Revelations

Posted on Tue Sep 2nd, 2025 @ 5:38pm by Glitch & Ebenezer Winch & Kyleigh Arynson & Ombretta del Carlo

1,895 words; about a 9 minute read

Inside the room is a grim cathedral of brass and madness, where electricity crackles through sorrow and science alike. The room glows with harsh, industrial brilliance, cast from overhead bulbs that glare onto four wooden tables, each fitted with aged leather straps and iron fasteners. These slabs resemble both surgical platforms and ritual altars, their surfaces stained by time and unspeakable procedures.

Smoldering pots of hot coals rest in iron cauldrons throughout the chamber, emitting a low heat that seems as much spiritual as thermal—fueling arcane devices as well as dread. From one wall to the next stretches a grotesque parade of glass jars, each containing a preserved human brain suspended in viscous fluid. These biological relics are wired together in a latticework of copper filaments and ticking mechanisms, connected to steam-powered cogitators that pulse with a sentience far removed from mercy.

Across the far wall, a mosaic of steampunk ingenuity sprawls: exposed Tesla coils, rattling pressure gauges, rotary switches, and an entanglement of brass pipes feed the room's profane purpose. Steam bursts from valves in irregular rhythms, as if echoing the thoughts extracted from the wired minds.

It is less a laboratory and more a reliquary of a fallen technologist’s ambition—where sentience, suffering, and circuitry merge into one terrible experiment. The room is alive, not with people, but with ideas too bold to be ethical and too powerful to be ignored.

Strapped to one table was Ebenezer and the other, Elixir.

Flora paused just inside the doorway, overwhelmed by the sight in front of her. Too many words in her head attempted to describe the sight, and so many of them utterly failed. If she could describe it, it would have been something akin to fantastically gruesome.

Among the sea of coils, gauges, and brains, Flora spotted the worn table-like slabs, each occupied. At least one of the occupants appeared to be subdued or deceased, but it was clear that two others were awake. "They're here!" she exclaimed, caring not for who could hear her. "They're alive!"

Kyleigh breathed a sigh of relief as she joined Ombretta at looking at their missing comrades strapped to tables. "Let's get them out of here," she said, taking a cautious step forward. Who knew what might be awaiting them on the inside?

Celia came in behind them and stopped when she saw the workshop of horrors and their companions strapped down to tables. "What's going on here?"

Johnny stepped in behind her, saw the jars of brains and turned pale.

"Can someone get us off of here?" Elixir asked in a dry voice. "I can't use my powers."

Pulse recognized the voices. "Some psychopath is trying to make us not us. He's trying to make mutants not mutants...by messing with our blood. I say we burn it all and melt it into the ground. But first, a little help for sure."

Ombretta approached Ebenezer and quickly looked around his slab. The restraints were firmly set, but she could not find a way to easily release them. "Anyone see a key, keyhole, or anything that might release these?"

Kyleigh narrowed her eyes and stepped closer to the slabs, her boots crunching softly against the debris scattered across the floor. She crouched low, scanning the edges and underside of the platform with the practiced precision of someone who spent a lot of time in potentially dangerous situations.

"Hold up," she said, voice calm but alert. "Before we start yanking things loose, I’m checking for any triggers—pressure sensors, trip wires, anything that might set off a failsafe if these restraints are tampered with."

Her fingers moved deftly, but gently, along the seams, feeling for subtle shifts in the material or hidden mechanisms. She tapped lightly in a few places, listening for hollow echoes or unnatural clicks. "You can't be too careful in situations like this," she said, glancing from Pulse and Elixir. "Once we're sure it’s safe, you'll both be free."

"Stop!" a male voice ordered from the darkness. "What are you doing? Vexa, stop these creatures!"

Celia looked around and brought her arms up. "Who's there?"

Johnny brought his illumination up and the row of tanks holding the brains lit up with rows of cables and lights. "That's just nasty!"

"I am Lobe," the voice spoke from the darkness again.

Flora looked around, trying to locate the source of the voice. It seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. "Vexa?" she asked, a hint of nervousness in her voice. "Was that the woman at the door?"

"Oh come on!" exclaimed Pulse, still strapped to the table. "A freakin' disembodied voice after all this!" He sighed and dropped his head back to the mat. "No voice I've heard in here sounded like a woman."

A sense of dread came over Kyleigh, and when she didn't find any hidden triggers for traps, she made quick work of pulling the restraints off of Ebenezer first, then moved over to Cordelia to do the same. "Vexa, if that's who was outside, is no longer with us," she said. "What kind of monstrosity are you?" And why was she wasting time talking to it?

"That is disturbing," the voice said. "That would mean I have no caretaker now."

Celia struggled against her restraints. "Just get us out of here," she rasped.

Cordelia was looking at the banks of brains and at a small speaker that was in front of them. "I think this bloody brain is talking to us..."

"Doesn't matter," Flora remarked, now that their colleagues (or were they friends now) were free. "I think it's about time we leave this brain alone with its thoughts." With that, she guided everyone towards the door where they came in.

"I'm not so sure we should leave it standing," Kyleigh stated. "Who's to say it couldn't figure out a way to continue with this atrocity?"

"Can someone just get me a drink and off this table?" Elixir croaked.

Tremors looked ta the wall of brains and at Kyleigh. "Do you see any traps?"

"They are not trapped," the voice that called itself Lobe spoke. "They are poisoned as you are all with your mutant powers. I only wished to free them of that curse."

Kyleigh started to help Elixir off of the table as she looked toward Lobe. "And who are you to decide that we're poisoned or cursed? Look at you," she snapped, feeling anger beginning to bubble up inside of her, the air crackling as electricity began to grow. "You're rows of brains. Unable to do anything but sit there and fester. If you ask me, you're the one that's poisoned and cursed."

Johnny nearly choked and offered Elixir his canteen of water. "Here,"

Cordelia gratefuly took the water and drank deeply. "I'm...going to drain...that thing," She said between greedy gulps and sputters.

Celia brought her arms up and aimed them at the tanks of brains. "I don't care what you have to say or think. I'm about to shake your foundations to the core!"

"Stop!" Lobe shouted, but had no one to prevent them from doing what they wanted.

"Why should they stop?" Ombretta inquired, standing there with her arms folded, watching this all happen. The thought of not being able to sing again struck her deeply, so much so that she almost forgot about the beautiful voice that had been silenced a few minutes ago. "You're killing people like us. Harvesting what makes us special. And for what? For our minds to join yours?"

Pulse, finally able to stand, looked around at the room they'd been held in. It was the first real visual inspection he could do and it sent a shiver down his spine. "Don't engage the damn thing, just waste it. Drain it, burn it, whatever. Then we bring the whole complex down once we're out. Burn it with fire."

Kyleigh could appreciate the suggestion Pulse made, and while it would have been easy for her to destroy the monstrosity that referred to itself as Lobe, she decided to look to the others. "Would any of you, or all of you, like to do the honors?"

"Let's all do it," Tremors said, her arms still pointed at the wall of brains and the larger center one.

Elixir gave a smile that had no humor in it as she called her power in preparing to drain the tanks and the brains inside of all their moisture.

"I can make it brighter, but that's about it," Johnny said, feeling useless.

Ombretta hesitated. Up until now, she hadn't taken a life. She'd defended life, and she'd been absolutely appalled at the level of death and mutilation that had dominated this hellhole. But just because she hadn't yet killed didn't meant that she planned to start now. She moved to stand next to Johnny so that he wouldn't have to feel alone.

"It'd be my genuine pleasure," said Pulse. "Drain my damn blood...to hell with you, you monstrosity." To say that the events had changed Eb would have been an understatement. For the worse or the better, though, remained to be seen.

Kyleigh moved over to join Ombretta and Johnny, leaving the others to handle the monstrosity that called itself Lobe. "Then, by all means, do whatever you need to so we can get the hell out of here. Then again, should we try to destroy this place entirely? Or maybe figure out something good to do with this place?"

"Kill it first, then get out of here," Elixir said as she began to draw water from the tanks of the other brains into herself.

Tremors shot her hands out and began to shatter the glass with sonic waves, leaving Love for Ebenezer. "Put that thing down, Eb!"

Pulse watched as the water left the tanks and the glass shattered. The cables fell along the table and the interconnected brains were just there. With his mutant ability of electroreception, the big guy concentrated, tilting his head slightly. He could sense the biological electromagnetic field that each brain produced. It was like a quiet static hum. Alone, it was noise. But together, it was structured; a network built out of a living charge.

Pulse furrowed his brow and lifted a hand, not toward the cables, but toward the banks of brains themselves. That organic current of the brains' electromagnetism that kept them all going, that linked them into the thing called Lobe, was his to manipulate.

"I'm gonna end you."

His fingers curled into a fist while a cold, unemotional countenance covered his face. The small electromagnetic field of Lobe he felt began to falter as he reached in, not to the wiring, but to the fragile electrical whispers of the brains themselves. He tugged at the rhythm, interrupted the pulses, twisted the fragile field into silence.

It didn't take long with the combined assault of Ebenezer, Cordelia and Celia to reduce the tanks and the contents to a twisted, dried mass of dead material, glass and metal.

Johnny turned away, unable to watch as he started to gag and retch at the stench and display.

Kyleigh gestured toward the door, trying to keep the contents of her stomach where they were. She'd seen things on her travels, but never like this. "Let's get out of here."

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