Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

[Doctor Zanon]

"Good news everyone!"

The lights clicked loudly as they turned on, interrupting the rare darkness of the laboratory. It's two inhabitants blinked up from their cells. The heavily reinforced cages were sequestered away in a corner, away from the operating theater and the main laboratory floor. The cages themselves looked like something designed to hold some sort of big, strong, and violent creature. In a way, they were. Zanon walked right up to the cages, noticeably keeping out of arms reach. He learned from his mistakes, and breaking in a new body was not how he wanted to spend his week. The small, nasty creature Kane was lurking around his knees.

"Since Yvette didn't die from gangrene or shock, and your leg is all better Rethguals, I am going to put you to work. A mission." Zanon waggled his eyesbrows at the pair, looking from one cramp cage to the other. Barely room to stand or lay on the squat cots. "I've located an biological laboratory that is unaligned with neither the Empire or Alliance. Their neutrality makes them weak. I want you two to take the cargo ship to the facility, kill everything that moves inside, and collect as much biological samples as you can fit in the ship. Making clones isn't cheap, after all. Neither is putting you two back together after you've gotten yourselves injured. Oh, yes. Thank you Kane. I'll be sending a few droids along to help collect and load the materials. They are NOT to be damaged. That means they won't help you with the slaughter. Yes, I think that's everything. Get your collars on, gear up, and get ready to leave."

The reinforced back solid wall at their backs opened a hatch to reveal their favorite control collars. With it's unique donut shaped design that wrapped around one's neck, it was capable of delivering a motivating shock, was packed with a explosive charge should it come to that, and used a drug injection system to keep them periodically fed with a unique blend of his own design. It made them susceptible to suggestion. Anyone could control them, technically, but they had been condition to only obey him. A lot of discipline and tears had gone into making that a reality. Oh, and the compound was incredibly addicting on top of it all. They would be itching for a fix after spending a few days without their collars.

Even though he was very confident in how in control of his subjects he was, Zanon still retreated to elsewhere in the underground facility where he would be safer, and could watch them with the dozens of cameras set up throughout the facility. One wrong step and zap. Boom.

[Yvette]

It felt like she had only just closed her eyes. No time to slip into dreams. Not enough time to fall into the nightmares. The lights came on and his grating voice stirred her from her sleep, banished all thoughts of slumber and making her more alert than a cold shower and a cup of caf. She rolled from her cot, coming up to the bars quickly. It was not like him to wake them in the middle of their rare sleep cycle. That meant something was wrong or he was trying something new. New around here usually meant pain and suffering.

Instead she saw only the Doctor and his wretched pet. The solemn Kane with his big eyes and broken teeth. The click of the wall behind her opening caused her to immediately turn around and walk to the waiting control collar. Not just because she was conditioned to follow his instructions, but because she was craving it. It had been several sleep cycles since she had worn one, and the withdrawal was making her feel slow, like the world was moving by faster than she could compete with. The collar was grabbed carefully between her metal fingers. Opening it up allowed it to be wrapped around her throat. The inevitable clumsy moment of lining it up with the ports installed directly into the sides of her neck was an eternity until it finally connected, and the shivering cold of the fluid flowing into her veins followed.

The world started coming back into focus.

Looking around, she noticed the Doctor was gone. She vaguely remembered his instructions. Like a distant memory from some previous day. The cell doors opened. A small shock, not painful, but prodding, caused her to step along and exit the cell. She looked over at Rethguals. She could see the look in his eyes. The defiance. She shook her head and sighed. He should learn to just accept it. This was their life now, and had been for years. All he would ever accomplish was bringing down the wrath of the Doctor upon them.

The door closest to their cells took them to a locker room. Perhaps meant for the operating staff if this bunker had ever been a real medical facility. Inside was showers and the lockers that housed their real clothes and gear; a rare luxury only enjoyed when they left the facility for missions. Stripping off the strips of cloth that poorly wrapped her body, Yvette stepped up to the nearest shower and turned it on. Cold. As always. The water ran down her pale skin and plunked noisily off the metal components of her arms and legs. Both of her arms were gone, replacing with hard metal replicas all the way up to her shoulders. Her legs mirrored halfway up her thighs. The rest of her natural body was a crisscross of operating scars and bits of metal that protruded almost randomly from below her skin as a result of her reinforced skeleton.

Sticking her head under the water, she considered drowning herself right here, right now. She thought about it every time she came in here, and every time she convinced herself that the collar would not allow her to do it, or Rethguals would save her. Damn that fool.

"I used to feel bad about killing for the Doctor. I... I don't feel anything anymore. I don't feel guilt for the lives we are to take. Have we become monsters?"