Pain. That was the first thing Sam was aware of. His head felt like a car had rolled over it a couple of times and his entire body ached. His nerves were on fire and he groaned as he returned to consciousness. His head lolled this way and that as his eyes fluttered open, the light above blurry and undefined. He couldn't remember what had happened at the moment or how he had ended up this way. There had been the run...

"Razor!" Sam exclaimed, sitting up immediately as it all came rushing back and regretted it just as quickly.

The run, Razor and Omega and Greg and Gash they...

The human felt sick and promptly vomited on the space beside him, his body no longer managing to accept the sights he'd witnessed. His mentor was dead. The entire group had been killed because the power had managed to be switched on a few moments ahead of schedule. Sam was breathing heavily, his heart racing and anger burning through his mind. They had all died and meanwhile he had just let it happen. He retched as he remembered how Razor had jerked and spasmed while being shot and the blood chilling scream Omega had let out.

Already feeling a bit woozy the young street samurai took a look at his surroundings. He was behind a reinforced glass door in a cell by the looks of it. He had been stripped of all clothing and noticed that his hands were zip tied behind his back. The light of the room was giving him a headache and he felt even more awful than when he had first awoken. The world outside the glass cell door was more glass cell doors, a room full of cells that were a mix of empty and filled. All manner of people could be found there from humans to meta-humans and even a few that looked like ghouls.

Sam managed to sit up proper and pondered over the situation, trying to calm himself down. His comrades were dead and he was imprisoned in who knew where. No one knew where he was and he already knew the employer had no interest in going to get him. Shadowrunners were disposable assets. He locked his jaw as he realized that in his current position there was no real easy way out of this. All he could do was wait and see.

Hours seemingly passed as Sam waited in his cell, whiling away the time by looking at the others in the cells. When the doors to the outside finally opened it revealed a pair of armored guards wearing full helms, though from their girth he assumed they were either trolls or orcs. The approached the cell of a dwarven man, who fought and struggled against them. Only muffled noises could be heard from Sam's side of the glass but he didn't need to hear a thing to see this scene play out.

One of the guards zapped him with a shock maul and then they carried the stunned meta away, the doors sliding shut once more. It was a good hour before the guards returned again, taking an orc this time in a similar way. One thing Sam knew for certain though, whoever left with those guards did not come back to their cell. His imagination ran wild with what could possibly happen to them, all sorts of extremely gruesome scenarios playing out in his mind as he waited for the guards to return once more.

When they did it was his cell they came to, resulting in his heart pounding louder and louder as one punched in the code to his cell. The human made a decision not to resist as he figured that might mean he could avoid getting shocked so as to possess a better chance at escape. It appeared luck was not on his side however as the first thing the guards did this time was to shock him. Electric pain shot through his body, causing him to cry out and his muscles to spasm and tense incredibly. His thoughts and plots were destroyed by the amount of pain pulsing through his body, ending when the maul was removed and his limp form was lifted between the two.

Sam tried to track where they were taking him, giving up eventually after the fourth turn down a corridor. The places all looked the same, all sterile passageways that were indistinguishable even in a clear state of mind. After a bit of walking they arrived at their destination, a large square room with a set of restraints for his arms and legs hooked up to some machine. On the far side of the room was a black viewing glass, whoever was behind it being hidden from his sight.

The guards clamped the restraints on him as they cut the zip tie on his wrists and set him down on the machine, Sam twisting and writhing as feeling returned to him. It was soon lost when another shock was administered, the man crying out once more at the pain. With this done the guard's left the chamber. The young human was breathing heavily at this point, his head locked in place by another restraint on his forehead. He couldn't move an inch.

The doors slid open once more and in walked a youthful looking human in a loose fitting lab coat. Headphones were shoved in her ears and she appeared to be chewing some form of bubblegum. Her clothes beneath the coat were a simple black dress and a pair of heels. Her hair was dyed white at the tips, her nails were painted pink and she looked distinctly Asian. Japanese if he had to be the judge of that. In another place he'd have found her rather attractive, but being in his current position he was more thinking of how to get out of here.

"Hey! You! Let me out of this thing!" He said.

The woman either didn't hear her through the music blasting in her ears or didn't really care. Regardless she produced a large syringe from her lab coat and pushed the needle in his right arm without hesitation. Sam hissed in discomfort, opening and closing his hand as the needle was pushed inside. However his hisses turned to cries of pain as the substance inside the needle felt like liquid fire. It spread through his veins and the whole of his body quickly, causing the pain to spread to ever single nerve.

With a quick check that the needle had been drained she turned and departed from the chamber. It felt like an eternity before something happened, the fire burning through his blood and made every single heartbeat torture. He strained against the restraints as he tried to escape his bindings, an exercise in futility if ever there was one. Eventually it felt like it was settling down, however that only heralded a feminine voice coming over some comm device.

"Formula 27 has been injected into Subject 37-E, initiating the introduction of magic into the system." The voice said, cool, clinical, and unfamiliar.

Formula 27... hadn't that been the name of the thing their employer had wanted? The irony of being a test subject for its use was not lost upon Sam. A low hum sounded out from the machine below him, his hairs starting to stand on their ends as some energy started to develop from within. Suddenly it felt as though he was being shocked again and his mouth opened wide as he let out a scream. Every single part of his body was in so much pain that he lacked words to properly describe it. It felt like his very bones were being eaten away at and his skin was about to split open. He didn't know how long he endured this mind numbing torment before the edges of his vision started to blacken and unconsciousness finally took him.

Once more Sam's first sensation upon awakening was pain. It was apparently beginning to be like old hat in this place. This time though he noted that his hands were unbound as he was able to raise them in order to squeeze his temples. The headache he had possessed had developed into a full blown migraine, to the point where he almost wished whatever that machine had done to him had killed him.

He sat up; finding this time doing so was just as bad as the last time. He also found that this time he was completely enshrouded in darkness. Sam had one of two answers for that, either he had gone blind which was frightening or the room was just so dark he couldn't see his own hand in front of his face. Until proven otherwise he opted to believe it was the latter. Sam slowly tried to stand but found his head meet the ceiling of whatever place he was being held in.

Alright, low ceiling, that was promising for the dark room theory and despite how having a really low ceiling was not exactly a good thing it at least gave him hope that he wasn't blind. Sam crawled about in the darkness, seeking out surfaces with his hands. Through his groping he was able to discern that he was indeed stuck in a closed off room, so in all likelihood he was not blind unless the place was actually lit. Being blind, captured, and a test subject would really take the situation to absurd levels of misfortune. Really anything would be better than that.

The darkened room suddenly jostled and shook which sent Sam tumbling back on his ass. The shift turned the room onto its side which has Sam grunt when he hit one of the walls. He groaned and shook his head, trying to hold his balance. As if he hadn't been nauseous enough this shifting was sending his stomach roiling. What the hell was going on?

Blinding light suddenly poured in as he heard something scratching against the walls outside. Once more gravity shifted and he was sent tumbling towards an opening where the light had poured in from. He yelled and was found himself landing face first on a soft plastic surface. He shook his head as his eyes adjusted, groaning as he felt himself being shifted again before feeling himself become pinned between two of the plastic surfaces.

His chest felt compressed painfully and when his sight finally adjusted and he saw what was holding him in place he thought he'd have a heart attack.

It was a pair of gloved fingers. His eyes found their owner, who was the same girl who had administered his shot. He pushed up against the massive digits, straining to just be able to breath normally. The young woman was wearing the same headphones in her ears as she worked, bobbing her head slightly as she looked him over. He estimated himself to be about two or three inches in height. What the hell had these people done to him?

He didn't have much more time to ponder the situation as the woman shifted her grip and moved him towards a magnifying glass. He struggled and strained in vain as she painfully gripped his limbs and pinned them beneath metal pieces deigned to hold a subject. She didn't seem overly bothered by his struggles, just adjusting her grip expert and handling him like any lab specimen. With his limbs pinned down he was spread eagle beneath the glass as the young woman took her time observing him.

She produced a metal prod and, despite his best efforts to avoid it, poked at his naked form without restraint. "What- ah, stop! Please stop!" Sam cried.

If she had heard him she didn't show it. Instead she continued her little examination despite his protests. He felt small and weak, angry and violated, but above all he was piss scared. Whatever these bastards had done to him had reduced him to the size of a thumb. He didn't even know why they did it or if it could be reversed. The prod seemed to finish though the young woman then flicked it over his member, smirking slightly. That most certainly was violating and he found himself shouting various choice words at her to get her attention. Nothing. No acknowledgement or reaction from her as she filled out some notes on a chart. She started humming a little to whatever music was blasting in her ears.

Sam was on the brink of hysteria when the woman finally removed him from the observation area. He struggled and writhed, pushing against her fingers in vain. He even tried biting and only got a mouthful of plastic for his efforts. The only response he got to these things was a slight tightening of her grip which ripped the air from his lungs. The woman then stood and Sam found his world become a blur of motion. His perception was terrible at this size so whatever lab they were in was obscured mostly as the woman moved wherever she was going.

If he had eaten anything for a long while Sam suspected he would have vomited. His misery was only compounded when he managed to twist his head around to see just what the giantess was moving towards. There was a set of glass tubes arrayed on a rack, five being corked and the last one being open. Sam yelled as he was casually deposited in the open tube by the gigantic woman. He managed to catch his hands on the lip of the tube and smirked as he attempted to pull himself up.

His captor was having none of that, the woman blowing air out her cheeks and rolling her eyes in slight annoyance as she picked up the tube and shook it slight. Sam tried to keep his grip on the lip of glass but it was no use. He ended up sliding down the wall of the tube and hitting the bottom in a heap. The young woman set the tube back in place and corked it and started humming to herself once more as she got back to whatever work she was doing here. Sam grunted as he sat up at the bottom, shaking his head as he tried to reorient himself.

Well... he wasn't blind at least. At this point however the man figured being blind was not actually the worst thing in the world. His team was dead; he had been turned into some test subject, and reduced in size. The man wasn't sure how much worse things could possibly get. Then again he didn't know what was going to happen to him. He could end up dissected or some other horrific fate. The tried to calm himself down; weird shit happened to runners every day. The difference was that this weird shit was happening to him.

The man looked through the glass but found his view outside distorted a bit. He could see that the subjects of other tubes were men and women like him, human or meta. That explained why no one had come back from that room a while back. This was not how he had been hoping his curiosity would be sated. Sam growled a punched at the glass. Of course he did not damage the thing. He'd have better luck breaking the glass by spitting at it than smashing it with his fists. Razor probably would have been out of here by now.

Sam wasn't sure how long it was before the woman came back. When she did she removed the rack of tubes and placed them on a cart. He was jostled naturally but tried to hold his balance as best that he could. He didn't know where he was headed but he remembered his lessons in this moment. He refused to break down and start sobbing or start screaming his head off. In a situation like this the power was out of his hands. All he could do was watch and wait for a way out of this to present itself.

The cart rolled along and the street samurai tried once more to get a good look around. He guessed they got on an elevator at some point. He could hear muffled snippets of conversation from the massive figures they passed but little else. He supposed they were still in the same building which helped in planning his escape. Though that brought up the question of what the fuck he could do once escaped. Three inches was not exactly a safe height. He knew a mage or two but whether they could reverse this... not exactly a sure thing.

The cart finally lurched to a halt and the exchange here was easier to hear. First came what he assumed was the voice of the woman who had been pushing the cart. "Subjects for your approval Miss Lysender."

"Set them up on my desk."

That particular voice sounded familiar but in his current state of mind he found himself searching his memories for corporate folks he knew. It was a rather slim list. The rack was moved from the cart to a desk and the tubes were selected one by one by this figure sitting at it. Sam found himself slammed against one of the walls painfully when his tube was taken last. He grunted as he stared up at this Miss Lysender and found himself staring into the very recent past which both rose his spirits and froze his heart.

He was staring into a very familiar pair of blue eyes and at the face of Lyria Lysender.