Tulip Lore chapter 5
Heads up, this is the rewritten version, I’ll keep up the original but this is the fixed one.
I could feel myself beginning to drift off. The movie he had put on was painfully boring, filled with talking dogs that made the whole thing feel more like a fever dream than an actual film.
My eyelids slowly drooped.
Beep.
The sharp electronic chirp startled me awake.
I turned toward the sound and froze.
Silas was violently shaking.
His body twitched uncontrollably as warning beeps echoed from somewhere inside him. His glowing orange eyes flickered erratically, glitching between their amber glow and to their usual deep crimson red.
My heart skipped a beat.
I hurried off the couch and instinctively backed away. I had never seen anything like this before.
Silas suddenly slammed his fist against the side of his head.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each impact echoed through the room with a dull metallic clang.
The orange light in his eyes vanished completely.
Only red remained.
Silence.
He slowly lifted his head, looking around the room without saying a word, almost as if he were trying to remember where he was. It only lasted a few seconds before his gaze settled on me.
Our eyes met.
Every muscle in my body tensed.
I couldn’t move.
Silas began walking toward me.
“N-No…! Get away from me!”
He ignored me completely.
His metal hand clamped around my wrist with crushing force before he began dragging me toward the sealed door leading to the living quarters.
Pain shot through my arm.
He didn’t slow down.
He didn’t care.
“P-Please… let go…”
My voice trembled.
“Y-You’re hurting me…”
Nothing.
His grip only tightened.
Panic flooded my chest until it became difficult to breathe.
With a loud metallic hiss, the door slid open.
Silas finally released my arm.
For one hopeful second, I thought I could run.
Instead, he effortlessly scooped me into his arms before I could even take a step.
“No! Let me go!”
He carried me through the corridors without hesitation.
I kicked and struggled, trying desperately to break free.
“Please! I don’t want to go wherever you’re taking me!”
He never answered.
The cold metal walls rushed past us.
Every turn made my stomach sink further.
Then I recognized the hallway.
No…
Please…
Not there.
Not again.
He was taking me back.
Back to the experimentation wing.
My chest felt impossibly heavy.
I struggled harder, tears blurring my vision.
“I don’t want to go back…”
The familiar laboratory doors came into view.
The memories hit me all at once.
The surgery I was forced to go through.
Silas entered without slowing down.
He crossed the room and slammed me onto the cold metal examination table hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
Before I could recover, restraints snapped shut around my wrists and ankles.
Then more.
Another around my waist.
Another across my chest.
Even one around my neck.
Far more restraints than last time.
Each one pulled painfully tight, leaving almost no room to move.
It was as if they expected me to become something impossible to contain.
I pulled desperately against them.
Nothing budged.
Only then did I realize Silas had already left.
The entire process had happened so quickly that I hadn’t even noticed him leave the room.
Sirens wailed somewhere outside the laboratory.
They sounded distant.
But they were getting closer.
The laboratory door slid open once more.
The doctor stepped inside.
For the first time…
He wasn’t smiling.
I stared.
Something was wrong.
His hands trembled ever so slightly at his sides.
His breathing was uneven.
His expression looked exhausted.
Fearful.
Panicked.
I had never seen genuine fear on his face before.
And somehow…
That terrified me even more than his smile ever had.
“Hello again, Miss Rose,” he greeted calmly.
I answered by violently pulling against the restraints.
“I hope you rot.”
He chuckled.
Even now, he enjoyed watching me struggle.
“We’ve decided to begin today’s session earlier than expected due to… unforeseen circumstances.”
“Yeah?” I spat.
“What happened? Did Silas finally blow a fuse?”
He didn’t respond.
Instead, he quietly prepared something on a nearby workstation.
His movements were rushed.
Almost desperate.
What had him so frightened?
It couldn’t be █████.
He’s gone.
So what could possibly scare someone like him?
I watched as he carefully poured an impossibly dark liquid into a syringe.
Even from where I lay, something about it felt…
Wrong.
The substance flowed unnaturally.
It twisted inside the glass like living ink.
Like a piece of the night sky trapped inside a syringe.
It shouldn’t have been moving.
But it was.
The doctor muttered quietly beneath his breath.
I couldn’t make out the words.
Minutes stretched into what felt like hours before he finally approached me.
He cleaned the side of my neck with an alcohol pad.
The cold sting barely registered.
“I wish this wasn’t necessary,” he sighed quietly.
“But Silas is currently occupied dealing with… unwanted visitors.”
Visitors?
Who would attack this place?
The Resistance barely had enough people left to survive.
Before I could ask another question…
The needle pierced my skin.
The black liquid entered my body.
Agony exploded through me.
I screamed.
It felt as though molten metal had been poured directly into my veins.
Fire spread through every nerve.
Every muscle seized violently.
It felt like something alive was crawling beneath my skin.
“AAAHHHH!”
I thrashed so violently the entire examination table rattled beneath me.
The restraints dug into my wrists until they burned.
It only got worse.
My vision blurred.
Black spots danced across my sight.
The room spun violently around me.
The doctor took several cautious steps backward.
Even he looked uncertain.
Then the alarms suddenly grew louder.
Much louder.
Close.
Very close.
The doctor’s eyes widened.
“…Damn it.”
Without another word, he hurried from the laboratory.
The heavy door slammed shut behind him.
Leaving me alone.
Alone.
Strapped to a table.
Burning alive from the inside out.
My screams echoed throughout the room as tears streamed uncontrollably down my face.
I pulled until my wrists were raw.
Nothing broke.
Nothing loosened.
Outside the laboratory, alarms continued blaring.
Heavy footsteps thundered through the halls.
Human voices shouted over the metallic stomping of robots.
I couldn’t make out a single word.
Everything was drowned out by my own screams.
Then—
A brilliant yellow beam tore straight through the laboratory door.
The blast sent the massive metal slab crashing into the wall with a deafening boom.
Dust filled the room.
I flinched violently against the restraints, wincing as another wave of pain surged through my body.
When the dust slowly settled…
Someone stood in the doorway.
A blue hedgehog.
Blue.
Like Silas.
Fear gripped my heart.
Please…
Don’t let it be him.
My vision was far too blurred to recognize who I was looking at.
He cautiously looked around the room before his eyes landed on me.
I had finally stopped screaming.
Not because the pain had faded.
But because my throat hurt too much to continue.
He approached slowly.
Without saying a word, he gently removed the syringe from my neck.
Then he searched nearby until he found a bandage.
His movements were careful.
Gentle.
Nothing like the rough treatment I’d grown used to.
Once he finished bandaging the wound, he grabbed the restraints.
With a single pull…
Metal snapped.
He tore every restraint apart as though they were paper.
I was free.
Slowly, I pushed myself upright.
Instantly, another wave of agony crashed through me.
My body gave out.
I slipped from the table—
Only for strong arms to catch me before I hit the floor.
“Woah!” he laughed softly.
“Easy there. Let’s not add a concussion to your list of problems.”
That voice…
Why did it sound so familiar?
He lifted me into his arms.
For the first time, I could properly see his face.
Orange eyes.
Eyes burning with hatred.
Not toward me.
Toward someone else.
Yet despite that hatred…
His grip remained gentle.
I managed a weak smile.
Then—
Heavy metallic footsteps echoed down the hallway.
My blood ran cold.
No…
Please…
Not another one.
The footsteps stopped at the doorway.
Another robot entered.
It closely resembled a badly mimicked Silas.
But without the synthetic skin.
Nothing but exposed metal.
Like looking into the past.
The same machine that had dragged me here.
The blue hedgehog didn’t attack.
Instead, he spoke calmly.
“Take her to Sage,” he ordered.
“Have her modify Shadow’s old inhibitor rings to stop the mutation from spreading any further. Make sure they can’t be removed.”
Mutation?
My heart nearly stopped.
What mutation?
Who was Sage?
Who was Shadow?
What had they done to me?
The hedgehog carefully handed me over to the robot before turning toward the destroyed hallway.
“I’m going to kill the bastard who did this to her.”
His voice was cold enough to freeze the air.
Then he walked away.
My chest tightened.
I wanted to call after him.
Beg him not to leave.
I didn’t want to be alone with another machine.
The robot seemed to notice my fear.
“You’re safe, Rose.”
Its voice was calm.
Gentle.
It didn’t erase my fear.
But it sounded like it genuinely wanted to comfort me.
Without another word, something activated.
The laboratory vanished.
One moment we were standing inside that nightmare…
The next…
We were somewhere else entirely.
I stared at my surroundings in stunned silence.
Had…
Had someone actually saved me from that place?