret experiments.
The young man’s boss reported him missing after a long day of ‘work’, receiving mute silence from both his parents and the police ever since as if they all never existed. Never have they thought it would come to this.
So then B-3 was born, doctors sucking out non-lethal amounts of blood from it every day, leaving it powerless and pale on its floor. Scientists theorized that blood flowing in arteries and vessels was the reason bodies rot, blood being essential for survival, what if humans could survive without it?
W-2 hums soft melodies to soothe the weak whines of the other on yet another side of the indestructible wall in the process, thumping its soot-filled head against the high walls.
And that was the second mistake that the Institution had made.
The fourth was an incredibly young boy, demanding refuge from a head of experiments by the roadside, hoping to escape from the suffocating grasp of his blood relatives. Golden-blonde hair shimmering under the sun, gray-blue eyes stinging with tears as he pleaded, taking scarred hands from repeatedly picking up scalpels.
No one reported anything of the boy’s disappearance, and nearby security cameras received nothing but a few minutes of glitches that day.
The boy let out silenced screams as they injected moss and mold into his veins, if bacteria could even preserve meats and substance, the same could work for humans right? Even children would know this wasn’t legal.
Sobs of T-4 could be heard through reinforced walls, B-3 comforting it telling it tales of old, folklore little believed in, myths heroes left behind with their legacies and wishes. Too bad none of the four are just yet.
The next never came for a very long time, so doctors and scientists grew crueler to the only subjects they had in captivity, experiments growing more and more severe every single day, every single hour, every single second. They inject strange substances and vaccines into strangely modified bodies, simply offering antibiotics when T-4 coughed out specks of spores and blood, B-3’s pale veins under skin bulging, W-2’s eyes turning black from the sheer amount of tar, or when P-1 grew shards of glass out of his fingernails.
Screams and cries became much more frequent, at least one of them dripping salt onto the dirty marble tiles or their floor until no more could be shed, another uttering quiet words of reassurance every single time. Soon enough, humans all have their breaking points, and so did the four in separate rooms, although they were never seen as one for a long time.
One by one, mentalities broke, some maniacally, some silently sinister, some rabid, some cackling into the sanitized air of their specialized room. If no one but the others beside them treated them as human beings, why should they believe they are any longer?
A group of so-called monsters waiting to pounce after being wrecked by their own kind, supporting each other’s train of insanity when scientists ignored their screams of survival.
That was the third and last mistake the higher-ups made.
It was eventual one of them would snap anytime, they were mad uncontrollable beasts, after all, cannot be restrained except their own kind, a hive mind of crazed ideals with shattered mirrors of humanities, the shards digging into their hearts, yet they stayed apathetic as you might expect.
The string finally broke when they wheeled in B-3 into their lab for another experiment, the pale man snapping a doctor’s arm as he attempted to suck more of his blood out, bits of his skin already rotting, yet his muscles had amplified power for the penance of unknown shots.
The antiseptic had no effect on him as its body was much more modified to adapt to any foreign substance due to the lack of blood 24/7, blue-veiny eyelids flying open before a doctor could press his scalpel on it.
It also ignored the doctor’s scream when he broke the bone into two brittle shards, the place where it broke flushed beet red and brown, the same color B-3’s rotting skin above his rib cage had.
The- being smirked sinisterly as the said doctor commanded his assistants to incapacitate it, picking up the scalpel laid by a side on a tray nearby.
Splatters of red paint decorated the navy aqua doors of the experimentation room soon after, and the only person standing dipped its uncut fingers into the pools of crimson, rippling across the original marble floor. It smiled as it licked a drop off its finger, turning its gaze towards his creations thrown across the floor and the intricate walls.
Wails of sirens blared the same shade of liquid dribbled into the room, casting dark shadows under pale eyebags, ribs rattling in its cage with a weapon in its hand, slitting throats and chests with such precision, you would have mistaken it as a human doctor perfecting their art.
Metal gates thundered open with a press of a few simple buttons, and the being never felt excitement ever like this before as its family stepped out of their respective rooms, grimey feet stepping onto the gray concrete that was the outside, bearing all sorts of blissful smirks and smiles across their disfigured faces.
Pale-green spores spilled out of T-4’s mouth as it cackled, spreading the whole perimeter with its toxic mist, kicking away the corpse that obscured its way out of the bolted door. The bacteria the doctors ever so gracefully bestowed upon it spread around the underground facility, bloodied coughs sounding out from locked doors and glass.
The four of them wasted no time storming out of the room they stayed in for so long, now was finally the time for all of them to wreak the havoc they wished in their dreams. W-2 cut upon its blue-blotched skin to let tar dribble out from its wounds, showering the midnight coal substance all across walls and their trails.
Glass nails slid out of P-1’s partly transparent skin, muscles wriggling under bloodied glass as the razor-sharp material fluttered out into the crisp air, destroying a lock nearest to it, letting the other massacre their ecstatic way to all living beings that were present. It hummed as it flew a shard of glass from its back to a guard attempting to stab it from the back, impassive as the man slumped on the floor, with a shard of bloodied glass embedded into his thick skull.
Silenced screams of doctors and scientists replaced theirs this time, an eye for an eye, multiple experiments for multiple gruesome ways to die gifted by the grim reapers they made themselves.
A matchbox was revealed in T-4’s hands as they walked out of the entrance, footprints bloodied with the same nasty substance, medical gowns soaked with grime and crimson oil paints across the canvases on their bodies. All of them grinned as they saw the flammable tool, taking a match each, and walking toward different corners of the facility on the surface.
An eye for an eye, a leg for a leg, torture for torture, brutality for more brutality, and last of all. Wasted sanity, for their lives.
P-1 smirked as it stared at its beating heart under a pane of glass.
W-2 bubbled out a cheeky laugh as it saw its trail of black spread across the entire operation.
B-3 squeezed off excess blood from its gown, dripping the liquid in its mouth, faint shades of pink flashing upon its rotted body for a split second.
T-4 brushed on a furry piece of mold growing out of his temple, raising the flaming match on the nearest trail of soot and tar.
Four flames were set ablaze in four corners of hell, letting loose four demons of its own making into the wild, and that.
Was their Fourth mistake.
P-1 grinned at the amber flames licking the gray concrete walls, the other members of its family reuniting with him by his side.
“Now.”
“Let’s welcome the 5th member of our family, shall we?”