As it turned out, he didn’t get the chance to see the scientists’ reactions.

The moment the discs activated, he was transported to a containment box. Thick, enchanted glass walls surrounded him on all sides and the only way out was through an equally transparent airlock.

He had taken a look around and was shocked by what he saw. There were twenty people gathered in this room, and eight of them were guards armed with assault rifles not all too dissimilar from his own.

The other twelve people looked like they might be scientists, but maybe they were just general assistants instead, they all looked rather young and just didn’t have that same clinical gaze the ones he’d met previously had.

When he first appeared, he just stood still in confusion as they pointed towards him and mouthed words at him.

He couldn’t tell what they were saying. with a minimum of five people talking it was hard to focus on any one person.

It was only after one of them started fanatically gesturing at a circle on the floor in annoyance that he got the memo and stepped on it.

When all that got him was a bunch of shaking heads, he stepped off it, only to receive crossed arms from a few of them.

So he stepped back onto it, to which one of the assistants actually face-palmed and flipped him off.

Finally, he understood what they wanted him to do when the same woman who had gestured at the circle placed her hand on the floor.

Copying her he put his hand on the circle and almost immediately felt a sharp prick of pain.

Yanking his hand in pain, he looked at the droplet of blood that was forming.

He looked over at the woman, feeling betrayed. She shrugged at him, and then held up her hand like she wanted a high-five

He had to resist the urge to flip her off like the other assistant had done to him earlier.

He also resisted the desire to rub his hand on his trousers or vest. Instead, he lifted his hand up, pausing just before he licked it.

He also didn’t want to put his hand anywhere near his mouth; he knew where it had been and what it had done, and it disgusted him.

With no options available to him, he just left it be and watched as the blood droplet formed and splattered across the pristine, white floor.

Then he looked back up at the assistants. They still stared at him, but there were no more gestures or mouthed words. He felt like some sort of zoo animal.

He tried miming wiping his hands, but there were just a few nods and raised eyebrows; nothing helpful came of it.

After a few minutes of this treatment, he stopped trying to interact with the people. The small wound had stopped bleeding anyway.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Instead, he went over to look at his kill, he’d never really gotten a proper look at the fiend, so why not take one now?

That’s when the airlock door finally popped open. Changing direction instantaneously, he walked over and into it.

The whole decontamination process wasn’t pleasant, but he beared with it. Maybe he wouldn’t need a shower, he mused. That was one of the very few bright sides.

He was still going to take one; he just wouldn’t feel clean otherwise, not after what he had done today.

Walking out of the airlock, he got a pat on the shoulder from one of the assistants.

“Good work on surviving.” He said, eyes gleaming with glee.

Looking around, he noticed that was the gaze that most people had; respect and also a fair amount of confusion.

He couldn’t see the guards’ faces since they were hidden behind black-coated visors, but he felt them weighing him up.

“Very good work, now let's get this off of you” another male assistant said, lifting up Thomel's arms for him while another guy started to pull off his vest.

He felt like a toddler, but all that exhaustion and mental weariness he had been holding at bay was starting to slam into him. Besides, he had just killed a ginormous troll, what was there for him to feel insecure about?

Stifling a brewing yawn, he stood as still as a mannequin while they got to work jabbing him with syringes and stitching up cuts he didn’t even know he had.

Maybe they were doctors, not assistants? They certainly seemed quite skilled at this.

“Right, looks like we’re done here. Cas, want to take him to one of the rooms?” One of the assistants called out to his colleague.

Thomel was starting to have difficulty telling them apart, all. Their faces and voices had begun to blend together, like soup in a cauldron

A combination of his exertion and some potent drugs drowned his mind. He never was that big a fan of drugs, especially not when given to him by some megacorp workers.

But in this case, he was actually quite thankful for it, he felt fuzzy and warm and not at all like a man who had narrowly avoided death at least two times in the past few hours.

Grabbing him by the arm, he was led away by one of the assistants. Or maybe it was a guard? He was so out of it he couldn’t tell.

“Could I get some help?” His minder asked in a weird tone, Thomel couldn’t pin down whether they were happy or sad, angry or calm, it felt jarring to him that he was unable to pick up on something like that.

He couldn’t tell if he was grabbed immediately by another person, or if he had just blanked completely, but suddenly he had two carers. Everything felt off, like he was engulfed in water but capable of breathing in it anyway.

They were hauling him somewhere, he tried not to drag his feet on the floor to the best of his ability but then all of a sudden he couldn’t feel himself walking.

He was flying now, soaring above a formless and vast sea of black clouds, with arms outstretched he soared into one of them.

He didn’t know if he was dreaming or “awake” anymore; he also didn’t have enough brain power to really care.

He just enjoyed the moment. And, when the clouds turned into thick, smoggy water, he turned into a fish and began to swim through it with glee.

When the water solidified and became dirt, he morphed into a worm making its way home before Christmas.

When the dirt gave way into formless, abstract shapes and mind-numbingly huge eyes, he became a two-dimensional triangle and watched over the end of the circulatory system of a long-dead god. But something was wrong. The god wasn’t dead?

Then he was a pig, rooting through dirt for a truffle.

He experienced so many fragmented lives that he didn’t even know what he was anymore.

And then he woke up, and reality hit him like a sledgehammer. He had so much to do and nothing to look forward to.

But that was fine, he just had to take it all one step at a time.