"I guess theres no helping it, lets get started." responds Steven with a resigned sigh.
The process that follows... takes a while. The dentist pokes around in your mouth some more and starts extracting unsalvageable bits of tooth, leaving you deprived of basically all of your incisors, canines, and even some of your molars. After this, she explains that now it's time to let the tooth sockets heal, and to come back in about 10 weeks, and if things are good then, you'll get fitted with a proper set of dentures over a period of about 5 more weeks. And after paying the woman, you exit the dentist's office with fewer teeth than you had before. Granted, this was to be expected, but still you can't help but feel a little disappointed.
Selina stares at him for a moment, shocked. This was almost as bad as the pain! He had kidnapped, tortured, done all these things to her for days atleast. Now he was going to replace her so no one would even come looking for her anymore? Condemn her to this hell?
A rage was falling over her as Selina began to thrash against her restraints in some animalistic instinct. She was crying slightly, but not a lot. Something in her was about to snap.
You rage against your restraints, filled with a mixture of emotions and thoughts. The first of these is simple - the man who has captured you, this Konicek, what he's presumably doing right now is not just a mere replacement, but carries with it a different implication entirely. He is about to erase your existence in as thorough a way as he can. If it works, of course. You can't let it work. You need to escape these restraints, this filthy basement that stinks of your own blood and waste, this personal little hell of yours. But to do it, you need to hurt Konicek, and hurt him very badly. The place is very thoroughly locked, it seems. Even the window is partially boarded up from the outside. And you need to survive these two previous tasks somehow. Flight is impossible. That just leaves fighting back.
You tear at the straps holding you in place with all your might, which is insufficient, but you don't really care. You are going to escape this. Your wrists begin to hurt terribly as you try to pull your hands off the table, trying to assume a more defensive position as instinct takes hold. Adrenaline drowns your thoughts, and your entire body becomes primed to kill. And with a single mighty effort, you try to free yourself with all the strength you can muster, pushing yourself to the very limit. And at this moment, you feel yourself become entirely divorced from reality. Earth and sky meet, grand beings of heaven floating among the land of the living, seeking something. You, perhaps? You, definitely. And then, in an instant before you snap back into the familiar, you are found.
You lie on the table, breathing heavily from exhaustion. The straps, despite your best efforts, have held. You are still where you were, and nothing at all has changed. The burning hatred born of helplessness remains, as does some of the rush left over from minutes previously. You feel like you're sweating quite a bit, and a sense of filthiness mounts as you remain in place. You're still crying a little, and as you notice this a certain heaviness within you becomes more pronounced. Several hours pass as you lie there, the air feeling stale and nasty beyond belief, especially as you become cognizant that the source of the stench is you, and the tools used to mutilate you. You were beginning to build up a familiarity to the smell, which disturbs you quite a lot when you think about it.
Eventually, Konicek comes back, opening the door, looking quite excited.
"Now, I don't want to jinx it, but I think the plan worked!" he says quite happily. "So I think we can get back to work without further worries. I've actually got a very important thing to test," he says, getting out a handgun. "It's going to hurt a bit, but it's the last big thing I need to test, okay? After this it'll mostly be watching side effects and stuff, I think. Want anything to eat before we begin, maybe? Some water or something?"
Oddly, you don't think you've actually been thirsty this entire time, or particularly hungry. You've just been cold and frightened, or in mortal agony, and you don't even feel at all cold anymore.
Do that but first write don the cost of such a device.
Most of the cost would be instruments - those could cost anywhere from fifty to five hundred bucks, depending on what you've got at home and at uni (you haven't looked very hard, and haven't had much reason to steal tools like that from uni before, maybe you can ask your friends if they've got experience with that kind of thing) and what kind of quality you want, that sort of thing. As for materials, you think you could do it with eight to ten pounds of steel easily, and you don't think scrap steel costs more than a dime a pound.
Alex would reach over to his mother, and he would grab at her. He would attempt to silence her mouth with one hand and slowly crush her skull with another, hoping his parahuman powers would kick in. He would feel hatred and wrath formed into a wicked smile"You want to screw me over? I'll have a chat with dad in a little bit."
You put your hand over your mother's mouth while grabbing her head with your other hand, and start smiling wickedly as you try to crush her skull slowly. Panic appears in her eyes. You put as much force into your grip as you can.
However, the human skull, a triumph of evolution over adversity, refined through millions upon millions of years of randomized development, proves your better today, because you just can't do it. Not with one hand. Probably not with both, either. It's hard to say, mostly because you don't get a chance to try, because your mother, while she does make a sound of alarm, appears to be much calmer under pressure than most, retrieving a purse gun she seems to have packed exactly for the occasion, pushing it straight into the bottom of your jaw and starting to fire wildly as you rapidly begin to move your hands away from her head to somehow push the gun from .
One shot, the first, pierces straight through the flesh at the bottom of your jaw, tearing through your tongue and embedding itself in the roof of your mouth. The second glances the roof of your mouth, being deflected into the back of your esophagus. The third seems to strike further to the back, flying right past the bone into the softer parts of your skull. Where it ends up, you can't really sense, but it's at this point that your movements become slightly erratic as the realization that your mother seems to be shooting you in the head fully sinks in, as does the pain of what you're currently experiencing. Blood seems to be pooling in your mouth very rapidly. The car skids to a stop, and your mother leans a little further as she squeezes another shot off, this one following the path of the third, and a feeling of weakness seems to overtake you as you slump backwards. Your mother stares at you in clear horror, her hair a mess and her mind no better, clutching the purse gun to her chest as she backs away. The car door opens, and the driver pulls you out, looking very much in a panic, although seemingly trained for an event like this as he pulls you out of the car and out onto the pavement. You're not quite capable of putting up a resistance at this point. You think the fact that at least two bullets are currently lodged in your brain, and that you are aware of this, is mostly the reason why this seems to be the case. As you lie on the pavement, blood begins to make its way into your airways, and you begin to cough it out in copious amounts as you roll to the side.
Oddly enough, you are still very much alive, and though in a massive amount of pain, more confused than dying, clutching the bloody holes in your lower jaw as you attempt to stem the blood flow.
"Oh god. I'm so sorry, Alex, I'm..." your mother starts to say in a panic before noticing the way you're moving. "He's... he's still alive?"
"Uh, looks like it," the driver goes. "We better leave, ma'am."
"But..."
"Right away."
Without another word, though your mother does try to mumble something before the driver ushers her to the car, and they drive off.
"Carrie! You're alright!" Simon swept his daughter up in a big hug, but is quickly pulled away by the officer. "Sorry," he says sheepishly, "But what is my daughter doing here?
"Dad, Mom... she." Carrie choked on her tears. Finally things were falling into place.
"I know, they told me." his face became hard and his voice filled with sadness.
"Did you..."
"Know? Sort of. She said that it was best that I not look too hard. I took her word for it because I loved her." he looked at the officer. "Which doesn't explain why my daughter is in a parhuman jail cell."
"She was on scene, and she appeared to have parahuman powers, which she has admitted to," the officer who is escorting your dad, a different one than before, says. "She doesn't seem to have been part of the shootout, but we felt it best to keep her here until we could find out more. She requested to see you, and we saw no reason to deny this request. If you want, I can leave you two alone for a minute."
Jake was still angry. It was the one emotion that had stuck with him through the whole ordeal, and it didn't abate even as he tried to guess how Nick would react. How is a nine-year old boy who likes watching TV and playing video games supposed to deal with the loss of one of the main senses that allowed him to enjoy them? He pushed the anger down, holding onto it. He would find Dissent and make her pay, but that would come later. For now, his family needed him and he would probably have to drive them to the hotel they were staying at.
The rest of the day is spent grimly, and while you seem to be fit for release by the end of it, the doctors say your mother will have to be kept here for a few more days, and that the same goes for Nick. They urge you to rest a bit, and to immediately call an ambulance if any of the characteristic symptoms of fluoride poisoning, eye damage or acid burns appear. You agree, and your father takes you over to the hotel that you'll be staying at - it's not a bad place, a little on the cheap side, but you think it'll be a decent place to live.
Now if only you could take your mind off the fact that your little brother will never see again.