Chapter Text
Sans is lying on a table, his small childish form struggles against the straps that hold him there.
There’s a tall figure draped in a large white lab coat near Sans. He stands next to a machine. The machine beeps and a drawer opens. Mists wafts out from the opening, and the figure takes out a needle that is filled with luminous red liquid. He turns toward Sans, and looks directly in his eyes.
Sans freezes in a moment of panic. Something about the figures eyes sends chills down his spine. They are large pools of blackness with small dots for pupils, which other than being a little creepy are not much too look at. But the feeling he got from them, it was indescribable. And then the cracks that they have…it just adds to the effect. He smiles sinisterly at Sans.
That breaks Sans from his stupor, and he renews his attempts to escape.
The figure approaches Sans, and frowns severely at him.
“Stay still,” he says.
The cold severity in his tone made Sans instantly stop.
He injects half of it into Sans’s humerus bone, and then withdrawals the needle.
The bone he injected it into burns and stings. It feels like it’s on fire. Sans wiggles around a bit as the pain spreads to the other bones in his arm.
“S—.”
Sans only hears part of his name. The pain distracting him from the figure as the feeling now spreads past his arm and into the rest of his body.
“S—!” The sharpness of the figure’s voice grabs his attention. “Now hold still, this will hurt a lot, and if you move during it, you may not recover.”
W…what? Sans thinks, frantically. What does that mean!?
The scientist hovers the half-filled syringe above Sans soul for a fleeting second, and then plunges the needle into his soul.
It was a sharp sensation but cold too. Sans mind blanks out momentarily, but he is soon brought back to his senses as a stabbing pain sears through his soul. A harsh fiery feeling engulfs him. He cries out, writhing in agony. He struggles against his bindings, but they hold fast. He feels something foamy coming out of his mouth, and his body goes into convulsions. Then all goes dark…
Sans jerks awake, gasping for breath. The bones in his body ache, and his head throbs with a dull ache. He looks around, and calms down a bit. The room he is in a sterile room with metal flooring and white walls with large windows on of its sides. He’s on a pile of blankets next to his sleeping brother, who is year younger than him.
He’s not in that room with that person. What do they call him? Something Gaster? Not that it matters, they are never to address him by his name but only as Sir. But Sans would still call him that mentally, as a sort of silent rebellion against him.
He sighs deeply and tries to collect himself. That was a little over a month ago, but the events still shake him to his core. And not just figuratively. That injection did something to him. Ever since that shot, he’s had trouble getting a full night’s rest. He got shuddering fits where his bones would rattle nearly all the time, and not just on the outside, but the inside too. Those fits lessened in occurrence and severity, but they still occur ever so often.
Fortunately, Papyrus never saw him have those attacks, and Sans never wants him to. It would make him worry, and up till now they only really occurred when he was with Gaster. It made it nearly impossible for him to concentrate and able to perform the tasks Gaster had wanted him to do. The scientist always got angry when that happened, and told him that if he didn’t do better he could always use his brother instead of him.
That was always his trump card, and it won all the time. Sans will do anything to protect his dear brother from sharing his fate, and Gaster knows it. So Sans would always pour all his concentration and strength into fulfilling Gaster’s orders. But sometimes that wasn’t enough, and Gaster would punish him…
Sans shakes his head. He doesn’t want to remember that. He tries to think of more pleasant things. Like being with his brother, making up stories for him, and seeing him smile.
Sans’s bones start to tremble.
Darn it, he thinks, wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to stop the shaking. Why do I have to have another attack right now? What if Papyrus sees me?
Papyrus…
He looks over at him, a gentle expression enfolds on his face. Papyrus, who is just a bit younger than him, is sleeping peacefully on the makeshift nest.
The vibrating of his bones gets worse, and Sans closes his eyes tightly. He takes in deep breathes.
Please, let it end soon… Please…
Twenty minutes later, the shaking of his bones stops as does his headache and the dull ache in his bones.
Sighing, he curls up in the blankets. He plans on going back to sleep, but there’s a buzzing overhead. The sound gets louder, and Papyrus’s face scrunches up in annoyance.
Sans eyes widen in horror as he remembers what that noise means.
He’s coming. Gaster is coming.
Sans sits up and dread fills his young heart. His body stiffens as hard as a board as he sees the silhouette of the scientist pass by the windows of his room.
He feels a hand wrap around his leg, and he jumps a bit. He looks down and sees a trembling Papyrus glancing at the window and then to him.
Sans gives his brother a reassuring hug. He’s unsure how effective it is since he too is shaking, this time from fear.
Gaster stops in front of door, and he waves his hand in front of it.
The metal door opens silently.
“S/4NS.” The doctor calls.
Sans shudders at his technical name. Before he goes over to Gaster, he looks at Papyrus for a brief second. He instantly regrets it. The look of fear and sadness on his brother’s face sends pangs of pain deep into his heart. Sans smiles weakly at him, and then walks over to Gaster.
As Sans steps out of the doorway, the door instantly shuts.
“Follow me.”
Sans silently obeys. His heart pounds in his chest, and the bones in his legs feel weak and wobbly.
Why? Why does this time feel so much different from the others so similar to it? He wonders. Maybe it was just because I’m still effected by the shot I had a month ago? The one I just had a dream about.
Sans shudders at the thought of it. He instantly looks up at the scientist, hoping he doesn’t see his fear. Gaster doesn’t like them to show any signs of weakness. They are punished whenever they do show signs of it.
However, the scientist doesn’t notice and keeps walking down the barren corridor.
Sans decides to turn his thoughts to other things to distract himself from that time. He looks around at his surroundings. The walls are gray and blank with no distinguishing marks on them, the floor is a white tile.
Everything in this place seems so lifeless… lifeless…
He shivers at the thought, and instantly grits his teeth. He does his best to tense up his bones so he doesn’t show how worried he is to the scientist. He looks up at him again to make sure that he isn’t in trouble.
But the doctor is still not paying any attention to him. Instead he is looking at a clipboard with some weird words in it, and mutters about deadlines and something about Determination at 10 times the level of the previous injection.
What does that mean? Sans wonders.
He follows the tall scientist to another room, and his heart instantly sinks. There in the middle of the room is a table with straps on it, and beside it is a machine.
No… Sans thinks as fear grips his soul with in its icy clutches. No…This is just like that one time…
.
.
.
.
.
.
Gaster sits on a stool near the table, observing the effects of the booster shot of Determination on his test subject. He frowns, and turns toward the machine and begins typing into it.
Specimen G-S/4NS is exhibiting increased signs of distress after booster shot. Convulsions and foaming of the mouth are more severe than the previous time. Specimen is unresponsive to my voice or instructions. His heart rate is erratic, and he is sweating profusely. I will be moving him to an observation chamber and will attach him to a machine to monitor his cond-
A sudden noise from the table Sans is on catches Gaster’s attention, interrupting his note taking. He swirls around and nearly gasps out in terror.
Sans’s small body is starting to melt away. Gaster rushes into a nearby room and grabs a small metal box. He runs over to the table and touches the cube to it. The cube automatically merges with the table and forms a containment unit for Sans, able to catch and retain his melting form.
Sans reaches up an arm that drips down into his body. His eyes wide in horror. “Paaapyyruss….” He moans.
Gaster watches in horror and fascination as Sans body becomes a glob. It calls out for his brother.
As in response, Papyrus from far down the hall, starts calling for Sans. His voice gets higher and higher and it starts to drive Gaster crazy.
Gaster closes the door, and quickly inputs the Sans’s changes into the machine. He presses a button which summons some lackeys to take Sans to the observation room and hook up machines to his melted form.
As he watches them take Sans away, he realizes that his most promising test subject has failed him, and all the hard work he had in him has gone to waste.
This is bad, he thinks, S/4NS is a far better test subject than his brother. While P/4PYR05, is stronger, he has completely weaker disposition and a more sensitive mental state. If only he had been an identical twin to S/4NS, then all he would have to do was adjust the levels of Determination, and all his hard work would not have been lost. After all, training and molding the young skeleton isn’t difficult, it was just having the right specimen for the serum…Well, no even identical twins are different... There would still be problems... He sighs. If only he just had another S/4NS…
His eyes widen and a smile creeps on his face.
That’s it! Another S/4NS…. I have a machine that might help him with that!
He dashes over to into another room with odd machines and monitors next to a strange archway.
He types something in the machine. He sees different wavelengths in the one monitor, and in the other monitors he sees skeletons of different shapes, sizes, and ages. They were all of Sans and Papyrus.
My timeline machine! Gaster thinks, I made it watch over different time lines to learn from the errors of my other selves, and make important discoveries… but I think that with the right amount of tweaking, I can enter into one…and then I can just take one of the S/4NS’s that are there…but it needs to be around the same age, size and appearance of the one that melted… That way no one will be the wiser, I won’t get into trouble for melting my speicimen, and his younger brother will think he has gotten his brother back and thus will shut up and stop calling for him.
Now I just need to find the right one…