Jason never awoke after being freed from Anushka's horrible boot, instead his night was full of long and confusing dreams--some too horrific to imagine while others were much calmer, but disturbing in a somewhat different way. He could feel the pain in his body through his dreams, but along with the sensations were others as well. For images of a lusciously silken haired Russian scientist floated through his thoughts in ever increasing intensity. At first she'd scared him--terribly so--as he witnessed her pale, smiling face while pulling him apart with ruthless glee. But then the dreams started to change, and as they would come and go he'd find himself more and more focused on the warmth of her touch, which was such a contrast against the biting cold of the floor, how her skin seemed to instantly soothe his body.
The sound of her voice was so rich and beautiful his dreams would transform it into a sirens song, drifting to him on the wind, where he would then be snapped to the floor, an image of her bare sole advancing upon him. Her grey eyes always shining brightly and full of satisfaction behind her pillow soft foot coming down to swallow him. Waves of soothing heat would precede her step, washing over his skin like warm spring waters before the fleshy touch of her foot would descend upon his fragile form.
Every time her foot came down to snuff him out he would be drawn to her smiling face, her beautiful grey eyes studying him with hi-beam intensity. No one ever looked at him like that, ever, not so much as a single woman in even one of his few relationships. No woman in his life had ever shown him such focus of attention, and despite everything she had done to him--pushing it all aside--he could not shake the truth in what he saw there.
He liked it, that penetrating, soul searing look of interest.
Behind her icy demeanor, beneath it all, within those eyes was a look of wonder. She was fascinated by him--so small, helpless, completely at her mercy--it was the look of a child seeing her greatest dream unfolding before her. A sense of him couldn't help but wonder what experience in her past could have given her eyes like those when she looked at him.
The thought chilled him, but was too deeply seeded in curiosity just the same.
The morning found him feeling weak, but surprisingly not nearly in a state of pain he would have imagined for himself. He could feel his body was a mess, and he had no feeling at all below his waist. Initially the total lack of sensation in his legs had been quite close to giving him a panic attack, his heart rate and adrenaline picking up exponentially before he was able to somehow push it out of his mind. He knew he would never walk again, but more important than that was to survive, for if he didn't, then what did it really matter. His legs were something to break down about later.
From what he could see, his body was pretty banged up, but the bruising that was visible already looked like it was a day or two into the healing process, having begun the cascade of rainbow shades as the blood seeped back into the damaged muscle tissue.
His face was pretty stiff and sore, but he had a fair amount of vision returned since his brutal beating beneath Anushka. He couldn't even sense his damaged rib anymore--How was the primary question in his mind. It felt like he had been asleep for a few days and yet the memories of the torment he had suffered at the feet of the cruel scientist were so fresh in his mind he couldn't be sure.
He was still completely naked, but with the wide, heated bulb beaming into his glass box, the atmosphere felt like the tropics rather than the deep winter of icy Russia.
Beyond the glass box was a cold and sterile environment, nothing but gleaming stainless steel instruments and hard, spotlessly clean surfaces. Glass cases lined the walls with all manner of chemicals behind complicated labels. The lights shone as white as daylight, but seemed to lack the warmth that came with it. In the corner he could see the small stereo and across from it the green cushioned wooden chair where he'd spent so much time looking upon it from the floor.
Seeing the chair again brought back a mix of conflicting emotion, much of which was too confusing to discern the source of. He ended up thinking about the dreams he had been having, though much of them were far too hazy to remember correctly. When he thought about them he felt both dread, horror, and he also felt something warmer, more pleasant, though he couldn't pin down what it was. Much of the morning was lost on thoughts of his former life, where his friend Alec might have ended up in this crazy place, but most of all he spent it looking for any tangible thread as to what those strange, hazy dreams could have been about.
It nagged at him that he couldn't just feel awful about what she had done to him.
The approaching echo of solid boot heels striking tile flooring brought Jason back to the present. Anushka appeared behind the glass portals and ghosted through the swinging double doors with the superior ease as having done so a thousand times before. The lab was her baby and her home, and nowhere in the world felt more comfortable than here.
She wore a simple black top with thin white horizontal stripes, and some charcoal grey cotton slacks covered behind a long white lab coat. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, her dark bangs made long and hung loosely just above her cool, piercing eyes. A simple silver stud adorned each ear with another in her right upper lobe. Her make-up was light and made to soften her appearance, though given her abrasive demeanorJason couldn't see why. She enjoyed intimidating, that much had been obvious, but now she appeared much more drawn down, perhaps even more approachable if one could ignore the sharpness of her eyes.
Her favorite patented black ankle boots adorned her feet, the solid clack of their soles striking the tile in a sultry rhythm as she headed straight to the glass holding box imprisoning her little soldier. Jason's breath had caught in his lungs, partly out of fear of this woman as memories from his time with her flooded back into the front of his mind, and more than just a little from how outright beautiful she looked, her complexion so soft and pale, and those eyes of hers burning right into him through the glass. Which they seemed to light up all the more when she noted him moving, and a brief look of excitement shot through them when she saw he was still alive.
She didn't even try to hide her smile.
"I'm relieved to find you still breazing Amerikan. I don't have to dirty my boot soles viz your body just yet." Anushka tells him in her melodic Russian voice. Not sure how to react to such a morbid greeting Jason gives her a blank expression. Was this woman always this way, the most horrid things just flitting through her mind on any given moment throughout the day?
"I ... I also don't know how I'm still alive." Jason responds to her, his voice breaking and weak, barely loud enough to reach his own ears let alone hers.
Seeing him presumably saying something the scientist smiles all the wider. "Of kourse zere's no vay I kan hear you little soldier, but I might guess vhat you are trying to say. I am amazed you still live after vhat I did to you yesterday; you looked like a fading shade. Good for me, bad for you, you don't expekt any differential treatment now do you?" Anushka questions him as she reaches into the box and carefully lifts Jason into the manicured fingers of her slender left hand, a small silver watch loose around her wrist. "I vould like to say zat anyvay, but it vouldn't be good science I'm afraid. Playtime vill have to vait until after I have studied you some. Your rekovery iz too remarkable to ignore."
Jason's legs hung slack in her fingers as Anushka carried him over to a stainless steel table and laid him down on its icy surface. His skin immediately goose fleshed against this suddenly cold intrusion and he emitted a yelp of discomfort. Glancing at him a moment the scientist smiled, "It vaz nice and toasty in zere vazn't it?" She asks him as she takes a seat on a metal stool, hiking up her boot heels so they rest comfortably over its thin steel bar, and pulls on a pair of latex gloves from one of her many coat pockets,
"Ve vill do some bloodvork, and I'll take a skin sample to analyze vhy you appear to be hyper-regenerating. Iz it somezing about your size, or hidden in your cellular level? None of ze ozer test subjekts have shown such kharakteristiks before. I vonder vhat it iz about you Jason." She asks, mostly to herself as she pulls out a syringe with a very thin, but insanely intimidating looking needle.
Seeing him blanche at the sight of the deadly syringe brought a soft chuckle from her, "Ve had to alter ze zickness of ze needles for you tiny subjekts. Ze old ones vould pierce you like svords and it vas too easy to stab a vital organ or sever your arteries in two razer zan take your blood sample. Ve had to learn so many zings just to keep you little rats alive long enough to kill you on our own terms. Many times it seemed vorking on animals’ haz proven easier zan vorking on you." She informs him as she manoeuvres his manically struggling arms out of the way and pins them down with two of her long fingers. The needle glistens in the light like a razor thin hair as she places it to his side and carefully slides it into his flesh with the practiced hand of a surgeon.
The incision was remarkably pain-free, which calmed Jason considerably. If she was going to hurt him, this wasn't how she intended to do it. Not that the thought of how she intended to do so exactly was a pleasant one. He had the impression she could likely dissect him like a frog with the same level of detached efficiency, without changing a single hint of her expression.
"You ver lucky zis morning, zat I kouldn't kome and get you sooner. Ze bastard generals making a surprise vizit on my institution afforded you a little more rest. Did you use it vell?" She asks while removing the needle from his side after pulling enough blood to leave him feeling woozy. Turning him over, she pulls out a scalpel and scrapes a skin sample from the back of his feeling-less legs. Carefully probing his back, she feels the discs are still quite disconnected and likely would remain so despite his rapid regeneration.
"Your interrogators listed you as being veak, crying all ze time, telling zem anyzing and everyzing you knew vhen you first arrived. Not deskribing someone who I vould expekt to survive after I stepped all over zem, half smashing you like a kockroach and leaving you smelling like my dirty feet vhen I vas done last night." Anushka tells him while studying the damage to his back, and noting how the bruising had already faded considerably since yesterday. Most of the redness around his joints and face had already returned to a normal cream-colored shade. Turning him back around to get a closer look at his face she could see that even his teeth had some of the whiteness returning to them where she had knocked them black just last evening. Such a thing shouldn't even be possible to regenerate, yet signs were showing just that.
"I vill need to take a marrow sample, but zat can vait, az you do not need to be alive for it to be taken." She says, seeing how he would react to hearing of his possible demise. But he returned her with an emotionless expression of his own, which she seemed to enjoy just as much as if he had scrame out in denial. "You have bigger stones zan yesterday too, iz it also due to your rapid rekovery? Vell, ve shall see." Anushka tells him amusedly as she turns on her stool and puts the samples into their cooling stations.
"I kannot lie, you have impressed me Jason. Maybe you do not know, but even grown men couldn't have suffered vhat I put you zrough and survived. You are ze first tiny man to have done it, and zat says somezing." She says while turning to look him in the eye, allowing him to see her sincerity rather than the cold, blank expression or occasional cruel he had been growing accustomed to.
"So, I give you a challenge, Amerikan. Ze generals grow anxious to see some rezults, to justify my institutions advanced budget. My research is zreatened it vould seem, but zat prezents to you and I a unique situation. I am going to test you, and test you, and see just how much a tiny man like you kan take beneaz my feet. I vill kontinue to try and squash you, it is somezing I enjoy and look forward to, zis much is a certainty." She says, pausing to light up a smoke and crossing her legs while holding it seductively between her fingers. "But you should strive to live, and survive my trials. No ozer subject haz ever done so, but if you kan do it, I may konsider it to see zat you live a good life vhen it iz done. I give you my vord az ze head researcher of zis facility, zat if you allow me to break you, to study and understand you az you survive and feed me wiz your body ze important data I need to satisfy ze generals, and I'll give you a reward of vell dezerved komfort, and a promise zat zese trials vill eventually end. You'll never be returned to who you vere, it iz impossible, but zat doezn't mean you kannot live a good, komfortable life any longer. And little man, you vould be a fool to doubt vhat a voman of my pozition in ze Russian command could bring you zat vould make your head spin in eternal lust." The leggy scientist promises him, her chilling eyes never leaving his, imparting images of the sheerest carnal enjoyments amidst a sea of Russian beauties. .
Jason studies her eyes, and sees that somehow in their fierce depths she is telling this to him honestly. He doesn't know why he trusts her on her word, for he couldn't do a damn thing even if this was only a lie to get him to try harder for her. But it was hope; he had to cling to hope, no matter who it was coming from, or how scarce it might be. He didn't believe for a minute that he would be swimming in a sea of beautiful women when this was over, but just the promise that he might be able to live was something worth holding onto.
She looks at him for a full minute, taking a breath of her smoke while gauging his reaction to this news. "You do not need to agree, it vould be pointless az ze tests vill kontinue regardless. Koncider it a motivation only, to endure vhat I am now going to do to you, and kontinue to do to you, and zat you vill be revarded for it all." She finally says while dashing out her smoke and then taking Jason from the metal table. He steeled his resolve as she took him up in her fingers, but then she gave him a look of pure sadistic elation that almost made him waver.
The time had come to begin the tests.
------
Bringing him over to her favored cushioned chair of last night, Anushka returns him to the cream tile floor, which luckily wasn't much colder than the metal table he just left. Still, the contrast between her warm hands and the cold world around him was considerable. The tingling memory of them touching his flesh still imbedded on his surface.
None of this prevented the memory of his body suffering beneath Anushka's deadly torments from this position only the night before, and he thought deeply about how he was going to be able to survive this--knowing full well what was in store for him.
Her eyes boring into his, Anushka leans over his prone body from her dreaded wooden chair, the one that had become a symbol representing torment, and possible execution. Seeing it from this angle or any other would forever remain etched into his mind. This damn chair would haunt him for the rest of his life he knew.
Removing her left boot, a terrible red wall fills Jason's vision as he recognizes the bottom of her two-day old cotton sock, the bottom of it worn damp once again, clinging to her foot as it outlined its form through the thinning material. The sock molded tightly over her toes while they grasped at the damp cotton threads between their tips, as if promising to pull him right into their folds and swallow him as well. Anushka watched him with great satisfaction before giving him a far more devious look as he follows her vision to her newly removed boot. "You see, zis one vas much veaker zan you," she says softly as she slowly turns the shoe onto its side, emptying out its contents. "He didn't last zat long in zere before suffokating on ze scent of my toes."
An acidic lump appears in Jason's stomach as he recognized it to be a body of another test subject, one he found familiar.
It was the lifeless body of Alec.