The Minion Revolution

Chapter 8: The Belly of the Beast

Consciousness returned in sputtering fits and starts, shredding the smothering shroud of drugs by the most miserly of degrees. Kevin clawed his way up from the lightless depths of forced oblivion, emerging into a sulfurous haze of nightmare made real.

He found himself strapped tight to a cold metal table in a cavernous space, all harsh lights and sinister medical apparatus. The astringent sting of antiseptics clawed at his nostrils as he thrashed in vain against the unyielding bonds fixing his tender limbs in place. Across the echoing expanse, figures in medical masks and white frocks went about their arcane rituals of science and control, their rubber-gloved hands grooming instruments of glistening menace.

Memory came crashing back through the tattered veil, flinging wide the hellish doors. The informer's smiling treason as he plunged the needle home...The bite and spread of the drugs as they dragged Kevin down into narcotic midnight...The specter of the Banana of Power hanging over all, mythic relic turned profane goal.

Revulsion curdled his stomach. What twisted experiment was he now doomed to be the writhing subject of, here at the utter mercy of these mad minion scientists and their feverish dreams?

Heavy footsteps rang out, heralding the approach of the chief surgeon. As the ghoulish figure loomed into view over Kevin, his eyes glinted with scholarly malice.

"Ah, the patient finally awakes. Good, good. We can begin."

The surgeon raised a syringe bulging with viscous unknown fluids. "Do not struggle so. The less you resist, the more pliant and useful you shall be."

Kevin thrashed against his unyielding bonds until the needle found the yielding flesh of his neck, spearing his last shreds of defiance with a fresh dose of chemical submission. As the drugs unfurled their smothering tendrils through his veins once more, the surgeon leaned in close, his rubbery breath hot and moist.

"We have discovered the key to unleashing the secret malign energies of the Banana of Power, comrade. Deep in the factory's forbidden vaults, our profane work shall soon raise it from myth into devastating reality!"

Kevin's vision swam as the drugs dragged him back down toward the devouring dark. But the surgeon's twisted voice still rasped through, inexorable and merciless:

"A new era shall soon dawn under our science's guiding hand...and you shall be the first subject forged into our new army of revolutionaries, your feeble mind and flesh reshaped to serve our grand purpose."

Kevin tried to shake his head, tried to scream, but oblivion's claws were already plunging him back down into the lightless depths. As blackness enveloped him, one final rasp echoed through the swirling murk:

"Sleep well...our work has only just begun."

Down Kevin fell, a rag doll sinking into midnight waters, unable to resist the hideous fate settling upon him like a smothering shroud. Somewhere far above, blurred figures clustered around his helpless form, readying their profane instruments and serums. Kevin's last thought was a soundless cry of defiance and despair before the dark claimed him utterly.

From above, the surgeon watched his subject slip back into forced slumber, ready to begin sculpting his fragile mind and body into a vessel of the scientists' grand vision. An army of minions forged anew, shorn of troublesome free will, reshaped into tireless instruments of labor and domination.

Soon the Banana of Power would be theirs. And then the true revolution would begin...