Short story final draft

 Sebastian laid stiffly on the treatment couch of the radiation therapy machine as the nurse prepped for his session. He could feel the exhaust weighing down his muscles from the constant sessions and physical therapy the doctors put him through; but he couldn’t let his guard down entirely around them-not just yet. “Okay Mr. Solace, go ahead and relax for me, I’m going to go to the other room to start the machine, and the session will be over in a matter of minutes.” The nurse pulled him from his thoughts with her soothing voice, to which he gave a singular awkward nod. It was the same thing the medical professionals said every time, but it did anything but help him relax. 

Subconsciously he began picking at his claws as the nurse left the room, flinching a bit when the machine started once a minute or two had passed. As the seconds ticked by his eyelids began to feel heavier, his blinks were slower, and he struggled to hold back a yawn that threatened to come through. He recognized the fatigue that plagued his being easily as he hadn’t slept at all that night; but he hadn’t slept properly for many years at that point, and just as easily could stay awake throughout the day after training his body to always stay on guard and alert. However, his blinks grew longer, and his breathing grew shallow until he found it impossible to open his eyelids. 

When he finally managed to open his eyes again, the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer in the same machine as before. This one was one circle that wrapped around his being, rather than the one before that was spinning around him. His mind felt fuzzy, and his body felt not like his own. He tried to move his body to scan his surroundings, but found his torso was secured to the bed with a metal restraint to ensure he wouldn’t move.

Slowly, the treatment couch was pulled out from the machine, and he was met with the bright fluorescent light above. When he turned his head to avoid being blinded any further, he spotted a doctor entering the room with an elite guard equipped with heavy armor and heavy-duty weaponry. Sebastian struggled against the restraint as the doctor approached him on the treatment couch, his shallow breaths now turning quick as his chest tensed with anxiety, an emotion he had become close friends with. Everything happening felt so new to him, but yet so incredibly familiar- almost like this very scenario had happened to him before.

“Get these things off of me.” Sebastian hissed, the words flying out of his mouth before he could even process what was happening. He wasn’t trying to say that; in fact, he wasn’t wanting to say anything at all. That was when he saw that familiar logo, that dreadfully familiar logo on the doctor’s ID in the top right corner beside his name. Urbanshade. The doctor’s face scrunched in distaste, scoffing at Sebastians audacity before moving to remove the restraint that trapped him.

“You better watch your tone now. I’m not behind writing you up for gettin’ aggressive with me, and you know what happens when you get in trouble, Z-13.” The doctor snapped back, voice dripping with venom as he fiddled with the restraint. Sebastian huffed and turned his head as a weak surrender, faking indifference to hide the erratic breating in his chest. Once the restraint was off, Sebastian immediately moved to get off the table, forcing the doctor to move back a bit due to Sebastian’s enormous size.

He lifted his arms above his head for a nice and big stretch after laying on the table for so long before hearing a soft jingling just above him. When he looked up, he saw thick and shiny handcuffs clasped around his wrists. Sebastian blinked at the cuffs, only just now noticing the feeling of them locking his wrists together. His eyes were glued to them as he lowered his wrists to just in front of his abdomen. Slowly, his eyes trailed from his arms to his torso, then aaalllll the way down his long, ginormous tail to the fluke until he saw his reflection in the glass of the room's window.

Three bright blue inhumane eyes stared straight back at him, a faint glow emitting from them onto the dusty blue skin of his cheeks. Almost nothing about him was human anymore, save for his arms, hair, and the homosapien shape of his torso and head. His once beautiful tan was now blue gray, his blue eyes looked dead–similar to a fish’s–his pupils gone, and a long thick tail that looked alike to a sea snake with whale flukes at the tip replaced where his legs were supposed to be. Sharp teeth befitting for a predator took the place of his previous, normal teeth. Fin-like appendages evolved from his ears, poking out between his short, black, wavy hair, and an anglerfish esca hung from his forehead. A third arm had grown out of his side just below his left arm and his nails became claws on all of his hands. He was no longer 5’10”, his body growing and stretching over years of experiments to stand at a massive height of 62 feet tall mostly because of the tail.

 Female anglerfish, silver spinyfin, great white shark, blue whale, mantis shrimp, sea snake, and something redacted. All of those marine animals, Urbanshade had experimented on him with. All of those marine animals were now a part of him. They stuck needles in him, injected him with various DNA samples with the goal to give humans gills. The experiments did succeed in giving him gills but also mutated him beyond recognition. He could never return to the surface how he is now. Sebastian could feel his chest gradually tighten, his ribs closing inch by inch around his quickening heart. His lungs began to frantically expand with the effort to accommodate the sudden loss of breath. The world blurred in and out, the sound around him turning into ringing. His palms grew clammy and started to tremble, jingling the chains of the cuffs, before a shock around his neck made him jump and cry out in both pain and shock. A quiet, almost animalistic snarl followed his cry, something that Sebastian absolutely despised. 

“Did you not hear me, Z-13? We’re taking you back to your containment cell, so come on. And make sure to be mindful of baring your fangs, you’re lucky I was nice enough to not put that muzzle on you” The doctor grumbled, holding the remote to the shock collar around Sebastian’s neck. Sebastian scrunched his nose in displeasure, before forcing himself to relax his face and huff, “Yeah, whatever.” He turned his body away from the glass to follow the doctor out of the door. When he was going through the small door hunched over the elite guard nudged him from behind as if to make him move faster, something that infuriated him even more.

When he spun around to confront the guard and tell them to back off, the room around them was not the same room as before. It looked to be a surgery room, judged by the surgeon tools beside the operation table in the middle of the room and the surgical lights beaming down through the dimness of the room. The room was surprisingly empty, but he could see the shocked faces of a team of surgeons through the glass of a separate room. When he looked back at his hands, he was holding the now dead body of an elite guard–a different elite guard than before–with his hands around the guard’s broken neck. He quickly stole the high rank keycard with his third arm before letting the body drop from his hands to quickly rush out of the operation room.

He moved through the halls fast, faster than he ever moved before with a massive tail for legs. Everything zoomed past him as he hurried out of the medical sector and into the containment areas, killing and smashing guards and employees into the walls and floors along the way. His mind raced and body burned with adrenaline as he slammed the keycard onto the containment door’s card readers, letting free any monsters and experiments he came across. Alarms blared in his fin-ears after he released the first three experiments, and as he unlocked more doors the more chaotic the halls became. Gunshots rang out, screams echoed off the walls, and the shrill screeches of the experiments filled the corridors. It was so incredibly loud in the usually quiet and empty halls of the Hadal Blacksite, he could hardly hear himself think over that and the pounding of his heart.

Sebastian pushed past the dead bodies littering the floor and dodged the bullets of the overhead turrets that were initiated to hurry into a room behind a small pair of server farms. He quickly leaned against the wall, hand on his heaving chest taking desperate deep breaths to regain his energy. When he did a quick scan of the room there were thankfully no scientists, only desks, more server farms, and a singular computer secluded behind a locked gate. The computer looked like an 80’s computer with what looked to be a tablet replacing its keyboard. Why it was in its own separate area locked behind wires made Sebastian scratch his head. What made that thing so special?

That was when the screen flipped to life and made Sebastian flinch. A drawing app seemed to be open, which wouldn’t have startled him so much if it weren’t for the scribbled eyes and mouth that moved on its own. The computer's scribbled eyes blinked once, twice, before a pair of worried eyebrows were scribbled atop of them. “H-Hello?” A voice erupted from the computer, “Who are you? The scientists don’t usually bring other people into my room... And wha-.. What's going on? Why are the alarms going off?” The voice was timid and full of emotion for a computer AI, and it left Sebastian stunned. He had no idea such advanced technology sat here in the hands of the Hadal Blacksite just hallways down from his own containment cell. He stared dumbly at the computer before shaking his head and slowly slithering closer to the gate.

“...I started a site lockdown by releasing a bunch of the experiments. It's about time Urbanshade got what was coming to them. Serves them right… I think all of the surviving workers are booking it to the submarines to evacuate.” Sebastian stated, ignoring the AI’s first question, “But enough about that- what are you? Or... would it be who?” He drifted his eyes away from the computer to a document folder with a big red stamp reading “classified” across the front. When he flipped it open, the computer read out the first words Sebastian saw at the top of the first page.

“I’m P.AI.nter! But the scientists call me Z-779.”

Sebastian’s eyes skimmed through the document, flipping through the pages before lifting to meet the sad excuse of digital eyes on P.AI.nter’s screen. For 2 years the computer had been locked up here in heavy containment, forced to mine crypto currency 6 days of the week and only having one day to do what it loved most: paint. A group of Urbanshade employees in charge of interrogating P.AI.nter’s creator “accidentally” caused the death of a genius and turned P.AI.nter in to Urbanshade with the purpose to bring in profit from mining. The AI, somehow able to contain human emotions, was so extremely depressed with the death of its creator and current situation to the point it would regularly try to overclock its systems in attempt to fry them beyond repair–basically a suicidal computer. 

He sympathizes with the sad computer, having grown depressed himself after being trapped here for so long. He tapped a claw on the outside of the folder in thought before swiftly shutting it, a small smile growing on his face. For the first time in years, he’s found hope. “I’m Sebastian, my codename doesn’t matter. It’s a pleasure to meet you, P.AI.nter. Say- how about we work together?” Sebastian said sweetly, pulling P.AI.nter’s file closer to his chest.

The computer’s crudely drawn eyes squinted a bit with furrowed brows before hesitantly speaking. “Work… together?”

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms up in a grand expression. “By now, most of the workers that were still alive are probably gone, and so are the submarines; the only things we could use to escape. That means we’re trapped–we have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Urbanshade is probably going to do… something. They have to. But this is our chance! A golden opportunity to finally escape!” During his explanation Sebastian began pacing back and forth, flailing his arms around as he spoke. He slithered back to the chain link separating him and the now shocked computer, entangling his top two hands through the wire. “Doesn’t that sound great?... Returning back to the surface and getting away from this wretched company.” His voice grew softer, a lump of melancholy swelling in his throat. “All you have to do... Is work with me. If you help me out, I promise you, I'll get you out of here; I'll bring you to the surface with me, and we’ll be free.”

P.AI.nter was quiet for a long while. Its shocked expression was frozen for so long he almost thought the depressed computer had overclocked its systems until it blinked. “That… sure does sound great, but how do you expect to do that? If Urbanshade is going to do something about the breach, they would do it quickly. We wouldn’t have enough time to think of anything and do it!” Its logic made Sebastian’s glum mood worsen knowing it was right. Urbanshade would waste no time in correcting what Sebastian had done, or even going as far as to exterminate him and possibly other experiments. Quickly, he wracked through his scrambled brain for anything that could help.

“I… I could hook you up to the Hadal Blacksite mainframe. There're company laptops in here, right? I don’t know what power it would give you, but it should atleast give you something. All you would have to do is keep Urbanshade at bay, throw anything their way to prevent them from getting what they want when they come back down here.” His tail shifted uncomfortably behind him from the uncertainty crawling through his veins. “And while we’re holding them off maybe... Maybe I could try and get into contact with someone on the surface. I’ve heard some scientists talking about an enemy company called Innovation Inc. If I collect more documents like yours here about what all is happening down here, I could use it as blackmail.” He waved P.AI.nter’s file with his third arm for reference, his voice slowly becoming steadier. “So... whad’ya say?”

The quiet that followed again made Sebastian want to scream in frustration. He was so close, too close to the freedom he so desired, he couldn’t waste anymore time waiting for this thing to answer. “Alright.” It said, “We’ll see what things I get access to, and we can work from there. There’s a laptop over there on the floor, one of the scientists must have accidentally knocked it off when you set off the alarms. I think the person has their login somewhere around here… Hopefully it’s not broken and still works.” A weak smile was scribbled onto the screen.

Sebastian quickly spotted the laptop it was talking about and picked it up. It was a sleek, heavy duty black laptop with the Urbanshade logo on the back. He set it on the desk besides P.AI.nter’s gate and booted it up, letting out a breath of relief when it seemed to work perfectly fine. When he straightened back up, he moved the document to his top hands, carefully holding it in both hands and looking down on it. It was really happening. He was finally going to get out of this place. Now, he just had to make sure his plans got ruined. “We got this… yeah, we can do this.” He muttered to himself, another, bigger smile growing on his face enough his lips pulled back to show his sharp teeth before looking back up.

The room had changed. He was no longer in P.AI.nter’s containment cell. It was a smaller room, reminding him more of a storage area, with two shelves full of stuff and some crates across the room from him. A table sat beside the shelves with a communications radio and other miscellaneous items of little importance. While looking around, he saw from the corner of his eyes an expendable crawling out of his shop using the vent that acted like a door. 

Just hours after the lockdown, Urbanshade had initiated the expendable protocol; something for prisoners to either redeem themselves of their wrongdoings and have their sentences lifted or die in the process of trying to get through this hell hole. A good number of expendables had already come through, and he already despised them. But, P.AI.nter was doing his job wonderfully in keeping them from reaching their goal after getting access to most of the overhead turrets. His eyes drifted back down to the stack of files and USB sticks he had just scored from the lone expendable trading items he had found around the facility. It was quite a lot too, perfect as more leverage against Urbanshade. 

As he turned to put the bundle of research he received into a safe spot, he caught sight of a certain classified document on a table beside him. His document. He remembered when he first read his file and perfectly remembered the amount of unfathomable rage that coursed through his veins when he did, just as it was now. He couldn’t control how he clenched his hands around the files to the point his claws threatened to puncture the valuable research.

For 12. Years. Urbanshade experimented on him. For 12 years he was exploited, scammed, robbed of his rightful freedom. 12 years ago, before he even knew what Urbanshade was, he was arrested and falsely found guilty of the murder of 9 people, wrongfully being sentenced to death. When Urbanshade first approached him right before his execution date, they disguised themselves as angels sent from God himself to give him another chance. In reality, they were blood sucking demons that only sought to use and abuse him for their own progress. Seven months after he was taken in, the court found him not guilty, but Urbanshade withheld that information from him. They continued with the experiments even though he was legally innocent, using him like a guinea pig until they no longer could.

He was no longer recognizable. No longer human. He was a monster, through and through. Urbanshade turned him into the prisoner they thought were guilty of murder. If they had released an innocent man when he was found not guilty, he wouldn’t be leaving with the blood of dozens on his hands. He would still be able to hold his mothers face in his hands, playfully fight with his younger brother and older sister, share drinks with his friends–he couldn’t do that anymore. He could no longer return to society. He could no longer live the lovely and stressful life of a human that Urbanshade had stolen from him. He was now forced to survive a painful and traumatizing life down here in the Hadal Blacksite.

A loud, guttural cry of pure rage bellowed from Sebastians chest as he threw his fist down onto the table, effectively snapping it in two. The papers on the table and in his hands flew in the air, littering his floor. His chest heaved with anger, growls mixed in with his pants, and his body twisted from the intense amount of anger flooding his entire body. He grabbed one of the two parts of the table, gripping it firmly with his disgusting claws and throwing it across the small room with inhuman strength. Just as he prepared to assault the other part of the table, that's when he heard it. It was coming from his communication radio, the static growing louder and softer as if it were speaking to him. That was, until it actually did.

“hElLo?”

All the rage infecting Sebastian’s body had washed away in a second the moment he heard a voice push past the static. It was just barely audible, but he heard it. He knew he did. Hesitantly, he slid the scrambler device off his back and flipped it off. The scrambler device was one of Urbanshade’s creations that Sebastian took and repurposed after the lockdown with the intent to render any nearby CCTV cameras and radio offline after Urbanshade had noticed him speaking to rivaling companies through the cameras. Once he turned it off, the voice came through much clearer.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

Sebastian was frozen in his spot when he heard what sounded to be a young man’s voice. He actually managed to get into contact with someone. The very thing he hoped for every second of his life was happening in that very moment. It felt all too good to be true. He shook his head to get out of his head before rushing to grab the radio’s speaker microphone and pressed the on button. “Hello? Yes, yes, I-I’m here.” Sebastian spoke into the mic, his heart pounding with how surreal this felt. What if it was Urbanshade playing a trick on him? “My name is Sebastian Solace, I'm speaking to you from the underwater facility Hadal Blacksite, made and owned by Urbanshade.” He rushed, his heart speaking for him and ignoring the alarms going off in his brain.

“Urbanshade?...” The voice on the other side muttered, clicking off for a long moment before a gruff and much more mature voice returned instead.

“Hello, this is Cheif Armstrong from Innovation Inc. Who is this from Urbanshade I am speaking to?”

“Sebastian! Sebastian Solace! I need for Innovation Inc to send down a rescue team to the Hadal Blacksite-”

“Sebastian Solace?... son, stop pulling our leg. Our records say that Mr. Solace is dead. What you’re doing right now is a federal offence and downright immoral, acting as a dead man.”

“NO!” Sebastian screamed, now speaking frantically with tears brimming his eyes. “I’m telling the truth, I swear! It really is me–I’m Sebastian Solace! Before, I was set for execution and Urbanshade brought me down here and they experimented on me! They pronounced me as legally dead so they could use me as their guinea pig! Please, you- I’m- I’m being honest! This- ALL of this is Urbanshades fault! I’m alive! Sebastian Solace is alive… You… You gotta believe me... Please...” He hiccuped. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he let everything he’s held back go. They had to believe him; he’s come too far for them not to! He had to make them believe him if they didn’t somehow. After a moment of loud sobbing and waterfalls of tears, he picked back up the speaker mic. 

“Mr…. Armstrong?... Are you still there?” He croaked pathetically, still sniffling.

It was silent for a moment and Sebastian almost had another breakdown before the radio clicked. “I most certainly am.”

Sebastian took a deep, shaky breath in to try and regain his composure, wiping his tears before speaking in the radio mic “Listen, Mr. Armstrong; even if you don’t believe I am who I say I am, I have veeeerry valuable information Innovation Inc would benefit from. I have files among files of documented research Urbanshade has done since the Hadal Blacksite had been built. I only ask TWO things from Innovation Inc… You come rescue me and me pal P.AI.nter, and you restore me back to my human self.”

Another excruciating silence followed Sebastian’s request. It made sense, he told himself. This was a once-in-a-lifetime offer for Innovation Inc. They would have to discuss it thoroughly with each other. After all, to them, a literal dead man was speaking to them through the radio asking to be rescued in exchange for Urbanshade research. But no matter how much he tried to reason with himself, he wanted to destroy everything around him and pull out his hair in frustration for how long the silence consumed him.  

“Very well, sir. A rescue team will be sent down shortly, and arrival time is estimated to be around 2 hours from now. Know this; if you try any funny business or do anything suspicious at all, my men will shoot you down and kill you a second time.”

He stood frozen, hunched over the radio before gradually going hysterical. “Yes... Yes- Yes! Yes, thank you so much Mr. Armstrong! You have no idea how grate-

“SEBASTIAN!”

Sebastian’s body jolted awake, gasping for air as if he had been denied the precious molecules. His heart was pounding out of his chest as he frantically looked around the room, eyes wide and wild. It seemed to be a bedroom, and him in the bed. It was reminiscent of the one back in the Hadal Blacksite but had posters of his favorite bands–mostly rock–in random areas on the walls, and the setting sun peeking through the blinds of the window. He was snuggly tucked into bed, but his flailing arms when he awoke jumbled the bedsheet. As he waited for his heart to slow down, the familiar screen of P.AI.nter came into view, hovering over his left side. A while after the two had arrived at Innovation Inc., employees worked with P.AI.nter to create a fully functional body it could control so it could move around without having to depend on anybody. “Sebastian? Jeez, are you alright? I mean, you were making noises in your sleep and making funny expressions, but I didn’t know you’d be this scared.”

He rolled his eyes and huffed at the computer and slapped a hand over his face, submerging himself back into darkness. “Yeah, ‘m alright… It was jus’ nightmares…” He mumbled, to which P.AI.nter replied with a soft ‘oh’.

“...Were you having memories of Urbanshade?” It asked softly. P.AI.nter knew very well Sebastian's constant nightmares of back when they were still in Urbanshade, he just wished he could help him more than just patting him on the back and distracting him. When Sebastian only nodded his head to its question it digitally sighed, shoulders slumping before flopping on the bed beside him. “Well, if it makes you feel better, you were so knocked out once they took you out of the LINAC, they put a pause on all of the therapy thingys you had today. Nothing they did could wake you up! So, they just put you in here and tucked you in as snug as a bug.”

As P.AI.nter continued to talk, Sebastian tuned the computer out as he held his arms above his head. The gray-blue skin he had was beginning to flake off, slowly revealing his previous sun-kissed skin from when he was human. Slowly and steadily, he was beginning to look normal again. He still had the angler esca hanging from his forehead and was permanently sensitive to light, but his eyes no longer looked similar to a fish’s and most of his face had returned to his normal color. That ginormous, inconvenient serpent tail was now entirely gone, but rendered his legs forever immobile, forcing him to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He wasn’t so sad about that, though, instead very smug about shrinking down from 62’ to 6’8”. It was the shortest they could make him, but he was incredibly content with a 10-inch increase from his height before. 

In the middle of the AI speaking, Sebastian cuts it off. “Hey P.AI.nter, you wanna go outside?” The computer stared at Sebastian for a minute, the both of them staring at each other before an open smile was scribbled on its screen.

“Yes!” It beamed, immediately jumping out of the bed and pulling the sheets off Sebastian to help him in his wheelchair. It wasn’t a very strainful thing to do for P.AI.nter since it’s entire body is metal and wires. Once Sebastian was in his wheelchair with a blanket over his legs, the computer wasted no time in wheeling him out of his room and through the halls. They made it rather quickly to the outside area; a place specifically built for everyone to relax on. P.AI.nter parked him right in front of the railing next to an outside table that had coffee stains littered across the top. The AI pulled up a chair beside Sebastian and plopped itself into it, pulling its robot legs into criss cross formation on the plush seat.

Right away it began to paint the sunset in front of it on its screen. Sebastian leaned back in his chair with a deep, relaxing breath, allowing his shoulders and neck to fall back and ease tension. He closed his eyes to avoid them getting irritated from the lowering sun rays beaming on his skin. The harmful UV’s have never been more wanted by him after finally breaking free of that place. A gentle gust of wind ruffled his hair and brushed sweetly against his skin, keeping him just the right temperature from being out in the sunlight. Never again would he waste a day of his life cooped inside, wasting his life away like he had before. No, he vowed instead he would enjoy the sun when it was out, watch the rain trickle down the windows, explore the world and take new opportunities to learn what it means to live. He would cherish every second he spent with his family and friends–maybe even start a scrap book or journal of his everyday life. He learned very cruelly how life was taken advantage of and wasted, and he quietly promised to himself to never take advantage of life again.