Author's Note: Hello Everyone! Yes I know I should be working on Something Special or Kidnapped, not a one-shot but this just popped into my head and I had to write it down. I am currently working on a chapter for Something Special and I will be done with finals at college in about two weeks so I will soon have the time to finally finish something! I'm very sorry for making you wait but I hope you enjoy this snippet.
This takes place after the first episode of season three, 'Back in Black'. I felt like Rex should have been more overwhelmed and would have been at least a little traumatized from his brother trying to control him with a collar. I know the next episode discussed him not being fine briefly since he is just riding around aimlessly on his Rex Ride and joins a motorcycle gang. This is him working on getting over that in the initial stages. On with the story!
Rex sat on the edge of the walkway, swinging his legs idly as he stared out into the makeshift hangar bay and the sky beyond. He wasn't particularly looking at anything, too busy thinking about the past few days. Holiday and Six had left him alone to explore the new base, the Plant they were calling it, and Knight was off who knows where, probably drinking some milk, Rex thought with a smirk. His mind was a complete jumble and he wasn't sure where to begin to try to wrap his head around the idea that so much had happened in the six months he had been absent. His whole world was upside down in a matter of minutes for him and all the panicking and escape attempting at Providence had really taken its toll. So he sat there, deciding to think of nothing for a while, watching as the sun sunk lower and lower into the sky.
He wasn't sure how long he had been there exactly but when he finally decided to move he found Six leaning against the wall behind him. "Oh hey, how long have you been there?"
"Not long. You hungry? Holiday went and got pizza."
Rex's stomach growled at the mention of food. He smiled sheepishly at Six, "Food would be good."
"Come on. We didn't get around to cleaning up the kitchen yet so we'll eat in the lab."
Rex nodded and trailed after Six, looking around at everything as they passed, looking a little lost in all this.
"How are you holding up?"
Rex started slightly, having been lost in his own thoughts as they walked, "Wha- oh, fine, a bit overwhelmed at the moment, but fine."
Six nodded and they didn't speak any more until they got to the lab where Holiday was waiting.
"Rex I got your favorite- Meat Lovers Delight!" Holiday said with a smile as she handed the box to Rex when they came in and sat down with her at the makeshift dinner table she had put together.
"Thanks, Doc!" It was said with a smile but it didn't quite meet his eyes and the tone was just a little too cheery. The adults noticed and shared a glance but Rex dug into the pizza immediately so he seemed alright given the circumstances.
All was going fine, Rex wasn't as talkative as normal but that was okay, because Holiday was busy filling him in on where exactly they were and where he was going to be sleeping and all that.
About three slices of pizza in though, Rex's phone started buzzing in his pocket and he took it out, thinking it was probably Noah wanting to hang out now that he was back, like they had texted about earlier, but he was met with something unexpected. Cesar was calling.
Rex just stared at the screen as it continued to buzz in his hand for a moment, not really sure what to do before he suddenly had the urge to fling his phone into the wall and that's exactly what he did.
Holiday gasped, flinching back a bit, Rex just stared wide-eyed at what he just did, and Six sat there calmly, observing the crack in the wall and the damaged phone on the floor before looking to Rex who now had his head in his hands.
"I am so sorry! I don't know why I just did that." It came out a bit muffled and Rex groaned before he scrubbed his hands down his face, looking in slight horror at his phone on the ground.
"It's alright." Holiday spoke cautiously as Rex turned to look at her. " Who just called you?"
Rex looked down at his lap and mumbled "Caesar." He crossed his arms over his chest and slouched inward a bit, taking up a protective position in his chair.
"Rex, what happened between you two?"
"I don't want to talk about it right now."
"Rex, sometimes it helps to just get it all out there, you may be able to deal with this sudden change better if-"
Rex let out a bark of laughter. "Sudden change? I get dumped out of a portal in the badlands, panicked for five minutes thinking I had ended up in the dinosaur age or something, finally get ahold of Providence and no one will tell me anything, not even if Six and everyone got out okay of what I thought had been only a few hours ago tops, so I just have to sit there and wait for an hour in the middle of nowhere. Then I get picked up on a transport with no one I recognize on it, I thought at least Six was going to be on it but no, I know no one, and the only person I see when I get to Providence is Caesar who just all the sudden has a beard! Oh and then I'm just supposed to accept that it's been an entire six months, that you guys are MIA and your numbers had been disconnected and that White Knight threw a crazy coup and is DEAD, and Black Knight is now in charge, who just kept talking to me in the most annoying 'calm and approachable' voice like I was going to do something crazy at any moment, while I am trying to figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. And Bobo wasn't acting like Bobo and Caesar was acting like everything was fine and I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT ANY OF IT."
He was panting slightly by the time his rant was over, hair frazzled from pulling at it and face red.
Holiday opened her mouth to speak what Rex was sure were going to be comforting words, but he cut her off, just wanting to get out of this room and to be alone for a while as he tried to sort this out.
He stood up abruptly, "I'm sorry- I just- I think I'm going to go get some sleep, I'm tired." He went and picked up his smashed phone off the ground and started to hurriedly retreat to the door.
Six spoke up as he was about to walk out though. "Rex, when you're ready to talk, we'll listen."
Rex turned back. "I know. Thank you," he practically whispered as he walked out.
Rex tossed and turned in the bed, he had actually managed to sleep for a few hours, but sleep because illusive around 2 am after he had dreamed that he was back at Providence with Cesar trying to control him with that ray thing again.
Holiday was right he needed to deal with this. He got up and started to walk towards the lab again. He wasn't really expecting anyone to be around or even awake but there was Holiday sitting at a computer looking over some diagrams and Six was sitting on the medical table sharpening his blades. He was almost worried about disturbing them and waited outside the door for a moment, gathering some courage, before walking in, in what he hoped was a casual manner.
They both looked up at him as he wandered in, Six giving him a nod and Holiday a smile as he sat down where he had previously been back at dinner.
Holiday came over and sat with him. "Did you get any sleep? You still look pretty tired."
"A few hours, yeah." There was a pause before he continued in a small voice, "I want to apologize for earlier. I didn't mean to blow up at you guys like that."
"That's alright, Rex. You've been under a lot of stress the past few days, "blowing up" is perfectly normal given the circumstances." Holiday smiled at him and patted his hand softly. "While you're awake, I was going to ask you to look at these diagrams of the current control collars in use. Robo-Bobo was able to get ahold of them a couple days before you came back and Six and I haven't been able to get a good look at them yet, but you got to see the process up close and personal with that EVO worm, right?"
"Yeah, yeah I can look at them." He stood up and tried to discreetly wipe his now sweaty palms on his shorts, though he was positive Six noticed because he notices everything.
"Okay do these look like the correct specs? Robo-Bobo wasn't sure if these were actually the current model."
"Yep that's them."
Six was still at his perch on the medical table, sharpening away, but he was watching the conversation and saw Rex get a little pale as he looked at the diagrams. He wiped his palms again too. He watched Holiday also glance at Rex, so she must have noticed too.
"Are you okay, Rex?" she asked, a glance to Six that time, looking concerned.
"Oh, yeah, I just don't like these things. They can turn them on and off too, so whoever has the remote can choose when to give the EVO any sort of free will, if at all. This shouldn't have been the solution, yeah it's effective, but it's horrible and it's bad enough they'll use them on animals but they do it to the ones that used to be human too!"
"I agree, Rex. I got fired from Providence for being so adamantly against this," Holiday said with a wry smile.
"Wait they fired you? The lead nanite researcher?" Rex asked in disbelief.
"Your brother holds that title now." Six finally stopped sharpening his blades and came over to join them at the monitor. "I quit after that. Things were getting bad, and they were using less and less resources to look for you. I stuck around for a while, trying to gather as much information as possible, but as those collars became used more and more, I couldn't stand to help them do it any longer so I left too. When White told us he was faking his death to get out of there, we ditched everything and went off the grid and prioritized searching for you. We had managed to hack into Providence's communications about a month ago so we heard when you called in. You did a good job taking down that worm EVO, by the way."
"Not much really got said over the comms, how do you know how I did? Wait, were you guys there for that?"
"Live and in person," Holiday said. "We even used old-fashioned binoculars."
"Wow. So are you going to let me take lead on missions now?" Rex asked with a grin in Six's direction.
"I said a good job, not perfect."
Rex stuck his tongue out.
"What happened with the worm exactly? The ray is new; I don't have any specs on it so if you can tell me what you saw? That would be really helpful to see how far Caesar has come along in controlling E.V.O.s."
Rex suddenly got pale and crossed his arms over his chest, taking up that protective stance again. "I can do better than that, Doc. I can tell you exactly how it feels."
Holiday gave a shocked gasp. "Oh Rex, I'm so sorry."
Six put a hand on his shoulder and led them back over to the table so Rex could sit down.
"We saw you hitch a ride under that transport. So you went snooping and got caught?"
"I didn't actually, I just confronted him about it. I was trying to get him to see reason, to understand what he was doing but he kept going on about how much more humane it was than what I do to them. He just brushed me off and said he had work to do so I got mad and was destroying his lab, then Black Knight showed up and told me I shouldn't have gone snooping and, and he just did it. He didn't even have to be told to do it, he was already firing it up on his own. He said it was the 'logical conclusion to what we started'. What does that even mean?"
Rex didn't leave any room for either Holiday or Six to even try to answer, it seemed like once he had started, the floodgates were open and he was going to talk until it was all out. He knew he was kind of rambling and he wasn't sure if what he was saying was even making sense, but he had to get it all out.
"He said he was 'sorry', like that made a difference to what he was doing, and 'that I would thank him later.' It hurt. The ray- it kind of- I don't know how to explain it exactly- it was like it was trying to hijack my nanites, not reprogram them, but just like take over each nanite, and it hurt. I could feel my nanites just shaking inside of me, there was a second there where I thought I wasn't going to be able to fight it off, I just wanted it to stop. But then Cesar said that I needed to 'stop resisting', that it 'only hurts if you struggle' and then they boosted the power because it was 'taking too long' and I knew that I only had a few seconds left- and I don't know I just managed to smash it and high-tailed it out of there. She sicked Mel on me and then all those black pawns- since when are the pawns Six-wannabes anyway- and I was so messed up by the time that I got to the hangar bay you guys were able to get the drop on me so quick it was ridiculous and I just- I thought I was never getting out of there- that I was going to end up this mindless- E.V.O. puppet they could turn on and off whenever they pleased-"
And then Holiday was grabbing his hands, that he hadn't noticed were shaking so bad until now and she said in her best calming voice, "Alright, Rex. Rex, just breathe, it's alright." She waited for him to stop hyperventilating and then said, "Thank you for telling us, you're being very brave right now."
Rex nodded, a bit exhausted from getting it all out there.
"I wouldn't say us getting the drop on you was ridiculous," Six spoke up after a minute. "Given what happened to you, and the fact that providence tends to only have one pilot per jet, you wouldn't have thought to look around you more closely. You did a good job getting to that hangar bay and might have actually succeeded if it weren't for us."
"We didn't originally plan to drug you to get you out of there, Robo Bobo was going to get you to the hangar bay but then we got alerted that the whole base was on a hunt for you so we had to take some drastic measures," Holiday said apologetically. "You made a valiant attempt fighting off the drug though, I'm impressed."
"Yeah, what was that exactly? I've been able to counteract just about any knock out drug in the past."
"It was a very high concentration of what gets used for offloads. I believe you would have been able to fight it off if your nanites hadn't been under so much strain already, plus Six made it harder for you by covering your eyes.
"And how exactly did you get me out of Providence? You shot me and then what?"
"Black Knight turned around to lead the way to the lab and Holiday shot her in the back too," Six said with a slight smile. "She got cocky and thought the only threat in the room was you and with you unconscious she thought she had nothing to worry about."
"Good." It was stated with a bitterness than had previously only been used when Van Kleiss or Hunter Cain was mentioned and it told the adults that, while Rex was better for having talked about his experience, he wasn't going to be healed anytime soon.
There was a pause where no one said anything before Rex spoke up again in an almost timid voice. "Thank you for getting me out of there. And you were right, I needed to talk about this and it helped."
"I'm sorry about what happened with Cesar but Six and I will be here for you no matter what," Holiday said as Six nodded in unison.
"Thanks," Rex said with the most gratitude either of them had ever heard in his voice. "That means a lot to me."
"Think you'll be able to sleep now?"
"I might manage it yeah," he said with a yawn.
"I think we should all get some rest, it's almost five in the morning." Six said. They all headed for the door. Six pulled something out of his pocket. "Here." He thrust a phone into Rex's hands.
"You already got me a new phone?" Rex asked incredulously.
"Your old one had the possibility of being traced by Providence so I was going to pick one up anyway. Don't throw this one at the wall."
"Sir, yes sir!"