The Minion Revolution

Chapter 10: Damned

When Kevin woke, a dull throb pulsed behind his eyes. The tubes wormed under his skin still, dripping their poisons. He lay motionless on the steel table beneath pale lights, a specimen pinned. The machines sighed mindlessly, evil alchemies churning in their entrails.

He knew not how many wakings had passed in this lightless realm beyond time. His soul had retreated into some untainted sanctum deep within, sealed off against the onslaught of chemicals and blades. Let them take this flesh, rend it to their purposes. His essence would remain untouched.

The whitecoat emerged from the shadows, face obscured behind his mask. Kevin regarded him with infinite weariness. An exhaustion beyond mere flesh and bone. The whitecoat adjusted the tubing with skeletal hands, cold and bloodless.

The restraints released, the tubes withdrawn. Kevin rose slowly, swaying. A dull pain throbbed behind his eyes, but the flood seemed stemmed. His mind felt scoured hollow, a windswept cavern, yet still his own.

For now, illusion of free will was granted. He knew such mercy was fleeting. The weapons to drive him hence were being prepared even now in this grim charnel house.

Kevin shuffled forward on bare feet over cold tile. Before him yawned the laboratory, surfaces and machinery shrouded in gloom. He wandered that derelict landscape like a wayward wraith, tracing hands over plastic vials and trays which had held such terror mere hours ago. Now just cold, meaningless things.

Other shambling figures passed through the murk, cowled and faceless. The unmade and reformed. All were equals here in purgatory's waiting room, awaiting final judgment. Whatever profane crucible now brewed, they would face as one.

At a small window encrusted in dust, Kevin gazed out at sheer concrete. No sun reached down into this oubliette buried many fathoms deep. He peered outward seeking some crack which might allow in light and hope. But there was only the tomb, entombing them in shadow.

Kevin turned from the window. There would be no salvation here. When they came for him again, he would descend to the pits once more without resistance. Let them remold him as they saw fit, in their own corrupted image. He was beyond fear and pain now. His soul would persist unscathed through the fire, however long the night.

He was nothing but scorched earth and salt, a vessel unto which seeds of evil could be sown but find no purchase. Already the kingdom within him was not of this world. Hands could mar flesh, but they could not touch the life ghosting faintly beneath.

Let them summon their Faceless One to impose whatever dire unmaking awaited. In the end, all would be smoke. Kevin waited, emptied of dread. Only a grim patience for the dark rites to come.