(Knox wakes up in a lab! Oh dear... Featuring a not-introduced-yet character)
tw: noncon nudity
“-of a normally developed, slightly undernourished young adult male of Caucasian descent measuring 173 cm in length, weighing 54 kg. Apparent age is around 14-16 years old.”
Knox’s hearing returned to him before his sight did. He blinked, blearily, trying to clear the fog from his eyes. Above him was the sound of a curt male voice, but Knox could sense the presence of at least three other people nearby. He blinked again; there was a bright light above him, shining directly into his eyes, and Knox could only see the silhouettes of the figures surrounding him.
Blearily, Knox tried to speak and found himself unable. He flinched, confused, his awareness still coming to him in bits and pieces.
The man continued, intoning in a posh, professional voice, “The body is cold and free of any signs of rigor. Hair is pale blonde with dark brown roots, approximately 25 cm at the longest point. Eyes are slightly sunken, with gray-blue irises.”
Is that...is he describing me…?
Knox blinked some more and tried once again to speak. He could taste some foreign object in his mouth, made of a rubber of some kind. Knox swallowed and a spasm suddenly shook his entire body; there was a tube running through his mouth and down his throat, blocking it off entirely.
“The hemophage has regained consciousness,” a second voice spoke. This one was younger, but with that same disconnected tone. “Make a note: approximately 1.6 liters of blood were consumed before the hemophage became active.”
As the men spoke, Knox looked around, squeezing his eyes shut once more before opening them. He looked straight up and around first, confused, muffled noises escaping him as he took in the appearances of the trio of men, all of whom were wearing lab coats and rubber gloves. On each of their lapels was pinned a small silver symbol: it looked like a crescent moon with an arrow spearing through it. One of the men held a digital audio recorder by his face and was speaking into it as he looked Knox over with a clinical disinterest.
Am I in a hospital? No, they...they said they fed me blood...but...that means they know I’m a...
Knox followed his gaze. He froze and his eyes widened; Knox was strapped down onto a clean stainless steel slab, his arms and legs tightly restrained with thick bands of metal. He was completely unclothed; he could feel the uncomfortable coldness of the steel on his bare skin.
A doctor (these can’t really be doctors, can they? This is illegal, isn’t it?!) wheeled over a metal tray, its contents just out of eyesight from Knox’s position on the table. Knox craned his neck to look, but he couldn’t sit upright enough to see. Then, there was movement and Knox tensed as the third man reached for his face, gripping hold of the tube that had been forced down his throat.
With a practiced motion, the doctor began to pull the tube out, one gloved hand pressed to Knox’s forehead to hold him down. As the rubber object was withdrawn, agonizingly slowly, Knox gagged, instinctively arching his back as the tube rubbed painfully against his insides. Finally, the end of the tube left Knox’s throat, and he tasted the remnants of the blood that had been flowing through it and into his stomach moments before.
Knox coughed harshly, blood flecking at his lips, and looked at the three men with wide, panicked eyes. “Wh...what the hell is this?!” he rasped out, his voice harsh and frightened. Nobody responded to him.
“The hemophage has no visible external injuries or marks,” the doctor with the recorder continued as if Knox hadn’t even spoken, “We will begin the internal examination with a Y incision, starting at the top of each shoulder-”
“W-wait…” Knox’s voice was soft. To his left, he saw another man pick up something from the tray he had wheeled out. It was a scalpel.
The man lowered the blade to Knox’s bare shoulder. He flet the touch of the steel and cringed away, shaking his head with disbelief. “Wait...st...stop…” he breathed, terror gripping him like a vice around his throat.
Steel pierced flesh and Knox shut his eyes tightly; he clenched his hands into tight fists as the blade began to draw down his chest in a smooth line.
“And meeting directly below the sternum before extending to the pubic bone-”
Knox was shaking hard, breathing heavily through his nose. He could hear the sound of the flesh being parted. Pain like hot oil flowed over his body, numbing all thoughts from his brain.
“Once the initial incision is made-” Knox’s hyperventilating halted entirely and then he took in a sharp, agonized gasp of air, eyes widening as he felt the flesh peeling apart, “We can open the chest cavity. As you can see, we need to work quickly to counteract the hemophage’s naturally accelerated healing.”
Knox gasped again and then let out a harsh scream; the doctor had taken a pair of medical shears and was delicately snipping into the chest cavity. Meanwhile, the man with the recorder addressed one of the others.
“We’ll want to contain the remains in something quickly once we remove the sternum. Do you remember why that is, Anderson?” he asked with the tone of a professor in a lecture hall.
Anderson, the young man who had removed the feeding tube from Knox's throat, replied quickly, “Oh, it’s because a hemophage’s cells rapidly deteriorate when separated from the main body. Is that right, sir?”
“That’s right,” the first man replied, and Knox’s screaming grew louder, more desperate as he felt a hideous snapping sensation in his chest; the doctor added with some impatience, “Shut it up, will you, Anderson, I can’t think with it making that noise. Then we can move on to the examination of the internal organs.”
A thick piece of rubber was shoved into Knox’s mouth and strapped around his head tightly, all but silencing his screams. Bloody tears were beginning to trail down the sides of his face, staining the tips of his blonde hair.
The men continued speaking, but Knox couldn’t focus on them anymore. He was hyper-aware of the cracking of his ribs being parted from his sternum, then of the hideous, alien sensation of hand feeling around inside his rib cage.
“Make a note of its breathing, there. We’ve observed that, despite the hemophage’s lungs being vestigial, many of the juveniles still practice what you might call psychosomatic breathing. That is to say, when under duress, they imitate the natural behaviors of humans: breathing, vocalizations, and the like.”
“Nghhhhh!! Mm-mphhhh!!” Knox sobbed, shaking his head back and forth and trying to pull away from his assailant.
Knox bucked against his restraints, moaning into his gag as the assistant doctor continued to slide his scalpel into the flesh. Knox couldn’t see what he was cutting, but he could intimately feel the sensation of his organs being manipulated from the inside.
“It’s all instinctive, though, a sort of after-image,” continued the man, “Muscle contractions, but it doesn’t have any pain receptors. This is more of a social camouflage than anything. Now then, I think we should begin by removing the right lung-”
There was a sudden slam of a door, and Knox could hear a figure rapidly approaching. When he spoke, Knox opened his eyes in surprise; he recognized that light Scottish voice…
“I’m here from R&D,” the man who had entered said snappishly, “This is a cute exercise in anatomical analysis, but this one isn’t scheduled for requisition yet. We don’t have the storage space for it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding, we’ve already started,” Anderson, the younger doctor, replied irritably. Knox was panting, shuddering with pain as the cool air of the room brushed against his exposed chest cavity. The Scotsman replied brusquely, “That’s not my problem. Just leave, I’ll take care of storage; I’m sure there’re plenty of other specimens back in the vats.”
Muttering sullenly to each other, the three men nonetheless did as they were told. Knox turned his head to watch through eyes glazed over with exertion, and to take in the appearance of his rescuer: the wavy brown hair and dark blue eyes of Knox’s elder brother, Beathan.
The door closed behind the doctors and Beathan immediately dropped to his knees and began unstrapping Knox, starting with the gag. The cold look on his face was replaced with an expression of horror and concern. He pulled the gag out and Knox took in a shaky breath of air, trying to focus his gaze on his big brother.
“Oh, God, Knox, how did they get you?” Beathan breathed, releasing the rest of the straps in quick succession.
“I...I don’t…” Knox’s voice was faint; he could feel his blood drizzling around his sides and down his neck from where his skin was peeled open. Beathan shushed him, shaking his head with an almost desperate expression of worry on his face.
“N-no, never mind, it doesn’t matter,” he tried to reassure the teenager, lifting him off the slab and into his arms and standing up; his white lab coat swiftly began to stain crimson, “I’ve got you, Knox. Don’t worry, I’ve got you. You’re safe, I’m here.”
“...Beath...an…?” Knox mumbled, nearly inarticulate with pain.
Beathan hugged Knox closer to him, wrapping his arms around his brother protectively. “That’s right, Beathan’s here. I’m here. I’ve got you...I’ve got you…”
Thunderbolts* (2025): "What I said to you before was wrong, Bob. You can't stuff it down. You can't hold it in all alone. No one can. We have to let it out. We have to spend time together. And even if it doesn't make the emptiness go away, I promise you it will feel lighter."
hey uh new type of ao3 spam comment just dropped. (I know it's spam because the fic they left this comment on . doesn't have chapters. lmfao). Report this kinda comment as spam and don't take it personally it is literally recycled bullshit
Also y'all this really ties into how impactful comments are and why it's so encouraged to leave comments and leave NICE ones. If I hadn't known this was spam, and if I'd gotten this on my currently-updating fic, it would've crushed me and likely convinced me to never update again. Adversely, even one nice comment from someone is enough to motivate me to write and share more. If you read a fic you liked, tell the author that! If you're reading an unfinished fic, leave a comment to say you're excited for more, or comment throughout chapters even! It really is so easy and quick to do, and it's not only nice but it can also completely alter a writer's motivation and inspiration
Fanfic writers, please be aware that for some reason having bots spam fics with negative comments is a thing now. Not sure what anyone gets out of spreading misery, but just know it's not anything to do with your fic. I got one that was like, "This fic is a delight ... just kidding, it's unfunny and tedious." It was very clearly unrelated to the content of the fic but for someone else it might have been heartbreaking.
what i've heard about this sort of thing is that fics that have been deleted are harder to prove the provenance of, thus making them easier and safer for AI generators to scrape for their data sets
they're trying to encourage you to delete/orphan your fics so you can no longer prove that they're YOURS
Signal boost for all writers in my network. If the comment mentions no specific details about your fic, assume it's a bot post, delete it, and keep writing your great works. Also tell your friends about this and let's keep our space on AO3 as awesome as it is.
I do think Altair, Ezio and Connor would be mortified by the concept of Animus but At first they would probobly think that its funny, like Ezio would be going "so you just lie down, watch us go about and wake up with our skills?.... Thats cheating!!!" Altair would be prob a bit salty. Connor would wish he had that of an easy time training.
Then they learn its not like "lying down and resting while animus does the work" at all;
Desmond wakes w muscle spasms and phantom pains from injuries he never got. He has chronic insomnia because his sense of time has been blinded so much he is basically jetlagged 24/7. He doesnt remember how long a day is supossed to go, how slow a month passes, how decades indeed take decades. He has backpain from lying down all day without being able to move, then his muscles protest when he has to move out of animus because thats the only time he used them. He forgets to eat, sit, drink, shower till someone tells him because he didnt have to in animus. He is shocked when people speak to him unprompted because there was always a reason for someone to talk to him first in animus.
Then they learn about his bleeds, how he became a puzzle of their skillset but also their minds. How he forgets his likes and dislikes because he has been others daily, longer than he has been himself in a while. He forgets where he is, if he is supossed to be there, if what he is seeing is supossed to be there. He forgets his name sometimes, replies to anything but his own even if the person is in the room as well. How he freaks out when he sees his reflection sometimes, remembering it as a strangers face. How he sees and talks to things that arent there but maybe was or will be.
They learn he isnt even himself sometimes, cant remember how to be. He doesnt know if he is mad at someone because he doesnt like them or if its Others feelings bleeding. They learn some of his own memories been forever replaced by their own and he doesnt even realize he never met that person only Connor has met before. He cant remember the day his mom got him his 5th birthday gift but Ezio's 5th birthday and his new gift of a carved horse figure is fresh in his mind. He doesnt remember his girlfriend from when he was 19 but he remembers Altaïr's one crush that lasted a week. He cant remember if he ever tried a dish but knows if one of them would like it based on the ingridients. He cant remember faces of his classmates at the farm but knows the novices names by heart.
They learn while they might have sacrificed their bodies and years for their training Desmond has sacrificed his whole self for it.
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