Chapter 5: Buck Wakes Up
Consciousness returned in layers, each one thicker and more oppressive than the last. First was the chill—a deep, industrial-grade cold that seeped into his bones, unlike anything he’d felt in the woods. Then the smell: sterile, sharp with ammonia and ozone, undercut by something metallic, like blood or hot machinery. Finally, the sound: a constant, throbbing hum from all directions, vibrating through the surfaces he was pressed against.
Buck opened his eyes.
He was on his back, held fast on a vast, grooved metal slab that sloped slightly, its chill radiating through his skin. The space above him was a vaulted ceiling of featureless gray concrete, studded with harsh, recessed lights. He turned his head, the only motion truly possible.
Massive, gleaming bands of a dark, composite alloy encircled his neck, his wrists, his torso just below his armpits, and his thick ankles. They weren’t cables. They were smooth, seamless cuffs anchored by immense bolts directly into the floor and the slab beneath him, engineered specifically to his current dimensions. He strained, a deep, guttored effort that started in his chest and travelled outwards. His muscles, the size of small cars, bunched and tightened. The alloy did not groan, did not stretch. It absorbed the force without a sound, without a millimeter of give. For the first time since the Change, he met an immovable object.
Fear, cold and precise, dripped into his heart.
A door, inset into a distant wall and nearly invisible, hissed open. A lone figure strode out, his boots clicking a measured rhythm on the polished concrete.The Colonel. He stopped on a high catwalk twenty feet above the ground, still barely level with Buck’s supine chest. He looked small, neat, contained.
“Good, you’re awake, beast,” the Colonel said. His voice echoed flatly in the vast chamber. He made no effort to project.
“My name is Buck,” Buck’s voice boomed out, filling the space. It sounded less powerful here, trapped by the sterile walls.
The Colonel dismissed this with a slight wave of his hand. “Irrelevant. You’re an asset. Assets have designations. Yours is ‘Subject Prime’ or, if you prefer, ‘Beast’. I find the latter more fitting.” He leaned on the catwalk railing, peering down. “The comedown from the tranquilizers can be disorienting. Tell me if you experience nausea. We need you functional.”
Buck ignored the clinical concern. “Where are they?Finn. Tommy.Jesse. What did you do to them?”
A thin, unpleasant smile touched the Colonel’s lips. “Your little… companions? We questioned them. Extensively. They know precisely nothing. No idea how this happened, no control over it. They’re just… accessories. Toys for the beast to play with, apparently. Pathetic, really.”
A hot, protective rage surged in Buck’s chest. He pulled again at the wrist restraints, a futile, furious jerk. “Don’t you touch them. You leave them alone.”
“Or what?” The Colonel’s smile widened. “You’ll crush more hardware? You’re not in a position to make demands, beast. But as it happens, I have no current plans for them. They’re non-essential personnel. Their continued well-being is entirely contingent on your immediate and total cooperation. So long as you do exactly what you’re told, they’ll be perfectly safe in a holding facility. Uncomfortable, bored, but safe.”
Buck forced his body to relax, to absorb the terms. He swallowed, his throat dry. “What do you plan on doing with me?”
“With you?” The Colonel straightened up, his eyes bright with a zealot’s light. “We’re going to learn how you work. We’re going to take tissue samples, stress-test that hide of yours, map every biochemical quirk in your oversized nervous system. And then, we’re going to replicate it. We’re going to make more of you. Or at least, controllable versions of you.” He began to pace along the catwalk. “Subject Prime, you represent a breakthrough in singular combat potential. You will be the progenitor of a new kind of soldier. An army that can walk through artillery fire, level cities with its bare hands, and completely, irrevocably wipe our enemies off the map. No more messy wars. Just… deletion.”
Buck felt a cold sweat break out, unrelated to the room’s temperature. “That’s not what I am.”
“Isn’t it?” The Colonel stopped, his gaze piercing. “I reviewed the engagement footage from the forest clearing. After they took your little boyfriends away. The way you dismantled those armored vehicles. The… casual brutality of it. You were efficient. You enjoyed it. Don’t bother denying it. I saw the look on your face. That’s your true nature. We just removed the societal inhibitors—your friends, your job, your comfortable little clutter. This,” he gestured to the vast, imprisoning room, “isn’t a cage. It’s a staging ground. It’s where we let the beast unleash what it was always meant to be.”
“I’m a gentle giant,” Buck whispered, the phrase sounding hollow and childish even to him.
The Colonel’s laugh was a short, sharp burst of genuine amusement. “You might believe that. But the creature I saw was a weapon of destruction. An insatiable engine of pure force. And now, you work for me.” He turned towards the door.
“Wait,” Buck called.
The Colonel paused, looking back over his shoulder with impatience.
“Is that all?” Buck asked, a note of desperate confusion in his voice.
“For now. The science teams will be in shortly. They’ll be nervous. Try not to roar. It unsettles them.” He took a few steps, then seemed to remember something. He reached down beside the catwalk railing and lifted a small, olive-drab bundle. With a casual, almost mocking motion, he tossed it down.
It fluttered, a tiny scrap of fabric, and landed on the slab near Buck’s ribs. A pair of men’s briefs, the exact dull green of military fatigues.
“A present,” the Colonel said. “For the sake of my staff’s decorum. The quartermaster is working on sourcing more… attire. It will take some time. We weren’t precisely prepared for a subject of your particular size and lack of modesty.” The door hissed open for him. “Rest up, beast. Your real work begins soon.”
The door sealed shut with a definitive thud.
Buck lay there, imprisoned by the unyielding alloy, in the hum and the chill. He stared at the tiny pair of briefs, a ludicrous and demeaning token on the colossal plane of his body. He thought of his friends, cold and bored and scared in some concrete cell because of him. He thought of the Colonel’s words: an insatiable beast.
He remembered the feeling of the helicopter disintegrating in his hand. The crunch of the personnel carrier. The savage, secret joy of it.
A low, shuddering breath escaped him. It trembled in his chest, threatening to turn into something else—a sob, a roar, a fracture. He clamped his jaw shut, his massive beard scratching against the restraint at his throat. He focused on the dull green fabric, a speck of color in the gray. He held onto the image of Finn’s dramatic gestures, Tommy’s easy smile, Jesse’s quiet, grounding presence. He held on until the shuddering stopped.
He did not break down.Not yet. But in the silence, the hum of the facility sounded like the distant approach of an army.
But in the silence, the hum of the facility sounded like the distant approach of an army.
The room they’d been shoved into was aggressively plain: concrete walls, a concrete floor, and a single recessed light behind a wire mesh that cast everything in a sickly yellow glow. It smelled of old sweat and industrial cleaner. Three thin cots were bolted to the wall, their mattresses stained and vinyl-covered.
“Okay, this is officially the worst Airbnb I’ve ever been in,” Finn said, pacing the ten-foot length of the cell. He kicked at the leg of a cot, hurting his toe. “God damn it. Even the furniture’s hostile.”
Jesse sat huddled on the edge of the middle cot, knees pulled to his chest. He hadn’t spoken since the soldiers separated them from Buck, since they’d been processed with cold, impersonal hands. His glasses were smudged. “They took our phones,” he whispered, his voice thin. “They didn’t even read us our rights. That’s not… that’s not procedure. This isn’t right.”
Tommy sat down next to him, the cot creaking. He put an arm around Jesse’s shoulders, pulling him close. “Hey, look at me. Breathe, Jess. Just breathe.” His own smile was absent, replaced by a tense frown. “They’re trying to scare us. It’s working, but that’s all it is.”
“Scare us?” Finn spun around, his arms wide. “They zipped us up in the back of a armored truck like we were weapons-grade compost. They called Buck a ‘thing’. They stared at us like we were bugs. I’m way past scared, Tommy. I’m fucking livid.” He stopped pacing, his face earnest. “I keep thinking about him out there, alone. What are they doing to him right now?”
Jesse shuddered, pressing into Tommy’s side. “The Colonel… his eyes were empty. Like he was looking at a diagram, not a person. What if they… hurt him? To study him?”
“Buck’s tough,” Tommy said, but his voice lacked its usual easy confidence. He was seeing the helicopter explode again, the casual backhand. “He’s the toughest guy I know. But they had those cables, those drugs… I just hope he’s not scared. He hates feeling trapped.”
“Scared?” Finn scoffed, but it was brittle. “I don’t want him scared. I want him angry. Remember the cabin? Remember how he just… ended it? I want that guy to show up right now. I want him to get so pissed off he rips this whole concrete shoebox out of the ground and shakes us loose.” He ran a hand through his blonde hair, mussing it. “I wish he’d smash this place to bits.”
Tommy tightened his hold on Jesse. “And then what, Finn? They’d just send more. They’d probably kill him. Or us. This isn’t a movie.”
The fight drained out of Finn’s posture. He stared at the solid metal door for a long moment, listening to the meaningless echoes in the corridor outside. His shoulders slumped. “I know. I know that. I just hate feeling so useless. And I hate that they took our guy.”
He walked over and sat heavily on the cot on Jesse’s other side. The vinyl squeaked under his weight. For a minute, no one spoke. The sterile silence of the place was worse than any noise.
Then Finn leaned into Jesse, his head resting against Jesse’s shoulder. Tommy felt Jesse’s breathing hitch, then slowly even out. Tommy rubbed Jesse’s arm, his thumb tracing circles on the thin fabric of his shirt. He reached his other hand across Jesse’s back, finding Finn’s and giving it a squeeze.
“He’ll figure it out,” Tommy said softly, more to himself than anyone. “He always figures it out. We just have to be here when he does.”
“Yeah,” Jesse whispered, his voice a little stronger. He adjusted his glasses with a trembling hand. “We just have to wait.”
Finn let out a long, controlled breath, the kind he used before going on stage. “Fine. We wait. But the second we’re out, I am billing the United States government for emotional distress, dry cleaning, and the absolute murder of my aesthetic. This lighting is criminal.”
A faint, real smile touched Tommy’s lips. He pulled them both a little closer. The three of them sat in a tight knot on the narrow cot, a small pocket of warmth in the chill. They didn’t speak again, just listened to each other breathe, each holding onto the same silent, fragile hope that everything, somehow, would be alright.