Specimen
“Where did they find this one again?”
“At the police station. They caught it attacking one of the students.”
“Jesus. Is the kid okay?”
Keith moaned, shivering as he came to. He could barely hear the voices over the high pitched ringing of his own ears. His ears hurt, his head hurt...everything just hurt.
When he attempted to inhale, he immediately gagged, the stench of chemicals and latex invading his senses like a virus. His entire body shuddered painfully, and he could barely keep himself quiet at the way his empty stomach convulsed.
“Oh hey, I think the sedative is wearing off.”
Keith’s heart skipped a beat at the voice, suddenly much more aware. He tried to open his eyes, but the lights burned like salt water. With a pained grunt, he tried to move a hand to block his eyes, only to have it stopped a few inches up. He yanked at his hand again, but it was held firmly in place.
Groaning, he made another attempt at opening his eyes, squinting tearfully through the light. Strapped down to where he lay, he could only see the white ceiling above him.
Keith tried to sit up, but the restraints around his wrists held strong.
“What's going on?” he called out weakly. “Where am I?”
Despite his pained efforts to speak clearly, they didn’t answer. It was like they didn’t hear him.
Something told Keith that volume wasn’t the issue.
The voices spoke among themselves.
“You made sure those restraints were secure, right?”
“Yes, it’s fine. The specimen is pretty small anyways. He’s not going anywhere.”
He wriggled a wrist uselessly in his binds, letting out a shaky sigh. Somewhere in his heart, he knew trying to make himself heard was pointless...but there had to be something he could do. He couldn’t simply ignore the panicked desperation building in his chest. He was helpless and trapped and he couldn’t even be heard, and that made Keith want to scream and cry until they were forced to acknowledge him. Yet he knew that would most likely not be enough to make them hear him.
Keith let out another shuddering breath.
“Why am I here?” he spoke louder, fighting to keep his voice from trembling.
Yet his efforts were fruitless. The only response he got was another harsh light flushed directly into his eyes. He jerked his head with a whine, but a hand grabbed him by the chin and went to pry an eye open.
"Careful, Ben. He's dangerous."
His other eye was forced open for a moment, before the hands and light were drawn back. The light remained etched stubbornly into his retinas, making him feel even blinder than before.
“The specimen seems stable right now. Besides, he's tied down. We're safe."
Keith clenched his fists, hating that he couldn't move. Whatever these people had in mind for him, he was helpless to it all.
He propped himself up on his elbows as far as he could, and saw two men in lab coats, before registering the other man at his bedside. None of them seemed to have noticed that Keith had moved.
"What are you gonna do to me?" No response. “Please...I just want to know what's going to happen to me.”
One of the men looked his way for a moment, but before they could even make eye contact, the man returned his attention to the clipboard in his arms, scribbling something down.
Defeated, Keith sank back down against the bed. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to keep the tears of frustration to himself.
“You're okay,” he thought to himself. “Everything is going to be fine.”
Yet he couldn’t convince himself; his thoughts were bound to the tightness around his wrists and ankles.
Suddenly, he heard a door open, and an extra set of footsteps entered the room.
"Good evening, Admiral Sanda. The specimen is awake."
"Good," a new voice spoke. "You know, it almost looks like a person."
Keith clenched his jaw.
"Yes. It appears to be able to retain a human form, unless startled."
There was a sudden sharp pain to his forearm. Keith, already on edge, couldn’t help the loud cry, as he tried to pull away from the fingers clamping down hard. In a desperate panic, he fought against his binds, his breathing coming out in short gasps. There was a small itch of fur starting to grow at the base of his neck, and the light became much brighter as his eyes morphed.
"It's amazing. I've never seen anything like it. An extraterrestrial species, able to camouflage itself in a foreign environment. I wonder if there are any more out there?"
A set of footsteps came up to his bed. Keith’s eyes met with a set of hazel ones.
"I sure hope not,” the woman Sanda spoke. "This thing is dangerous."
"I'm not," Keith said quickly.
The only form of response he was allowed was the harsh glare of the admiral. Keith’s breath hitched in his throat. All he was able to do was squirm beneath the gaze, suddenly feeling as if he were being pinned down even further into the bed. He was too petrified to even look away.
"It's good that we found it," the admiral continued. "God knows how many more people it could have attacked if we hadn't."
Keith bit his lip.
Was he really that dangerous?
He had gone all of these years, able to blend in with society, able to blend so well that even he was fooled. Yet something within him had finally escaped from deep inside.
Was it possible that he wouldn't have stopped at Adam if the cops hadn't arrived?
Sanda stepped away.
"Be careful with that thing."
Keith listened to the footsteps trail out of the room. He wished that he could simply melt into the bed beneath him. It hurt to lay in that bed. He felt guilty for being alive.
"We should make sure that we tag the specimen now, before we forget.”
Keith stiffened at the word “tag.”
"W-what are you doing?"
When he was once again answered by silence, he pushed himself as far as he could from the bed, just in time to see one of the doctors pick up a needle, which was attached to a small mechanical box with what looked like ink inside of it. The tip of the needle gleamed under the bright light of the room, as if snarling at him.
He shook his head with a whimper, trying to back away from the man coming towards him. If he could just rip off those cuffs...
"What number is this one?"
"Hold on, let me check.”
He tugged desperately at his restraints, his breathing once again becoming rugged and shallow. The doctor locked him into an icy scrutiny, staring Keith down as if he was a disobedient dog.
"Bring me the anesthesia. He's obviously not going to sit still for this."
One of the other doctors pushed a large machine towards his bed. Keith started yanking even harder at the straps, putting everything into his struggle.
Deep inside, he knew that it was a fruitless fight. However, in that moment, he was too terrified to acknowledge the fact, even as a possibility.
"Harold, Ben, hold him down."
The man holding the needle set it down and followed his partner up to Keith. They grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back against the bed.
"Stop!"
Keith thrashed and bucked hard against the solid sets of arms. A mask was placed over his face, and he shook his head away from it.
"NO!"
They held the mask down around his nose and mouth, and Keith started to scream.
He knew it was a losing battle. No matter how much he thrashed against the hands of his captors, he couldn't break free. His cries for help echoed sharply off the walls, but no matter how hard he screamed, he remained unheard.
It was not long before his world began to grow dark. As the anesthesia took hold of his system, invading every inch of his body, he became limp and heavy, as if he was being filled with lead.
He sank from the force holding him in place. Hands were drawn back, and he was swallowed into a world of darkness.
…
His dreams were made up of random bits and pieces, which when thrown together, only managed to clump sloppily into one mass of confusion and grief.
At first, Keith saw one of the officers who had been kind to him at the station. Although he couldn’t understand what he was saying, the man’s voice was soft, and he felt safe simply hearing it.
As soon as he appeared, however, he quickly vanished. Before he could react, Keith was before another man who, from the moment they had met, sent every inch of his being into a state of pure terror.
The cologne the man reeked of poorly masked the equally powerful scent that reminded him of burnt rubber. He felt even smaller than usual under the man’s threatening gaze. The man began to stomp towards Keith, his voice growing louder and louder by the second.
Keith couldn’t remember what he had done wrong.
He turned around and started to run, but he bumped into another body. Stepping back, he met the eyes of Adam, which were wide with fear. Adam stumbled on his back to the ground, cowering before Keith.
“I’m sorry,” Keith tried to say, but he couldn’t find his voice. “I’m sorry!”
It was useless. No matter how hard he cried out, he could only let out a small breath, the words getting caught in his throat.
“I’m so sor—”
Keith shot up with a gasp.
It took him several minutes to stop panting until he was finally able to regain control of his own breathing. He thought to make a grab for his inhaler, until he remembered that it was long gone.
As his shoulders loosened up, the cogs in his groggy mind started to churn once more, and he began to take in the room around him.
He was sitting on a plainly made mattress. The grey covers beneath him were made of a rough material that made his palms feel dry. The walls of the room itself held a shade of white that made the grey sheets on the mattress clash in comparison; they were so white, so bright, that they almost physically hurt to look at. The door on the opposite end of the room looked to be made of steel, being the only thing that stood out from the glare of the light. When he looked down, he saw that the floors were a darker shade of grey. He placed the back of his hand on the floor, which rubbed harshly against his knuckles, like sandpaper.
He started to push himself off the bed, intending to check to see just how locked the door across from him was, but the clink of metal against concrete stopped him in his tracks.
Heart sinking, he sat back down, finally noticing the restraint locked firmly around his left ankle. The cuff itself was obviously some kind of ankle monitor. Although Keith had never worn one himself, he knew what they looked like. One of the other foster kids from his last home had been forced to wear one, after being arrested for having drugs in his pocket.
However, his own ankle bracelet had some modifications over the last one. He saw that the bracelet had a thick chain wrapped and locked around a loop of the cuff, which had clearly been put there to allow the wearer to be chained to the floor.
Keith grabbed the chain attached to his ankle and gave one testing pull against it. Although the chain had about four feet of slack, it wasn’t enough for him to reach the door.
With a frustrated sigh, he buried his head in his hands in defeat.
He only remained still for a moment, however, when he felt the slight pinch of the bandage stuck to the skin on his arm. He scanned his arms and spotted the large patch band-aid on his right bicep, right above the inside of his elbow. He paused for a moment, unsure, before ripping the band-aid off. He choked back a grunt and looked down at his arm. He immediately spotted the number etched in black ink. From his angle, it was upside down, but it would only take him an extra moment to read the numbers scrawled across his arm. This string of numbers reminded him of the numbers criminals were assigned in prison.
Keith let out a muted sob as he gingerly poked at the tender area, slowly registering each number scrawled in someone else’s handwriting across his arm.
87361-348
He shook his head, his throat growing tight, as his vision blurred with tears.
They had branded him. First, they had taken him prisoner...and then they had marked him, like a piece of property.
This was permanent. He couldn’t wash this mark off with soap and water. For the rest of his life, his skin would be the canvas to this terrible ownership of his being. His body, mind, and soul belonged to some people in a place where he didn’t even know the location. There was no way to even know where in the world he was, how far he was from home...except this place was his home now. This strange place was his new home, and he didn’t even know where he was, if he was even in the same country anymore.
Keith hiccuped. With a small cry, he put his head back in his hands. He squeezed his eyes shut, letting the tears slip past his fingers, and stroll messily down his wrists.
“What am I gonna do?”
...
So like two years ago, I wrote and published a very early rough draft version of this within the first few days of coming up with this AU, and since then, I have been editing and revising this piece quite regularly. It’s one of the most important pieces to me for this AU, because this is the first scene that Keith is introduced to true dehumanization. As a foster child, he has not had it easy...but even he was unprepared for just how much worse things could get. Keith’s father died, but even that is almost bearable compared to being treated so less than human.
Even though I’m publishing this now, I’ll still continue to work on this piece until the full chapter that this belongs to is ready to be published. And probably even after that, because some pieces are just those pieces you can’t put down. This scene is one of those pieces.
Lololol also for those of you that read the original draft, you may notice that Iverson is no longer The Bitch. I mean, you can’t be mean to Iverson after s7 of Voltron. Even though he did strap Shiro to a table. (Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, it’d almost be funny if I had kept Iverson in this scene just for that reason.)
I just feel like Sanda is more suited for this role. I don’t think she was a bad person in VLD, especially considering the fact that she died trying to save Earth, even after her major fuck-up. But she’s still pretty brutal and she did betray Voltron. I understand that she did it because she thought that this is what she needed to do to keep earth safe. But her antagonist-like role is something I’d like to take advantage of. Plus I’d feel bad disrespecting the true character that VLD showed Iverson to be.
Of course, I would like to add some more depth to Sanda, even though she is a pretty high up person in Area 51 that is more or less the one telling everyone that it’s okay to poke and prod extraterrestrial beings like they’re microorganisms in a test tube. But I’m not sure what kind of development her character will go through in this fic, if much.
One more thing, I actually don’t know yet if this Adam is “the” Adam. Again, I started this fic two years ago, so when VLD was like “GUYS HERE’S ADAM” I thought it was funny that I had an Adam in my fic that more or less is kind of the reason Keith ended up in Area 51. (Context, Keith was bullied and cornered to fight, and Keith panicked and attacked before realizing that he was exposing himself. Everyone saw what happened, and some even recorded this and posted pictures and videos online. It was a huge thing for the government to cover up, but they managed to do it.)
I feel like it’d be kinda funny and messed up if three years later, Keith is taken off the streets by the boyfriend of the guy that put him in Area 51 in the first place. Keith would feel super fucking guilty, because like, uh, wow, this was probably some psychological damage that I caused you. But to be fair you tried to punch me and got me kidnapped by the government, so fuck you.
It would be pretty interesting if that happened. But I’m not sure if I’m going to take this route or not. It might just be a different Adam. I also feel weird having Adam be someone in this role, because even though Adam wasn’t there for Shiro in the end, I don’t know how I feel about Adam as a person. We just didn’t get the chance to see him much as a character. Sometimes characters just die before you can really get to know them, you know?
Finally, there are some other references in this to the rest of the story that might not make sense, but I tried to make it as clear for possible since I decided to publish this tonight. But like if some things do seem unclear, they’re kinda supposed to because those things will be brushed back on later in the story.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed? I also like constructive criticism, so be brutal! Unlike the pieces I’ve been publishing for the challenge, this is a much more polished draft, so it’s something that I especially care about and will happily continue to work and improve on.
