322 Force of Nature, Pt Freya and Lucifer both picked up the pace as they went down another long hallway. The sounds of animalistic yelping and crying were more evident, now that they had gone down yet another deck on the massive barge.

A dark cloud hung over the both of them as the cruelties that were happening on it became more and more apparent.

Even the normally dispassionate Lucifer was visibly affected. Ze grit hir teeth in anger at all that was going on around them. At this point, ze found no reason to deny what was actually happening. Lucifer began to fear that the report was truer than it first seemed.

Despite the pain they both felt in their chests, they knew they had to keep going. They needed to confirm all of it with their own eyes.

No matter how much they didn’t want to.

The wailing and yelping became louder and louder as they approached a set of thick double doors, which they both apprehensively went through. The grimaces on their faces were wiped off by a wave of incredulity, surprise, and heartache at what they saw on the other side.

There was a massive room with rows of specially-contained antigrav fields. Each one appeared to be a sort of tank that held what seemed to be wolfen animals in each of them. Their bristly fur was a faded rust red in color, and the wolves themselves hung limply in their respective antigrav fields.

Not only were their bodies thin and emaciated, but sections of their fur was matted down with blood. There were numerous cuts and gashes on their bodies, some of which openly bled. A number even had wounds that looked as though they were burned in – they were blackened and scarred to the point that pus oozed from them.

Beyond their wounds, the wolves looked as though they were physically exhausted, and their breaths were ragged and weak.

.....

Almost all of them appeared to be on the very edge of death, and it seemed to both Freya and Lucifer that it was done on purpose. As though keeping them starved was part of... whatever what was actually happening here.

What made it all worse was that this vast room was one of many. The hundred or so wolves in captivity in front of them were only a portion of the total on the entire barge.

Freya and Lucifer’s anger and disillusionment only rose higher as they watched a handful of lab technicians perform a number of thoroughly inhumane tests on the wolves.

One of them wielded some kind of two-handed probe – which Freya felt was almost akin to a spear.

Except wires snaked out of it, which were connected directly to a large device that stood next to each of the containment fields. Another lab tech stood at one of the terminals attached to the device, and kept an eye out on their readings.

A third stood to the side, and simply watched as everything proceeded. He appeared to be making notes on his datapad, while his EyeCast recorded the entire process.

historical

The hum and crackle of electricity echoed all around the moment the first technician activated his spear-probe. Then he jammed it point-first into a captive wolf, who yelped from the sudden pain.

Then, the wolf made a haunting yipping sound as electricity painfully coursed through its body, as though it was pleading for its life. The wolf flailed uncontrollably in the antigrav containment field, not just from the electricity, but from a dire need to escape.

But no matter what he did, he simply couldn’t get away from the technicians, or their torturous probes.

While pain wracked its body, it shifted rapidly through many forms, even while it spasmed from the sheer pain. Sections of its fur, its skin, its eyes, its teeth, its claws, everything became crystalline or calcified into bone or solidified to stone, or back to normal.

Like Freya and Lucifer, these wolves had the ability to shift their bodies. And on seeing what was happening, both of them were filled with tremendous amounts of rage. They squeezed their fists to the point that their knuckles turned bone-white.

“Hey, no SecForce in the labs during active hours!” said someone. “You know the protocols! Quit staring and get out!”

A couple more technicians walked up to Freya and Lucifer from the side, clearly annoyed by the breach of protocol. They went towards Freya first, in an attempt to physically push her out. Though they completely expected to easily manhandle her, they found the exact opposite.

She glanced at the one on the left, and in the blink of an eye, tore out his throat with a vicious swipe. Immediately afterwards, she snapped forward with her other hand and grabbed the other one by his neck. And began to squeeze with an iron grip while the first one gurgled and gasped to death.

Lucifer shot forward and went straight to the one holding the spear-probe. With only a fraction of energy, ze spanned the distance, and swung a downwards fist on the technician’s hip. He screamed in pain the moment his hip snapped to pieces.

As he fell to the ground painfully, Lucifer sped towards the lone observer, and struck him squarely on the chest with an open palm strike. The technician’s chest imploded and every bone in his body shattered from the impact, even while his body was flung to the far end of the massive room.

He crashed painfully into a stack of equipment, his body a twisted, broken wreck. Jagged shards of bone punched through his skin and clothing in places, which ensured his death was slow and excruciatingly painful.

Ze then grabbed the technician’s datapad as it fell in the air, and threw it at the technician who was back at the terminal. The datapad spun in the air and struck him on the back of the head, just as he was running away.

He immediately fell forward with a loud SMACK, and didn’t get up.

Lucifer then picked up the spear-probe on the ground, then pointed its tip right at the first technician, who was still writhing on the ground in pain.

“Since you seem to like this toy so much,” Lucifer seethed, “allow me to introduce you to it more personally.”

Ze then jabbed its point straight into his ribs, and flooded him with electricity. The technician went rigid and began to flail uncontrollably as it coursed through his body relentlessly. He screamed painfully as he cooked from the inside.

Lucifer pulled the spear-probe out momentarily, and let the blackened wound in the technician’s abdomen smolder slightly. Ze let the technician pant and recover just a tiny bit. Then ze jabbed him on the other side of his ribs and continued sending electricity deep into him.

This time, ze kept the spear embedded within, and allowed the tremendous currents to char his insides. The sheer amount of electricity that spread through him literally fried him from the inside out, and the smell of cooking meat began to permeate the area around them.

All while Lucifer paid the technicians back their due justice, Freya dragged the one in her grip towards the center of the room. There, in the middle of it all was the largest containment field of all of them. In it was a wolf who was far larger than all the others, and was almost twice as long as Freya was tall.

Her heart sank when she saw how weak it truly looked. Like the others, this female wolf appeared to be incredibly undernourished. Her body was marred with open wounds and blackened burns. Her fur was deeply matted in both dried and fresh blood, and its luster was all but faded.

There was a scar that stretched across her face, from above her left eye, across the top of her snout, and down to her cheek. Its depth made it clear that she had been wounded long ago, and it had never healed properly.

Freya loosened her grip, and let the technician fall down to the floor with a WHUMPH. As he coughed and sucked in gasps of air, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to his feet.

“Deactivate all the fields,” she demanded. “Now.”

Unable to respond, his reddened face simply nodded in submission, then went towards a nearby control station. There, he tapped a few commands which lowered all of the antigrav fields in the room.

Freya quickly hopped forward and caught the large wolf before she could hit the ground, then set her down on her side gently.

“Bring me a first aid kit immediately,” she told the lab tech, who instantly nodded and ran towards the closest medical supply cabinet. He grabbed absolutely everything inside, then brought it back to Freya as fast as he humanly could.

He handed her a medinject with a shaky hand, which she quickly accepted.

“Kneel,” she told him. He complied quickly.

She then turned her attention to the wolf below her, stroked her coarse fur gently, then applied the medinject close to one of her open wounds. The medical nanites began to stitch the wolf back together, albeit far slower than normal. These were, after all, medinjects designed for human use.

Still, they worked their magic, and healed the wolf bit by bit. Certainly enough for her eyes to open slightly. Her mouth also opened, and she began to pant out of relief.

“Are you alright?” Freya asked.

She expected the wolf to respond in some way – perhaps a whine or a wag. Instead, her mind was flooded with a wave of thoughts and emotions.

“No,” thought the wolf, “I am not. But I am free. That matters more. I am grateful.”

Freya was utterly stunned by the thoughts that appeared in her mind. It was as though she was washed by the waves at a beach, but the water passed partially through her, rather than on her.

It reminded her somewhat of her brief touch with Godeater, but this was more a language she could understand. This was a creature of flesh and bone and blood, and her mind could easily translate the wolf’s thoughts to her.

More easily, anyway.

In fact, it was almost like they were talking through her DI, except instead of a direct representation of their thoughts, it was more intangible.

“This is utterly fascinating,” Lucifer said as ze walked up to them. Ze had also been caught up in the wolf’s thought-waves, and all three of them were in some kind of telepathic loop with each other.

All three were able to sense each others’ base feelings and thoughts in an instant – they practically wore it on their minds. They flowed between each other and shared their anxieties, their fears, their hate, their anger.

And together, they communed.