BOOM!!!
As if struck by a silent thunderclap, Wednesday's vision went pitch black, only to be instantly swallowed by a blinding light! Everything—the car window, the trees, the back of Larissa's head—instantly twisted, dissolved, and collapsed!
She felt herself violently thrown into a bizarre, kaleidoscopic tunnel where the flow of time became warped and frenzied.
When she could'see' again, she was no longer inside that stuffy car.
Like a ghost existing outside that dimension, she floated in a cold, pale world reeking of pungent disinfectant.
Cold surgical lights illuminated the operating table at the center. Strapped tightly to it with restraints was a small, pale, almost translucent boy.
It was Victor.
A young Victor.
His eyes were wide open, pupils brimming with pure, overflowing terror, his face smeared with tears and cold sweat.
He struggled in vain, the metal shackles grinding his thin wrists into a bloody mess.
A group of people in white coats, wearing grotesque bird-beak masks, surrounded him like a lifeless specimen.
Their gazes, visible through the glass eyepieces, were cold, indifferent, devoid of any human emotion.
A scalpel descended, its cold steel glinting.
"Ahhh—! No! Please! It hurts! Mom... Mommy..." The young Victor let out a shrill, heart-wrenching scream and plea, his voice echoing heartbreakingly in the vast laboratory.
No one responded. Only the cold clatter of metal instruments and the flat, emotionless voices recording data.
The scene accelerated and flashed insanely.
Once, twice, ten times, hundreds of times... the same operating table, the same cold blades, the same gradually weakening screams.
Wednesday was like a forced spectator, witnessing this cruel, recurring ritual.
How long had it been? A year? Or two?
She saw the fear in Victor's eyes gradually replaced by numbness, the screams turning into silent tears, until finally, even the tears dried up.
Those once fear-filled eyes slowly grew hollow, and then, from within that hollowness, a strange, twisted light began to fester.
During a later surgery, as the blade fell once more, Victor suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse yet carrying a bizarrely flippant tone:
"Hey, Mr. Bird-Beak, you hold that knife like a virgin cutting steak for the first time."
"And you, Assistant Miss, your waist-to-hip ratio is truly regrettable. Your husband probably prefers watching sports at the bar after work rather than coming home, right?"
"Your experimental data is receding as hopelessly as your hairlines..."
He used the most vicious language to precisely taunt and provoke every white-coated figure, targeting their skills and their families.
Wednesday watched in shock.
She saw those perpetually calm 'bird-beaks' begin to stiffen in their movements, their breathing growing heavy.
Finally, a researcher who had been hit where it hurt slammed down his instrument, picked up a needle and thread, and roughly, without anesthesia, began stitching Victor's lips shut, one stitch at a time!
The needle tip pierced flesh, pulling out black thread.
Victor's body trembled violently, but he couldn't form complete sounds, only suppressed, guttural laughter bubbling from his throat, the madness in his eyes almost overflowing.
The scene shifted once more.
An unknown amount of time had passed. The operating table was empty. The white-coated figures rarely appeared anymore, as if they had forgotten this 'failed product' with stitched lips.
Victor was locked in a huge cage, like a strange, abandoned pet.
He sat huddled in a corner, quietly watching the new focus of the laboratory.
Inside several transparent containers, slimy, writhing, color-changing lifeforms pulsed. The white-coated figures surrounded them, recording, gesturing, filled with fanatical anticipation.
Wednesday could sense Victor's gaze, fixed for a long time on those things, especially on one black lifeform that seemed to condense the deepest shades of night.
Time stretched out again. Wednesday watched as the colorful lifeforms, one by one, gradually lost vitality, turning gray, withered, and eventually dying completely.
The atmosphere in the lab shifted from fanaticism to anxiety, and finally to a despairing silence.
In the end, only that black, seemingly about-to-extinguish'sludge' remained.
As an observer, Wednesday could clearly 'perceive' the faint yet incredibly tenacious will emanating from that black mass—
[Don't want to die...]
[Live...]
[Hunger... Desire...]
[Bind... Survive...]
It was the most primitive, purest, most overwhelming will to survive.
Even in a form like sludge, even if it might dissipate the next second, that 'desire to exist' burned with such fierce intensity.
Victor seemed to sense something too.
He stopped hugging his knees, stood up, grabbed the cage bars with both hands, and stared motionlessly at that black mass.
Until one night, the laboratory was empty.
Victor raised his head. For the first time, a different emotion appeared in those hollow, mad eyes.
He walked to the cage door and silently fiddled with the lock—no one knew when or how he had learned that.
The lock bolt clicked open.
He stepped out. He didn't try to escape, but walked straight towards the container holding the black symbiote.
He stood before the container holding the black symbiote, silent for a few seconds.
Then, he raised his fist.
THUD!
A fist smashed hard against the reinforced glass! Knuckles instantly split open and bled!
THUD! THUD! THUD!
He punched again and again, as if feeling no pain, silently, stubbornly smashing! His right hand became a bloody mess, bone almost visible, so he switched to his left! When his left hand was ruined, he used his head!
From his stitched mouth came suppressed, muffled guttural laughter, deranged and exultant, as if roaring silently, venting all the accumulated despair, rage, and twisted desire for life!
Alarms shrieked! The white-coated figures finally realized something was wrong and rushed in, weapons in hand!
"Turn around! Now!" they commanded sharply, weapons aimed at Victor's back.
Victor stopped moving.
Slowly, slowly, he turned around.
However, he bore no wounds, his hands perfectly intact, as if the self-mutilating assault had been an illusion. In his hands, he held the shattered container, now empty.
He looked at the horrified white-coated figures before him. The coarse threads stitching the corners of his mouth snapped, one by one.
The threads broke, blood dripping down his chin, but what he revealed was a huge, grotesque, maddeningly terrifying smile.
"Let's..." his voice was hoarse, yet carried a chillingly cheerful tone, "play a game."
"A game of survival."
"You have three seconds to prepare."
Black, viscous, seemingly living liquid oozed from his torn lips, rapidly covering his entire body, forming a massive, monstrous, tooth-filled shadow of terror!
The psychic vision ended!
In the instant before her consciousness was pulled back, Wednesday realized—
The symbiote that entwined Victor in the darkness had captured a soul more desperate than darkness itself.
They were not host and parasite, but two wrecked ships anchoring each other in a torrent of destruction.