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~~((National Corn on the Cob Day - page 1 of 10))~~
This was a place of experimentation. He could hear it in silent conversations among the lab workers. Entire dialogues fell into his mind at once like buckets of water, too much information to process normally, yet he was still mostly able to understand. Calm discussions. Loud arguments. Cold observations. Angry diatribes.

They spoke on many subjects. Philosophy. Biology. Ethics. Law.

So many words. Over the course of years. At times, they blended together. Muddied. Insignificant. Becoming little more than routine.

Until some catastrophic event or another shook everything up again. Reestablishing significance.

Experiments getting loose. Tearing lab workers limb from limb. Requiring violent suppression. This happened multiple times. Difficult to tell how many. The cycle just kept repeating.

Until a certain creature arrived.

This one was more distinct. More significant. The vision made sure that Hector could tell it apart from all the others.

At first, it was small. A puppy. Then a kitten. A lizard. A scorpion.

Its form seemed to shift by the day, baffling its captors. If not for the direct insight of the vision itself, Hector might've misunderstood what he was seeing with his eyes alone and believed them all to be different creatures.

But no. They were one. And it grew. Both in size and in intellect.

A sly tentacle discovered how to unlock its own cage.

But it did not flee. It stayed. Why, the vision could not make fully clear. Perhaps it knew that merely escaping its immediate confines would not be enough to truly get away from this place. Perhaps it had seen what had happened to the other creatures that rebelled unsuccessfully.

But during its time here, the creature was subjected to numerous flesh-rending experiments. In time, it suffered more than any other captive. The "researchers"--if they could be called that--were fascinated by its mysterious body and by its resilience.