Sugawara could only watch and breathe.

He could feel the cold steel of the trolly he had been placed on through his makeshift clothes, he watched as the white tile walls rolled by. He felt his own blood trickly down his shoulder and chest, but he felt no pain.

They placed him on an operating table, and a machine strapped him down, more aliens came into peripheral view as the table lifted and rotated forward.

He saw beau on another table, bugmen in white coats were stabbing him with alien equipment, sealing his wounds with gel, collecting the red blood in vials.

A liazrd in a coat approached him, lazer glove in hand.

Suga’s breathing increased as the lazer was lifted above his head.

He couldnt feel the heat, he didnt feel pain.

But her heard the lazer cutting his skin, he smelt the burning of his own flesh.

he felt the blood drip past his ear and an alien nurse wipe it away.

They were cutting into his skull while he was still conscious.

His lips couldnt move but his vocal chords still worked.

He tried to cry and scream, his eyes darted trying to escape the madness.

When the madness found him again.

The bug nurse peered at him while he struggled, while he gasped, 6 multicoloured eyes stared and twitched as he spluttered.

The nurse wiped his mouth clean.

He watched as the black bugs came back, his mind screaming to him that they were there, crawling over his arms, his legs his face and he needed to get them off, while the other half of his brain knew they werent there.

Suga felt a tug on his skull, a wet suction noise released and his brain was exposed to the open air.

The human screamed in distress, a noise came out of him that he didnt recognise. Pure fear.

The nurse backed away, even the lizard surgeon faltered to the noise. The surgeon growled and snapped, the nurse scuttled away only to return with a syringe in her hand and a shadow over her shoulder.

He hadnt seen the shadow in a while, the faceless man that laughed at him with his fathers voice.

‘Look at you now’ it laughed ‘dont try to get up, its only going to get worse’

The syringe entered his throat and Sugas voice vanished with it, his breathing slowed as the muscles relaxed.

‘No ones coming to save you,’

‘Stop it’

‘You’ve only got yourself to blame’

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

‘Shut up!’

‘If you werent so weak-’ The voice cut out, as a slimy cold thread slipped down between his brains hemispheres.

“There we go! That should do it, hard to find anything in this knotted ball of nerves, assistant Fi, is the amalgamation responding?” the surgeons voice, from growls and snaps into comprehensible language.

The bug nurse chittered.

“It looks like its in distress, Doctor,”

“Nonsense! Its only in distress cause its away from it’s Vassal unit, is it responding to our input.”

Nurse Fi looked into Suga’s eyes and saw fear turn to fury.

“... its responding Doctor.”

“Fantastic, have the tech’s run a jammer frequency while I find the broadcaster nerves and connect them up.”

Assistant Fi walked away but the shadow stayed behind, its blank face flickering darkness.

‘Youre not even human..’ the voice mocked him, returning with a clarity that shook him to his core, ‘youre a dog, go on and beg’

‘N-no’ his own quiet voice did its best to hold out against the hallucination.

‘Beg!’

‘Your not real...’

Sugawara felt another slimy tendril slip down the back of his neck, twisting and wriggling under his skin. The shadow man stepped closer, until the darkness was all he could see.

“And that should do it-” the surgeon’s announcement died in his mouth as the entire room fell quiet.

Sugawara could feel the aliens in the room, like ripples on a pond, their life essence within his grasp. They quivered in fear, staring at him.

‘BEG!’ the voice screamed in sugawara’s brain, and the aliens obeyed.

They fell to their stomachs, squirming and screaming for their lives.

“Dont kill us!”

“We didnt know my lord!!”

“We’ll free you please no more!”

Sugawara could feel the pain his very presence caused them, so he did the only thing he could do. Lash out.

‘SHUT UP! SHUT UP! GET ME DOWN! LET ME GO! ALL OF YOU JUST GO AWAY! GO AWAY! JUST DIE! I’LL KILL YOU! ALL OF YOU JUST DIE!’

The begging stopped.

The aliens presence faded away.

He couldnt hear them move at all.

He was alone.

Except for the voice.

He didnt have the meds to get rid of the voice.

-*-

Beau wasnt a fan of anathesia, he always felt like shit after going under. The hospital had forgoten to turn of the light that were blinding him.

He reached for the hospital sheet and found only his own bare ass on a steel table.

Then the horrible reality came snapping back.

He isntictually reached for his shoulder, but there was no wound to speak of, as if he didnt get impaled on a steel spike only moments ago. He remembered the sharp lance going through his shoulder, and coming out below his ribs. He remembered struggling to breath as the blood filled up in his punctured lung, but there was not a scratch on him.

His head began to clear when he saw the bodies.

Aliens lying on the floor, all of them with a look of agony on their faces, or at least, what he thought was agony.

Then he saw Ryo,

“Shit,”

The poor kid was strapped down on a table with steel cuffs, whimpering and skittish, eyes glazed over and staring off blindly into the light. Beau slowly sat up and slid off his table, grabbing his clothes and slipping on what he could.

“Hold on Ryo, i’m coming,” he called, but The poor kid didnt answer. As the soldier approached he found out why.

The kid was missing the top part of his skull.

It sat neatly along side other alien equipment, and an empty glass tank. Beau gulped, and saw something sticking out. They had put something inside suga’s brain.

It pusled and wriggled, but had ultimately been surgically melded into ryo’s grey matter, there was no way he could remove it safely, not without killing the kid.

“Hey Ryo?” he spoke softly, gently tapping the kids cheek to get his attention, maybe he was still under the anathesia too?

The kids eyes slowly came too, and he looked right at beau and cried.

That horrible, gut wrenching cry all men make when pushed past their limit.

When all you wanted to do was die.

“Hold on, hold on…” he encouraged, slowly putting the top of the kids skull back on his head and pulling at the steel cuffs to release. They snapped open but Ryo didnt move, he couldnt, whatever nerve blocker they had used was still in his system.

“It’s alright kid, we’ll get outta here.”

Beau lifted him over his shoulder, carrying him out of the lab.

They were met with more bodies.

Everyone seemingly dropping dead on the spot, whatever happened while he was under effected everyone but them. Even the guards were just slumped over against the walls.

Beau carefully reached for the guards weapon, and activated it.

“It will be okay,” he repeated to himself as they walked down the silent hallways. “It will be okay…”