Logs:Us

Us
cn: imprisonment/abuse, suicide (attempted & implied), violence
Dramatis Personae Daiki, Dawson, Hive, Scramble, Shane
In Absentia	another lifetime "Please. We need you." (set in a Prometheus lab.)
Location montana / penfield research facility
day 1. Mealtime is half over and the snatches of conversation around the bolted-down hexagonal tables grow more rowdy as trays steadily grow emptier. Even so, a new arrival is enough of a stir that when the door opens there's a brief hush that falls over the room. If Dawson is disconcerted by the many pairs of eyes on him its hard to notice, at first; his expression doesn't much change from the wide-eyed uncertainty he'd already been wearing as he creeps in, arms curled tight against his chest and his twitchy gaze darting from face to face -- to the walls -- the guards -- the trays stacked by food pickup. "Um --" He almost looks like he's thinking of approaching one of the guards, but stops short, rocking back onto his heels with his fingers digging in against his arms. A tiny blue figure appears by his elbow, dressed as many people here are in serviceable khaki pants though he has neither the plain white tee nor khaki top many of the others wear, what's left of his shirt shredded into practical ribbons with the sleeves gone and large holes torn from the sides. Admittedly, his clothing is probably less noticeable than his face, composed largely of pitch-black eyes and serrated-sharp teeth that are currently grinning up-up-up at Dawson, dismissing the guards with a wave of a webbed-clawed hand. "Ohhhh, you don't want to ask them about shit they're no help c'mon, I can --" If Shane is trying to be helpful his advice will have to wait -- where Dawson was a moment ago there is abruptly no more skinny wide-eyed teenager. Just a blur and then nothing at all. --- day 6. It's not quite lunch time, but enough of the subjects have left early, leaving the rec room quiet and sparse. The Japanese boy standing by the book shelves is just a little slip of a thing, but the dearth of children's books on offer here does not seem to put him off. Something is putting him off, though. Daiki wrinkles his nose skeptically at the paperback copy of The Last Samurai ("Now a major motion picture!" declares the worn and dogeared cover) in his hands. He starts looking for an empty spot on the bookshelf to which he can return the offending volume. Dawson doesn't much disturb the quiet of the rec room as he makes his way inside, starting to head toward the muted television where Jeopardy is playing but changing course halfway to instead drifting across the room toward the boy at the bookshelves. "Not good?" he asks, with a sympathetic glance to the book in Daiki's hand. His own fingers are dancing over the battered spines of the books on offer, skipping over a cluster of Nora Roberts to hesitate and then stop on a lone King James Bible shoved between Fifty Shades of Grey and The King of Torts. He tugs the Bible off the shelf, fingertip tracing lightly against the edge of its pages. "-- How do we go to church services in here?" Daiki looks up, startled and clutching the novel at which he had been glowering only a moment ago as if he fears Dawson might take it from him. Suddenly, yet perfectly naturally, he seems more interesting, more irritating, more vulnerable and in need of protection, more -- something. His wide eyes ease a little at the question, though, head tilting as surprise gives way to perplexity. He'd just drawn breath to answer when he's interrupted by a boy who had been hovering nearby. Mich looks unmistakably related to Daiki, older by a few years, though certainly not many. He draws himself up to his full height, which rivals Dawson's if only in rangy limbs, and plants himself not quite in between the other boys. "Church? Dude, they let lab animals get religion where you come from?" There's not actually as much scorn in his tone than the words seem to warrant. "There is something watching over us, but trust me you don't want its attention." He turns and pulls Daiki with him by the arm, firmly. "Oh, and leave my brother alone." --- day 27. It's well past lights out, but Dawson hasn't been sleeping. In the dim sliver of light that slices in from the hallway he's trying to ignore the soft warbles and rustling of feathers from the adjacent bed, focusing instead down on the wanly illuminated Bible in his hands, fingertip tracing down over the book of Hebrews before him. In his exhausted state he's only half reading the familiar verses, comforting all the same even though half the words skip right past his tired eyes into some hollowed-out part of his aching soul. He's far from the only one not sleeping, around here. Past the rustle of feathers there's another susurration, more felt than heard where a quiet mental touch presses up against that ache, starts to press down into it for a small hungry moment before (almost guiltily) pulling back. << -- could never sleep on Sundays at first, >> offers an unfamiliar voice, quiet and musing in Dawson's mind. << Used to spend time with my father then, too. >> --- day 51. This evening Shane actually has his uniform shirt on, though it doesn't do much to hide the darker mottled splotches or his noticeable dragging limp. He's been arguing -- vociferously -- at the dinner counter until he's shoved away unceremoniously to make room for the people behind him, his tray not nearly as laden with meat as he'd clearly wanted. For all that, he doesn't seem particularly glum when he plops himself down on a seat and starts tucking into the food. Without greeting he shoves a small plastic cup to the side, not really offering. Just presumptuous, since, equally presumptuous he's reaching to nab some chicken off the neighboring tray. "You like cherry crumble? You're having mine. Been settling in okay?" It's only here that he's finally looking up at the boy next to him. His lips peel back into a broader baring of teeth that is perhaps a smile. "Can put your eyes back in your head. If you just don't do anything I do, probably you'll be alright here." Possibly Daiki would not have taken much note even if his eyes actually had fallen out of his head, so long as they were still trained on the blue elfin being beside him. He does, at least, stop staring and drops his gaze to the cup Shane had unilaterally traded him. If he objects to the arrangement, he is either too polite or too frightened to say. "It's better than the chicken." He tries and fails to sound casual, but this fumbling effort seems to make him more compelling, somehow. "They should call it cherry mush, though. What are you doing that I shouldn't do?" He loses the fight to suppress a sardonic quirk of his mouth. "Does it include eating chicken?" "Totally! Any chicken you got should go straight to me." Shane's already mostly made Daiki's rubbery bland portion of meat vanish. He sucks his claws clean after this, head shaking and his words a little more earnest as his other hand flaps in the air in the general direction of the guards keeping a bored watch at the door. "I just mean like, their tests and all. If you don't give them trouble they don't really care what else we do here." His head ducks, hand running sheepishly against the mangled gills stuttering open against the side of his neck. "Anyway I give them enough trouble for the rest of you combined." --- day 97. Daiki is not often seen alone in the rec room, but perhaps he got bored of waiting for his brother today. He's curled up in one of the threadbare armchairs, shuffling a worn deck of playing cards while occasionally consulting a book on legerdemain that is certainly twice his age if not more. His attempts to replicate the tricks have not seen much success so far, but at least he's not spraying cards everywhere. Yet. His halting efforts draw the attention of a pair of older boys who'd been listlessly watching TV until now. The taller of the two swaggers up to loom over him, the other following more hesitantly, with surreptitious glances at the guard by the door. "Yo, ching chang chung," says tall boy. "Lemme show you a trick." He doesn't actually wait for Daiki to surrender the cards, snatching them right out of the younger boy's hand. He bends the deck and shoots a long stream of cards at Daiki's face. "That's called 52 Pickup!" His shadow laughs, a little nervous and a little too loud. Dawson has been sitting alone at a table, making his way without a lot of enthusiasm through one of the many John Grisham novels available, but the cardplay draws his attention as well. He dog-ears the page before closing it and setting it aside, slipping over to start picking up the cards that have fallen to the floor. He offers them back to Daiki, but it's all boys gathered who he addresses when he looks up. "Hey, c'mon. This place is already out to get us, we don't have to help them." The smile he offers Daiki is small, but genuine. "Would the waiting go faster if you had someone to play with?" --- day 113. In the small hours of the morning the cell block is as dark and as silent as it ever gets. Daiki has slept only in fits and starts, his nightmares persisting even after relocating to his brother's bed. After a lot of tossing and turning, Mich has given up on sleeping himself, sitting up with Daiki's head propped on a (sad) (flat) pillow in his lap. "{Why can't you just listen to me?}" Mich has been trying to sound older and gruffer in his native Japanese lately, though this is perhaps not much helped by the frequent cracking of his voice. "{I don't like you hanging out with those freaks.}" Daiki does not answer at once, tugging at the haphazardly draped blankets to little avail. Finally, "{Michi, we're freaks. Some of them are really nice, but you keep getting more...}" He trails off, chewing on his lower lip. "{I think it's my uh, mutation? I think it's doing stuff to you. More stuff. Like, like with --}" He swallows the sob that's welling up and curls up against his brother, the inexorable draw of his power waxing sharply with his distress. Mich makes a grumbling noise that does not come out as low as he was perhaps hoping. "{We're not! Have you taken a close look at the blue midget that's always --}" His words cut off abruptly with a sharp inhale when Daiki's power surges through him. "{Your mutation has nothing to do with this. Mom has nothing to do with this. I'm just trying to protect you!}" He gathers Daiki closer, his embrace painfully tight. "{I won't let anyone hurt you. Anyone.}" --- day 153. The infirmary is quiet, and by the standards of this place actually fairly peaceful; much more comfortable beds, curtained windows that actually look out onto the neatly-kept grounds, cheerful pictures on the walls and no bars on the doors (just ignore, please, the weaponry still carried by the guards posted at every exit.) The skinny youth sitting cross-legged on the end of one bed is perhaps an adult, if only barely; bony limbed and thick dark hair hung shaggy around his ears, eyes sunken too deep in a face far too pale. The young man has an Xbox controller in hand, but his attention has long since shifted away from the paused game of Portal on his screen. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do, I just -- think it'd be easier on you if --" A sharp snort cuts this off. Shane's back is to the telepath where he's curled up in the adjacent bed. No longer as fuzzy with painkillers as he had been earlier, the fierce anger in the boy's mind is easy to hear: << -- tells us all what to do -- >> and what he says aloud is no less irritable. "Easier. Ooookay. You sit up here with the good food and the comfy beds and tell me what's easier sure. Why are you even here I bet they let you play Xbox in your room." The telepath bows his head, teeth dragging slowly against his lip. He doesn't answer this, eyes just pulling away from Shane to return to the screen. --- day 197. Dawson has been staring down at his breakfast for some time now, trying hard to psych himself up to taking a bite. Though not precisely queasy his appetite is gone, a leaden weight to his limbs that is hard to overcome -- the thought of a day scheduled in the lab is not helping motivate him despite the knowledge he'll sorely regret the lack of calories. Somewhere passing in his mind he wonders -- almost hopefully -- if they really kill people for disobedience. << Not quickly, >> a quiet voice replies. << They don't want you dead. What they give you is a world of pain. But you're not the first to wonder. Do you? Want -- >> Though he breaks off here the question is clear enough. Dawson's fingers tighten around his spoon. "Shouldn't you know? I thought you were in our heads," he murmurs, first to his oatmeal before he reminds himself not to voice this. << Everyone says... >> He's thinking over flashes of gossip -- practically a boogeyman -- mind-stealer -- traitor -- working with them. His brows crease, and he takes a mouthful of his porridge before he finishes more cautiously: << ...I'm just tired. But if I did, aren't you there to stop us? >> --- day 265. Perhaps no one would have wanted this corner of the rec room anyway, nor cared whether two young boys -- one much smaller and bluer than the other -- have staked it out. Daiki sits seiza on a cushion roughly the shape, size, and firmness of a base plate. "{Do you like me?}" His Vietnamese is still heavily accented, coming by turns halting and triumphantly fluid. He frowns, and quickly amends, "{Do you think you like me many -- too much? Like uh...} weirdly {too much?}" "Uh -- {what? Weirdly? What's weirdly? How much is normal?}" Shane's own Vietnamese is glib; any hesitation in his words comes from the fact that he's currently worming his way awkwardly over to hoist himself up on an elbow and drag an old blanket down off the back of the couch, an effort which would probably be accelerated if he got up from where he's been lying on the floor. "{If you're cool then it's the right amount, right?}" Daiki listens intently, the delay before his own reply marked by a faint furrow between slim black brows. "{Weirdly like, how my brother is. He wasn't like that, before.}" His voice is quiet, but the tension beneath it is practically audible. But then he drops his gaze, a minute bow. "{I am, so cool to it. I hope that makes it the right amount.}" --- day 333. The cafeteria is not quite full yet, but busy enough to make a new arrival less immediately apparent. Nia does not approach anyone, does not take any interest in the food, does not seem to be engaging with anything going on around her at all. Still, awareness of her presence spreads gradually as she meanders through the room, eyes trained doggedly on the floor. Even if her appearance does not draw remark -- dark skin dull and ashen, hair recently and crudely shorn off, wrists chafed raw from too-tight restraints -- it's hard not to notice how those who pass near her are suddenly afflicted. There's no discernible pattern to who she leaves in the throes of panic and who catatonic, who overwhelmed with despair and who shrinking from things only they can see, but she ignores them all alike. The only words she speak come in a low, steady stream, a well-worn mantra of "...not real not real not real…" —- day 349. Nia seems more lucid the next time she appears in common space, but her infamy has grown in the meantime. The others give her a wide berth and exchange whispered hyperbolic rumors about whose brain she fried and how. She settles at an empty card table in the rec room and studies the board games piled on the nearby shelves. Her dark eyes dart toward any movement, fixing intently on everyone who passes near -- who almost to a person avert their eyes and veer away. Similarly to the others, Dawson's eyes flick to the ground at first when Nia's pass over him, unlike most of them he looks back up soon after. He chews at the inside of his cheek, shifts his weight awkwardly, and in the next moment he's at the table across from Nia -- looking, admittedly, a little bit startled to be there. He doesn't leave, though. Just offers her a small nod, and gestures toward the games. "Do you know what's good?" he asks, before amending a little sheepishly: "-- I guess good is optimistic, but maybe they have something worth playing?" Nia skids her chair back so fast she nearly tips over. Throws her weight forward to grab the edge of the table -- probably more firmly than strictly necessary -- staring at Dawson wide-eyed. She does not answer immediately. Doesn't leave, either. Blowing out a long breath, she settles back down into her seat. "If this was a hallucination I don't think a white boy would be the fast one." She sounds kind of resigned about it. Glances back at the games. "S'a lotta basic shit, but I can work with that. Aight, how 'bout..." She plucks a colorful box from the shelves and sets it down between herself and the boy. "You ever play Clue?" --- day 365. Dawson has been staring at the same page of his book for a long time now, the words blurred in front of his eyes without meaning. Every so often he tries to will himself to continue reading; his thoughts swirl instead in grief-leaden memories that, too, start to blur. A sturdily hewn kitchen table with a jigsaw puzzle half-finish atop; his sister is reaching for a piece but it's Nia who lays it into place. The heavy wood has shifted under his hands, its familiar grain and nicks now rickety plastic with years of graffiti and scratches scrawled into it, " REV 6:9" "GOD IS WATCHING" "THERE'S NO GOD HERE" "AREN'T YOU WORRIED", the words etched into the table the words etched into his brain -- -- << -- been off-balance enough, >> somewhere amid the depression-fueled daymares there's an actual voice cutting in, a sharper edge to it than it has had before, words coming now with an edge of pain where the words write themselves into Dawson's mind. << Do you worry about what that'll do to you? >> There's a clarifying image that comes along with this, Nia again though this time properly resituated across the card table, the jigsaw puzzle replaced with an old Clue board. It takes Dawson a moment to shake off the surreality, anchor himself firmly back in this cell. << Sure, cuz this place would be a party otherwise. >> He stares up at the ceiling, fingers clenching around his novel. << What's it doing to you? >> --- day 373. Nia gets a cell all to herself, and it's there the guards are returning her now, cautiously staying out of her power's reach even though it is sated for the moment. << When I figure out how to actually work this jonx you motherfuckers going down... >> The door slams shut behind her, and she stands in the center of the room, breathing slow and deep. Her mind struggles to piece together what happened -- nightmarish fragments of her isolation slowly resolving into the terror of the girl they'd strapped down beside her, the desperate rapacious grasp of her power, her frantic attempts to pull it back in somehow. Even if her memories are a chaos, her thoughts now are clear and sharp and focused, unclouded despite her fury and horror. << Gotta to learn to fight it. Can't let 'em make us do this shit to (our own) (who the fuck is even us) each other. >> << Was it bad? >> The voice isn't unfamiliar, exactly, but then who's to say how much Nia remembers of her first weeks here. It's harsher than it's been before, a knifelike mental edge to his otherwise quiet words. << What do you think happens when you fight it? Outside, there's an us. >> This comes with a wash of memory, of feeling, pressing down warmer and enveloping around Scramble's mind for a heavy-blanketing moment: a crush of chaos too-loud too-wild but somewhere through it another mind, quiet soothing, reaching out to tease a thread of calm from among the disorder another institution not so-very-dissimilar from this -- but no bars on the windows, no guns on the orderlies' hips -- and the conspicuously empty lunch table around him until a skinny girl with wild yellow eyes and fur-lined arms sits down across from him with a grin, her mind announcing her even before she says hello, << they're scared of me, too >> skidding freefall-reckless down an icyslick street, thumping heart undecided whether to be exhilarated or angry at the classmates chasing behind him -- settling squarely on the former when a snowball flies out of nowhere to THWACK into the face of one of his pursuers, an unseen hand pulling him (amid a fit of muffled giggles) into the cocoon of invisibility << -- but that's out there. In here... >> The hard-edged voice doesn't trail off so much as just stutter to an uncomfortable silence. --- day 393. "You can do better." The head researcher's voice over the intercom from where he watches through a one-way mirror sounds deeply unimpressed. "Show him your mother." Mich, bound to a chair and outfitted with electrodes, swallows hard. The bevy of tengu circling them fade away, replaced -- in much greater detail -- by a pale, thin woman with sunken, haunted eyes. "{It's okay, my sons,}" the words tumble from her chapped illusory lips in Japanese, "{Be brave for me!}" Daiki's eyes go wide and his breath speeds at the sight of their mother. For the first time he starts fighting the straps of his own too-large chair. "{Michi I can't!}" He pries his gaze from her and focuses on his brother instead, but starts hyperventilating all the same. The abrupt swell of his power is hard to recognize for what it is, but the attending spike in Mich's readings seems likely to interest the researchers. Instead, they all seem intensely fascinated with Daiki's data, even though his distress is likely mundane. The vision vanishes. "Stop!" Mich is struggling against his own restraints, now. "You have to stop, you're -- he can't control it!" "Bring her back," the head researcher says, low and vehement. "Or we will find other ways to coax his powers out. I think pulling out his fingernails should do it..." The other side of the one-way mirror isn't visible, hasn't been visible, just an implacable face that cracks its door open shortly to dispense an equally implacable orderly pushing a rolling medical cart neatly arrayed with implements whose purpose it's best not to dwell too long upon. He makes it only halfway across the room before freezing short, hands locked in their grip on the cart, eyes fixed ahead. Still breathing, weight kind of leaning with an intermittent wobble on the cart -- not quite a statue, but perhaps not reassuring in the world's eeriest game of "Simon Says". When the orderly unfreezes the mirror's inscrutability shatters, too, with a lash of (pained) (angry) psionic tendrils that have coiled themselves out around and into Mich's mind to root themselves fast and deep in a sudden shift of perspective, shift of being, at once within the examination room and in a chair outside it (no restraints here) looking in with a sick (just a fucking kid) fury. For a moment as the orderly returns to the back with the cart, reaches for one of the scalpels on it, they can feel the researchers' panic << fuck oh fuck it's getting bold >> << effective sure but how do we leash him >> starting to press in around them -- a hand reaching for a button, the guards by the door already have their weapons drawn -- -- that only subsides when he starts to set his equipment away. In the next room, their illusion is blossoming again. The echo rings a little more hollow in the shared mental space, but it's no less vivid for all that. "{It's okay, my sons.}" --- day 427. "The sooner you do this, the sooner you can both get out of here," the researcher's voice on the intercom is soothing and conciliatory. "You'll feel so much better, too." Nia has kept her breathing carefully steady for some time, but now it speeds up, and she tugs fruitlessly at her bonds. Her eyes, wide and wild, keep tracking around the test chamber -- sometimes to the younger teen tied down beside her, but often to apparently nothing at all. Her "go fuck yourself" is harsh but not loud, forced out between gritted teeth. "I got hold of it now. I don't care what you do to me, I ain't gonna -- violate this kid. One of y'all wanna come cozy up I'll give you all the data you want." There's a brief silence from the other side of the mirror. Then, "I'm sorry you see it that way, Ms. Washington, though it is encouraging that your control has improved." The door to the test chamber opens and an orderly wheels in a cart loaded with gleaming steel surgical implements. The researcher continues speaking over the intercom, sounding almost bored, "I realize that your mental state might lend you to poor judgment, but maybe Mr. Allred can motivate you…" --- day 427. The infirmary is dark, and not quite empty, tonight. Dawson has not been particularly cogent since he was brought in, and though that's expected enough for people who come in contact with Nia after a stint of isolation there's nothing muddling his mind but pain. Here, now, in the middle of the night he's gradually been working his way toward a calm again, aided by snatches of fitful sleep that at the moment is proving hard to hold on to. << -- I could help. >> The voice that crashes into his head isn't in itself much help, a sledgehammer crash that does nothing to dull the pain, psionic tendrils coiling down in quiet offer against the boy's mind. << Don't have painkillers but I'm good at sleeping through pretty much fucking anything. >> << -- yeah, I bet you'd have to be. Did you see... >> Dawson's eyes squeeze shut tighter, and he doesn't finish the thought, willing himself hard not to think of the bright lights of the lab earlier. << You're kidding, right? Aren't you -- they say -- isn't... >> He hesitates. << What you (do/are) >> , his mind stumbles over the idea of it, << that's like losing (your soul/yourself) -- >> << Sure. Is that bad? >> The other mind sounds genuinely curious, but the mental touch pulls back. << That's how I find me, too. >> --- day 491. Lying curled on his side beneath a thin blanket on one of the nicer infirmary beds, Daiki does not move. He does not look particularly injured, and though the staff still come in to fuss over him from time to time, they have for the most part moved on to gossiping in hushed and reproving tones. << did you hear what happened -- that poor boy -- really should give him more sedatives -- what is the world coming to -- >> They do not give him more sedatives, but what they had already given him does mute the whirlwind of his emotions. He stares fixedly at the wound care supplies on the counter across the room, doggedly imagining a city of living cotton balls and gauze pads and nitrile gloves. Memories slice into this fantasy, raw jagged flashes of agony and terror, of his own voice pleading, of his skinny hands trying and failing to push Mich away. He does not move at all. Daiki's quiet is interrupted by a significant flurry of activity. Not hushed voices now but intent ones (Mich's name comes up more than once in the commotion), not quite panicked but certainly urgent behind the drawn curtains of the neighboring bed; a rush of personnel and equipment and, once, a pair of guards briefly dragging in a young labrat with frizzy red hair and a sleepy look that suggests she's just been dragged out of bed for this. When the commotion finally has died down there's another patient in the locked infirmary. The youth sitting hunched on the other bed is skinny, hair recently shorn to leave a heavily scarred scalp, a mass of mottled bruising ringed thick around his neck and his eyes wide, unsettled in their flit around the room though they return regularly to Daiki as if pulled that way. "You -- we --" His voice is hoarse; the tip of his tongue darts out to wet his chapped lips. He straightens self consciously before he tries speaking again, pulling himself almost exaggeratedly upright. "{I'm sorry,}" is in Japanese this time, "{we didn't -- are you --}" His hand lifts, reaches out, a flutter of psionic pressure accompanying the gesture, but then just lifts instead, scrubbing against his suddenly scrunched face. His shoulders deflate, crumpling back inward. "... here. You're here oh god. Sorry. We -- he was sorry." Daiki has kept wide-eyed watch through the emergency medical interventions and attending chatter. He curls up tighter once the curtain is twitched aside, disappointment warring with relief when his eyes find not Mich but a stranger -- if an oddly familiar one His mouth opens, then abruptly snaps shut when the older boy starts speaking Japanese. The force of his recognition hits him like a physical blow and he shrinks from the outstretched hand. "{Michi? How --}" << Why is he acting like him who is us what does he mean -- >> "-- what do you --" The words come out hoarse, choked with horror as his eyes track to and stay fixed on the bruises. He swallows hard and tries again. "-- what do you mean was?" --- day 497. The guard looming over Daiki is expected, by now. The boy bows his head and answers as softly and monosyllabically as he dares, trying to breathe, trying to will himself into the floor. Nia sidles over to Daiki's bully, her bearing causal and her voice conciliatory. "Yo, can we just leave the kid --" She's cut off here as much by the guard's "stay back!" as his fist. She reels back and staggers into -- -- Daiki, who reflectively steadies her. His hand touches her wrist, just a bare moment before he jerks it away. It's long enough for the full force of his power to slam into -- -- Nia, whose perhaps reasonable protectiveness has bloomed into fanatical devotion. The sheer intensity of this change destroys her carefully cultivated hold on her powers, which reach out for -- -- Daiki and wrenches his mind into abrupt expansive confidence and a maddening unbearable restlessness in and around the sudden flood of frenzied thoughts. The remnants of his calm fled, he loses even his tenuous indirect dampening of his own power. Suddenly the whole room is converging on them, voices rising, baleful eyes fixing on the guard, bodies and minds tensing for a fight. Too little and too late once the room jumps to their feet, maybe, but an alarm is sounding through the facility, a baleful red light flashing that may not be ominous enough to cut through the spiral pull that is agitating the mob. Thumping feet are closing in on the cafeteria, reinforcements with guns already drawn when they arrive. The first guard through the door rivets his attention and his pistol on Daiki unerringly. The crack that follows is loud, but ripples painfully through the minds of the room rather than its walls and ears, an unfurling of psionic power that shoves itself through the riled-up crowd with a collective grinding of teeth. Then a collective exhale, deliberate and incongruous with the klaxon continuing to insist all is Not Well. The guns lower, and as one the hive returns to their lunch. --- day 563. "You're kidding, right?" Shane's black eyes are huge, his gills fluttering rapidly. When his lips peel back its only in a crooked grin, a sharp bark of a laugh punctuating his next, incredulous: "You all can't be very good scientists his power makes me like super like him why would I want to hurt him? You all can just sit there and be bored we're gonna play cards not fight." The fact that he doesn't, actually, have any cards where he sits cross-legged atop the exam chair (none of its heavy restraints are currently in use to restrain him what so ever) does not seem to bother him one bit. Unseen by either Shane or his experimental partner of the day -- Daiki has been still and quiet, and busily fending off panic -- the research lead for this study replies, "You know as well as I his power can turn even his closest companions against him." His voice is flat, implacable. "You will help us discover what triggers that change, whether you want to or not." Behind the one-way glass, the researcher turns to the lanky youth who sits in on so many such sessions. "You're up. Don't get creative." This comes out like a warning moreso than just a request or even command. "Just get it done." The young man does have a pack of cards, old and well worn and riffling smoothly between his bony fingers where he's been shuffling them repetitively, shoulders hunched and shaved scar-riddled head bowed. He's staring down at the red rider design on the back of the deck rather than out through the observation glass. The shuffling stops when he's addressed, but he doesn't look up, fingers tightening against the card deck to pull the edges of the cards in line. "...hard to survive a place like this without any friends." His teeth grind, slow, and he shakes his head as his robotic shuffling resumes. "You can get someone besides Nguyen in there. I am done." The research lead says nothing for a moment. "You have a choice, just like Mr. Nguyen. Just like any of you here. Looks like you've made yours. But." He waves an orderly forward who brings him a complicated headgear, a sort of skeletal helmet trailing far too many wires to an bulkier device on the orderly's cart. The contraption makes an ominous rising electronic tone as it goes active, and the researcher settles the now-glowing helmet on his own head. The cards slip from the young telepath's suddenly limp hands to scatter across the floor. Inside the test chamber, Shane lurches unsteadily to his feet, unsheathing his long claws with none of his usual flare. The researchers' attention return to their respective workstations, all save their leader, whose eyes are trained on Shane but not quite focused. "You're not done until I say you are." --- day 577. It's a glorious day out, visible here where it isn't on the lower levels, sunlight streaming in through the infirmary windows and dappling the bed where currently one raccoon-eyed sallow-skinned telepath is paying the beauty very little attention. He's curled sideways atop the covers, and though there's an episode of Battlestar Galactica playing on the television he also doesn't seem to be paying much mind to the cylon's machinations, just staring at the door and gnawing at his lower lip (already stippled with blood between its chapped skin). One of the actual nurses, watched carefully by guards, wheels Nia in and hooks her up to an IV and monitor before leaving without a word. Her left forearm neatly bandaged, the pain finally starting to fade. Beneath the slowly rising haze of the sedative her mind is quiet as it only ever gets when her power has -- somehow -- torn sanity from someone else. She looks at the TV first, her recently regained sense of equilibrium shaken -- the memory of watching and enjoying that show far away and unreal and -- Seeing her roommate -- or, really, recognizing him snaps her right out of that dissociative spiral, although not with any kind of relief. << Shit, like my brain ain't been fucked hard enough. >> For all her fear and anger and distantly conflicted concern, "you," is all she manages aloud at first. Then, "You s'posed to be minding me?" In the other bed, Nia's temporary roommate is slow to respond, eyes delayed in their tracking -- to the nurse considerably after they enter, to the door several seconds after it's closed again. "Huh? I don't mind..." he starts uncertainly. Stops, shakes his head. "Is that what you think I..." It's only now that his slow gaze finds Nia, managing some approximation of focus. "I don't. Know what we're supposed to be. Still trying to figure that out." Even dampened by drugs Nia's anger flares hotter. "We supposed to --" << (fight) (win) (love) >> But she can't voice any of those words, salvaged from another life. Tears come, not for the killing despair that landed her in the infirmary, but for the community lost to her now. She breathes out slow and tremulous. Fixes her eyes on the screen without really seeing it. Remembers the babbling pleas of the subject they'd dragged in to feed her as she drifted in and out of the darkness she'd sought. "We s'posed to build a community. Ionno if that can even happen in here or what it look like if we did..." Her dark eyes snap to the young man. "...but I know it don't include no kapo motherfuckers like you." --- day 613. It's easy, these days, to track Dawson in the common space, his little corner of it more popular even than the often argued-over television (currently tuned to "Jeopardy"). The game of Clue that's been ongoing has come to a pause Yet Again on his turn, though; he's quite forgotten about his little note sheet and has been instead talking to the other players at the table with increased exhilaration in a voice that he's trying and failing to keep hushed. "-- really just been making us better and better and better in all these sessions I mean when I got here I didn't know what I was doing but the stuff they have us practicing now I --" His eyes have gotten wider still as he picks the tiny pewter rope up off the board, half out of his seat already. "Like I bet I could tie a guard up so quick I could get us all out of here." Slouched beside Dawson in a heap of too-skinny limbs, Nia has thus far weathered his flitting attention with a sort of fond if long-suffering resignation. "Gonna take a lot more than practice." She sits up, suddenly more alert than she'd been in days, her voice low and urgent. "Even if you had actual rope you ain't getting past all of -- boy sit your lily-white ass down you gon' get yourself killed!" When this warning fails to stop Dawson she reaches out and takes him by the wrist, far too gently to physically restrain him. Her power, though, unfolds in a flash and digs into the boy's mind with a fierce hunger. Nia grits her teeth hard and where Dawson's mind was racing faster for just a moment it now steadies, his mania receding to leave him calm and clear-headed. Her hand drops and she curls in on herself. Quietly, weakly, without inflection, she manages, "Please. We need you." --- day 613. In previous days Dawson's mind has been a vibrant thing, too bright and hard to ignore in its constant clamor. The torrent of chaotic thoughts have come to a very sudden halt, though, subdued and quiet as he studies the board in front of him. Only one background stream of thought is actually attending the game -- he's already mostly settled on who killed Mr. Boddy and where and how -- most of his more conscious mind is turning over its newfound clarity. Gauging (with a trace of guilt) the space between here and the guards. Fingers curling around his wrist. The heavier slump of Nia's shoulders. Thick leather restraints on her wrists and her voice defiant through gritted teeth. << there's no guilt in needing each other. >> The voice that interrupts his stream of thoughts slices in without preamble. << You think your friends in here don't need you, too? >> Dawson's cards don't quite slip from his hand -- startle reflex quicksilver enough that he's adjusted his grip in nearly the same instant he starts to lose it. By now, at least, he keeps from moving his mouth when he answers, even if it takes a conscious effort. << It's different. I was a crazy mess and she works so hard at not being -- >> (like you) doesn't quite make it into words, but then, it doesn't quite have to. The silence that follows is long enough that maybe it seems Dawson's game can finish unmolested. But after a stretch it finally shatters again, words stretched somehow thinner in the mental space between them: << Doubt she'll hold a little crazy against you. >> --- day 643. Recently returned to the company of her fellow lab rats, Nia has been steadily ignoring the (very appealing!) lunch on her tray, her elbows propped on the table in an exhausted slump. "...maybe they wouldn't have actually done it, but I couldn't gamble Becca's life on that. Shit." She scrubs a hand over her face. "I tried to hold back some, but I was so far gone once I let go it just -- fuck." Her hand sweeps outward, fingers curling into a fist in the process. Her voice trembles when she adds, "Ion even know what the fuck I did to her." Shane has been chewing this over together with some of the eggs he's pilfered from Scramble's tray, head bobbing in slow-uncertain nod and legs swinging freely below even the low seat he is perched on. "Something she'll be alive to yell at you about later?" He's flexing his fingers in idle thought, the webbing between them currently severed neatly apart. "They woulda done it. Be nice if they could get a taste of that scramble for once instead." Nia huffs a bitter but not completely humorless laugh. "Sure ain't helping my chances getting girls, but yeah." Her voice drops lower, hand closing tight around her still-pristine fork. "If I ever get a chance -- well, that fantasy always make me wish I could do it permanent." She looks at her lunch for the first time since sitting down. "Here I was thinking this was gon be my supervillain origin story and once we bust out I'm start calling myself 'Straitjacket' or some shit." She finally starts in on the remnants of her pale spongy eggs, but not before adding, with a crooked slice of smile, "I like the sound of Scramble better." --- day 671. There's no reason for secrecy really, not with this mode of communication, but even so it's very late at night when a psionic presence nudges up in uncomfortable impending-headache push at the edges of Shane's awareness. Push. Push? If he wasn't awake before he will be soon, a pressure growing acute and questioning behind his eyes. "Kkkkhhh." The tiny sharkpup was, in fact, asleep, stirring now from restless nightmare to restless waking with a grouchy grumble that gets no more pleased once he identifies the source of the intrusion. << Fuck off, >> is his summary response; he pulls his pillow over his head as though the thin cushioning could provide some kind of barrier to the telepathic invasion. << Was having a good dream. >> << No, you weren't. >> The other voice doesn't sound particularly apologetic for interrupting. << Thought it might improve if you knew what the guards were buzzing about tonight. All kinds of riled. Say there was a jailbreak, one of the other labs. Out east. Never happened before. Bunch of subjects they lost. Was another little blue shark in the files. >> Shane sits up straight in the darkness, breath suddenly catching and his gills fluttering uselessly along his neck. << (he's lying) >> << (why would he lie?) >> << (why is he telling me?) >> overlap in furious tumult with memories he's trying to shove back down of an identical skinny blue fishkid. It takes him several seconds to breathe. To pull his claws back out of the pillow. << Fuck are you telling me for? What, like. Rubbing it in that if we try any stunts like that here you'll be ready? >> --- day 695. "{No, I swear it's true! With knives on your feet.}" Daiki's Japanese is rapid and perhaps unnecessarily hushed as he tries to control his excitement with very limited success, his powers fluttering but yet not sharply enough to draw much attention, ensconced in the corner behind the couch as they are. "How have I never told you about ice skating before?" He pulls his knees up to his chest, deflating a little. "{But I don't really know what getting out of here now would look like, either. Foster families not wanting me was how we ended up here to begin with, and how can I blame them?}" He swallows, leaning a little closer to his companion though he dare not reach for him. "I drive people crazy worse than Scramble." "{Foot-knives! Outside sounds badass.}" Shane is bouncing slightly in his excitement, toes (with their not-insignificant knives of their own) wiggling. "{Tch, don't talk nonsense. If they don't like you just make them like you. People can't tell us what to do out there! I bet we'll have a million family.}" --- day 723. The alarms aren't stopping this time, haven't been stopping, but if anyone who they're supposed to alert needs the warning at this stage in the game -- well. Through the halls of the compound there's been yelling, there's been gunfire; this lab, usually bright and clean, is thick with smoke that's drifting in from down the hall. With the clogged air Shane is beyond relieved when the door blows open -- even as he lifts an arm to shield his eyes from the brilliant light beyond he's vaulting from the chair where he's shredded his restraints, grabbing the glowing figure who's just appeared in the remnants of the doorway imperiously by the overheated hand to drag him out into the hall. "-- holy shit I thought everyone just made you guys up we gotta find my friend he's -- probably panicking he worries way too much come on --" In his cell Daiki isn't quite panicking yet, but he is near enough to it that when the door bursts open he throws himself at Shane -- powers be damned -- as though he means to never let go. Their rescuers are moving on to other cells, and to those who have freed themselves or their neighbors; however difficult it may be to ignore Daiki right now, there are screams coming from further down the hall. For all that there are people here who presumably know what they are doing, it's to Shane that Daiki blurts, wide-eyed, "He -- the mind-control...guy, he's --" This is interrupted by another one of those screams, very nearby, this time. A sudden wash of shadow eclipses the bright light that's been accompanying them. There's a familiar psionic pressure that pushes in at each of their minds in turn and -- almost reluctantly -- pulls away. In the hallway the remnants of their rescue team has their hands full ushering the last of the straggling labrats out; two of them have stopped halfway to the exit (not a door but a giant hole blasted right through the middle of the wall) and turned to fight their would-be saviors. That same questing pressure pushes down again, savage but inexpert in its grasp at the next mind it sees. Scramble, already loose in the hallway, has been bringing up the rear of the slapdash escape, cajoling and shouting and sometimes bodily propelling her terrified comrades forward. She stops dead at the pressure in her mind, but she does not drop or turn on her fellow shepherd. She does dump -- perhaps not all, but certain a lot of -- her sanity into Dawson, the abrupt unbalancing of her own mind dislodging the inexpert telepathic grasp. When she starts moving again her steps are uncertain, but she presses on, wild-eyed, toward their saviors. "We got everyone back there!" Her voice is much louder than it really needs to be, even in the chaos. "Except --" She cuts herself off, clutches her head. Continues. "-- we cannot go back for that traitor he's the one killing us. Go!" This last is to Dawson as she pushes him toward the cluster of younger labrats who have clustered around Shane and Daiki. "We out." A jittery flutter of motion carries the youngest Prometheans out past the rubble and the bodies of their fallen comrades. Then returns, Dawson's eyes wide and his jaw set as he curls his hand around Scramble's wrist. "No." He's not talking at her but past her -- maybe into the chaos or maybe at the pressure that tries and fails to squeeze down around his strobing mental presence. At least some measure of his newfound mental stability is willing itself -- inexpert as well but determined -- in a direction he can only pray is correctly aimed. "We're all getting out of here." --- day 724. day 1. It's not much, here; just a little scrap of a garden, walled off and small, an eclectic chaos of hedges and flowers overspilling its mulched paths. The young man sitting cross-legged on the fountain in the circular clearing at the center is looking at the tiny community garden like he's found a paradise, though, transfixed as he watches a honeybee rise unsteadily from a lilac and totter off, shedding a few grains of pollen on the way. His hand lifts to skim absently along the side of his shaved head, fingers trailing along the knotted scarring there, and his eyes track the bee as it settles into its next bloom. In even more unsteady-erratic a path there's another flutter from behind a tree, a shiver of motion, a skinny teenager materializing beside the fountain to look at the other young man. Dawson is gnawing at the insides of his cheeks, hands wringing in front of him and his mind buzzing with several uneasy questions that haven't managed to find the words he wants. He swallows, head bowing, and though some part of him feels he ought to ask permission, climbs up to take a seat on the fountain's lip, his gaze turning outward to follow the other youth's rather than stare quite as much as he wants to. There's several breaths, several false starts, before he finally sets the rest aside in favor of: "I don't know what you want us to call you."