"Urgh…" I groan as I start to move my body, still somewhat numb.
My eyes open, and I find myself in yet another different place, another cell, for a change…
'At least this one seems to have the basics,' I think as I take a look around the cell, which contains a toilet, a sink, a chair that looks like it might collapse on its own at any second, and a mattress on the floor, where I'm sitting now.
I can't move properly; my body is far too weak… I try to look beyond the cell. It's considerably large, it seems… a surgical room?
A slightly inclined operating table, a set of lamps attached to the ceiling, and a cabinet of medical tools… all of that combined with the fact that I'm wearing hospital clothes…
I quickly lift the hem of the blue shirt and take a look at my body…
'No surgical marks.'
I breathe a sigh of relief. They didn't take my organs, at least not yet… although I do have that strange regeneration; the stitches might have disappeared…
I decide to try standing up. My legs tremble from the effort, so I give up and sit back down on the mattress.
I pause to organize my thoughts. 'It looks like I was sold. Now what the hell is going to happen to me here…'
Footsteps
I feel a chill run down my spine when I hear the muffled sound of footsteps outside the room, growing louder and louder, until the metal door opens and a man wearing a white lab coat enters the room and closes the door.
He starts speaking in a language I don't recognize, though it seems familiar, then stops mid-sentence, shakes his head from side to side, and mutters something, probably remembering that I can't speak his language.
He opens the cell and pulls me out. I can't even struggle before he places me on the operating table and firmly restrains my head, arms, and legs.
"Na, Mmmph!" He doesn't let me finish a single word before gagging me with a cloth. Desperation and anxiety begin to take over as I can see my body due to the table's incline.
Ignoring my desperation, he casually puts on a medical mask and gloves, then seems to fill a syringe with something from a vial he took out of a cabinet.
The "doctor" approaches me with the syringe and injects it several times, circling my arm with needle pricks. Then he turns his back to me and starts rummaging through the tool cabinet.
My arm begins to tingle a bit as the strange liquid spreads through it. Within a few seconds, a peculiar sensation makes me recognize what he injected into me.
'Anesthetic… but why only my arm? I imagine that if this guy wanted to take my organs, he'd knock me out first, right?'
He comes back with a scalpel, wipes a spot on my arm with an alcohol-soaked cotton pad, and lightly passes the scalpel over the area.
The cut bleeds a little. The doctor presses another cotton pad against it, just in time to see my regeneration quickly close the wound.
I see the doctor's eyes light up, a sight that makes me feel unpleasantly nauseous.
'Oh no… I'm going to become a lab rat… I don't know if that's worse than having a kidney stolen.'
He continues observing the skin where the cut had been moments ago. He picks up a notebook and starts writing something down.
After finishing his notes, he puts the notebook away and comes back with the scalpel again. This time, without even wiping the area with alcohol, he cuts deeper into my arm.
I don't feel the pain because of the anesthetic, but the sensation of something invading my arm is still extremely unpleasant.
He watches the wound close again, without even cleaning the blood, which runs down my arm in large amounts before stopping as the regeneration does its job.
I find myself watching my own blood with a strange focus, feeling a peculiar kind of attraction. 'Huh? What?' I think to myself as I snap back to reality, after being lost in the crimson stain as if hypnotized.
Before I can finish my thoughts, he returns with the scalpel once more. He gently cuts into the skin of my arm again… but this time it's different. I let out a muffled scream of pain through the gag, he cut into a part of my arm that wasn't anesthetized.
The doctor steps back when he hears my scream, looking surprised. He watches the wound close, then takes a deep breath and starts murmuring something as he turns toward the notebook.
'Damn… did he do that on purpose? What was that?' I feel the tingling in my arm lessen, my eyes widening in fear.
"Mmmph! Mmph!" I try to stop the doctor, but he ignores me and slices into my arm again, this time in the right spot, yet the pain still comes, as the anesthetic is starting to wear off.
He pauses when he hears my scream of pain, but continues cutting, making a much wider cut than the previous ones, slowly drawing a line from my wrist to the end of my forearm.
As he cuts, the anesthetic loses its effect more and more, causing the pain to increase with each passing moment, only ending when the regeneration finishes healing my arm.
I lose track of time as he continues making cuts not only on my arms, but also on my legs, feet, thighs, and even my face, dangerously close to my eye, all without anesthesia.
The suffering ends when he returns with a bag of blood, which he injects into my arm. After finishing setting it up, he sits down on a chair and begins analyzing a sample of my blood.
My eyes don't leave the blood bag above me. I feel lost in the dark red, only coming back to my senses when I feel the cloth in my mouth soaked with saliva.
As I try to process my strange behavior, I don't notice the blood bag becoming empty, but the doctor does, and he begins removing the old equipment.
With everything removed, he unstraps me from the surgical table and puts me back in the cell. My body collapses onto the mattress, my eyes already dry from crying so much, becoming watery again.
'What is happening to me…?' I ask myself as I stare at the still-wet bloodstains on my arm.
I swallow hard and let myself be carried away by intrusive thoughts. I lick the blood, and when I do, I feel an explosion of energy surge through my body. I look at my skin and see it becoming a little less pale.
Without thinking too much, I bite into my arm and drink my own blood, stopping when I feel a sense of being sated, not from hunger or thirst, but from something else I'm still not sure about.
Watching the bite mark on my arm heal faster than the last cuts the doctor made, I begin to understand my situation a little better.