A/N: Sorry, the last chapter lied about this chapter's name. I changed it and forgot.
Time tended to blur when someone was in a lot of pain. The pain grew hazy too, until there was nothing but agony and the crawl of each second ticking by. At first, Ben tried to convince himself that it was boring and he was getting used to it, but that wasn't the case. Each new twitch of discomfort built upon what had come before it, up and up with no sign of stopping or coming down. And it was boring after long enough, but also consuming. Despite how desperately he wanted to, Ben was unable to think about anything else. All he could manage was a chant in his head that begged for the pain to stop.
It didn't, of course. Ben didn't expect it to.
The time that passed, alone like that, could have been hours or days or even weeks, for all that Ben noticed. It felt like seconds that dragged on for minutes, building in the same way that his frayed nerves screamed their protest. The noises that he made were inhuman and spine-curling to listen to, but it was better than giving in and pleading for it to stop, so Ben let those sounds out so that he could keep the words in. He felt like he would do just about anything to make it stop.
And then it did. Not because the machine was turning off or moving to a lower intensity — rather, it was because everything below Ben's wrist stopped having any feeling at all. The shock of such pain to a lack of anything at all was enough to snap him out of his haze, even if the rest of his arm was still on fire. Ben tried to move his fingers, hoping to gain a twitch or jerk, but there was nothing. His fingers hung limply out of the end of the manacle. He craned his neck, straining and squinting to try and see what had happened to his wrist, but it was a hopeless effort. There was no blood dripping from the machine's restrains, which Ben hoped was a good thing. He couldn't explain it, but there was an acute sense of wrongness gnawing at his gut.
The worst of the pain became centralized. His arm never stopped hurting — actually, it felt like the pain was creeping up into his chest, making Ben's lungs seize for seemingly no reason — but most of it became background noise. It felt like there was a ring around his wrist, right below where the Omnitrix rested. Ben couldn't feel it anymore, but he knew that it was still there because he could see the sparking Omnitrix core still sticking out.
Bizarrely, the more he focused on the ring of nerve-searing torment around his wrist, the more details Ben could make out about it. For one, it was getting worse. But more importantly, he was growing increasingly sure that it was moving. Inching its way up his arm, millimeter by millimeter, growing outward with every pulse of the machine's nauseating light display.
It was certainly alarming, but not something that Ben could do anything about. That was apparently becoming a trend, though he wished that it wouldn't. Instead of worrying himself about numbness, which was honestly a blessing, Ben tried to make himself seem outwardly composed. He had been in pain before. Nothing so severe or holistic or long-lasting, but pain nonetheless. He just had to school his expression and do his best to force himself through it. Easier said than done, to be sure.
Minutes later (or possibly hours), Murowa returned. She had said that she would, but Ben still couldn't help but be surprised to see her. Apparently, feeding him through an IV was no longer efficient. There wasn't a lot of room on the platform for that clunky machine that had pumped him full of nutrients and filtered his blood anyway. The whole thing felt so convoluted, but maybe Ben was just tired. It seemed like so much work to hold someone captive. Why did anyone bother?
With Ben forcing himself to pay attention though, he finally took notice of the control panel near Murowa's workstation that she was using to open the glass dome that encapsulated him. It slid open sideways, peeling apart, and the gust of sterile oxygen made Ben painfully aware of the ionized air surrounding him. It was hot and stiff, leaving a bad taste in his mouth.
Speaking of bad tastes, Murowa had brought him some sort of grey gruel. She didn't say anything to him, in a hurry but obviously excited if the way she was twitching with energy was any indication. What she was feeling him tasted like if all those nutrients Ben had been getting through an IV were ground up and then mixed with water until they were blended. Which was probably exactly what it was. The only reason that Ben didn't spit it back in his face was because the hunger pains were starting to get worse and he didn't need to willingly make himself hurt even more than he already was. He was fairly certain that, if Murowa was willing to fight Argyle to keep Ben alive, she would force-feed him if she had to.
He choked down the last of it with a grimace on his face and a sticky, unpleasant film left behind on his tongue. If that was what food was going to be, then Ben would prefer the IVs. By the time he lifted his head though, Murowa was already leaving. Ben hesitated to call her but, in the end, curiosity won out.
"Hey!" He shouted. Murowa didn't stop or even turn to look at him, but her head tilted instinctively in his direction, so Ben knew that she was at least listening. "Do you know what's happening to my arm? I— I can't feel my wrist."
That certainly caught her interest. Murowa pivoted neatly in mid-air, hovering in place a good distance away from Ben but staring at him intently nonetheless. "Really?" She trilled, drifting closer. "That's interesting. I had hypothesized such a side effect, yes, but I hadn't anticipated that it would take hold so quickly."
A sudden jolt of electricity shot up Ben's arm, burning and tingling all the way up his arm and down his spine. He shuddered hard. "Can you just—? What are you talking about?"
She waved dismissively, her temporary interest apparently already exhausted. "Oh, it's nothing that you need to concern yourself with. I imagine that it's probably harmless, long term. Unfortunately, it's going to hurt quite a bit if I'm right. I'm very busy right now, so catch my attention once you begin showing symptoms. I'd love to take samples. It will probably be easier to explain once you can see it for yourself."
"Samples?" Not a single part of that sentence had sounded reassuring. Ben lunged toward her, but Murowa had turned away and was making her way toward the exit. "Hey! Get back here and explain this! Symptoms of what?" The door slammed shut behind her with a ringing finality.
Ben let out a groan of annoyance, thrashing his head and tugging insistently at his restraints just to move something. What was happening? Things were finally being explained to him and he still didn't have any answers! Murowa wasn't concerned about whatever the numbness was, but she grinned when she mentioned it "hurting," so it couldn't be good.
The sound of something crashing caused his head to snap up. At first, Ben didn't notice anything out of place. The office-like set-up was exactly as clustered as Murowa had left it and the doors were still locked tightly. He was willing to dismiss it as the machine doing its thing, but a cluster of broken metal shards in the middle of the floor caught his attention. Ben glanced upward, but only saw the hole in the ceiling where the broken camera used to be installed. Because that wasn't suspicious at all.
Unfortunately, nothing else fell or broke, so it was back to the waiting game. And, wow, did Ben hate waiting. Being impatient and in pain was a bad combination. It was so boring. How long was Ben expected to listen to himself cry out from agony without starting to find the noise annoying? Not to say that he wasn't in a lot of pain, because he certainly was, but the whole thing was unbearably monotonous. There was no change, no variety, no break. Just pain and the continuous march of time.
It never really got better, or worse. The only benefit was that Ben at least had something new to focus on — the cut-off point of the ring of pain that was gradually pushing its way up his arm. He could see his fingers twitching occasionally without his permission but still couldn't feel them. Ben was glad that he couldn't feel lower than his wrist, though. Even over the roar of the machine in his ear, he heard when the bone of his wrist snapped, felt the responding pressure of the manacle keeping his hand in place. Instinctively, he winced, though Ben hadn't felt anything. Not in that area, at any rate.
It wasn't too long after that that Ben finally got a look at what was happening to him. From underneath the lip of the manacle, something glittered in the flashing lights. He squinted, straining to get a closer look, and swallowed a shout of pain as a tiny, delicate-looking crystal burst out of his skin.
No, that wasn't quite right. It was more like Ben watched his skin melt and harden, both in under a few seconds, then stretch and strain itself until a peranite shard was growing out of his ulna. Finally knowing what he was supposed to be looking for, Ben could feel it: the discomforting twinge of his nerves shriveling up as the muscle and fat and skin around them hardened to crystal. Those nerves were already dead, though. The ones that weren't were what was causing Ben the most agony. They were cut off every few millimeters, sending the surrounding area into an inflamed and pain-filled fit. Ben felt himself beginning to hyperventilate. God, he recognized what was happening to him.
He had felt this before, every time that he transformed into Diamondhead. Usually, it was so fast that he didn't have time to feel anything more than a twinge of discomfort as not-bone slotted into its new place and peranite wrapped its way around him. He didn't have the luxury for it to be quick. Whether it was a proper transformation or not, that didn't change the fact that Ben's body was turning to crystal — as painfully as possible, it seemed.
The realization of what was happening only made it worse. Ben tugged harder at the wrist clamp than he had ever before and shuddered, biting back a whimper when he heard the steel shriek in protest as he dragged peranite against it. He scrambled for the sense of control, the knowledge that all he had to do was will it and his hand would grow big enough to shatter his restraints, but Ben was left floundering. That sense of power that came with being a Petrosapien wasn't there. And yet, the crystal wouldn't stop growing.
Fuck. That couldn't be good. That was really not good. Ben was one-hundred-percent certain that the Omnitrix was never supposed to make the transformations slow. What if it wasn't a transformation? What if Murowa's energy harnessing or whatever was causing the watch to mutate him? The thought summoned forward flashbacks of Kevin — at age eleven, trapped in alien forms and then forced into a Frankenstein machination of them, at age sixteen, made of steel and crystal and wood, at age seventeen, having it happen again not only once but twice.
Ben was going to be honest with himself — he had no idea if he could handle that. He had always admired that anyone could, that he would be lucky enough to befriend someone as inspiring as Kevin. Always bouncing back, always coming out the other end better, always trying. It took mental fortitude that Ben wasn't sure if he had or not. He didn't want to find out.
He wanted so badly to go home. For it all to be done and over with. The rage was there still, the unbridled fury he felt toward the people who had hurt so many, but beneath the skin-deep outrage was exhaustion that sank deep into his bones. It was so much. Everything was so much. It shouldn't have built up to the point that it had. Why hadn't Ben stopped it? Why couldn't he do better? Why was he right in the heart of their operation and still so useless?
The door to the room slid open, as it so often did when he least wanted company. Ben managed to school the frustration off of his face, but the fear must have still been obvious because Murowa squealed as soon as she saw him and was quickly poking and prodding at his left wrist.
"Fascinating! Oh, the Omnitrix is such a complex device. I could never fully understand it, but I was hoping to get a peek at its machinations anyway!" Murowa trilled, giddy, and darted back over to her work station. She went back to Ben with a set of pliers in one hand and a camera in the other. "Now hold still," she chastised, mocking him. She set her pliers to one of the newly formed crystals and squeezed.
"Wait! Don't—!" Ben tried to warn her off, to absolutely no effect. She twisted the pliers, grinding the peranite embedded in him, and wrenched a gasp from Ben as she yanked it out.
Blood, pink-ish and watery in texture, oozed out and bubbled, fizzling along Ben's skin like soda. He watched, horrified and transfixed, as clear liquid followed after it and burned his wrist, reeking of sulfur. It leaked down the side of his arm, following the curve of Ben's arm, but didn't drip off of him. Instead, it congealed almost like gel. A new crystal had already grown where Murowa had plucked the first one.
Unconcerned, she took a picture and pocketed the shard of peranite. "Invaluable. I could float here and study you all day, Tennyson. Imagine how much I could learn from watching the slow transformation of every one of your aliens."
Actually, Ben did not want to imagine that. He could picture the painful burn of muscle growth and the feeling of new arms breaking through his skin that came with turning into Four Arms. He could see his skin melting, his muscles dissolving, his bones liquifying as he became Goop. He could envision himself shrinking, skin becoming nothing more than a containment suit as his insides turned gradually to oxygen and left him filled with sound as Echo Echo. The thought of having to experience that for every last one of his aliens filled Ben with such an acute sense of dread that he couldn't breathe for a moment.
When Murowa started to float away though, Ben forced himself to focus on her instead. "Hey!" He called after her, voice shakier than he would have liked. For whatever reason, she actually paused and turned to look at Ben. "Are you… What the hell are you doing that's causing this? This— it isn't normal!"
There was an amused twinkle in Murowa's eyes as she moved closer to him once more. "It's not really something that I'm doing," she said after a moment of consideration. "It's more of a side-effect. See, this machine, big and impressive-looking though it is, really only has one function: to trigger the Omnitrix's genetic cloning mechanism and collect that energy to relocate it somewhere more "convenient" for me. Your slow transformation is probably due to the excess energy leaking out. It automatically grafts itself to you to avoid damaging itself or the surrounding area due to radiation. Or, that's my theory for it, anyway."
It was almost impossible to focus on Murowa with his skin turning to peranite right in front of him, but Ben tried. He latched onto something that she had said and ran with it. "That's— that's all that this machine does? Couldn't you clone DNA all on your own?"
Murowa looked appalled by the very idea. "Are you joking, Tennyson? Do you have any idea how difficult that is? Frankly, I'm amazed that Azmuth has it down so perfectly himself. Why do you think your alien transformations always come out ideally? You never get genetic defects or shortcomings that could be associated with DNA. I could certainly clone some of your cells, but could I do it so expertly, so rapidly, or so efficiently? Absolutely not. Don't undersell the Omnitrix, Ben. It's well and truly a scientific marvel. If I wasn't so convinced that I would break it trying, I would take it apart and try to figure out how it works myself." She paused, then added, "Well, that, and I obviously still need you."
"Okay," Ben managed, straining to keep his gaze focused on her. "But why, exactly?"
There was an unimpressed huff as Murowa folded her hands over her chest. "You're awfully slow, Ben. Tell me, why would someone who's been kidnapping Petrosapiens ever have an interest in someone who can essentially mass-produce their DNA?"
Ben's eyes widened. "You mean that you…?" He blinked, shaking his head hard. "No, wait. None of this makes any sense! Why did you need that many people in the first place?"
She gave him a sticky-sweet smile, laced with condescension. "If it's any consolation, Ben, I don't need them anymore. In fact, they're all now dead. We only had a few hundred-thousand left aboard this station, anyway. I think that the total was somewhere around ten million, but most of them haven't been alive for a long time."
Something inside of Ben froze. He stared at Murowa, uncomprehending, for what felt like a long time. Her smile didn't so much as flinch. "... They're all dead?" He breathed. "You killed… ten million people. For what?" His voice didn't sound as hateful and disgusted as he would have liked. It came out almost scared; browbeaten and hollowed. Ben was surprised to find himself shaking, though not from pain nor cold.
"More or less. Ten million might be being generous." Murowa shrugged one shoulder, looking into space somewhere over Ben's shoulder as she considered something. "Oh, but you wanted to know why?" Her attention snapped back to Ben, head tilted curiously. "Well, I can't really show you and it's a rather complex procedure but…" She mashed her hands together, fingers interlocking and squeezing. "Peranite doesn't melt unless under extreme pressure, otherwise, it skips right from solid matter to a gaseous matter. I managed to find a method using the pressure in a star's core to melt and condense the crystal into whatever shape I want."
The blood drained from Ben's face. He felt caught somewhere between fainting and vomiting. "No," he breathed. "You wouldn't. You couldn't just… All of those people, I—"
"Are you surprised?" Murowa arched an eyebrow, unimpressed. "What were you expecting, really? Surely you didn't think that they were all still alive. Did you believe that I had some ethically justified reasoning for genocide?"
The shock evaporated and Ben clenched his jaw so hard that he could have sworn he was tasting blood. "No! Of course not, I—!" He strained for the right words. "I can't believe that anyone could do something so horrible just to turn a profit! There are literally thousands of peranite asteroids that you could've taken from if you were that desperate! So then why—?"
Murowa cut him off with a soft tinkling sound, shaking her head. "You wound me. Please, a little credit, Ben. Genocide wasn't my first option," she said with a giggle. "When the taydenite market crashed two years ago, Argyle was the one to get this operation together. We had been wanting to work together for some time now, but our plans kept falling through. This one did too, at first. We harvested peranite from the surrounding asteroids and comets and the planet's surface, but it wasn't good enough. It was too brittle and too common to be peddled as a taydenite substitute. It wasn't long until other "businessmen" were arriving at this part of the galaxy in an attempt to copy us." Her face twisted into a sneer. "I even tried melting it in a star core, like I mentioned. The results were discolored and brittle — completely worthless. It was Diavik who first got me pondering: "why is it that Petrosapiens have consciousness and their planet does not?" Well? What do you think, Tennyson?" She pressed, smug.
It was hard to see past the red blurring in his vision. Ben almost snarled. "I don't care about your fuc—!"
"When I looked into it, the answer really became quite simple!" She cut him off with a flourish. "It's because Petrosapiens are made of a fundamentally different material than simply the surface of their planet. I named them distinctly: the mere rock, I called peranite-A, and the kind that allows consciousness, I called peranite-B. And for the record—" Murowa grinned sharply, "—I didn't start from genocide there, either. Our first experiment was on an animal. Surely you've noticed how quiet the wildlife has been recently, haven't you?"
That gave Ben pause, holding him still long enough for a fresh wave of horror to crest. "Wait. You're telling me that you also—? All of their natural wildlife?" He gaped. Something had short-circuited. Ben was struggling to wrap his mind around it. So much needless destruction. So many lives lost.
How much of it could he have prevented?
"Most of it. I'm sure that a good number over their native species are now extinct, but I wouldn't be able to tell you. I wasn't taking a survey." Murowa fluttered up near his head, brushing dust all over Ben's face and shoulders in the process. He did his best not to breathe it in, but found his body relaxing despite himself. "Do you see why I'm so thankful to have you, Ben? It was a long and tedious process, drugging the water supply and waiting for those Petrosapiens to get sick enough that they no longer presented a threat to me. Not to mention having to gather them without rousing too much suspicion, then the nightmare of transportation and containment! You are so much more compact and efficient."
Something shifted in the corner of Ben's eye. He only spared a glance before violently lurching his head in the opposite direction and slamming his eyes shut tight. He remembered what he had seen the last time that Murowa sprinkled pixie dust on him. He didn't need a repeat performance, especially not with his parents. Oh, God…
"How are you doing that?" Ben asked through clenched teeth, fumbling for a distraction. "I thought that you… that Nemuinas could only influence dreams."
Murowa clicked her tongue chastizingly. He heard her fluttering around him but refused to look. "My, what a narrow-minded way to view the world! I know that you've been a Nemuina before, Ben. You must have some inkling as to what the benefit for this is." She paused. He could almost hear the frown in her voice when she continued without receiving a reply. ""Dream" is a very loose term, especially across languages. What you perceive as the waking world, I perceive as a reality waiting to be augmented. My limit only goes so far when you're awake, but it's enough to influence thoughts and feelings. Our kind can't feed when we're awake, though. That's the drawback to unlimited power over our victims: when we pray into their dreaming minds to feed, we dream as well, leaving ourselves vulnerable. Hallucinations are useful for subduing, though it lacks any other benefits. Or weakness."
Everything that Murowa was saying was meaningless to Ben, but he was grateful for the distraction almost despite himself. He did sort of know what she was talking about. Being Pesky Dust was such a struggle, like there was something dark and power-hungry lurking at the back of his mind and it was only Ben's stubbornness that kept tapping it back down. He hated being that alien, not because he thought it looked stupid or was weak, but because it made it so tempting. Why stop at finding out a person's worst fear? He had access to their entire head when he was in someone's dream. Their hopes, their desires, their secrets… He could rake all of it out as slowly or painfully as he wanted, or he could pluck it as daintily as a flower and his victim would never remember having that thought at all.
But that was the thing that Ben hated: his victim. It made him feel vile. He didn't want victims, not for anything.
A dainty, gloved hand patted Ben on the cheek. "You can open your eyes," Murowa cooed, amused. "I've made the scary visions go away. You know, Ben, if it weren't for our positions, I would say that you and I are very alike."
He cracked an eye open, sparing a glance around, but it seemed that Murowa was telling the truth. The hallucinations were gone so he focused back on her. "Yeah? How so?"
Maybe she had only said that to have Ben's attention focused on her again. Murowa flew circles around his head, chirring — not happily, but some emotion that Ben couldn't describe with alien noises alone. "We're both often underestimated, wouldn't you say, Ben?" He couldn't twist his head all the way around to follow her, so Ben glared at her as his eyes tracked her from one end of his vision to the other. "We're both resourceful and clever under pressure. We both have horrible and cruel thoughts, except that you don't like to let yours out, do you?" She cooed.
Ben stiffened. "What? No, I don't— Saying that I'm going to make you pay isn't the same thing as killing millions! I'm a hero, I'm not— I can't be—" He bit his tongue to quiet himself. All he was doing by protesting was making Murowa's grin widen.
"Tell yourself whatever you like, Ben. You can't hide things from me." Murowa suddenly came to a stop. For emphasis, she rubbed her fingers together and let golden dust drift lovingly to the ground. "I may not be able to feed off of you while you're hallucinating, but that doesn't mean that I can't see inside your head. I didn't even have to look deep, Ben." She tisked, mockingly disappointed. "You say you're a hero, but have you actually helped anyone since you arrived on Petropia, Ben? But it's been all that you've been thinking about! Saving people this, helping people that… But nothing to show for it. Is that one of those funny lies you tell yourself? That you want to help people? To help ease the guilt that inevitably bubbles up when you can't?" There was a malicious glimmer in her eyes. "Or won't?"
Anger flashed in his chest, harsh and consuming. Ben lunged futility toward her. She didn't so much as flinch — that grin on her face was practically becoming imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. "Shut up!" He shouted. "You don't know what you're talking about! I help people, I save them! I'm a hero! All I ever want to do is help people."
"Yes. So you have something to fall back on when your black-and-white morality falters," Murowa chided. She waved her hand idly. "I've read your file, Ben. I suppose that it was justified when you planned to kill your best friend. I understand. What's one life to countless others? Oh, but I wonder how the victims of the Highbreed genocide would feel if you said that to their faces? Or what about that planet in the throes of a civil war that you did nothing but aggravate? I'm sure that you helped all of those people, Ben."
He stared, uncomprehending, indignation washed away as easily as she had summoned it. "I…" Ben sagged in his restraints, looking somewhere over her shoulder. "Those were… accidents. Mistakes. I didn't— I mean, I… I never wanted to hurt anyone," he muttered.
It sounded like such a weak excuse.
"And what if you did?" Murowa hissed. At some point, she'd gotten behind him. Her hands were on his shoulders, voice right up against his ear while the machine rattled in the other. Funny. The pain that Ben had been fighting so hard to ignore seemed to fade when she demanded to have his full attention. "Does your intention really matter, Ben? Does the morality of your actions matter at all? You'll never please everybody. Someone is going to be hurt, no matter how many others you claimed to have saved. There are claims that you've created the universe. Does it weigh heavily on you? In a way, all of the awful, terrible things that others do are only possible because you created them. You've allowed it to continue. Tell me, Ben, when you're that powerful, when you're all but a god, do the consequences of your actions matter in the slightest? We all end up dead eventually, anyway. Even you."
Letting out a shaky breath, Ben closed his eyes and bowed his head. "What are you even talking about?" He asked, mind spinning.
She laughed, taunting as though he was a ridiculous child for asking, and gave Ben's shoulders a squeeze before pulling away entirely. "Philosophical ponderings and rambling nonsense, I suppose. You've given me a lot to think about in the last seven years, Ben Tennyson. Sometimes it seems that you're all this galaxy can manage to talk about."
The further away she was, the easier it was for Ben to think clearly. He averted his eyes from Murowa, scowling at the ground instead. How much of his thoughts were his own? Was anything that Ben felt actually his genuine emotions? Hallucinations didn't have to be just things that he saw. Something that she did made his mind palpable and Ben hated the way she prodded and goaded him like it was a game.
After a moment, Ben lifted his head to stare at her. He did his best to keep his expression passive, though he knew that the underlying anger was still there. He couldn't look at Murowa or Argyle and not feel irrationally furious. "The answer to all of your questions is "shut up" and "I don't care." It doesn't matter what you or anyone else thinks about morality. It matters what I think. And I think that I'm going to keep trying to do my best, even if it sometimes backfires." He narrowed his eyes. "And also, that you're sick in the head and going back to jail."
He didn't bother staring long enough to gain her reaction. Ben didn't care about that, either. He looked away stubbornly, fixing his gaze on the far wall. Whatever Murowa was going on about, he knew that he disagreed. Maybe the doubts in his head were his, or maybe she had planted them there, but either way, they were wrong. No matter what, Ben knew that he was a hero. That was one thing that would never change.
"Oh, fine." Murowa huffed. "Keep your close-minded view of morality, then. I have business associates to get in contact with, anyway."
Without another word, she left. It was sort of funny — Ben had thought that his ability to ignore the pain was some sort of hallucination trick, but there was no rush as the agony returned full-force. Almost as though he was doing it all on his own.
Still, that didn't stop the crystal from spreading. There was nothing to do but watch, so Ben did, equal parts horrified and hopeless. He hoped that it wasn't permanent. He could see the peranite creeping up to his fingers on the end of his hand, thankful that he couldn't feel below his wrist. Then again, the only reason that he couldn't feel was because there was a block of solid peranite where the nerves allowing him to move his fingers were supposed to be connected. The growth was about halfway to the crease of his elbow on the other end of his arm. Maybe it was Ben's imagination, but it almost looked to be spreading faster than before.
A loud clatter attracted Ben's attention and his gaze snapped up to the air vent on the ceiling. The grate had been forced out, lying in a twisted heap on the ground far below. Ben blinked dumbly at it, confused. First the camera that had fallen from the ceiling and now part of the air vent. Was the station falling apart?
Something flashed in the vent shaft and that was the only warning that Ben got before an emerald-colored mass dropped. The ground ruptured beneath whatever it was, snapping the broken vent grate into several pieces. It wasn't until the crystal moved and Ben noticed a black body-suit that he recognized who he was looking at.
"Patience?" He couldn't keep the shock out of his voice. The rebellion leader looked calm and furious, stalking toward Ben with intent in her eyes. His last memory of her was how she had ruined their fight with Argyle by selfishly trying to glory-kill him herself, so Ben wasn't all that eager to see her. He rolled his eyes. "If you're here for Argyle, he's not here right now, obviously. And I don't know where he is either, so even though that stunt looked pretty badass, I think it's going to turn out to be a pretty massive waste of—"
Ben was cut off by a peranite blade being pressed to his throat. His breath caught, eyes wide — not with fear, but surprise. It widened at the end, bottoming out at Patience's elbow to fade back into her upper arm. The look on her face was severe. "Do you think," she said slowly, "that I spent all that time disabling his cameras just to break into a room that Argyle wasn't in? Don't insult me, Tennyson. For some reason, I'm here for you."
She brought the blade down hard on his right manacle before he could tell her to be careful. Automatically, Ben recoiled, expecting blood and a missing limb. When there was nothing, he hesitantly opened one eye. It was a bigger relief than he wanted to admit to see that his hand was still attached. Patience had left a red welt across his wrist from the force she used, but it triggered the release mechanism and he slid his hand out without issue.
The other one wasn't so easy, but Patience didn't seem to care that Ben had a giant machine sucking Omni-energy from his watch. She repeated the same process as before, narrowly avoiding slamming down the popped-open core. Ben wasn't sure if he wanted to try to finish the transformation or not. He got the sick feeling that it wouldn't help.
A part of him expected the machine to blow up once Ben was no longer strapped in, but all that happened was that the noise and lights gradually faded as the whirring gyros slowed. Without a constant power source, the device shut itself down and was functionally useless.
Before Ben could enjoy not being restrained again, Patience had smoothed her hand back to normal and set it on his shoulder, yanking him up roughly. "There's no time for that," she snapped. "If they didn't notice when I took out the cameras, they will definitely notice that I removed the source of their income. We need to go, now."
The mention of what Murowa had admitted to earlier made Ben shudder. His mouth went dry. "How much of that conversation did you hear?"
Over her shoulder, Patience shot him a look that was almost pitying. It quickly turned brittle. "Pretty much all of it. Now shut up for five minutes and let me get your ass out of here. Be cooperative for once, for both our sakes."
She stopped underneath the vent that she came from, tugging Ben closer and focusing her other hand on the ground. With a shove of effort, a peranite platform ripped free of the steel beneath their feet and shot up into the air. Unsteady on his feet, the sudden motion almost knocked Ben over, but the hand on his arm kept him stable and balanced. They couldn't fit into the vent together, so Patience shoved him in first before pulling herself up. Behind them, Ben could hear peranite shifting and assumed that she lowered the platform again. He didn't know what it would do to help — it would be pretty clear at a single glance that someone had broken him out regardless.
Silent, Patience shooed Ben forward. He thought about hanging back just to spite her and demanding answers about what was happening and why, but putting distance between him and Murowa sounded a lot nicer. He did what she said, shuffling forward through the dark. Occasionally, Patience would nudge him to get him to turn, but other than that, they carried on in silence. Whatever had possessed her to help Ben out obviously hadn't done much to help her overall attitude toward him.
He wasn't sure how long they were on the move. Everything was still sort of fuzzy, but maybe that was because Ben couldn't feel the lower half of his arm and everything beneath his shoulder was throbbing. He got the feeling that this wasn't healthy. If his arm had just been solidly turned into crystal, then it should have fallen off and left a clean stump. The fact that it hadn't implied that it was fading into his arm, nerves and blood and tendons blending somewhere with the peranite. He didn't know what exactly was going on with his arm, just that it hurt and crawling around wasn't helping.
Eventually, they did stop. Patience suddenly yanked on his foot to get Ben to pause, then punched out the grate between them. Beneath was a room shrouded in darkness, but he let her drop first and, when it didn't sound like a long fall, steadied himself and followed.
The only light was the red glow of the Omnitrix. Apparently, it had cycled itself into recharge mode, which Ben had mixed feelings about. Getting energy siphoned off like that couldn't have been easy on the battery, but were there going to be side-effects from being mid-transformation and having the Omnitrix off? It meant that they wouldn't be tracked because it wasn't giving off enough energy to be located, but while it meant that Murowa and Argyle couldn't find him, it meant that no one else could, either.
Next to him, Patience shifted and walked somewhere across the room, muttering to herself. Ben let her go without comment. He sighed and ran his good hand through his hair, laying back and staring blankly up at the darkened ceiling. For whatever reason, he felt empty, like someone had scraped out his insides with a melon baller. He wanted to be done with the whole situation that he found himself in, but he knew that it wasn't going to be that easy. There was still so much that he had to fix before he could allow himself to rest. Assuming that he would even be allowed to, of course.
A light was flicked on and Ben squinted against the sudden brightness. He shielded his eyes and turned his head to look, unimpressed, at Patience. She was stalking back over to him, looking no less pleased. But there was something different on her face, too. Something that he hadn't seen before. Almost like… resignation?
Standing over him, Patience said nothing, so Ben took it upon himself. He waved his left wrist pointedly, brandishing where peranite almost seemed to be growing from the Omnitrix. "This happened," he said. He wasn't sure why. Just to talk about it, maybe.
Patience arched an eyebrow. "So it did," she hummed. Nothing changed in her expression, but she knelt down and took Ben's hand, examining his wrist more closely. "Is this going to be a problem? I didn't break you out just for you to tell me that you're useless."
The situation wasn't funny, but Ben huffed out a laugh. "Are you sure? I could have sworn that you did it out of nothing but the kindness of your heart."
He sat up, taking in his surroundings with a disinterested roaming of his eyes. It wasn't anything special, only another military-esque bunk room. Everything was toppled on its side, giving the appearance that a tornado had torn through.
Ben hummed softly, taking his wrist back from Patience. He ran his good fingers over the sharp crystal growth, staring ahead of him at nothing. He swallowed thickly. "I don't know what's going on. I feel… I don't even know. Overwhelmed, maybe? I can't feel my arm. I just can't…" He struggled for a moment, then shot a searching look at Patience. "Do you have a plan? I can't even think right now."
For a moment, Patience almost looked sympathetic. She gave Ben a considering look and stood up with a sigh. Gently — which, considering that she was made of peranite, was not all that gentle — she nudged Ben in the side with her food. "Pick yourself up off the floor and stop being so pathetic. We have a job to do, Tennyson. Are you seriously going to let this stop you? I thought that you were better than that."
There was a flare of anger and indignation in his chest that quickly fizzled out. Ben couldn't bring himself to be furious. Still, he shook his head at her. "Is this your idea of a pep talk? It's not very encouraging."
"I don't give pep talks." Patience snorted as though offended by the idea.
With a roll of his eyes, Ben nonetheless climbed to his feet. "Yeah, I can tell," he muttered loudly enough for her to hear.
He looked down at his clothes with a grimace. When was the last time he showered? He felt grungy. His borrowed clothes were too big to fit properly and they were torn and covered in his own blood. At least the wound in his side had been fixed, not that it did much to help out in his current situation.
"Shut up, Tennyson" snapped Patience, lacking any of the usual heat behind her words. Her expression faltered before smoothing out into her typical scowl. It looked dishonest, somehow. "Like it or not, we've got a job to do. I thought that you liked being the hero. Don't tell me that a little pain and some philosophical babbling from the craziest bitch this side of Orion's belt is enough to make you give up." Something in her tone was needy, almost begging, "Not now. Please."
Heaving out a tired sigh, Ben deflated, shoulders slumped. "No. I don't know. I'm not giving up or anything, I'm just… I'm so tired. In general. I want all of this to be over already." He tapped the Omnitrix dial impatiently, but there was no response. It was, for all intents and purposes, dead. With nothing to fiddle with, Ben started idly tugging at his shirt hem. The throbbing in his left arm was getting more insistent. He closed his eyes. "You know what? Never mind. You're right. There's work to do, people to save, so… Tell me what I missed while I was kidnapped for the second time. Has anything changed?"
Patience looked far from convinced. The smile on her face was more like a grimace, and for once, Ben didn't think that it was directed at him. "Well, the attack to knock out the generator caused a chain-reaction that killed most of the engines, too. We've been barely moving, but I've been listening in on Argyle's conversations with that Nemuina and we're nearing a station that will be useful for getting the parts they need. Obviously," she snorted, "we should do what we can to prevent them from reaching that point."
A simple, straightforward plan. Knock the engines out. Contact the Plumbers. Ben wasn't sure how he would fair with an arm made of peranite, but at least he wasn't bleeding out anymore. He only had two tasks. He could handle that.
At the very least, he was going to have to.
Nodding, Ben stuck his right hand out for Patience to shake. "I don't like you, and you don't like me. But right now, we're all that each other's got. I'd rather do this with you than without if you're willing to put aside our differences and do this right," he offered.
She eyed his hand like it was something distasteful, sending Ben a sharp look. "What part of "I risked my life to save your ass," made you think that I wasn't willing to work together?" But she took hold of his hand anyway, shaking firmly before dropping it.
Despite himself, Ben smiled. At least one thing was turning in his favor. "In that case," he said, "it's so hero time."
A/N: Finally, Ben is back in the driver's seat! Hopefully, he can stay that way long enough to save the day this time.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Mutually Assured Destruction
