Alone and half feral in a dirty cell, Ghost finds you during a raid beneath a foreign military research lab. It quickly becomes clear that something isn't right with you, your behavior more beast than human.
A result of horrific human experiments, you're a failed attempt at making genetically modified soldiers with killer instincts and keen senses. Instead they produced you - a mutt.
Ghost is assigned to be your handler, to help you heal and shape you in to the 141's very own attack dog. But the bond between a handler and his beast eventually turns into something more...
*Reader has human anatomy*
18+, MDNI
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
It started after Knuckles had a seizure. Maddie was telling Tom how she wished she had a medical file for him. She hated that medical problems with Knuckles always caught her unprepared. They didn’t realize Tails was in earshot. He offered to find Knuckles’ medical files through the alien equivalent of the internet.
Maddie was skeptical of course. Knuckles acted like he was raised by wolves, but really he’d been raised by no one. Who would have kept medical files on him? Tails didn’t explain his reasoning. Still, he was confident not only that the files existed, but that he could dig them up.
Maddie had mostly agreed to placate him. She didn’t think he’d actually be able to do it. She should have known by now: her kids would always surprise her.
A few days later, Tails handed her a flash drive. “I organized the files by year and set up a search function,” he said. “I did my best but… I think some of the files were corrupted when I was transferring them onto Earth technology. It seems mostly intact though! I didn't look… I figured Knuckles wouldn’t like that.”
Maddie agreed, which was why she’d asked Knuckles before going through the files. He was just as skeptical that such files existed as she’d been. Then he insisted it must be fake or the files must be empty. Finally, he agreed. Possibly just to get her to leave him alone, but still, he agreed.
He definitely didn’t seem comfortable about the whole thing. He never was with medical stuff. The mom in her wanted to respect his privacy. But as his doctor, she didn’t want to face any more surprises.
Maddie sat on her bed, opened her laptop, and plugged in the flashdrive. Knuckles was outside, tending to the cluster of grape vines they’d got for him. Tom was working on his truck with Tails. Sonic had gone for a run (and was hopefully not getting into mischief somewhere). It seemed the perfect time to get some work done. One finger dialed across the trackpad and opened the flashdrive.
“Woah…” She said under breath. Not only was there a medical file, there was an extensive medical file. Thank goodness Tails had done a little bit of organizing. The records went back ten years, although she didn’t know how those years coincided with Earth years. These could have been from last year or five years ago for all she knew. The only thing she did know was that the first two years were 87% of the whole record, then there was a gap year before the records began again.
She started at the beginning.
Maddie was swiftly disappointed. A lot of the files were grayed out–corrupted during the alien-Earth technology transfer. They also weren’t chronological. Each file was dated at the end, but the rest of the file names used abbreviations that meant nothing to her. Some, she wasn’t sure were connected to Knuckles at all.
BLVL_S2
BLVL_S2_STRS
CTRL_S2_PT00_TEST
CTRL_S2_PT12_TEST
DSGN_S2_PT00
DSGN_S2_PT12
DSGN_S2_PT12-Final
NRJK_S2_PT12_TEST
Did ‘BLVL’ mean ‘base level’? She’d taken her own base levels for Knuckles before… but it might help to average them out or see how they might have changed over time.
Again, she was doomed for disappointment. Most of the files were greyed out. When she did manage to open one she found it to be a scan of a written form. All the prompts, height, weight, body temperature, were in English, but the entries were illegible. After staring at the writing, turning her head this way and that and squinting at the page, she came to the conclusion that the handwritten entries wasn’t in English. Poo.
The next file was BLVL_S2_STRS. Again, most of them were greyed out.
Maddie sighed. She didn’t want Tails to feel like he’d done a bad job. She had no idea how hard it would be to transfer alien file types to something her computer could read… She was just wondering how she might subtly ask him to get ahold of a computer from his world so they could access the files on their home technology when she spotted a file that wasn’t greyed out.
Eagerly, she selected the file and her laptop’s video player opened, immediately displaying a pop-up: ‘This file contains corrupted data and may not display as expected. Would you like to continue?’ Shoot. Maddie sighed. She clicked ‘yes’, fully expecting a five minute, black screen with no sound.
Instead, a video started.
She gasped.
“Oh my God!” She said out loud. “Baby Knuckles!”
Okay, not a baby baby but little, yes. He was probably around Tails’ age, they looked about the same size anyway. She double checked the file’s date but their years were different, she had no idea when this was.
The video was grainy and distorted, portions fading in and out between focused and rainbow pixelated nonsense. But she could see his shoes and gloves looked homemade, the cuffs bright green with yellow patterns etched into them. He wore a necklace of some sort, but nothing was clear enough for fine details. His quills were shorter and thinner and his hands and feet were… actually more proportional to his frame. But Tails was kind of like that too. Perhaps that was just how people from their planets developed?
Little Knuckles sat in some sort of medical clinic, leaning back in a chair not unlike a dentist’s. It was strange seeing him in a setting like that and not looking tense. The Knuckles she knew was stubborn and completely non-compliant in any kind of medical setting. This one was tapping his toes together, looking around, and chatting with the doctor. The man in question was little more than a black and white blob as he moved around the room, making some sort of adjustments to Knuckles’ chair.
There was no sound. Her only source of information for the video was the file name and the grainy time stamp at the bottom of the screen.
As cute as it was to see little Knuckles, she thought it would be better to move on. There wasn’t enough understandable information here for her to learn anything.
On the screen, the doctor finally stopped moving and started the recognizable steps of preparing Knuckles for an injection. But what gave her pause was that once the grainy after images faded, she finally got a good look at the guy. Was that… an echidna? He had the same long, draping spines and no visible ears, but his fur was snowy white. His eyes looked completely black, perhaps a distortion… or he was wearing goggles? Sunglasses? She wished the video was clearer.
The doctor said something to him and little Knuckles nodded, grabbing the arm rests of his seat, his face setting into the determined look she was so familiar with. Despite the graininess, she knew exactly when the injection happened. Knuckles’ whole body tensed, his face scrunching in pain.
Maddie crooned. It was mostly out of sympathy, but also because she wasn’t used to such open vulnerability from her Knuckles. His reaction to the shot was so pathetically adorable. She wished she’d known him when he was so soft. Okay, she should go though. Knuckles had agreed to her looking at these files for medical reasons, not so she could coo over how adorably innocent he’d been. But the video was only–five hours?!
Something strange was happening on screen. The doctor stepped back, but Knuckles’ pained response didn’t ease. It actually became worse. He jerked, squirming in his seat.
Her heart rate picked up. Was this an allergic reaction? Was Knuckles allergic to something injectable? A vaccine? Antibiotic? Pain medication? Oh, she wished she knew what the injection was!
Knuckles tried to raise his arms, only for them to slam back down against the arm rest. Something glowed at his wrists. The camera quality couldn’t capture it entirely. She might have thought it was his power, but the color was wrong.
Little Knuckles kicked and strained and the same glowing encircled his ankles.
The doctor did something and the table tipped back.
Knuckles continued to shake and thrash, jerking against the cuffs. His image blurred as the video distorted. The doctor moved slowly enough that the pixels didn’t disagree with him. Maddie could see him perfectly as he produced a clipboard, sat down, and watched.
Knuckles’ face twisted, image breaking apart into rainbow pixels. She caught only flickers of his expression. His mouth opened. Screaming. He started to cry.
Maddie slammed the laptop shut.
She sat there.
And sat there.
Her hands were shaking like she was cold, but she felt hot all over. Her ears roared. The only sound she could make out was her own frantic heartbeat. She was taken completely by surprise when Tom walked into the room.
“Sonic’s back, what do you want to do for dinner…?”
He froze at the sight of her. His face paled. In one quick and silent motion, he closed the door and hurried to her side. “What happened?” He asked, quiet and urgent.
It took her a moment to find her voice, during which time Tom assumed the worst. “Did Rachel call?” He asked. “Is Jojo okay? Your parents?”
She shook her head and he gasped. She snatched his hand in hers. “No–they’re okay!” She choked out. “No one’s hurt! Everyone’s fine.”
Knuckles. Maddie stood and rushed to the window.
She could just see him in the garden, dwarfed by the trellis he and Tom had built for his grape vines.
He was fine. Probably eating way too many under-ripe grapes and ruining his appetite for supper. But fine. Safe. She watched him glance toward the house and then sneakily shove a handful of grapes into his mouth. His crooked tail gave a little wag. He was better than just safe. He was comfortable.
She turned back to Tom. He watched her with great alarm, waiting for some terrible explanation.
She’d be angry with herself later. Knuckles was so private and had only given her permission to see his medical files but… she told Tom. She didn’t show him. He didn’t need those images in his head. But she couldn’t carry this alone. She didn’t know how Knuckles did. But no, she did, didn’t she? He’d had no other option. He’d had no one else to carry it with him. And now, she and Tom were left with the question–what to do with what they knew?
The UK government is preparing to experiment on healthy children to investigate a belief it cannot even define.
The UK government is preparing to experiment on healthy children to investigate a belief it cannot even define.
By: Andrew Doyle
Published: Nov 24, 2025
First do no harm. It’s a neat summary of the ethics of the Hippocratic Oath, and one that doctors generally abide by so long as their names don’t end with ‘Crippen’, ‘Shipman’ or ‘Mengele’. Specifically, we might look to the line: ‘I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous’. Few would argue with that.
So why is the UK government now embarking on trials of puberty blockers for the treatment of children who believe that their identity is misaligned with their body? Approximately 250 children will be involved in the study to be conducted by researchers at King’s College London. Because they are too young to consent, permission will be sought from parents who may or may not have been deceived by the reckless lie that gender-nonconforming children are more likely to commit suicide if not medicated.
The Cass Review confirmed that the evidence for the efficacy of puberty blockers in such cases is remarkably weak, but we do know of the likely harms. Documented cases include an increased risk of osteoporosis, testicular atrophy, cancer, brain damage, and impaired future sexual function. And all of this to prescribe medication to children who are fit and well, and whose problems are clearly the result of a mental-health condition. Why would any conscientious doctor take such risks for a problem that requires a psychotherapeutic approach?
Once again, children are being treated as cannon fodder in the culture war. The grooming gangs scandal saw thousands of girls raped and tortured while figures of authority failed to intervene in order to promote the myth that multiculturalism is beneficial for society. In the midst of the genderist stranglehold on our culture, one whose grip has only recently begun to falter, we have seen countless healthy children experimented upon to promote another ideological fiction; that we each have a gendered essence that may not correspond with our anatomy.
In order to justify this trial, which could potentially ruin many children’s lives, we should surely first establish beyond doubt that such a thing as a ‘gender identity’ exists. In spite of its confidence about the trials, our government cannot even define the term ‘gender identity’. When its spokesperson for equalities in the House of Lords, Jacqui Smith, was asked for a working definition, she simply could not answer. Not that she is alone; even those who believe in a ‘gender identity’ and claim to possess one cannot tell us what it means without resorting to circular (and therefore useless) definitions.
We need to be honest about what is happening here. An unevidenced and pseudoscientific claim is being assumed to be true, and innocent children will almost certainly be injured as a result. This is wholly unethical. Medical trials are initiated on the principle that the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks. But, as Tavistock whistleblower Dr David Bell has pointed out, these trials will ‘introduce a known risk of systemic physical harm to a physically healthy child. To put it mildly, this is a divergence from normal clinical practice’.
Why stop at trials for puberty blockers? In some communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, children believed to be possessed by kindoki – a type of evil spiritual influence – are treated by beating, starvation, burning or forced submersion in water. There is no evidence for the existence of kindoki, and those who believe in such witchcraft represent a minority of the population. So will the government commission a medical trial to ascertain whether beating, starving, burning and submerging a cohort of children is beneficial to their wellbeing?
The analogy seems extreme, but testing for the presence of demons is no less absurd than doing so for the existence of an innate gendered soul. If evidence for such a phenomenon were to be discovered, and reputable doctors were then to put forward a case that this soul/body incongruence is best treated with medical rather than therapeutic intervention, then a puberty blocker trial might be justified. We are so far from this scenario that it is astonishing it is even being entertained as a possibility.
Injecting children with a hormone-suppressing drug to investigate supernatural claims is simply not morally defensible. It will doubtless impact most severely on children who are autistic, who suffer from unrelated traumas, or who are likely to grow up gay. While the power of the genderist ideology continues to decline, we need to be alert to those in positions of power who still insist on conflating medicine with metaphysics. Children should never have to pay the price for the delusions of those entrusted with their care.
==
Giving healthy children who don't have an endocrine disorder drugs to give them an endocrine disorder is completely insane.
Recently Watched: Mr. Sardonicus (1961) directed by “The Screen’s #1 Shock Expert” William Castle. Tagline: “Mr. Sardonicus – his deeds formed the fabrics of nightmares!” Sure, b-movie poet Castle is frequently derided as a schlock-meister by the unversed, but his films like House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, 13 Ghosts and Homicidal are a blast – and I consider Strait-Jacket (the one starring Joan Crawford as an axe murderess) a bona fide masterpiece. Anyway, this one opens in London in 1880 (think Big Ben and pea soup fog). Out of the blue, earnest, idealistic young physician and groundbreaking medical researcher Sir Robert Cargrave (Ronald Lewis) receives a letter from long-lost sweetheart Maude (Audrey Dalton). She’s now married to the enigmatic Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe) and implores him to rush to their castle in Gorslava, explaining “The Baron has expressed a desire to meet you. Indeed, it is most urgent to my well-being that he meet you …” Upon arrival in Gorslava, the train station attendant recoils when Cargrave informs him he’s staying with Baron Sardonicus: “You are young. You do not understand. You do not yet have … daughters.” What ensues is permeated in a Gothic sinister ambiance and has echoes of Dracula, Edgar Allan Poe and Hammer Horror. Sardonicus is clearly nursing a painful secret - for one thing, he’s wearing an eerie expressionless mask hiding some unspeakable horror. There’s an evil one-eyed henchman called Krull (Oskar Homolka), plus: the definition of “ghoul” (“an evil being who robs graves and feeds on corpses!”); leeches; graveyards wreathed in dry ice; secret locked rooms; sadism and torture chambers; weird medical advice (“Give her brandy and the juice of red meat”); dialogue like “Damn you to hell for eternity!”; buxom peasant wenches and big hair (even though it’s set in 1880, every woman sports teased and lacquered bouffant helmets that scream “1961”). In other words – Mr. Sardonicus is irresistible! Watch here.
IT IS SCIENTIFICALLY POSSIBLE TO DIE FROM DRINKING TOO MUCH WATER
IT'S IMPORTANT TO STAY HYDRATED TO KEEP OUR BODIES FUNCTIONING WELL. HOWEVER, TOO MUCH WATER CAN ALSO BE FATAL. WHEN A DEHYDRATED PERSON DRINKS TOO MUCH WATER WITHOUT THE ACCOMPANYING ELECTROLYTES, THEY CAN DIE FROM WATER INTOXICATION AND HYPONATREMIA.
