Watch Dogs 8- The Crucible
#2 of Watch Dogs
We ignore any reasoning
And we do as we're told
And we grow so cold
And no one can say why.
Training- by neurosis
After coming through the portal Corvus tore in the world, and seeing Erik hurried off on a stretcher by frantic orderlies we all staggered of to debriefing, Matthews in our heads the whole way. "well done, you managed to get through it with only one man reduced to shreds- "Corvus, his face going a shade of purple not normally seen in nature screamed" we faced down a Great Old One , and his army of mad beastmen, and your being sarcastic! "
"Au contraire " said a grey faced man leaning against the doorframe, we all turned to face him, no one heard him come in, and given our sensory credentials that was no mean feat. " There were around twenty fatalities out of a hundred recruits this time, count yourself lucky, at least you weren't tortured to death by elves. And to answer your unspoken question I am Andrew spencer, you didn't hear me because I've spent decades being unnoticed and am quite good at it, and you didn't smell me because I am dead, and smell of nothing apart from a whiff of formaldehyde. It's a long story but it boils down to me making a bad deal with something best left unknown, and bar having to repair myself with an industrial stapler now and again, and this annoying habit of speaking for absolutely ages here I am. Now before I forget, here are your marching orders for tomorrow "and with that he tossed a file onto a nearby table and strolled off whistling.
Drawing a veil over Spencer's disturbing monologue we were asked about the mysterious figure that had saved us from the Wendigo, Marcus kindly dropped the whole event directly into the sergeant's mind, and after we had seen her face blanche, I shook her repeatedly until her eyes had rolled back down. "Thank you, Skye, and you'll all have to be patient for answers, firstly because" she pauses to flick through the folder" yes, your actual training begins at sunrise. Your little escapade was just a way to see if it's worth it to actually train you, as you're alive I'll concede that one, but now we're have to turn you into people capable of keeping the worst the world has to offer away from the masses. And secondly the entire event falls under things man was not meant to know and if I think about it anymore I'm going to wash my mind out with bleach. Now get yourself ready for tomorrow, they'll keep you alive now you're here but that doesn't mean it'll be easy, or even possible.
Dismissed we headed back into the bunk rooms and tried to sleep, knowing our trials were ended... for the moment at least. Shadows swooped around me, and the air was filled by mad piping and the shrieks of some huge animal, a figure comes through the haze, his burning gaze focuses on me and I turn to run... damn him I turn and run, but the air is like treacle and I feel cold hands and brutal claws on my back I fall and...
I gasped as I feel out of the torn rags that had been my bunk, changed and frenzied, but then I feel cold and I can't move. A voice chimes out from behind me, "that should keep you still for a while, now would you mind changing back, this spell is really taxing my reserves." Changing back and turning to face Corvus, looking relatively calm for someone who had just had to confront 300kg of angry wolfman, "Having a disturbed night were we, well allow me to help you in your plight" he tossed me a syringe filled with a bluish fluid" It's called Morpheus, no side effects, just a full night sleep, in liquid form.", looking at him sceptically "okay, firstly how do you know what it is, secondly, how much shit will I get into if I'm found out, and finally, where the hell did you get this, this is practically a prison."
"Well, no one ever said living a life of decadence and libertinage made it easy to sleep at night. As to reproductions, practically everyone her uses something to make life bearable, given that our instructors are the ones who couldn't cope with the frontlines, Matthews drowns her sorrows in cheap whiskey, and the padre freebases angel's tears. as to how I got hold of it, these were a gift from our beloved leader who thought that having dead-eyed shamblers going into training might make her look bad." With that he turned away and went back to his bunk. I looked at the syringe for a while then lay back and depressed the syringe into by arm, it fell from my fingers and I slipped into blissful oblivion.
The next day, after the last of the blackness had faded from my eyes, hauling myself out of my ruined bunk and pulling on some fresh fatigues, and stepped out into the morning twilight along with the rest of the unit, under the eye of a man who looked like he was hewn out of oak rather than born, seeing us lined up his eyes began to flare and I clutched at my temple as searing pain flashed through me, screwing my eyes shut I could make out over the pain blazing through my eyes, the sound of multitudes of voices and memories of actions, and as soon as it had started it stopped again. Glancing around I saw that I'd taken it relatively well, everyone save me Otto and James were still trying to shake off what happened, unlike the other two I wasn't engaged in a brutal fist-fight with the telepath who did this, wincing as I saw him break James nose with a haymaker and stab a hypodermic into Otto's neck, he gestured to me and I came forward and dragged them back into ranks, he dusts himself off , holds a fast but whispered conversation with Matthews, hands her an icon and strides into a nearby building, leaving us.
As other squad members tend to James and Otto I walk over to Matthews. "What happened there?" "James is still angry about his enlistment it seems. You see him and Otto are both decedents of one of the old archetypes, the Great White Hunter, and when they found each other it was a bit of a long-lost twin moment, that night they got utterly pissed and, surprisingly it's not a good thing when weres loose all self-control. They fought against the local watchman, who was the guy you just saw, and in the chaos he used on of his more proscribed weapons on him, the msgic warped Otto into the delightful figure he is now and the backwash altered James eyes and now he can't stop seeing things, I'm honestly surprised that they're as sane as they are, now get back to the others and form them up" and with that I hurried back and with only the mildest tongue-lashing managed to make them form back up. With that while the sergeant began reading off the tablet and space began to twist, but before we began another window in space opened and a twisted figure, somewhat like a were but hairless and human in places, stepped through. "Did you miss me" said Erik through his twisted face, and with that we all vanished into the place between the worlds.
I snapped back into the world, alone and bound by restraints to a dentist's chair, a door hidden by the shadows opens and a man in a plastic apron walks in, he is pulling a wheeled container, closed for now and his face was hidden by a featureless mask. He turns to me" please don't try and change, the restraint around your neck is just too small for your neck to expand in and is lined with silver-alloy needles. Need I say what will happen if you decide to be stubborn. Your spatial portal was redirected so we could ask you a few questions, I'll start with an easy one, what is the commander of the watches name, I know you know because I've saw your little encounter in the alley, it's amazing where cameras can be put nowadays isn't it, I'll give you a few minutes alone to mull it over and I'll ask you again" With that he opened up the container and left, when he exited I felt Markus in my head he hurriedly garbled "tell them nothing, once you tell them your nothing to the-" he broke off and the masked man burst in, "he really shouldn't have done that, and now he's being punished, want a look." He grabbed the back of the chair and spun it around and there was a TV screen and on it was Markus, he was with another masked man, he had picked up a steel rod and was systematically breaking every joint in his body, there wasn't any sound and for that I was grateful, but Markus's face was contorted in a rictus of agony. The chair was spun around and the man came and asked me who the commander of the watch was. I spat at him, he wiped the spit off his mask, and said in his awful monotone "you're going to regret that. Firstly let me tell you what's going to happen to you, firstly a telepathic psychologist is going to obliterate your self-esteem, then we will begin with 5 hours a day of me cutting and cauterising your flesh, if you havnt talked by then we will begin slowly removing then reattaching your extremities, during this we will make you an addict, and drive you suicidal by forcing you to watch equal horrors performed on your friends, if by some miracle you still haven't talked we will inject pure capsaicin under your skin, then we will chemically burn that area of skin, and once we have done this to every inch of your body we will flay you alive, which due to you being a were may not kill you, if you survive all this and your friends don't talk either we will consider you a lost cause and bury you alive in quicklime. Any questions?"
The following days filled with agony, the only thing worse than the nightmare caress of the scalpel was when I was shown what was happening to the others. Lucy , naked and suspended off the ground by chains, kicking away ravenous dogs that group around her feet, Otto slowly being driven insane by the words of his tormentor, and poor Erik bound to an operating table and being ever so slowly vivisected. The horrors continued, each day worse than the last, until finally, the tormenting masked one stopped coming, and I heard the weak pained voice of Markus in my head, "telling me that some of us had broken free and were coming to save the rest. He never came, and when my tormentor next visited, he took great pleasure in telling me that the escapees had been driven down into the drains and sewers of the building and any hope of rescue could be considered thoroughly dashed. And again my world was filled with pain, I contemplated ending it all by changing more than once, but still I dreamed of rescue, until the chemicals they healed my savaged form put an end to dreaming.
I had lost track of time, but maybe a week afterwards, still bound into the chair, all my needs catered for by tubes inserted into me, still under his hellish torments, that something wondrous happened. As he began his work, a grate used to drain away all the...fluids generated during my torment began to open, the noise attracted my torturers attention, turning his head, I tried to break free at that point, believing my torment at an end, while he stared down the drain I managed to work a hand free. Reaching for something to use to break the other restraint I grabbed hold of one of his scalpels, knowing that this was my one chance at freedom I hurled the scalpel at him as he turned, hearing my attempts to escape. The scalpel plunged into the eye slit of the mask and he fell backwards , howling into the grate he opened. Searching the container full of his loathsome tools, I grabbed an acetylene torch and used it to heat the other restraint until I could burst through it, the neck restraint received similar treatment, and as I tore the tubes out of me, I realised I was free, I changed and then changed back, healing the wounds within and without and looked at the drain, a figure eventually coalesced out of the shadows of the drain, it was Adam and I have never been as happy to see another face as then.
We scaled the slimy walls down the drain, and emerged to the light of an outlet tunnel, with all of the others save one, James.