Lab Rat

Chapter 1

"Mom, are we there yet?" Crystal asked, looking outside of the car window and at the empty forest surrounding the barren highways of Wisconsin.

"I'm sorry, dear, but it will be some time before we arrive at Nana's house." She kept her blue eyes trained on the road the whole time she talked. "How about taking a nap like Ava?" She asked, referencing to Crystal's younger sister who was currently sleeping, using the window as her pillow.

"No thanks, I'm good," Crystal said, shaking her head. The teenager wasn't tired at all. Her dad had recently been 'killed' in action in a military attack on something.

'Something' as in no one will tell. All she knew was that her father worked for a solo research station off in Nevada. Before he 'died' though, he was always rambling on non-stop about alien robots and another war happening on Earth. She never payed any heed to it. It was just an old wives tale of robots that are going to take over the world, right?

Crystal sighed again. She settled for playing White Tiles on her phone for a while. That while wasn't long, though, because a long, earsplitting car horn pierced through the night.

"Mom, watch o-" Before Crystal could finish her sentence, a black GMC truck crashed into her mother's blue Minivan. Crystal and her mother shrieked, effectively waking up her younger sister. The car flipped into the air and landed on its side. The left side. The side her family was on. Two ear shattering shrieks were cut short.

Crystal felt something in her eyes. The edge of her vision was starting to erode, and fast. Within mere moments, Crystal couldn't see anything. All she saw was darkness. Nothing but darkness.

Outside, she could hear voices, panicking and frightened. They were unsure as to how to help.

"HELP!" Yelled Crystal. "PLEASE! HELP ME!" She cried, reaching out in front of her. Something sharp and pointy cut her skin, presumably glass considering the large amounts of it that had been broken and shattered when they were hit.

Gunshots echoed across the land. All of the fading voices outside the car wreck were cut off almost immediately. New voices, harsher and firmer ones, replaced the old. Crystal couldn't hear anything that they'd ere saying though.

She tried to move her left arm. She felt nothing. There was nothing. It had been crushed off in the accident. She must not have noticed it right away due to the panic. She could faintly hear the car door being ripped off and her body being dragged off somewhere. Crystal Sharder passed out moments later.

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Crystal woke up on something hard, like a metal table. 'Like the ones in labs...' She thought. She tried to struggle. A white hot pain shot through her. Her left arm was missing. 'So it wasn't a dream,' she had thought. 'It actually happened. Mom and Ava are gone.'

Faintly, heavy footsteps could be heard.

"Get her arm cleaned up," said a man's voice.

"But sir-" another tried to say, but was silenced with a gunshot.

"As I was saying," continued the man, "get her arm cleaned up. Then we'll begin the procedure." Crystal winced at the thought. Procedure? What does that mean?

Crystal was snapped back to reality though. A stinging sensation flooded through where her left arm previously was. It felt like Rubbing Alcohol, to say the least.

She was slightly glad that she couldn't see so she couldn't see what her arm stub looked like. Crystal had never been one to deal with the sight of blood well. She felt something soft press against the injury next, wrapping around her forearm a multitude of times before being cut and sealed tight.

A crinkling sound could be heard, like the one you hear when someone opens a package or a wrapped up tool they just bought from the store. The scent of heavy chemicals hit her nose, causing her to gag.

"Hold still," said a male's voice. "It won't hurt for long." Crystal was about to ask what he meant by that, but was cut short when he plunged a needle into her right arm. She screamed like her veins were on fire. It sure felt like it at least.

She felt something grow from her skin, pushing and shoving until it hit the air. Something hard and flat replaced the skin on her right shoulder, quickly taking over. It felt like the flesh was being eaten, the nerves being broken down from the inside out. And that was exactly what was happening.

Her arm now felt heavier that it was before, like there was something hanging off of it. Even though Crystal couldn't feel her arm, it felt more...metallic, in a way. Like it was made out of metal completely.

Over the pain, she could just barley hear the sound of a pencil scratching notes onto paper.

An evil laugh echoed throughout the workspace, or wherever Crystal was. "Silas. How n-nice to see you dr-drop by," the scientist(as Crystal guested him to be) stuttered out. Whoever this 'Silas' guy was, Crystal could the that he was not a good man.

"Hm. How is the test subject responding to serum 666?" Asked Silas, the sound of footsteps coming closer. '666,' Crystal thought. 'Isn't that the Devil's number?' She felt a hole form in her stomach.

"Very well, sir. It appears that the serum has been accepted by the patient's cells and have bonded together." She heard the voice pause momentarily. "Right arm has been turned fully Cybertronian, foreign substance stopped transformation one-third ways through right collarbone."

"It appears as if she it more so hearing than seeing. Has anything else been done to her?" Questioned the man. Crystal flinched when she felt a cold, gloved hand make contact with her mauled left shoulder.

"No sir. She was found this way, sir. The subject is blind and is missing the left arm. She was retrieved from a car crash on a highway in Wisconsin." She cringed away at how horrifying her arm must have looked when it was ripped off. 'Thank you for nothing, you useless brain,' she thought. 'Did NOT want those images.'

"Very well," said Silas. "Begin the other procedures. Let's see what those scientists over in the other facility have cooked up for us in that laboratory of theirs."

"Yes sir," said the other man. Crystal gulped. Another needle was plunged into her neck as the man began to take bots on his papers.