[b][u][center]Orca Soldiers
For Zohaku
By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]
 
 
 
 
 



When the military announced a new clinical trial for a serum for its soldiers, Leroy had been quick to sign up. After all, if he could help the people that were protecting the country, why not do what he could, right?

Of course, like anything involving the military, it was never that simple.

The young man stared up at the ceiling as he was rolled down a dark stone hallway, staring up the concrete pillars that rose up to the layered stone ceiling above him. There were no clicks or rattles through the cart he was on, which meant that the floor was probably more stable than the ceiling was.

He’d been brought here completely unconscious. He’d been informed that the facility where the testing would take place was completely confidential and classified, requiring these strict measures, so he wasn’t surprised by that.

What he was surprised by were the straps that held him down, keeping him from standing, or even sitting up. The men and women on either side of him didn’t look at him, just at some point ahead of them that was out of his line of sight.

[i]Something’s wrong here…[/i]

Despite his misgivings, Leroy was doing his best to keep from letting his imagination get the better of him. Surely, since it was a military operation, they would have tighter security to make sure that everything stayed safe…

Right?

Even he couldn’t entirely believe that one, but the straps were too tight for him to risk pulling an escape right then. Not to mention he had no idea where he was, and he was probably being paranoid to top it all off.

Better to wait, he supposed. Better to wait and see what would happen as the minutes went on. He might be wrong.

The stone tunnel eventually came to an end, leaving them inside of a chrome-plated corridor. The ends of the room sealed, and the hissing sound of decontamination sprays filled the air. Leroy turned his head this way, then that, and then looked up again when the sprays were done.

Finally, he seemed to get the attention of one of his walkers. They looked down at him from behind a paper mask over their mouth and nose, shaking their head.

“He’s awake. He’s not supposed to be awake.”

“Ignore it. He’ll be out again soon,” one of the others said.

“Ugh…I hate it when they wake up. There’s always a panic.”

“Why would we panic?” Leroy asked.

The four medical officials around him looked down at him, and then at the one that had started talking at the beginning. Apparently, he shouldn’t have said that, at least, judging by the glares.

[i]Yeah…not paranoid.[/i]

SLAM!

He would have jumped off his table if he wasn’t strapped down. Looking as far backwards as he could, he could just make out a large steel door that had come down in front of the normal one that they’d passed through.

Even he would have a hard time getting out of that, if he could do anything to get through it at all.

[i]Okay…okay…you wasted time, and now we’re in trouble. Okay, relax. They might still make a mistake.[/i]

His ‘companions’ started walking again, pulling and pushing his cart through a number of other rooms. He wasn’t able to look around so freely anymore, so he didn’t know what was going on around him.

However, he could hear screams in the distance, and that was never good.

Leroy forced himself to keep breathing evenly, to think about what he needed to do once he got an arm free. He wasn’t entirely helpless, and if he needed to, he had a few skills that the military probably didn’t know he had. If he could just use them…

Well, that was the trick, wasn’t it?

Rolled along in perpetual motion, the cart never seemed to come to a halt. His watchers never let him move, never let him get his bearings. He tried counting off the seconds from how far they’d gone from the steel door, but that was constantly interrupted by the screams around him. He tried to guess how fast they were going by measuring the passage of the tiles above, but that was frequently fucked.

By the time they finally stopped, he had no idea how far into the facility they were, what turns and twists they had taken to get there, or how long it would take to get back to the sterilizing corridor and the exit.

The straps came off, but they were replaced by strong grips on his wrists and shoulders. The men and women on either side dragged him off the cart, forcing him to stand with his arms held behind his back and his face forward.

They’d taken him to some sort of experimental chamber, he guessed, with a table in the middle of it and a series of straps on it, too. Over it were a series of bags and needles, probably designed to spill who knew how many chemicals down on the body, and –

Well, worst of all were the bags that were off on the side of the room, each one still, but each one filled with something big. Bigger than a body.

“You’re not testing medicine down here, are you?” Leroy muttered.

“[i]Quite correct, Test Subject 72.[/i]”

He looked up and to the left. There, overlooking the chamber, were a series of silhouettes behind a window, all of them looking down at him. One of them was a bit further forward than the rest, wearing a soldier’s uniform and what looked like General stars for his ranks.

So, it was a military operation after all, but it wasn’t the one that they had been advertising. The General continued.

“[i]You’ve been chosen to test a super-soldier serum.[/i]”

“Couldn’t we have done this at a general hospital?” Leroy asked.

“[i]Not with the anticipated effects,[/i]” the General said. “[i]You will likely experience a number of transformations in your shift towards being an ultimate soldier. We need to keep an eye on all of them in a secure location.[/i]”

Just in case it all goes wrong, Leroy imagined. If they had been having such bad luck as to have body bags off to the side, he could only imagine how many problems they were having.

And subject 72. Had all 71 other subjects died, or were they somewhere else in this strange facility?

There were too many questions, and way, way too many variables for him to solve them as things stood.

At a nod from the general, his escorts dragged him to the table and shoved him down. Leroy tried to struggle against them, even bringing his hand up with a flicker of flame at the fingertips, but it was too little, too late. He doubted that they even noticed his bit of elemental power. They were too efficient for that, pinning him down on the table and leaving him there.

The straps were even more extensive than the ones on the cart had been. He was tied down from his head to his ankles, his neck strapped to the table, his chest, his arms, his wrists, knees, ankles, hips, everything. His entire body was restrained, and there was no getting free, no matter how hard he threw himself against it.

[i]Damnit…[/i]

And his abilities were nearly useless without a greater range of movement. Without that…

“[i]Do you have an aversion to needles?[/i]”

“Would it really matter if I did?”

“[i]Of course. We wouldn’t wish to make you more uncomfortable than you already are. It would affect our results.[/i]”

Wishing that they would have just let him go and let him stay comfortable well away from this facility, Leroy sighed. He nodded.

“A small issue with needles, yes.”

“[i]Replace the needles with nozzles, then, men.[/i]”

He was surprised to see them do just that, replacing the needles over his head with a series of spray nozzles under the bags. He’d expected them to be trying to torment him with the possibility of so many needles, and instead, they actually followed through with the offer of some…comfort.

Not that it made the experiment better, but he was surprised, nonetheless.

The medical escort pulled away, going to the far sides of the room, and the General called out through the intercom.

“[i]Beginning topical application of serum in three…two…one…[/i]”

Time seemed to shift to slow motion in that moment. He saw the black fluids rushing down the tubes to the nozzles, saw the slight twitch in the tubes as the liquid moved so quickly. He heard the beginning of the hissing inside, knew that it was about to land all over him…

And he knew that there was nothing he could do to escape.

Leroy gritted his teeth as the black ran fell over him and the table, the liquid melting through his clothes almost immediately. It hit his skin like heavy droplets of goo rather than water, making him feel like he was being pelted rather than being under a shower. It fell on him, splattering out and spreading out on contact, and it continued to grow wider and wider as it spread further and further over him.

[i]Oh god…[/i]

It was pure black, too, black and shimmering like latex as it covered his skin. In short order, all of his pale flesh was completely covered, only a few places on his head remaining uncovered, spots of white amidst the black. He grunted, trying to turn his head to preserve one eye, but even as he kept it from being rained on, he could feel the black ooze spreading over his skin.

Worse, he could feel it running down his sides, pooling under his back, and –

“Nnngh!”

He grunted through clenched teeth as he felt something that should have been impossible. The ooze. The ooze, it was…it was pricking at his skin, sliding into it. Every pore, every hair follicle, everything that could possibly allow access under his skin and towards other parts of his body were invaded. Tubes spread into his nose, past his mouth, running into his body.

And as it spread further, he could feel his body warping, changing, becoming something different.

He looked down at his hand, seeing his fingers stretching, then drooping. The ends of them were already bubbling, looking more like they were liquid than solid, and it was confirmed as they started sloping down, extending as if they were melting. He stared, his eyes going wide as he saw them puddling at his sides, his hand following.

He yanked his arm free of the wrist restraint, staring at the stump at the end of the limb, but it was too late. He couldn’t do anything to bring it back, and the rest of the arm was melting, too, gradually coming apart and dripping onto his chest, his face –

“Gah!”

His eyes. They were blinded, soaked and covered by the strange latex. Even without sight, though, he could feel his body coming apart, disintegrating into a puddle. His chest was caved in, his back falling out beneath his stomach. He was flattening out, becoming nothing more than a puddle.

Even as his body escaped the restraints, even as Leroy tried to throw himself to the side to get off the table, he couldn’t do anything. He was being transformed, and there was nothing he could do to even slow it down, let alone escape it.

He could feel his arms and torso completely disappear into the puddle, his legs following afterward. His body seemed to pull itself together tighter and tighter, the puddle focusing towards the spot in the middle of the table. He had no real understanding of how it was happening, but it was, and there was no stopping it.

His head was the last thing to stay solid, and even that was iffy. He could feel his eyes turning up, the lower half of his mouth melting, his skull seeming to cave in on itself despite his best efforts.

And then…

Then it was nothing.

Leroy was a puddle, though he wasn’t sure how he knew that. He had a vague awareness of the continued rain on top of his head, the way that the machine was still running, but that was about it. His sense of sight was gone, completely useless as a puddle, and he didn’t have a sense of hearing.

But he did have a sense of touch. And a powerful one, at that, as he could feel the footsteps that were coming up to the table.

[i]Strike. Do something. Anything![/i]

Trying and failing to move, Leroy squirmed, bubbling as the puddle he was. He tried to extend some sort of tentacle towards the source of the vibrations, but before he could –

ZZZZZZZZZZZAP!

Electricity was attached to him, flowing through his liquid body. It didn’t hurt, but he felt it forcing a form on him, a signal that was running through his body making him take on a different shame. His form started to rise from the puddle, and as it did, he could both see and feel that he was no longer human.

His head was too big, for one, and as he opened his ‘eyes,’ he could see that he had less of a human mouth, and more of an aquatic beak. Too big and broad for a dolphin’s, though, and not toothy enough for a shark’s mouth.

He lifted a hand from his ooze puddle to touch his face, only to see that the black latex covered him. He was completely made of it, now, and there was no getting away from that fact. Leroy stared at his limb, at the thicker digits at the end, at the way that it seemed to be more muscular than it had ever been before.

The further out of the puddle he came, the more his body felt different. Not only had it had its masculinity pumped up to the extreme, but it was definitely not human. The thick shoulders were beyond anything that a human would normally have, and he had a bit more webbing between his fingers than a human should have had, too.

As he rose up to his waist, he felt something dragging behind him, and he looked behind to see what it was as the electricity zapped him again.

Though his body rippled as the building signals rushed through him, he was more concerned about the long tail that was rising out of the latex ooze, building up into an orca’s long limb out of the base of his spine. He flexed it, feeling the power behind the tail, and shuddered as he realized that his humanity was long gone.

His front was…not quite human, either. His cock had been replaced by something that was more like a long, very clumsy tentacle, and even that was sealed behind a layer of the latex with another zap that went through his body.

Soon, he was standing on rather massive feet, on long, tree-trunk style legs. He stood over the room in looming fashion, realizing why the other bags were so much bigger than human bodies.

[i]They didn’t hold dead people. They held experimental subjects….[/i]

“[i]Step down from the table, Subject 72.[/i]”

Leroy hesitated. As he did, he saw the raised eyebrows on the other medical staff, and he realized something.

[i]I’m supposed to obey instantly…[/i]

He jumped down, and the muttering stopped.

[i]The experiment’s not just supposed to make you bigger. It’s supposed to make you obedient, too.[/i]

Which meant that they expected not just obedience, but something dangerously close to mind control out of these experiments. No wonder they were pulling their volunteers somewhere well out of the way. They didn’t want anyone to find out what they were doing.

Worse, it meant that if he didn’t want to give away that he was still able to think for himself, he needed to obey whatever he was told. From whoever he was told, too, since he didn’t know how far the obedience was supposed to go. Until he got more information, even though he was free, he’d have to act like a drone.

“[i]Get in the bag, Subject 72.[/i]”

One of the medical officials held one of the bags open, gesturing at it. The orca didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t.

Sliding into the bag, he let it be folded over him like a body bag, then zipped up. Leroy forced himself to remain still, remembering that the other soldiers had been completely immobile during his transformation. If he was going to sell this, he needed to do it right.

Because there was no way that he was staying here for the rest of his life. There was no way that he’d help these people with whatever it was they were trying to do.

[i]I’ll get out of here…eventually…[/i]

 

 

 




[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]