Vanorion IncarnateChapter 3: Mutilation
It was cold.
Arc was numb, paralysed, and a prisoner of his own body.
Doctor Hibino had destroyed him utterly.
The wounds were still there. Arc could feel them, even when he could no longer move enough to acknowledge them. Cracked bones. Torn muscles. Blisters sweltering across his skin, each one a lingering reminder of the unstable mutagen he had forced through his system. His body had been pushed far beyond what it could endure, and now it was collecting the debt.
He was bleeding internally. Externally. Everywhere.
His life force dwindled by the day as he lay helpless, slowly dying over the course of a week.
Doctor Hibino would not let him die.
Not yet.
One day, the door to his cell opened. A guard entered without a word, seized him by the neck, and dragged him away.
Arc could do nothing.
He could not fight. He could not even raise a hand to protect himself. The guard's grip pressed against his already injured neck, and Arc had no choice but to endure the pain as he was carried through corridors he could not properly see.
The destination was a surgical theatre.
He felt the cold metal of the operating plate bite into his skin as he was strapped down. Restraints secured his limbs, while a rigid cage held his head in place, forcing his face towards the floor. Surgical scrubs filled his limited field of vision. Above him, sterile white lights burned with enough intensity to make his eyes water.
Machines beeped steadily around him.
He knew who stood before him.
The man's sheer size was evidence enough. Then came the unmistakable snap of rubber gloves being pulled into place.
Arc was terrified.
He would not pretend otherwise. Fear had settled deep in his chest, a cold, suffocating weight that no amount of intelligence or instinct could overcome. He heard the individual whirs of power tools being switched on, each mechanical sound bringing him closer to a fate he could neither understand nor escape.
Doctor Hibino spoke with clinical detachment.
"You're going to be a masterpiece, Arc Kodonaki."
The sickly sweetness of his tone grated against Arc's ears. It was the voice of a man discussing a work of art, not a living child about to be carved apart.
Then the tools began.
Arc felt the first incision cut into his back.
Deep. Slow. Methodical.
There was no anaesthesia.
Only pain.
It tore through him with such intensity that his thoughts threatened to scatter. Every nerve ending seemed to ignite at once as metal bit through flesh, muscle, and bone. He could not recoil. He could not twist away. His restraints held him perfectly still, leaving him with nothing but the sensation of being opened.
A metal bar had been forced between his teeth. His jaw clenched around it until his teeth threatened to crack, gripping the cold material as though it were the only thing keeping him tethered to himself.
Beneath the tools, Doctor Hibino exposed the mangled remnants of cervical vertebrae.
Arc's vision blurred.
He tried to focus on the machines. On the lights. On anything that was not the agony spreading through his back. His mind reached for patterns, for something he could analyse and understand, but pain swallowed every thought before it could fully form.
Then Doctor Hibino turned towards the instruments he had prepared.
The implants.
A gleaming cybernetic vertebra.
And beside it, a compliance chip, its exposed wires splayed like the tendrils of some parasitic organism.
Arc understood enough to fear them.
He had no idea what the chip would do, but its purpose was obvious from the way Hibino handled it. This was not merely an operation to repair his damaged spine. The doctor intended to make certain that Arc would never again be able to resist him.
The cybernetic vertebra was lowered into place.
Then the wires.
Raw nerves were connected to synthetic lines, each contact sending another surge of electricity through Arc's body. His muscles convulsed against the restraints. His fingers curled involuntarily, and his jaw tightened around the metal bar until the taste of blood filled his mouth.
The false vertebra settled beneath the axis of his spine, aligned with unnerving precision.
His body shuddered.
For a moment, the machines registered a sudden, erratic burst of activity.
Then Arc's eyes snapped open.
His brown irises contracted. At the centre of each pupil, a small white light flickered into existence, steady and unnatural.
The agony did not disappear, but something about it changed.
His sensitivity dulled. The signals from his damaged nerves were muted, their intensity reduced by an artificial hand reaching into the very mechanisms through which he experienced pain. His expression gradually settled into something more stoic, leaving only the faintest trace of suffering visible across his features.
It was not recovery.
It was regulation.
The cybernetic implant had given Doctor Hibino access to Arc's nervous system, allowing him to manipulate his responses, suppress selected functions, and interfere with the activity of specific regions of his brain.
Pain could be diminished.
Fear could be managed.
Resistance could be interrupted.
And obedience could be enforced.
Doctor Hibino examined the result with quiet satisfaction.
"Much better."
He then retrieved a sealed vial from a secure container.
Alkanite.
Arc recognised the name from the fragments of knowledge available to him. A pseudo-metallic compound generated for specialised applications, it was also used as a poison because of its deadly capacity to absorb energy. Anything dependent on energy to sustain itself could be vulnerable to its effects.
The vial looked dangerous.
More than that, it felt dangerous.
Some primitive instinct inside Arc screamed at him to flee. His body recognised a threat his mind could not fully quantify. Every surviving instinct urged him to move, to put distance between himself and the substance in Doctor Hibino's hand.
To preserve himself.
But he had already learned the difference between wanting to move and being permitted to do so.
The operation ended.
Arc was released from the surgical plate and ordered to stand. Fresh stitches crossed his exposed back, and blood seeped through the damaged tissue around them. Thin trails of red ran from the corners of his eyes, while the white lights in his pupils remained unnervingly steady.
He approached Doctor Hibino.
Each step was an achievement his body had once been incapable of making. His mobility had returned, but the relief he might have felt was nowhere to be found.
He stopped in front of the doctor.
Hibino held the injector in one hand and the sealed vial of Alkanite in the other.
Arc stared at it.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to strike the man before him, tear the injector from his hand, and escape before whatever came next could be done to him. His muscles were capable of moving again. His legs supported his weight. His hands were no longer useless at his sides.
Yet he remained where he had been ordered to stand.
His body had been repaired, altered, and wired into a system that recognised Doctor Hibino's commands as imperatives.
Arc could still want.
He could still fear.
He could still understand exactly what was happening to him.
But wanting to resist was no longer the same as being able to.
He stood motionless before the man who had mutilated him, watching the Alkanite with a terror he could not express.
For the first time, Arc understood that a body could be restored to movement while its owner remained a prisoner.