Chapter Text
All sparks become flames. All it takes is a little oxygen.
A man was pacing in a dark room while a second, much younger man typed furiously at a laptop. The only light in the room was the glow of the laptop and a single bulb. The only sound in the room was the patter of keys and the click of a shoe heel against concrete.
There was a third person in the room, but that person was not alive. She was on a gleaming operating table, naked except for a thin white sheet over her hips. Her skin was immaculate. Her hair was dark against the glint of the steel.
“Are you finished yet?” The pacing man snapped, clearly agitated. His eyebrows were strung together as his eyes bore into the unmoving body. The younger man didn’t respond, only readjusted his glasses and squinted at the screen.
These two men were lone wolves of an empire that once stood. The first man couldn’t help the bitterness he felt when he thought of what once was, what he once was. The world at his feet, a white lab-coat, and an army. A thousand armies. A thousand worlds.
“Is it done?” He said, pulled from his reprieve when the young man cleared his throat.
“I think so. I still think we need to test it on someone, sir, we can’t guarantee it won’t destroy the body, or-”
“It has to be now. We’ve wasted enough time.” The man began to pull surgical equipment from a cabinet adjacent to the operating table. He piled tools on a tray.
“Sir,” The young man cleared his throat again. “Mr. Julien, I understand the time constraint, but if this doesn’t work, if it doesn’t take, we’ll be back at the beginning. With no body.” He was right to be cautious. The journey to procuring this particular girl had been lengthy and complicated, not to mention keeping it healthy enough to prevent decomposition. The planting of the older girl to steal the body and replace it with a fake that the damned Killjoys would burn and mourn had been nearly impossible. She had begun to lose her mind, a hiccup in the plan that resulted with her brains splattered on the floor of the desert the day after she had done her duty. Julien had only just managed to steal the necessary chemicals to keep the real body from rotting before the company fell, and had escaped with only moments to spare before Better Living was destroyed.
“I understand,” Julien stated shortly as he donned latex gloves and picked up a scalpel. “But the time is now. Thomas, print the devices.” Thomas paused, glasses on the end of his nose. He looked uneasy.
“Have I not made myself clear? Now!” Julien barked. Thomas began typing again, and the machine connected to the laptop began to whir and move. Codes from Thomas’s laptop made their way to the machine and were transferred to microchips that slipped into Thomas’s waiting hand. Four were produced before the machine shut down.
Julien began his work. He made small slices on the girl’s body: one fell in the crook of her elbow, the other in her left Achilles tendon, and two more on each temple. No blood fell. The skin looked pale and dull under the glitter of his scalpel. Into each cut, a microchip was placed, and the openings were sewn shut. Thomas watched the whole procedure, discomfort clear on his face.
“Activate the program,” Julien said, eyes resting hungrily on the body in front of him. Thomas did as he was told, attaching electrodes to each freshly-sewn wound. Typing the activation key into his computer program, he waited. Each orifice glowed a pale blue and went dim. The body didn’t stir.
“It says the program has embedded itself, sir,” Thomas said excitedly. “It worked!” Julien said nothing, surveying the body closely. He circled it like a hawk circling prey, pausing occasionally to prod at the body or run his fingers over the cold flesh.
“She will need more muscle,” Julien’s voice was soft as he touched the skin around her neck. “All those years in the desert, underfed…” He trailed off, eyes trained on her face.
Thomas paused in the collection of his materials. “Sir? What do you mean, she’ll need more muscle? This is only a prototype. It’s not meant to be used on a live body. And she isn’t, well,” He coughed. “She isn’t alive.”
Julien had begun to pull another device from the cabinet. “Do you know what this is?”
“An, um, an I.V. pole, sir.” Thomas looked nervously at the body, and back at Julien. “Sir, are you alright?”
“And do you know what this is?” He held up a bag of fluid, labeled with a fading BL/i sticker. Thomas shook his head. “This is a complicated mix of flecainide, adenosine, and dofetilide. You went to medical school, didn’t you?”
“Those are all antiarrhythmic chemicals. But,” Thomas’s eyes widened. “Sir, you can’t do this! The program isn’t meant to function on living specimen, it hasn’t even been tested on rats!”
“She is a rat,” Julien stuck the left arm of the body with a needle and hooked the I.V. tube to the bag hanging above. “All of her kind are rats.” His eyes glinted dangerously as the fluid began to drip into her arm. “There must be reparations paid for the destruction of Better Living, Thomas. It is time for the resurrection of society as it should be. The future is bulletproof.”
Thomas paused before responding evenly. “The aftermath is secondary.”