Zac strained at his wrists, despite the screaming pain it caused his arms, wrists, shoulders, and, well, everything.

The woman moved away from Zac. He turned his head to see what she was doing, and found himself looking directly at Alex. The man leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, looking off to the side.

How could he just stand there? Even if all this time he'd known what Zac was, and hated him for it... how could he just watch this? It was one thing to kill what you hate; it was something else to watch someone be taken apart piece by piece!

What did these maniacs want? Why did they have so much rage towards him? Zac pummeled his memory for any hint of an enemy that might hate him enough to do all of this.

“I'd like to take a blood sample, however, indications are that piercing the skin with a steel needle could cause premature termination of the subject,” Dr. Reed stated into her little device.

Zac tensed. Premature? So... once she was done, they intended to kill him? Made sense. But why did he have to be alive for all this? Wouldn't they learn more from dissecting his corpse?

Maybe they were just enjoying it.

“I have decided a certain amount of creativity is called for,” Dr. Reed announced.

Zac flinched at the word “creativity.”

She returned to the table with a small tray, which she balanced on a nearby cart. She picked up a small, black knife. It looked rough, like it was made of stone or glass. Obsidian maybe? Well, that wouldn't kill him immediately unless she decided to stab something critical. The other hand held a small glass test tube. It did not take a genius to figure out the next stage of this little examination.

“Interesting,” the woman said as she sliced at the inner bend of Zac's elbow. “The subject presents with abnormal blood coloration. Blood appears silver, rather than red.”

“Freak doesn't even bleed like a human,” Alex muttered.

Well, yeah. Iron was poison to elves, and it was iron that gave human blood that color. It would hardly make sense for him to bleed red!

If she would remove the gag and try talking to him, Zac could explain everything she'd noted. Not that he was entirely inclined to be helpful to someone who talked about him as an experimental subject, but she could at least try!

Zac watched her fill several vials of his blood, each one with a differently colored rubber cap. He knew the colors indicated what kind of preservative medium was in the vial. He wondered what she'd find in his blood. He'd put a drop or two of his blood on a slide, but that had been a while ago and technology had advanced since then.

He somehow doubted Dr. Reed would be willing to share her findings with him. As he would most likely be dead before she got around to examining his blood.

Zac realized then that he was accepting his death as an inevitability. He did not want to die. Even in such pain that his vision fogged, he wanted to live. There was so much left he could still learn! Generations of children growing, coming to maturity and going out into the world to change it, right in front of him. He had seen youths become doctors, nurses, teachers! He had mentored some, befriended others. Surely some few of those friendships had been more genuine than what he shared with Alex. Surely.

Would... would they miss him? Even a little?

He looked again at Alex. Would he be the one to do it? To plunge a steel knife into his heart, or maybe slit his throat? Or would they just beat him to death? Take out their bizarre hatred for his race on his flesh?

Surely they meant to end this torment soon.

Unless.

Were they... were they just going to see how long it took pain and poison to kill him? Because it might take a while. Zac wasn't sure. He knew iron poison in the blood killed in hours. Skin contact? That might take... days.

If he begged, did Alex have enough mercy in him to kill Zac cleanly?

“What are you staring at, freak?” Alex snarled.

To be honest, Zac hadn't consciously been looking at anything. He would have sighed if the gag allowed him to take a deep enough breath. No, he'd get no mercy from Alex.

He looked to the scientist. Perhaps if he could offer to assuage her curiosity she might be reasonable. There were things it was safe to tell her. Surely a cooperative subject was more useful than a dead one?

He saw, then, that she had a small, metal disk in her hand. What was that for?

She spoke into her recording device, “Alloy one, 99% pure iron, direct contact test one.”

She then dropped the tiny disk onto Zac's chest. He screamed despite the gag. Yeah. Pure iron? A lot worse than just steel. It felt like someone was pouring acid onto his bare skin, cold and raging fire and never ending. He screamed into the gag, twisting in a vain effort to move out from under the increasing pain.

She left it there for... a couple eternities, and then lifted the disk from his chest. She made several observations about the area of discoloration and the subject's reaction. Zac, for his part, fought to breathe through a nose clogged from tears and mucus. He hadn't felt himself start to cry.

“Huh,” Alex said from near at hand. When had he left the wall? “All the stories say these things can't cry.”

Stories. Fairy tales. Nuggets of truth buried in wild fantasy. What stories had Alex been listening to?

None that painted elves in any good light, clearly.

“They also say you don't have souls,” Alex mused, apparently speaking to Zac. How was he supposed to respond?

“Souls are not a quantifiable factor,” Dr. Reed commented. “However, the subject clearly possesses tear ducts, lending to the obvious conclusion that it can produce tears. Presumably its eyes require lubrication in the same manner as a human.”

Zac shook his head slowly. Were they seriously arguing whether he could cry? When he was obviously doing so?

“Wonder if it means the same thing?” Alex pondered.

“There is not enough data to draw absolute conclusions.”

Yeah. No possible reason he might be expressing extreme emotion. Just strapped to a table, tortured with a deadly substance, cut open, and facing a slow, painful death at the hands of people who thought he didn't even have a soul! No, they clearly needed more data.

Alex reached out suddenly, and pulled the gag free of Zac's mouth. He panted, leaning up to see if he had enough range of movement to attack, when the woman dropped a second disk onto his chest. He screamed, loud and long.

“Why did you remove the gag?” Dr. Reed asked when Zac paused his screaming to breathe. She removed the disk and made some notes on a sheaf of papers.

“I thought it might smother. Its breathing was becoming erratic. You don't seem to be finished examining it.”

Zac opened his mouth to say something, probably involving Alex's ancestors and improbable acts with rats, when he heard the laughter.

He looked towards the sound. Were the other guards returning?

No, that sound wasn't... right. Wasn't... human. Too deep for a human throat. The sound sent a chill down Zac's back, striking a chord from deep in his memory. He knew that sound.

But from where?