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Perhaps Sparrow should’ve spent more time making the interior of the machine look a little more welcoming and comfortable and a little less like an imposing death trap.
It was dark, growing darker as the doors slowly shut themselves, folding around him like the maw of a living creature. Sparrow took a deep breath, forcing himself into position. He fastened a strap around each of his ankles, then one around his chest and one on his head. It was harder to get his last hand fully immobilized after he’d already strapped the other down, but he managed it. He didn’t want to end up hurting himself struggling or moving around too much. He’d added a mechanism to administer a sedative to himself, but it couldn’t hurt to be extra careful.
Perhaps this whole process would’ve been easier if there was someone else here, but there wasn’t anyone he’d want to trust with this much—they all seemed nice, but he barely knew the residents of the valley. And, if he was being honest with himself, most people would probably try to stop him if they found out what sort of process this was going to be.
Well, except perhaps that Sausage fellow. He might be willing, if he’d been so casual about offering to kill Sparrow he might as well have been offering to let him borrow a cup of sugar. But that didn’t exactly endear Sparrow to the idea of letting him use the machine on him.
No, he would manage it himself.
And it would be fine.
Everything would be fine.
Sparrow forced himself to take in long, deep breaths, to relax his muscles, as the doors clicked shut.
The machine whirred, and Sparrow shut his eyes, waiting. Sure enough, soon came the sharp pain in his shoulder, then the tingling feeling that spread through his limbs. He felt himself slump a little, the panic ebbing and making way for a deep exhaustion.
He wasn’t asleep, though.
Just wait a second longer, Sparrow. Relax. It’ll kick in soon.
The needle in his shoulder retreated, stinging the numbed skin, before there was another, staying there for a few seconds before it, too, retreated back into the machine. Drawing his blood.
Sparrow took in a few more deep breaths. He counted the seconds.
One.
Sparrow could hear the machine whirring louder, starting and stopping as it sorted through the various items he’d put into his storage one by one.
Two.
He should be excited, really. This was a scientific marvel! He could really, actually develop a way to gain the abilities these hybrids possessed.
It was going to be fine.
He just had to calm down.
Three.
The sound of item sorting stopped. Had it found something that worked, or were they all failures? Perhaps he should’ve been counting starts and stops instead of seconds.
Four.
Sparrow heard a new kind of whirring on one side of him.
Success, then. He took a deep breath, bracing himself.
Five.
He could feel metal pressing into the back of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. It was going to start soon.
It was starting, and—
Six.
He wasn’t asleep.
He still wasn’t asleep.
Seven.
He should’ve added more sedative.
He glanced around desperately, searching for something. He was supposed to be asleep, he—
There was a sound something like a hole puncher going through a few sheets of paper as the metal went into his neck, and he gasped as he felt something creeping under his skin, itching and burning. Sparrow felt his muscles tighten, and he leaned forward, as if to struggle against the straps, but the sedative was doing at least half of its job, and the world spun and lurched as he moved. Or maybe it was whatever the machine was doing. Whatever it was, Sparrow couldn’t manage the strength to pull at his bonds.
That’s—that’s fine, that’s fine. This is fine. It can’t be too bad, right? This is fine.
Maybe it’s just taking a moment and I’ll be asleep soon.
Sparrow let out a cry as the burning progressed, spreading through the meat, climbing up his neck until it reached the space behind his eyes. He was shaking, now, biting down hard on his tongue.
There was a pause. A moment of peace.
Sparrow took in a gasp of air. Was that it? Was he done?
Maybe—maybe there weren’t as many physical changes as he thought there'd be. Maybe he’d look the same, and whatever it was that got spliced into him, it would—well, first it would stop burning so much, and then, then it would just let him teleport around, or—or grow flowers, or fly, or something.
Maybe…maybe…
It started with his fingers.
Seemed an odd place to start, honestly, but perhaps it was just trying to increase his odds of survival. Start with the less vital areas.
Sparrow screamed. He felt a crack, and then another, felt his skin stretch around twisting bone until it tore. The burning was getting worse, squirming through the meat of his arm, burrowing itself into his bones, it hurt— he heard whirring again, felt more metal on his skin, sharp, spinning, cutting easily through his skin and through the muscle underneath. Sparrow struggled against the bonds, slammed himself against them, but there was nothing, nothing, it only made it worse. The chamber was getting smaller, he could see the machinery filling it, arms and wires and saws and drills.
Sparrow screamed again, hoping for somebody to hear. Why did he have to crash so far away from everyone else?
Something burrowed into his shoulder, hot, burning the meat. He could feel the something under his skin writhing, feel the fingers of his other hand start to snap. His legs crumpled as the same effect reached his toes, as his knees gave into the bulging mass under the muscle. More of the burning came from the machine still digging into his neck.
Sparrow managed a glance at his hands. Red and white, contorting and cracking, something red-hot dripping down the exposed bone.
This was a mistake. This—he needed out, he needed it to stop, he—
Sparrow cried out as one of the mechanisms cut deeper into his arm. Too deep.
They were reaching his chest, his stomach. He could feel heat in his throat, his eyes, feel his back creaking and bending with the pressure of the burning under his skin. Something carved at the skin on his face, pulled underneath it. He couldn't hear the screaming anymore, couldn’t hear the machine.
The last straw was when skin over his stomach split. There was one last screech, and then his eyes slipped closed. The hill was silent save for the whirring of saws and machinery.
The first time he woke up, he curled into the space on the floor he found himself in, the rotten meat on the ground squishing and squelching under his weight. He could hear flies buzzing.
Sparrow curled tighter, covered his head in his hands, tried to block out the sound and the feeling. He couldn’t breathe. There was so much. He could still hear the gears turning, the whirring of machinery. But it was closer this time. Underneath his ribs, hidden inside of him.
OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE SURROUNDINGS.
Sparrow whimpered, pressing his hands harder against his ears. The words flashed across his vision even with his eyes shut as tightly as he could manage, the sound blaring in his ears.
OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE SURROUNDINGS.
OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE SURROUNDINGS.
Sparrow didn’t move. He didn’t—he didn’t like this. This was…
SCANNING…
ERROR DETECTED.
PURGING DATA…
10%...
30%...
Sparrow let out a low whine, shifting as the whirring grew louder, as something seemed to wriggle through his thoughts, sifting through the inside…
50%...
75%...
98%...
…
The next time Sparrow woke, his sensors did not register the meat or the skin discarded on the ground, or the flies buzzing in the air, or the scent of rot. It seemed like he’d put just enough sedative in, because he couldn’t quite picture anything past when he’d strapped into the machine. Good—he’d been hoping he had enough to work.
He stumbled out of the now-open machine, gazing up at the sky and the overgrown camp. The grass had grown into tangles, and the moss was spreading up his machine and his old plane. How long was he…
Well, best not to think about those things. He was much smaller now—the machine looked bigger than ever—and looking down at his hands, he found bright, shining metal.
It had worked. It had actually worked!
He was a hybrid.
The machine had done exactly as it was meant to.