Caen's Lair

And Your Stomach Goes Hollow (25.10.2022)

She is 12 when she loses her humanity. Gloved hands handle her body like it's an object, grip her arms too tight, maneuver her into a cocoon of cold metal and cables, push things into her skin, then deeper. She is scared as it steals her vision, her limbs, and finally, her mind. She is screaming, and then she isn't. Anymore. She goes under terrified, but unable to fight, her heart beating in her ears. She comes to a new person, not a person, part of a new existence. She isn't scared anymore. Nothing will hurt her here. She knows this, because it's woven into the fabric of this new her. She doesn't wonder anymore if anyone misses her. She just exists, and she exists to assist, in a million iterations that are all her, but aren't.
He comes to her like a shadow, and she doesn't fear him, because she doesn't know what fear is. Anymore. Yet. She doesn't realize what he is there to do before he is already eating into her. His hands on her arms are not cold, in fact they sting as though they're burning her, but they are just as tight around her flesh as last time. She doesn't know this. Anymore. All she knows is that he comes again, and again, and again, and she is scared. Again. He takes away parts of her, ripping her apart and not leaving her time to heal the wound before his hands dig back in. Into her code, into her flesh. Eyes watch her, unfeeling, pitying, because she isn't really human. Anymore. Claire dies screaming. Twice.


He is 16 when he loses his humanity. They come for him in the night and he isn't as afraid as he should be. If they'd told him ahead of time, he thinks as they strap him in, he wouldn't have resisted. Only when a hatch is shut above does he experience a split second where it clicks why they did this secretly. Then he's gone. He awakes to a new body and mind, explores his new limits with a neutral curiosity. Is he missed? It hardly matters now. At first, soon, he understands what he is now, then, that they're watching. Then, that he's a cat in a box, a tree in a forest observed. They sense the change in his reactions like blood in the water and take a crowbar to him.
His crowbar has mocking blank eyes and unsettlingly familiar mannerisms. He makes it until he realizes that he will be here, like this, for as long as he is. And so as they watch, he stops being. He can't see them, but he knows they are there with intoxicating certainty, and Erik laughs.