Cyberknight: One Path

⁕ Faces of Reforged Shards (part 4)

With no time to fix himself up, Dane contended to simply bandage his facial wound with some simple cloth before moving toward one of the workstations. Using the drugs Cogitatio had concocted, Dane used his knowledge of chemistry to mix them together in a deadly cocktail. Then, with a swift motion, Dane threw the deadly concoction onto Cogitatio's table in a syringe. With this, the doctor left the laboratory with a renewed flame in his eyes.

Once back inside his laboratory, Dane exposed a set of three switches to the light, each labelled with the name of the scientist he intended to eliminate. With a cold and disconnected look in his eyes, Dane surgically pushed the first switch without flinching. Though he was not directly making the kill, Dane held the handle as if he were holding a knife.

Meanwhile, in Caecus' laboratory, the biological bomb he and Dane had worked on began to loudly beep on the table. Curiously, Caecus quickly moved to investigate the noise. While he prodded the bomb for any sign of defect, Dane gritted his teeth and pressed on the handle, which immediately ejected the virus from the bomb onto Caecus' face. Almost instantly, Caecus began to scream in pain as the fast-acting pathogen ravaged his visage, causing him to run blindingly through the laboratory like a headless chicken.

[Caecus] - "Oh fuck! Oh fuck! AAAAAAGH! Holy fuck! "

Screamed Caecus as he repeatedly tried to wash his face with water.

However, when he looked up in the mirror, he could only cry in sheer terror at the sight of his rotting face. While he saw the rot on his victims as art, Caecus failed to view his own disfiguration under the same lens. All he could do was scream while his life force drained from his body. Soon, he couldn't even close his eyes anymore as his eyelids rotted away. As the virus now invaded his blood and began shutting down his organs, the doctor could only whimper in the broken noises of his destroyed vocal cords. In the end, he truly wished that he were blind, that he couldn't see the horror before his eyes.

Meanwhile, even as the first of his opponents fell, Dane's face remained unmoving like that of a cold-blooded killer. There was, however, none of the sadistic gleam shown by the other scientist on his face. Dane killed, but not as the monster KD-554 wanted him to be. With the same steady hand, Dane pulled on the second switch as the camera feed changed to show Surdus in her laboratory.

During this time, the torture cages within Surdus' workstation silently unleashed their victims. Now, freed from their cages, these men, driven mad by pain and humiliation, sought only one thing in their bloodstained hands. While many of the crazed madmen screamed and yelled like savages, Surdus remained oblivious to their approach since she was so desensitized to their voices. As Surdus assembled the last piece to another one of her contraptions, she was suddenly struck on the head by a wrench.

As she collapsed to the ground, she remained conscious with only flesh injury to her head. However, before she could react, one of the men slammed a massive metal pipe down onto her leg, breaking it in half. Surdus screamed in pain as the zombified prisoners slowly circled around her with any weapon they could find. However, it was clear many were content with tearing her apart using their bare hands and teeth. The last thing Surdus noticed before the horde descended upon her was the wrench held in one of the prisoners' hands- It was Dane's wrench, left in her workshop as a gift.

As the horde of crazed zombies descended upon her, tearing her apart with savage rage and fury, Surdus could only scream like helpless prey. Though no one would ever know it besides her at that moment, she could hear her own screams loud and clear. Her screams were not the same music she described the screams of others to be; It was horrifying, primal and haunting. She will die, terrorized by the echoes of her own screams.

With an unbothered look in his eyes, Dane steadily moved his hand toward the final switch, pushing it down while the screen once again changed camera feed. This time, Mutus appeared on the footage, clearly showing him hard at work in his laboratory. As Mutus approached his creation in the incubation tube to take some note, the middle section of the humanoid opened up like a mouth. Confused, Mutus leaned in for a better look before a projectile suddenly shot out of the opening, breaking through the glass and allowing the specimen to escape.