Exposition and a start?

[gruesome]

They found him in New York, in the subways, but the string of deaths stretched out of the city, well into the mountains on the other side of the state. They'd all had the same markers; a body partially devoured, the marks of small, even teeth and short, thick claws. Nothing matched any species on record, though. The first dozen had been put down to some unidentified animal, which had already attracted the attention of the organization. But then one had been killed with a knife, a knife stolen from one of the previous kills. And they got more sophisticated as they moved east. And then they began in New York.

It was a chance report, a woman riding the subway claimed she had looked out her window at a junction in the tunnels and seen a young man, looking up at the train from a gap by the tracks, his face illuminated by the train's lights and smeared with blood. The Habakkuk Foundation made sure to get there before the police.

-------

It was the first time in his life that Some had been restrained. They'd caught him with a loop on the end of a stick, and then there had been a sting, and he'd collapsed into blackness. When he woke, he was bound, tied down to a table with the sharp reek and cold touch of metal, and the lights above were too bright for him to open his eyes. He pulled against them, making a worried noise deep in his throat.

"H-hello?"

Comments

[abyss_also_gazed]

"Well, good to see our pale little people eater's still with us. Try not to move, or I'll have to sedate you again." The voice echoes over the intercom, acerbic yet detached, as an ominous-sounding thrumming noise begins just above Some's head. The metal table he's on begins moving, and the thrumming grows louder as it does, until finally the edge of a massive opaque off-while cylinder comes into view. Slowly, he's fed into the MRI machine.

Dr. K had expected him to still be pretty out of it right now; she makes a note in his file of the fact that he's less susceptible to the tranquilizers she had him on than she had anticipated. But then, it was difficult to anticipate with specimens whose ecto readings were this high; at the very least, it seemed like most of the typical rules of reality applied to him, though she could already see that the scans coming up from the machine were distinctly anomalous.

[gruesome]

He made a groggy sound, trying to lift his head against the strap that held it down, trying to open just one eye. The noises, the motion, the light all had him even more disoriented than the drugs, and he curled his long hands into sharp-angled fists, straining up against the restraints, squirming side to side what little he could, blurring the strange scans.

[abyss_also_gazed]

Dr. K swears softly under her breath when Some begins thrashing. So her little people-eater isn't a cooperative one - well, it could be worse. He hasn't tried to teleport, at least, which might be because of the drugs, or some other, more obscure parameter she hasn't gauged yet. She shuts the MRI down for a moment before joining him in the room with the device. "You'll want to be more cooperative for the following tests. Otherwise the consequences will be significantly worse." She loads a cartridge of a different sedative into her jet injector, and unloads it into his neck. Giving him a slightly higher dose of a drug he hasn't had yet should keep him under for about as long as she needs.

[gruesome]

"Don't- don't..." The cold sting of the injector startles him, and he stops fighting, just for a moment. And then he can't start again, though he tries. His hands lift against the straps, then fall, and his eyes squint open a moment before sinking shut again. He has to get out of here, but it's getting so hard to think. He already knows that his ability won't work, can feel the weight of the machine he's strapped into, though he doesn't know it's a machine. It drags at him worse than gravity. But he tries, and for a moment, he's translucent on the table, hard to focus on. And then he's snapped back, like a jumper falling hard back to earth, and he gasps like he's just been punched in the chest and the drug takes him out.

[abyss_also_gazed]

Well, that certainly doesn't answer anything - whether it's because of the drugs that the teleportation fails, or if it's something else; because of the MRI machine, she doesn't even have sensors in the room to record any variations in the standard laws of physics that might be associated with her newest little experimental subject's teleportation. She'll have to think of a way to test him again under controlled conditions without the risk of him getting away.

In the meantime, she can finally take a peek at her newest specimen's innards - just when she was starting to think she might have an excuse to vivisection him, too, but business comes before pleasure. It turns out, though, that there are considerably fewer of those innards than she was expecting; on the inside, his body doesn't even look like something that should still be alive, let alone functional. Perhaps he's a magical construct of some kind - a golem, or something; the Foundation has acquired them before, though never one quite like this.

Once she's finished the scans and taken biopsies of what organs he does have, she moves him to slightly more comfortable accommodations - ones where he's shackled to both the bed and the wall, just in case, and on an IV of drugs that should keep him manageable. Now it's just a matter of waiting for him to come back around.

[gruesome]

Some wakes up sore, in slow, groggy stages. The failed teleport has left him with a pounding head, and the dim light that greets him just makes it worse. He groans, hands twitching like before, and tries to touch the deep ache in his side. This time, his hand can move if not far, but the heavy weight on his wrist wakes him further. Cautious, slow movements make it known that the same weights are on his other arm, and both his ankles, and more alarmingly, his throat. He can't raise his hands far enough to touch that one.

Gingerly, he tries again to open his eyes, squinting them against the light. "Please... the light, it's so bright."

man I am sorry about all my fail

[abyss_also_gazed]

((I do want to continue this, but I understand if you're not really into it anymore.))


"If you can prove to me that you're in a more cooperative frame of mind than you were earlier, I'll turn them down for you." None of the drugs she has him on have photosensitivity as a side effect - if anything, just the opposite. She adds it to her notes; even if that doesn't bring her any closer to figuring out just what he is, she'll need it in writing up protocols for his care and handling. "I won't make it difficult for you. All you need to do is answer a few questions for me."

No worries!

[gruesome]

He can't even bring his hands up far enough to cover his eyes. He just squeezes them shut again, watering. At least it's quiet now, without the horrible clanking sounds.

"I don't... I don't know what you want. Or wh-who you are."

[abyss_also_gazed]

"What I want is to know what you are, and the circumstances surrounding your creation." Letting him know who they are, by contrast, is considerably lower on her list of priorities - a reasonably intelligent specimen, like he seems to be, might conclude (and rightly so) that being captured by an organization like the Foundation is most likely to result in their life suddenly becoming very short and painful. Those are hardly the ideal conditions under which to conduct an interrogation - especially when she still hasn't decided what she's going to do to Some yet.

[gruesome]

"I- I am a grue." It's almost a whisper. He's not sure what harm could come of him telling her, unless she already knows what that means. "I wasn't created, I was born."