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Language:
English
Series:
Part 5 of Thunderbolts Oneshots
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Published:
2026-02-05
Words:
410
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
3
Hits:
33

Unburnable

Summary:

An OXE scientist is posed with a problem; what to do with the corpses of his test subjects.

Notes:

The idea for this came to me yesterday and I wrote the whole thing on my phone before falling asleep. (I do love a good flash fiction...)

Work Text:

It wouldn't burn.

The middle-aged OXE scientist watched dismally as the corpse of the latest test subject was dragged from the cremation oven and placed back onto the gurney it had arrived on. Aside from being hairless now - its hair and eyelashes being the only part of it that could catch fire - and covered in soot, it still looked as freshly dead as ever.

The scientist sighed. What a waste. His team had been tasked with making an invincible person, and all they'd managed so far was an invincible corpse. His wristwatch chimed with a message from the lab, alerting him that another one of the recent test subjects had died. He shook his head. Make that two invincible corpses.

"What... do you want us to do with it now?" One of the bewildered crematorium workers asked, staring at the soot-covered body. They'd known the body had come from a lab and might be unusual, but they hadn't expected this.

The scientist only had a moment to think before his watch chimed again, this time with an incoming call. He gestured 'one moment' to the workers and answered it.

"Hello?"

"We've got a problem." The lab technician on the other end said in a shaky voice, "Something happened to test subject C3 - his whole body turned black and he went out of control and... killed two of the nurses. We had to use the failsafe to take him down."

The OXE scientist stiffened. The test subjects were always kept sedated - there was no way for them to become violent.

"He killed them?" The scientist asked, trying to make sure he'd heard correctly.

"They're just shadows burned onto the wall now." came the voice from the phone, still sounding rattled.

The scientist blinked in surprise. This was an entirely new concept, definitely not in the skill set they'd been working toward.

"And the test subject's dead now?" the scientist tried to verify.

"We had to! The whole lab would just be shadows now if we hadn't!"

The scientist turned to leave, mind racing through a million different courses of action at once. One of the crematorium workers spoke up again.

"What do you want done with this?"

What indeed. The scientist paused, pulling the phone away from his mouth slightly.

"Box it up. We'll take it back to the lab."

If nothing else, they could always ship it back to the states. Someone there might know what to do with it.

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