capeandcowllogs | lifeless to know the definition for what life is

lifeless to know the definition for what life is

WHO: Cavil (

bestmachine) and Kiryu (

satisfiedsigner)
WHERE: An apartment leased out to "Michael Franson." The name, of course, is fake.
WHEN: Sunday night (11pm) --> Monday late afternoon
SUMMARY: Cavil has managed to nab another test subject. It's time for brain soup, yes?
FORMAT: Paragraph
WARNINGS: Human experimentation, violence, rainbows, and death. ...I'm lying about the rainbows.

The room he chose to use was soundproof.

He had to make it soundproof, of course, because like hell anyone sold apartments like that in this crummy neighborhood. He had bought the fiberglass installation the day after renting this second apartment with fake ID number two, already certain of what he would be using it for. Eight separate people had lived and breathed and screamed in that room already. The carpeted floor was covered in unidentifiable stains Cavil could only wrinkle his nose at, the sick organic primates. Still, it was going to serve its purpose.

He dropped Kiryu in the room once they returned from the parking lot, duct-taped his hands and feet, and then closed the door behind them.

From his place by the doorway, he waited for him to wake up.

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"Oh," he said. "That's a shame, but it doesn't matter so much."

Because you won't be around much longer, was left unsaid.

"The first question can be," he continued, "what do you speak? The second, of course, is what's your name? Feel free to tell me to slow down if you're having difficulties following. I wouldn't want to lose you."

He contemplated just not answering for a moment. Answering felt like doing what this guy wanted, and he hated doing that.

But talking might get him answers and delay whatever plans this guy had...

"Japanese," he muttered finally. "Name is my business."

...and maybe give him a chance to change forms and get out of here. He couldn't control his fire-power well, but he didn't really need to to hurt someone.

Edited 2009-06-02 07:33 (UTC)

He sucked in air through his teeth, shaking his head. It looked like regret, maybe. Feigned regret. He ran his thumb along the edge of the tuner.

"You know, I really hate having to ask the same question twice. You're in--" He patted his chest. "--my care now. That's M-E. And so things are going to go how I like them."

He turned the tuner on. There was a delay - maybe four or five seconds - before Cavil reached the somatosensory cortex, before he carefully stimulated a collection of Kiryu's neurons, the ones typically activated on the neospinothalamic tract.

The neospinothalamic tract meant pain. Sharp, acute pain.

There was that note again...maybe? It was easier to hear in this room--

Kiryu jerked, clenching his teeth. He refused to make a noise, even though it HURT and he wanted to and IT HURT. He refused to look at Cavil either, because whatever was hurting him, it had to do with that man, and damn if he would let him win.

He let this go on for thirty seconds before removing himself from the other man's mind, the once blinding pain fading into nothing with his absence. He ran his thumb over the tuner once more and the sound stopped.

"We're going to try this again." Slower, deliberate: "What. Is. Your. Name? I also want to know the abilities you have that could be considered supernatural or otherwise unavailable to the majority of the citizens here. You had a communicator on you, so don't play stupid - I know."

He considered just not answering again. Or using his alias that he'd only ever used once. But, well, that wouldn't keep him talking.

"Kiryu Kyosuke," he said finally, although he doubted it would mean much to this guy.

...And well, that could be potentially problematic. He had no idea how to explain what he could do in English, much less in English and to someone who probably didn't understand his world. He'd run into the problem with Starscream too...

"Can't tell you," he said, making sure not to glare this time. "Too much to...explain? Too much to explain."

Cavil took a moment to consider. Should he ask again? Knock it out of him? Or did it really matter, considering what he would be doing? Chances are, the guy was probably trying to stall anyway, trying to stall like anyone would in a situation where their life might be at stake. Probably thought some of his hero friends were going to help him out.

Ha.

He smiled. "I understand. In that case, Kiryu Kyosuke, I see no reason why we can't move forward."

He turned the tuner on and then proceeded to raise the volume. Definitely a note, now, definitely an A, filling the room with its steady sound, the room that no one else in the building could hear.

"Let us begin."

Cavil spent the next eighteen hours systematically digging through Kiryu's brain. He gave him breaks, of course, after the occasional accidental seizure, but mostly it was test after test after test. The beautiful thing about being a machine was that he had energy even when others didn't. He didn't need sleep. He barely even needed food. There was only this job in front of him, and he was going to get it done.

He sent jolts to Kiryu's motor area. He sent it to his visual cortex, his oratory centers, his auditory centers. He gave him hallucinations and made him jerk his arms. He even dug into the amygdala and provoked fear. He found it unfortunate that even with all this practice, he still had no real control over Kiryu's body (he could never call it 'mind control,' not at this point), but he did have a certain grip. And he did get better with time.

Around 5pm, he flicked off the tuner.

Those eighteen hours were hell.

He hated having his control taken from him, in any way. Having his body and his thoughts and emotions be so out of control...

Cavil hardly had to work to make him feel any fear. It was already there. He was terrified.

The hallucinations, though, were the worst. Most were about his time in prison, which was so much like this. But Saitou appeared once, looking sad and disappointed. And Yuusei, Jack, and Crow appeared again. Yuusei was crying. He hated it when Yuusei cried, even now.

When the tuner was finally turned off, he hardly noticed. He'd forgotten it was there after a while. And he was more interested in praying to his God, Ccapac Apu, to get him out of there like he had the last time. At this point, death seemed like the better alternative again. He was okay with being a zombie; he'd just make sure the Signers never won.

He was too disconnected from his body at that point to notice he was panting and crying. He probably wouldn't have admitted to it if he'd noticed.

"I'm thinking," he said, drawing out the word, "we're just about done here."

He paused for a moment, letting that sink in - if Kiryu heard him, anyway. He then dug into his pockets and removed a cheap, plastic stopwatch. For his next (and final act), he was going to need it.

"What I'm going to do," he said, "is enter your brain stem. If you're unfamiliar with this particular part of your anatomy, it's what keeps your heart beating. It's also what keeps you breathing, aware, and essentially more than just a bag of decomposing flesh. Shortly after I reach it, you're probably going to die. Not that I bet you mind anymore, huh?"

Fuckfuckfuckfuck...that sounded unpleasant. And definitely not how he really wanted to die.

Not that he'd died the right way the first time either. Wasting away in a prison cell was definitely not the right way.

He didn't have the energy to look anywhere but straight ahead, or he would have started glaring at Cavil again.

"I'm sure my breath will be wasted," he said, idly fiddling with the tuner, "but I figured I'd be polite and ask if you had any last thoughts."

He raised his eyebrows. Well?

Oh, he had them. And if he could speak, he probably would have yelled them at him.

Some of them. A few were a little private for that.

But as it was, he was pretty sure that if he tried speaking, nothing would come out. Or rather, whatever came out would be nothing he'd want to admit came out of his mouth.

He stared at the wall, waiting. And praying the Ccapac Apu would, by some miracle, help him again. But he was really starting to doubt that as a possibility.

When Cavil was certain he wasn't going to get an answer, he gave an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. Well, the movement said. At least I tried. He flicked on the tuner once more.

beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

"Now," he said. "Like before, you might feel a few stray thoughts."

He turned on the stopwatch. This one was going to take a long time. This one was tricky. He imagined throwing his thoughts into Kiryu's thoughts (the atlas firm in his mind) and took off from there, gently moving down towards the brain stem, careful not to activate too many neurons along the route. It took a long time before he reached the desired location - four minutes, to be precise.

When he got there, it started slowly.

A heart palpitation.

Kiryu's brain chemistry already wasn't the best. Stray thoughts tended to turn into hallucinations anyway. That or nightmares.

So, of course, he didn't get any now. He imagined what Ccapac Apu might look like if he came to help, and ended up imagining a very pretty girl with long white hair. He wasn't sure why; Ccapac Apu had always sounded male--

His breath hitched and an irrational feeling of fear swept over him. At least it didn't hurt, but feeling his heart do that wasn't fun.

The palpitations only grew stronger and more frequent. Now that he was in, Cavil didn't have to do much at all - his mere presence was enough to offset the delicate patterns.

Breathing came next.

It was funny, actually, how the brain could forget. It could forget how to inhale until the conscious mind reminded it. It could forgot about exhaling. It could forgot about swallowing. Or maybe it could forget and end up swallowing too much. Maybe it would tell the body to inhale twice instead of inhale exhale inhale exhale.

Either way, that was how Cavil was killing Kiryu.

The stopwatch read 4:32.

Okay...after a little while that started to ache; His heart wasn't used to beating like that; it started getting sore like any other muscle.

It didn't matter once his breathing stopped working right. That hurt. That hurt his lungs and his head and his heart when it started working even harder.

He was too exhausted to handle much of that. It didn't take long for him to pass out.

And Cavil continued to force the neurons to fire when they shouldn't be firing - again and again - even after Kiryu fell unconscious. At this rate, it wasn't going to be long before his heart stopped.

If he didn't suffocate first, anyway.

Cavil was concentrating, sure, but otherwise, he wasn't concerned. He had killed before, after all. He had killed billions and billions of people, and this one was just another tick-mark on the wall. It didn't warrant any ceremony.

It was his heart that gave out first; it was already weaker than normal and that was straining it too much. He probably would have suffocated a couple seconds later though.

Kiryu fell limp against the floor, dead.

When it was over, Cavil stopped the stopwatch and looked down. 6 seconds and 3 seconds.

Slow. Faster than usual (it was a new record), but still slow. At this rate, it made more sense to shoot someone in the head the old-fashioned way rather than waste time putzing around in their brain space. Ideally, he wanted to go in there and stop their heart in a single blink.

Soon, he thought. Soon.

For now, he was thankful for the aid this one gave him. Now it was only a matter of disposing of the body.

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