Chapter Summary: Ash has to find another form of proof when the man he needed is lost while he tried to escape the laboratory. That search leads him and Max to a certain winter spirit who's locked up deep. But why is he there?
Chapter 1: The Boy in Water
Ash has had his fair share of moments that required a certain flare of seduction. Fortunately, he has also had a lot of practice. Reluctant and forceful as it was. That is why it was second nature to use his cursed good looks to attract one of the security guards watching his cell, kill him, and take his key card. Ash did say he'd send him to heaven, didn't he?
He ran down the hallways, stuffing the guard's key card into his white pants as he went. He'd observed no windows in the facility so escape wasn't going to be easy. But he's used to that. As two workers in lab coats pass him, lustfully speaking of a woman they both wanted, Ash quietly hid and then crept through an air duct near him.
Creeping into the air duct meant it was only a matter of time before the rest of the guards in the surveillance room noticed his absence and pieced everything together, even if they are naturally idiots. Ash crawls on all fours, the noise made from the sensitive metal making him cringe in worry. He picks random paths since the schematics of the lab weren't imbued in his brain but luckily ends up in a sort of experimental room.
Weapon. I need a weapon.
Ash went through the drawers, spotting a stash of surgical scissors. He heard the guards outside.
"He couldn't have gotten far. Find him."
So they had noticed. Good for them.
Ash grabbed some of the scissors and placed them in the insides of his pants, wrapped to his ankle by an elastic band. Ash exits the room and hears more guards speaking to one another. One saying that they found him. After an order is given, they separate and allow Ash to enter into a room with exactly what he needed: a computer.
He inserted the key card and opened up the map of the lab.
The doctor who had wanted to rip out his brain was the one who showed him Alexis Dawson. If Banana Fish could bring about such a stupid vegetable like him then Ash needed the proof. He needed to find the man. He finds his room registered on the monitor.
"He's here!"
Ash turns to see a guard on the other side of the glass. Instinctively, he grabs the gun he stole from the guard and shot the man, cracking the glass as the bullet went through it.
Ash runs down the hall. He quickly finds Dawson's room and after evading more stupid guards, he uses the key card to open it and sees the man in the same place the doctor had left him.
"You're coming with me. You're living proof."
Dawson just looks at Ash for a moment. Then his lips begin to move. Softly, he speaks.
"Beautiful boy..."
The man said it to him, but Ash felt like Dawson was staring right through him as if Ash wasn't there at all.
Shaking off the old man's weird ramble, Ash grabs him by the wrist and drags him out. They walk slowly down the hall, Ash having to check around corners for any guards.
"I think it's safe now," he says, if only to himself, before they turn a corner.
"Somebody! A patient is loose!"
Shit!
Ash turns to glare at the nurse who screamed, turns back and runs. The guard behind him radio's the security center as they disappear around the corner. They are on the 14th floor, North Ward, Block C. Ash memorized the map and knew exactly where to go. Sometimes his magnificent brain was actually not a curse.
"Beautiful boy..."
Ash ignores Dawson's words like the ones of a crazy idiot, but they distract him long enough to not see the hall beginning to be blocked by a falling metal wall.
Dammit!
Ash grabs Dawson.
"Time to go, old man!"
He throws him through the entry. Ash then ran and masterfully slid on the floor through the slit that the closing door left just as it closed completely. He breathes heavily through his mouth.
"Beautiful boy..."
Ash stands straight and groans at the crazy man who was slumped with his face on the floor.
"Beautiful boy...," he says again, his words muffled by the fact that his face was literally plastered in the floor.
Well, he's useless now.
Ash sighs in annoyance as he rubs his forehead. He bends down, places the man on his back and begins running down the hall again.
I need to find a way out.
"Ethereal…"
Damn this old man! Can't he shut up!
"You're fucking heavy so just shut the fuck up!"
They stop at an elevator and Ash decides to go in. There was no other way to get them both out. They begin to go down but the elevator abruptly stops on the 12th floor. Ash becomes irritated by the securities stupid efforts to keep him here. He pulls the scissors from under his pants and tries to pry open the door with them. When it doesn't work he looks to Dawson.
"Go down to the floor on your hands and knees. I need your support."
The old man may be an idiot because of the drug but the doctors made it easy for him to follow commands. He does exactly what Ash asked and right under the escape hatch on the top too. Ash may begin to question how dumb the man actually is.
"Beautiful boy…"
Nope. He's pretty stupid.
The hatch is opened with the scissors and Ash drags them both to the top of the elevator. The guards pass the elevator.
"Okay, they're gone."
He begins to reopen the hatch when two men walk into the elevator. Ash closes it to remain hidden. He hears their muffled speaking as well as the sound of an intercom then the elevator begins to move upwards. It stops and moves again and again.
"What is happening!?" Ash angrily says.
The elevator stops abruptly nearly knocking him off his feet and sending Dawson over the edge. Ash panics and runs to the old man, grabbing his wrist and holding him up with his strength. There are nearly 13 floors of emptiness that they would fall if he let go but the edge of the elevator was digging into his bicep and the pain was flaring through his whole body. Ash gritted his teeth in pain.
The elevator moves again and stops even more harshly than before making Dawson's grip loosen. To save himself he grabs onto Ash's leg, making the teen fall and slide off the elevator due to the man's weight. Ash holds them both up with the small strength in his fingers as they cling to the edge of the elevator. But the pain was even worse now.
Ash looks down to the man clinging to his ankle.
"Hold on, old man."
With immense will and the absence of the fear of death, Ash reaches down to with one hand and transfers all the weight to the other in the process. He grabs Dawson's hand but realizes the strength it will take to lift the man up with only one arm was near to impossible. But as Ash stares at Dawson, he realizes that this old man is the only proof he has of the drug and the only proof to end all the madness. To end Golzine and every other asshole who abused this drug in order to gain power. Ash was fueled by the desire to destroy them and he was fueled by the image of those powerful, old men sitting securely in their mansions, giving orders leisurely while Ash suffers on the battlefield. He wanted to end their tyranny!
Ash begins to lift Dawson, his voice coming out in a strained yell as he gathered the impossible strength to lift the old man.
So close! So goddamn close!
With a final exerted force of effort, Ash places the man's hands on the edge so that he can hold himself up.
"Hold on."
Ash lifts himself up to the elevator but has no time to breath knowing that Dawson was not strong enough to hold himself up forever.
I am not leaving this place empty handed!
He reaches for Dawson and lifts him up with the last of his strength. The old man is safe and Ash falls to the floor in exhaustion, rapidly breathing from his mouth. He actually did it.
Dawson then stands.
"Beautiful boy…" he whispers.
Ash opens his eyes but remained laying on his back. He was too tired for the old man's bullshit.
"I need to find the beautiful boy...ethereal...he was ethereal."
Ash stares at Dawson. His concentration was blurred because of how he'd just exerted himself but Ash could comprehend the fact that the old man was speaking in full sentences. It confused him but he was too tired to care.
Dawson began to walk. Ash felt the vibrations of his footsteps on the hard metal below him.
"He's down below...all the way down...beautiful boy...I need to find…"
Ash felt sorry for how such a brilliant mind could fall so deep into insanity. The teen lifts his head a bit to see Dawson walking towards the edge. Ash's senses go into overdrive and he rapidly sits up ready to grab the man.
"What are you doing!?" he screams to Dawson and leaps to pull the old man in.
But he was too late.
Dawson steps over and falls.
Ash just stares wide-eyed into the dark abyss below as the man drops. A second later, the sound of the body hitting the bottom is heard, echoing through the elevator shaft.
Ash breathes rapidly, not realizing he had an outstretched hand out. hopelessly reaching into the abyss. He brings it up and slams it down on the metal in anger.
"Dammit!"
He's lost his only proof. Great. Just great. All that work. For nothing.
Ash is used to losing but not when he was so close to success.
He opens the elevator hatch and drops down, kicking a security guard in the process. He presses the lowest floor on the elevator panel to no avail.
Great. They turned off the elevators.
"I have no luck these days" Ash
He exits the elevator through a dust duct from the top once he climbs back up. Ash knows he's not leaving empty-handed. He has to take another subject with him. He runs through the hall. Guards were walking here and there but Ash was better at sneaking and remaining hidden.
Ash would have to return to the Patient Wing in order to get another patient and that was too far up and had too many people. He was sure that not even he would be able to get out unscathed. And not to mention that Golzine is most likely not giving orders (or Ash would have been at least close to being caught), which meant whoever was would be more willing to shot to kill.
Ash groans in anger. Pulling at his hair with comical anger.
Then it hit him.
The boy.
Dawson couldn't have just been randomly saying things, not with how many times he said it and with how he decided to jump. The man had wanted to get to that boy. Badly. But why?
Ash was willing to take the risk and find out. Dawson had said that 'the boy' was all the way down.
He must be on the last floor.
The teen finds a laundry room and at the far end of the wall a garbage shoot. He opens the hatch and climbs down a ladder connected to the wall. Ash wonders why he puts himself through all of this as he wrinkles his nose in disgust at the smell permeating from the bottom. Then he hears a hatch open not that far above him. A body is dropped and Ash yelps in surprise but manages to dodge it.
"Oh, God! It reeks in here!" a voice says from the top.
Ash recognizes the voice immediately.
"Max!?" he shouts.
The hatch above him is close to closing when it reopens quickly, the man Ash knew would show his face actually shows his face and Ash doesn't know wether to feel angry or annoyed at Max's smile.
"ASH!? IS THAT REALLY YOU!?"
The man shouts through the shoot loudly as if Ash was ten miles down and only a screech would reach him. Ash cringes in annoyance at the sound and the man's pure inability to remain stealthy and quiet while they were in an enemy's stronghold.
"WILL YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH, YOU IDIOT!" Ash screams back. Ibe's shy face peeks out and Max poses an idiotic expression on his face.
"We thought you were still in the lab," Max says, finally not screaming.
"I was but I escaped," Ash states blandly, then an annoyed tone takes over, "What are you both doing here?"
Ash knew why he'd already guessed it, but it seemed even dumber once Max said it.
"We came to rescue you!"
Ash closes his eyes and breathes in to calm himself down. Max and Ibe watch in curiosity from atop. Ash questions how he was the younger one out of the three.
"There's a ladder," Ash finally speaks, "Climb down. We're gonna get out of here."
Max and Ibe look to the ladder and grab on, fully entering the trash shoot through the hatch. As the three climb down together, Max just has to make idle talk.
"How'd you get away, Ash?"
Ash sighs.
"Definitely not thanks to you guys, I can tell you that," the teen sassed.
"Well, we didn't think you'd escape." Max defends in a tone similar to a child's.
They reach the bottom and the smell of the garbage is intense.
"Let's just get out of here," Ash says, not being in the mood to continue arguing.
"Yeah, this "psychiatric" building is really strange," Max complains. His words come out scrambled since he's getting no air through his nose while he pinches it. Ibe nods in agreement to Max.
"I'm not leaving the facility yet," Ash nonchalantly added.
"What? why?" Ibe and Max say at the same time.
"I need to find evidence of the effects of the Banana Fish drug. I lost Alexis Dawson while trying to escape with him and now I need another person for proof," Ash states, as if it should have been obvious.
"Dawson? As in one of the creators of Banana Fish," Ibe asks.
"Yeah"
"How'd he get lost?" Max questions.
"He jumped off the top of an elevator and fell 13 stories down."
"Oh.."
Ash looks around the chute's walls in search of an exit and finds one rather quickly.
"Come on," he tells the men as he crawls through the exit and into the cold air outside. Max and Ibe follow after him. Ash peers around the parking lot they'd just wandered into. He notices some emergency vans.
"Both of you get a van and wait for me. I'm going back in," Ash says with conviction and begins his run to the entrance of the facility only to be stopped by a rough hand on his wrist.
"I'm coming with you," Max orders.
Ash rolls his eyes.
"No you'll only slow me down," Ash complains.
"I'm not letting you go back in there alone. I don't want to lose you."
Ash didn't know how to respond to that, but the teen gives in from pure guilt.
"Fine."
Max smiles in assurance and lets Ash go.
"I'll stay here and get the van," Ibe says.
Max and Ash re-enter the facility.
"So, where do we go?" Max asks, but also just follows Ash as the teen sneaks down the halls to the left.
"I have no idea honestly," Ash confesses.
Max frowns in disbelief.
"Ash!"
"I only have a clue from a crazy man to go off of okay!"
"What'd he say?"
"He said the boy was "down below"."
Max stops in his tracks. Ash stops as well.
"A boy...? They even experiment on children here?" Max seethes.
Ash is confounded by the man's anger especially for the fact that it was completely unnecessary right now.
"They were willing to kill me. They don't care who they experiment on," Ash says.
Max clenches his fists in anger and grits his teeth.
"Still doesn't mean I should be okay with it," Max retorts.
"Let's just find this kid. I saw the map already but there aren't any patients this low down in the facility. And Golzine would never be stupid enough to place a patient so close to the exit."
"So basically this was a waste," Max uttered hopelessly.
Ash wonders: Was it really?
But there has to be more. Ash thinks back to what the old man had said.
'Down below, down below, down below'
Ash perks up in realization.
"Underground!"
Max is confused.
"This place has an underground?"
"It wasn't on the map, but it's the only reasonable explanation for what Dawson was saying even if it was a slim possibility. It was their only shot and Ash's instincts haven't failed him before.
"Some of the patients have escaped? Yeah, we'll be on the lookout," a gruff voice speaks into a walkie-talkie around the corner. Ash pushes Max to go down the opposite way but obviously, he was too slow. The guard turns the corner and instantly recognizes them.
Ash reaches for his gun but Max grabs him by the scruff of his shirt and drags him down the hall at breakneck speed.
"Let me go! I have to kill him! He saw us!"
But once again it was too late. Ash could hear the guard inform the others on his radio.
Great.
Ash and Max keep running down the hall and hide in a random room.
The room however is small, big enough only to have a hatch on the floor the size of a basement door. One that most likely led…
Underground.
Ash genuinely laughs at his luck.
"Guess we found the way to the underground," Max states in surprise.
Ash bent down to reach for the door handle only for it to be locked shut. The teen attempts to yank it open and grunts with force but the hatch doesn't budge.
"I think you need a code," Max says from behind Ash.
Ash scowls at the adult but considers Max's idea when he sees a keypad on the wall next to the door.
Ash strides over to it and begins to inspect.
"Any ideas," Max asks.
"Golzine made this. He uses the same kind of tech on a lock at his mansion for one of his special rooms. This must be his code. There's just so many possibilities," Ash comments.
"Well then I guess we better start," Max joked.
The two hear guards coming down the hall and by the sound of the footsteps, there are quite a few.
Ash turns to the keypad again and thinks of possible clues.
The guards were getting closer.
Ash reaches for his gun.
"They're coming, Ash," Max informs nervously as he peers down the hall through the crack in the door.
Ash points at the keypad.
BANG!
The hatch behind them opens with a mechanical whirr and reveals a staircase leading into a lighted path.
"Let's go."
Ash steadily walks down the stairs, cautious but also excited. Whatever was down here was here for a reason. Golzine or the doctors wanted to hide it. What or who could be so important?
They enter into a hall similar to the one's on the upper floors of the facility. Except there were no doors. Light lit the path in a dull blue haze. It was dark, like straight out of a cliche scary movie. There was no getting lost. There was only one path to follow and the end of it lead to a double-door with another key pad.
"Another one!" Max complains.
Ash brings out his gun.
"It worked the first time," Ash admits.
He shoots and the doors slide open.
Max and Ash step into a dark lab but the lights turn on once their movement is captured. There was a single machine in the large room. It gave off the sound of a heartbeat monitor and displayed many other things Ash had little motivation to investigate.
Max had wandered off as they both went in there own scavenger hunt for anything valuable. The room was big but not big enough to lose one another.
"Ash...you need to come see this."
Ash responds quickly to the serious tone of his father-figure.
"I think I found the boy," Max says, not peeling his eyes off of a huge clear water tank. Ash peers into the water and finally notices him.
A young boy, no older than 15 or 16, was floating in the clear water. His entire body was skinny and lithe and his clothing, a colonial-esque style, consisted of tight brown skins on his thin, long legs, a white loose shirt, brown vest and a thick brown poncho on top of them. His hair was startling white like snow, and it billowed in the water. The boy's skin appeared smooth and pale with soft marks. Like the moon. His features were delicate. Thin lips and a small nose. His eyes were closed but Ash could still make out the whiteness of his eyelashes as they rested on his cheeks..
"He's...beautiful…"
Ash snaps out of his reverie by Max's voice. Then it dawns on him that the young boy had no breathing mask on.
"He can't be alive," Ash snaps, "This was useless. This isn't proof if the kid is dead."
Ash glares at the floor in anger for his failure.
"Um...Ash," Max gets Ash's attention.
"What?!" Ash responds in an annoyed tone.
"Look.."
Ash turns to the tank and inside the young, ethereal boy begins to flutter his eyes open. Slowly.
And then Ash is staring into the brightest, blue eyes he'd ever seen.
He's alive.