They were grotesque, hideous things. Roke stared at the six gru’ul prisoners with disgust. They were somehow even uglier than their normal, non-mutated counterparts. He should pity them, for being war prisoners, but couldn’t bring himself to given the sheer amount of death and suffering they had caused.

  After months of painstakingly building the machines in the schematics Ava had given him, his lab was finally ready to begin synthesizing the orange chemical. The captives before him were fated to an agony so pure it sickened Roke. After having finally been shown just what the chemical did to another person, he fully understood Ava’s decision to distance herself from the project as much as possible.

  Unfortunately, such a thing wasn’t feasible for him. As the head of Kaius’ facility, he couldn’t easily be replaced. The rest of the Tribunal had instigated sweeping reforms into how research was to be handled and the new direction it was to take. Since then, Roke hadn’t heard any news from Elder Kaius.

  Roke wasn’t a fool. He knew the Tribunal would never allow him peace due to the dangerous knowledge he now possessed. As one of the sole people in existence with an understanding of how to synthesize the orange chemical, he would forever be a person of interest to the faction. His life was fated to be one of constant surveillance.

  Assuming they didn’t eliminate him after he’d outlived his usefulness, that was.

  He shuddered at the thought and focused his attention back to the team aiding him in his tests. The gru’ul had all been fully restrained and were unable to move, allowing his scientists to approach them without fear of injury. Still, that didn’t prevent Roke from ensuring a sizeable defense force was present on the off chance something did happen.

  The room he was in was large and bereft of any equipment or furnishings. It had bland, beige walls, a stark white ceiling and stone floors. Roke walked over to the heavily guarded trolly that contained samples of the orange chemical with varying concentrations. Plenty of it had been synthesized in preparation for today and over fifty gru’ul were now housed inside the facility.

  They lacked proper food for them, but Roke didn’t care. They were going to die anyway, whether they survived the orange chemical or not. The only thing he’d bothered to give them since their arrival was some water. Just enough so that they didn’t die before the experiments began in earnest.

  Gingerly, he picked up a vial of the orange chemical, unable to suppress a deep, primal revulsion at the thing. Even though it was completely sealed in its thick glass tube, there was something inherently discomforting about the thing that made Roke’s skin crawl every time he got near it.

  His team was almost finished hooking up monitoring devices to the gru’ul so that they could assess how their vitals changed as the chemical worked its way through their system. In only a few minutes, they confirmed to him that the equipment was fully operational and that they would be able to clearly measure and record any changes to the gru’ul after exposure.

  Roke had requested a translator orb so that he could converse with the test subjects. He knew not where the Tribunal had obtained one so rapidly, and frankly he didn’t care. He had what he needed and now it was time to begin.

  Picking up the orb from the bottom tray of the trolly, he approached the first test subject. “Do you know why you are here today?” he asked. He waited patiently for the orb to translate his words in a grating cacophony of shrieks and clicks. Roke kept his face carefully neutral, despite the unpleasantness.

  “Because we have failed our task,” the gru’ul responded. “You lessers have somehow managed to capture our glorious selves through trickery and deceit. It is not us who deserve to be here, it is you. Experiments such as yourselves will forever remain just that.”

  Anger bubbled inside Roke’s chest and spilled into his next words. “You monsters brought this upon yourselves!” he spat. “You have butchered my kind, tormented them, and inflicted upon them unspeakable agony. I take immense satisfaction in watching you become what you look down on.”

  The gru’ul shrieked in defiance. “Regardless of what you do to us today,” it said, “your existence is ours to do with as we please. My brethren will avenge us, and you shall be made an example of as they tear your limbs off and display your entrails for all to see.”

  “Your kin do not even know you are here,” Roke said. “You will die alone and abandoned. Your screams will be recorded, and your suffering will be our tool to haunt you with. Your kind will come to know true fear. It’s almost a shame you won’t be around to witness it.”

  Roke took the vial he picked up earlier and carefully prepared it for use in a powerful injector that would ensure the dose be properly delivered to the gru’ul. The test subject struggled against its restraints, but it was no use. Roke plunged the needle into its arm, any shred of his earlier hesitation gone as a cruel desire for vengeance took its place. The needle pierced its grey skin, and the orange chemical was forcefully introduced into the gru’ul’s bloodstream.

  A beat passed before the gru’ul loosed a sound so sickening that Roke was forced to cover his ears. It struggled against its restraints as its body spasmed, and its head shook and twitched erratically. Froth foamed from its mouth, but the gru’ul hardly noticed, so subsumed was it in its own suffering.

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  The display lasted for tens of minutes until the screams stopped without warning and the gru’ul slumped over, dead. Another scientist confirmed its death while the other gru’ul chittered in fear. Roke turned towards them and regarded them clinically, eager to see what the results of his next experiment would bring.

  “Your turn,” Roke said maliciously as he approached the group of terrified gru’ul. The translator ensured they understood what their fates would be before all they knew was a pain so pure that even their language lacked the words to describe it.

  Almost one month later found Roke staring at the results of his experiments so far. He was alone in his office, compiling the data and analyses his scientists had done alongside him in recent weeks. After the first experiment had proven lethal, Roke wanted to know whether increased concentrations of the orange chemicals made a gru’ul die faster or in more pain.

  Astoundingly, increasing the dose made no difference in elapsed time until death, leading Roke and his team to believe that they had already surpassed a critical threshold into what a gru’ul’s physiology could inherently handle. They tested the initial dose again for good measure and found the exact same results as the first experiment.

  And so, Roke ordered for the orange chemical to be diluted, gradually diminishing the concentration each test subject was injected with. He also tried forcing the gru’ul to ingest the substance to see if there was any difference, but they all staunchly refused. Not having the time to waste, Roke abandoned that avenue of research and focused on injections, which he figured was the most probable way that the orange chemical would be delivered to the invading gru’ul anyway.

  But the results of lowered doses also didn’t make sense to him. The gru’ul all died after the exact same amount of time after the chemical was introduced into their bloodstreams, down to the second. By now, Roke’s team was operating with doses so low that a single batch of the orange chemical could last dozens of experiments.

  Which they did.

  After testing on hundreds of gru’ul, Roke could only come to the conclusion that the amount of the orange chemical made no difference, so long as it entered the gru’ul’s bloodstream. Yet, the gru’ul had incredibly hard chitin carapaces covering most of their bodies. Asking a soldier to successfully shoot the comparatively small amount of skin they had was a pipe dream. There was no reliable way for every soldier to be that accurate on a moving target.

  Roke drummed his fingers on his desk, mulling over the problem. The only safe, reliable way they could experiment was through a single method. He needed to test alternative ways to introduce the orange chemical inside a gru’ul.

  They clearly weren’t stupid enough to eat it and poisoning the supplies of soldiers sent on a one-way trip planet-side to die for the cause was hardly worth the effort. Not to mention that attacking the many gru’ul strongholds on the planet would prove highly difficult, for they were all incredibly well defended.

  An idea struck him. In a sudden stroke of brilliance he was quite proud of, Roke called for another experiment. He checked in with the head of security and confirmed that they only had ten gru’ul prisoners left. More would come shortly, but for now, that amount suited Roke perfectly.

  Quickly, he looked up the schematics of the facility and found a room that could be completely sealed off should the need arise. Nothing would escape it, not even air. Roke ordered that all ten gru’ul test subjects be brought and placed in the room, with strict instructions to simply monitor them while he set up his next experiment.

  Roke rushed out of his office and called an emergency meeting with his team. Once assembled, he explained his idea to them and asked if it was feasible. The scientists scratched their heads and looked over the orange chemical’s properties before coming to the conclusion that Roke’s idea should be possible.

  “Are you sure you want to try this on all of the test subjects at the same time?” one of the researchers asked. “How will we know whether we can replicate the results? The room you intend to use is going to have to be permanently sealed off, since we don’t know how to safely dispose of the chemical yet.”

  “That’s precisely why I’m using all of the remaining subjects at once,” Roke said. “We’re going to test my theory with the lowest concentration possible that would still be enough to fill the room. Since we won’t be able to access it after, it’s better to have as big a sample size as possible.”

  “And if they don’t die?” another researcher hedged. “What do we do then?” she asked.

  Roke shrugged. “Let them starve to death for all I care. They’re going to die, one way or another. The question is simply whether it will be the fast, painful way or the slow, painful way. How long will it take for you to prepare for the experiment?” he asked pointedly.

  “It should take no more than an hour,” the same researcher replied.

  “Get to it then,” Roke ordered. “I want this theory tested as soon as possible.” He gave each scientist specific orders on what to do next, granting them the authority to do as they saw fit to accomplish them.

  With that, the scientists split up, each one going about their assigned tasks to ensure the experiment could take place without any leaks that might adversely affect the rest of the facility. Sure to their word, everything was ready to go an hour later.

  Roke assembled the team in the control room to finish the final checks. Once given the all clear, he ordered the section of the facility the gru’ul were being held in to be quarantined and evacuated until he was absolutely sure nothing leaked back into the facility post-experiment.

  He waited impatiently until security informed him that everyone was out of the wing and far away from the experiment. Roke nodded and ordered the experiment to begin. From his monitoring station in the room, he watched as specialized devices turn the orange chemical into a gaseous form and pumped it through the vents leading directly into the room the gru’ul were in.

  A fine orange mist filled the air inside the room, enveloping everything in a slight haze. It only took several heartbeats for the gru’ul to begin breathing in the chemical, unaware as to the danger they were in and unable to avoid doing so.

  As one, all the gru’ul let loose horrifying shrieks and clicks. They were so loud that Roke muted the volume. It was being recorded, and he would be able to revisit the audio later. For now, he spared his ears the misfortune of listening to their cries.

  They frothed at the mouth, convulsed, and resorted to throwing themselves against the walls with abandon — anything to escape the pain. But it was no use. Then, after the exact same amount of time it took for the other experiments to expire, they all dropped to the floor, dead and unmoving.

  The other scientists confirmed that their hearts beat no more and that there was no brain activity in any of the test subjects. Roke’s eyes widened as he considered the implications. “This,” he mumbled quietly to himself, “changes everything.”