[h3]Siberia[/h3]


[b]"The Farm"
2:14 PM[/b]


Dr. Yamada Kenji looked through the two-way mirror while his men worked. A metal table was the only object in the room. Yamada's side of the mirror was as equally spartan. He sat a plain wooden desk with nothing on it, save for the doctor's pocket watch and pack of cigarettes. Behind him were five young men in lab coats with clipboards and pencils. Yamada reached into the breast pocket of his lab coat and removed the well-worn notebook and stubbly pencil. He licked the tip of the pencil while he flipped through the pages towards the back of the notebook. He quickly jotted down the day's date. [i]The twenty-second day of the seventh month of the tenth year of Chikara[/i], the top of the sheet read in neat Kanji script.

Through the glass, two scientists in white lab coats and gas masks were busy strapping a Russian to the metal table. The Russian was naked, his pale and hairy body reflected harsh in the bright lights above. His eyes were glazed over from the sedative he'd been injected with. They had to use a double dose on the monster to get him to finally call down. At two meters tall, he towered over his Japanese captors. It'd taken nearly a dozen men with batons to get the brute down on his knees for the injection.  

Once they were done, one of the men signaled to Yamada that they were finished with a quick thumbs up gesture. They hurried out the room and shut the large metal door with the wheel on it. The wheel spun as the vacuum seal suctioned itself into place and left the observation room airtight. Yamada made quick notations on the page about the Russians approximate height and weight before turning to his pocket watch.

Precisely a minute after the door had been sealed, gas would seep into the room from overhead vents. Yamada would not see it, neither would the Russian. He would smell it, but by then it was too late. Really, it had been too late for the man the second the guards came to his cell. Yamda wasn't exactly sure what the gas was comprised off. He was a psychologist and neurologists but not a chemist. He had a basic understanding that the cocktail in question was a powerful thiophosphonate but that was it really. The Russian began to feel the effects of the gas quickly. Yamada looked down at his pocket watch and noted the time as he wrote his other observations. Behind him, the other men scribbled their own notes.

[i]Thirty seconds before symptoms.
Hyperventilating. 
Vomiting and dry heaving.
Evacuating of bowels and bladder.
Intense muscle spasms. 
Blue face.
Complete body spasms.
Death(?)
Elapsed time: two minutes.[/i]

Yamada closed his notebook. The Russian was dead, there was no question about that. His face was now completely black, his tongue a bright yellow. The junior scientists behind him wrote notes and softly spoke among themselves. Yamada held up the notebook. One of the men bowed and said his thanks as he took the battered book from his hands.

"Last page," said Yamada. "Write up my observations. Collect everyone's notes and tag them with the subject's medical history. File it with the rest."

The young man shuffled off with the notebook and the notes from the others. Every page in Yamada's book was another Russian. They had either been gassed, vivisected, impregnated, given a venereal disease, or exposed to the new biological weapons the Empire were creating. These men and women had no honor. Their surrender had negated any honor they had held. This was how they regained it. Each one of them did their patriotic duty, Yamada thought. Sacrificing their lives to help the Empire progress. They weren't Japanese by birth, but in their last moments the doctor thought of them as honorary Japanese. 

Yamada reached for his cigarettes and lit a fresh one. He took his time, watching as two soldiers in gas masks entered the room and removed the dead body. They'd toss it into the incinerator along with the others who died every day. The young men watched their mentor intently as he flicked ashes on to the floor.

"Let's run it again," he told his staff. They all started to bustle through the room, taking notes and hanging on to his every word. "With another male of comparable height and weight to the last subject. Increase the dosage. I want to see if we can get our time down to under a minute flat between first inhalation and complete termination of all biological functions."