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| Scene Title | Lazarus Denied |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | The Institute makes an attempt to revive someone decades since passed. |
| Date | September 13, 2010 |
A single row of bright Halogen lights shine down from overhead, creating a steady band of illumination above a smooth metal operating table. A tiered balcony overlooks the surgery theater and behind black tinted glass, observers quietly watch the scene below playing out before them, man's attempt at playing God's role.
Around the table three figures stand dressed in white. At the head of the table, Doctor Darren Stevens, his blonde hair swept back into a well-managed coif, stubble dusting his chin beneath the white surgical mask covering his mouth. To his right is a young girl, maybe thirteen years old, her blonde hair tied back into a bun behind her head, face covered by the same white surgical mask. To Darren's left is a far older man, his curly gray hair cut short but still unkempt looking, all the wrinkles and creases in his face hidden by his own mask.
Julie offers a look of blue eyes across the way to her adoptive father Doctor Jean-Martin Luis, his stare locked down on a glass jar sitting on the table in front of them where a human brain floats in preservative fluids. "Julie if you would be so kind," Luis says with a motion to the jar. One brow raised, Julie lifts her own hand, and in that movement the brain stirs in the jar like some sort of pulpy parasite, then floats up of its own accord out of the jar, dripping wetly on the table.
Luis leans in, reaching out to take the jar and move it aside, even as Julie is guiding the bare brain down to the head of the table. From above, in the observation room, one of the dark silhouettes behind glass calls down to the operation theater. «Please begin the preparation process, Doctor Stevens.» The voice of Doctor Simon Broome dominates the surgery theater when it is piped through the speakers, rumbling in the walls and floor like Oz, Great and Terrible.
Looking up to one of the silhouettes behind the glass, possibly Broome's, Darren offers a nod and then turns his focus to Luis, who is moving to a metal briefcase on a rolling stand nearby. Within the case is a molded foam padding wherein two syringes filled with — on a casual glance — ink are recessed. One of the syringes is taken and checked for air bubbles as he starts making his way to Darren's side.
Rolling up his sleeve, Doctor Stevens bares his forearm to the black cylinder, his eyes shut and head turned away as Luis drives the needle into a vein and injects that dark fluid into his system. Darren's breath hitches in the back of his throat, his veins turn inky black and when his eyes snap open they look like balls of tar in his sockets.
Hastily discarding the empties syringe, Luis retrieves the next and moves over to stand behind Julie. The blonde folds down the collar of her lab coat, lifts up the back of her hair and reveals a series of injection marks at the base of her neck to Luis. With one steady motion, Luis slides the needle between the vertebrae of her bent neck, eliciting little more than a wince from the teenager as her eyes are swallowed by the same liquidy blackness.
Stepping away from the pair, Luis tucks the used syringe into one pocket of his lab coat, moving hastily to stand behind a lead screen, the kind typically reserved for the use of X-Rays and other hazardous energy emission devices. Retrieving a pair of dark goggles from behind the screen, Luis slides them on over his head just in time to see wisps of emerald colored smoky radiating emitting from both Darren's hands and Julie's hands.
«Begin the revivification process,» resounds through the surgery theater, and with those words Darren lowers his hands down towards the brain laying on the table. Bones begin to radiate light through his skin, undulating bands of vibrant green energy with a smoky qualify wafts from his hands, tinted lemon yellow at the center. As he touches the brain, Darren's irises emit the same radiation.
A crackling snap comes next, followed by a thrumming vibration that rattles the metal table. The noise is droning, a deep bass-filled sonorous hum that rattles the glass windows of the observation room. As the green glow begins to grow, Julie lifts her hands in preparation for something. There's a flash another snap of electrical current in the air, then green light swirls and whorls into the silhouette of a human skeleton, super-imposed on the table with an ethereal skull hovering over where the brain is.
Julie closes her eyes, breathes in deeply, then exhales sharp as she throws her hands down towards the luminous bones, creating a second layer of sonorous vibrations in the surgery theater. Lights spark and one explodes entirely in a shower of sparks as everything is bathed with a vibrant green radiation as muscle fiber begins to appear in ghostly quality over hardened bones, lacing together like a man being sewn together. Flesh starts to appear neck, the plump spheres of eyes blossoming in more clearly appearing sockets.
Wide eyes stare up terrified from the skeleton as its jaws open and a howling scream pierces the surgery theater. The body's back arches, muscle fiber on the chest rippling as its arm thrashes uncontrollably, bone and flesh fingers clawing at the air. Julie tenses as he tries to apply telekinetic force while working Darren's ability, pushing the arm down with a motion of one remote hand, a thin line of blood starting to drip from her nose and one of her tear ducts on the same side of her head.
The screaming corpse begins to become more clearly visible, thrashing as its skin starts to peel over the muscle, and then Darren chokes, lifting up a hand to cover his mouth as blood trickles between his fingers. There's a reflexive gagging from a mouthful of blood being spat back up and the green light fades. Darren lurches backwards, stumbling into the wheeled stand, knocking it back into the wall as he drizzles blood all over the floor from his mouth and nose.
"Doctor Stevens! D— Doctor Luis!" Julie shrieks as she tries to keep the process under control, but the half-formed corpse lets out merely a gurgling whine and a scream of pain and confusion from its rebirth, one hand reaching up into the air as all of the lights in the surgery theater dim, and then total darkness swallows the room as the last light explodes.
Julie screams, there's a clattering and a clanging in the surgery room, followed by the wailing cries of an animal in pain from the inhuman sounds. A slick, a snap, then a gunshot and a muzzle flash before red security lightning can come on amidst the silence. A half formed body lays on the table, exposed muscle stretched out beneath paper thin skin too thin and pale to be real. A gunshot wound has been placed just to the right of the sternum, blood drools down the side of the table, and Doctor Luis crouches on the floor holding Julie, staring up at a man in a sleek black suit holding a revolver.
Simon Broome looks down at the smoking gun in his hands and then down to the corpse on the table, his lips drooping down into a frown. Sliding the revolver into his jacket, Broome turns to a startled Luis who can't seem to figure out how Simon even got into the room from the observation deck, his stupor is echoed in a stammer that should be words.
"Darren needs medical attention," Simon quietly states before turning pitch black eyes towards the mangled corpse on the table, "we need to go back to the drawing board on this," he amends with a furrow of his brows and a distasteful scowl. On the floor, Darren isn't moving, save for the shallow rise and fall of his back in breaths, the same as Julie from her overtaxing.
"I— " Luis can barely believe he's talking now, "I— I think I may have some ideas, sir." At the notion, Broome turns to regard Luis, then closes his eyes and slowly offers an approving nod, then turns his back to the corpse and starts for the door to the surgery room.
"Extract the brain and burn the body. We'll try again in a month."