Override
The leader motioned to the man with the briefcase, and set Daniel's chair to a fully reclining position. Trembling, the man set the case down and opened it slowly. The inside was filled mostly with padding, save for a small silver object, roughly the size of a cherry. It looked like a squished spheroid, and appeared to be made of tightly wound wiring. The leader picked it up from the briefcase and set it on Daniel's chest, where it sat motionless as the man closed the briefcase.
The leader pressed more buttons on his remote, and the object sprang to life. The wiring shifted for a moment, then six insect-like legs burst from the machine.
"This," the leader explained, "is the Override Device."
At that moment, a shrill synthesized voice came from the device: "Initiating scan, please stand clear." The device began to slowly flash red.
The leader went on, "As a precaution, the device is installed in all of our subjects."
"Installed?" Daniel screamed, "What does that mean?"
"Oh," the leader smiled, "you'll see."
The device's flashes became faster and faster, until it sprang up and back, hovering over Daniel. It paused for a moment, then emitted one last pulse of light, this one far brighter than the others had been. Then, seemingly finished, the device landed nimbly on Daniel's abdomen.
The monitor reactivated, this time with no input from the leader. In his position, Daniel could barely see it, but he could tell it was a computer-generated image--remarkably detailed--of him.
"Scan...complete," the device said. Dan thought he detected a note of pride in the voice, though he might have been imagining it. "Target," the thing continued, "acquired." The image on the screen changed at that point, to a cross-section of Dan's head.
The device crawled quickly up Dan's body. When it reached his neck, it ran around to the back and finally came to rest on the back of his head. The thing paused for a moment, then Dan felt six distinct jabs as the device's legs dug through his hair, into his skin.
Then the real pain began. A hair-thin spine came out of the center of the device, and forced its way into the soft flesh at the back of Dan's head. He screamed, and instinctively tried to pry the thing off, but the straps held him fast. As the spine ran deeper, hot jolts of pain ran down his spine. A convulsion ran through him as his entire body broke out into a sweat and tears filled his eyes. The spine ran deeper as his screams intensified. His heart raced. He tried to beg his captors to call off the thing and end the torture, but the words caught in his throat and came out as garbled nonsense. A final convulsion racked his frame, and then he was still. Deathly still.
The pain, hellishly intense only a moment ago, was gone. His heart rate had returned to normal, and his breathing was slow and rhythmic. The rest of his body was completely still. Even his eyes didn't move, staring glazed and unfocused into the ceiling.
The leader looked Daniel over. "Daniel?" he said calmly, "can you hear me?" Daniel could hear him. He could hear him clearly. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but his muscles wouldn't obey him. "Can you feel this," the leader went on, stroking Daniel's shoulder. Daniel could feel it. He could feel ever disgusting moment of the man's touch, but he couldn't do anything to react. He couldn't even panic--his entire body was trapped in an artificial calm.
At once, Daniel gained a sense of his intense vulnerability. He was lying there, completely immobile, naked, in a room full of strangers. He was entirely at their mercy, and he guessed that they wouldn't be showing him any.
The leader took on a mocking tone: "If you don't want us to perform unspeakable experiments on you, please say so." The leader waited for a moment, listening to Dan's silence. He tapped the remote, and the straps binding Dan disappeared into the chair. "You can leave," the leader smirked. "Look, I'll even open the door," There was a low creak, as the leader opened a door to the side of the monitor, revealing darkness beyond. "Please," he went on, with mock urgency, "give us some sign that you're alive, anything!" Then the leader leaned down, close to Daniel's unresponsive face. "That's alright," he said, "I know you are. I know how the Override Device works. You're still fully conscious. You can see, and hear, and feel everything that's been going on. You can still think perfectly clearly, and have full comprehension of your...situation." At this, the leader straightened up and began pacing up and down the length of the chair. "The casual observer," he said, with special emphasis toward the man in the briefcase and the woman with the gun, "might assume you to be unconscious. That, however, is merely because you don't control your own body any more." He tapped his computer again, and Dan's left arm shot straight up, then bent at the elbow and waved cartoonishly, all completely involuntarily. "I do."
Daniel was horrified. Not only could the scientists do anything to him, they could have him do anything they wanted. And, since they had faked his death, there was no hope of rescue. The leader spoke again: "I could, if I wanted, make you spend the rest of your life as our little puppet. But I know you don't want that. In a moment, I'm going to deactivate the override. If you cooperate with us throughout the experimentation, we'll leave it off. You'll still be our test subject, but you'd have your free will, and good subjects generally get some say in their own experiments. Perhaps you'll even be...happy. On the other hand, if you try to fight us, or make any attempt to escape, I will turn this right back on, and never turn it off."
The leader pressed the remote. Daniel screamed and sat bolt upright in the chair. He had never known how great it felt just to be alive! He flexed his fingers tentatively. Yes, he decided, he really was controlling them. He looked around the room. The door was still open, and nobody was blocking it. Maybe he could make a break for it! On the other hand, he had already been under the scientists' control, and he didn't want to go back to that. Still, freedom was sitting just across the room. Maybe it was worth the risk...
Written by Zodiac on 25 July 2008
