In collaboration with glorifiedscapegoat.
"You're bleeding."
Nezumi glanced up from the bucket of spades he had been glaring at. The bucket and its contents had not offended him in any way; they just happened to be what was in his sightline as he dissociated over catastrophe in the alley.
After he and Shion had left the no-name town and its antagonists behind, Nezumi had led them into the woods. His first instinct was always to bolt for the woods and hide amongst its shadows. If anyone asked, he would reason it was because it was easier to hide your trail when you're off the beaten path. But if Nezumi really dug into it, he knew it was because he was most comfortable in the woods. He had grown up isolated, deep in the trees in his family's cabin. To him, the woods meant privacy and safety, and they were as close to a home as he would ever get until Horizon Labs was blown off the map.
He and Shion were currently hunkered down in someone's cabin shed, deep in the heart of the forest. The small, cramped space boasted a wall of rusted tools, several mountains of mildewy rags, and cobwebbed windows complete with fat-bottomed spiders. Nezumi hoped Shion wasn't afraid of creepy crawlers, because there were dark shadows near the ceiling and door that skittered silently lower from time to time.
"I have a first aid kit in my bag," Shion said, finally moving his searching gaze from Nezumi's face.
Shion pulled his backpack toward himself. It cleared an uneven trail in the grimy, dust-coated floor. He opened a small, silver first aid kit, pulled out some gauze and disinfectant, and offered them to Nezumi.
"Clean your chin. Does your head hurt? You didn't bite your tongue, did you?"
The alcohol burned as Nezumi pressed the wetted gauze to his chin, but he suffered the discomfort without so much as a flinch. An abrasion like this was nothing; he had sewn stitches into his skin before. Nezumi stared down at the gauze when he was finished. The murky light in the shed made the bloodstains look black.
"Your knuckle is cut too." Shion reached for Nezumi's hand, and Nezumi snatched it back.
Shion flinched. His empty hands curled on his lap and Nezumi swallowed. He meant to keep Shion at arms length, but every time Nezumi pulled away and Shion's face fell, guilt gnawed at his insides. He didn't know what to do about it. Keeping his distance from others had never made him feel guilty before.
It's not my fault, growled Nezumi's rational mind. He chose to come with me. I did nothing wrong bringing him into this mess, and I don't need to be his friend.
But lately doubt had begun whispering through the logic, slipping into the hesitations like skips in an oft-played record.
Nezumi wished Shion would stop looking at him like he was now.
Shion's dark eyes pooled the low light, making them look larger, deeper, more insistent. Since they'd settled in the shed to gather their bearings, Shion's mouth had arranged itself into a small, tight line of uncertainty, or perhaps concern. Either way, Nezumi didn't like it. He didn't like being studied. It meant he was seen, and Nezumi preferred to be a blur in people's day to day.
Shion, however, seemed determined to figure him out: a few questions here, a concerned look there, plucking at Nezumi's threads one at a time, trying to find the one that would unravel the mess of him. Shion seemed to think he was a puzzle box, seemed to believe if he only twisted the right piece in the right way, Nezumi would come apart, all his inner workings exposed, the mystery revealed. But Nezumi felt more like a sinkhole: one careless poke and the gaping pit caved inward, deepened, and in his worst moments, the darkness swallowed the people nearest to him whole.
The Lab was the origin of that darkness. It followed Nezumi close as a shadow and blackened everything around him. And now it reached its crooked fingers out to brush Shion, and Nezumi realized with cold horror what it meant to be responsible for someone else. Whether he acknowledged Shion as his friend or not did not change the fact that Shion was with him now, and any danger that befell Nezumi was Shion's to face as well.
He saved me.
The big man had him laid out on the ground, and his partner had a gun. If it weren't for Shion's intervention, that could have been it for him. Shion's powers had chosen to cooperate when they needed them most, but if they didn't figure out how to unlock them on command, next time they might not be so lucky.
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want this. Nezumi's heart ached with regret, but there was nothing he could do but move forward and hope he and Shion would continue to survive.
Nezumi cleared his throat. "Good job with the agents. That was quick thinking."
Shion's dark eyes bored into his. The look demanded something of him. Nezumi shifted uncomfortably.
"Thank—"
"Why didn't you use your powers on them?"
Nezumi's mouth hung open, the aborted 'thank you' dangling on the tip of his tongue. "I couldn't. They had scramblers in."
"Scramblers?"
"They're a kind of earpiece. They give off a low frequency, and it interferes with my ability. I can't use my power on agents that wear them."
Shion's mouth pulled down at the corners, clearly displeased.
He hadn't mentioned this limitation to Shion before? Nezumi's cheeks heated, and he rubbed the back of his neck to distract from the mortification. His hair had come loose during the fight, and apparently, he had lost his hair tie in the aftermath. He collected his hair into a single coil and pulled it over his shoulder to keep it from dragging in the dust and spiderwebs along the walls.
"You need to answer my questions."
Nezumi's eyes snapped to Shion's. "In regards to?"
"Everything."
"Everything?" Nezumi arched an eyebrow. "I think you overestimate my knowledge, Shion. Though I am flattered."
Shion's brow twitched and an invisible force shoved Nezumi against the wall. It didn't hurt, and the pressure was only there long enough to bump his head against the wood before retreating, but Nezumi coughed once in surprise.
"I don't want to joke and I don't want to argue with you," said Shion. Nezumi had never heard such command in his voice before, and for once his mind could supply no pithy retorts. Nezumi sat still and silent as Shion continued. "You need to explain Horizon Labs to me and why you hate them so much."
An element of accusation lay in the hard, flat tone of Shion's voice. Nezumi's heart spasmed. "Don't tell me you believed the garbage that agent told you."
"Would I be here if I did? But part of what he said resonated with me."
Nezumi's mouth clamped shut. Shion sighed, and the criticism faded from his expression. His next words were soft and hesitant.
"I went into this journey basically blind. I just…took everything you said at face value, because I knew that whoever those people were who came to my mom's bakery, they weren't good people. I wanted to believe that if I had to have these powers, and if I had to leave my life behind, that I would be doing something to make up for it.
"But, Nezumi... I barely know anything more now than I did four days ago. I don't know how to control my powers, I don't understand why the Lab is after us, and we were just attacked!"
Nezumi forced himself to keep eye contact with Shion, but he couldn't quite keep his breathing in order. That unfamiliar, but growing steadily more familiar, guilt returned full force.
Shion raked his teeth over his bottom lip. "So, I need to know, Nezumi. I need you to explain to me what we're doing and why we're doing it, because I want to be able to take your side without having to doubt again."
Nezumi frowned. He glanced down at the soiled gauze he still held in his hand. Take my side? And Shion's face was so earnest. It was bizarre, and a little corny. But…
"What do you want to know?" Nezumi said to the floor.
"Start from the beginning. How did the Lab find you?"
Nezumi almost laughed, and in fact, after a few breaths of holding it in, he did laugh. It was a low, mirthless sound, and Shion looked as uncomfortable upon hearing it as Nezumi felt. Nezumi's laughter trailed off to a dry cough when he inhaled too much dusty air.
"Nezumi…?"
"S'fine," he muttered. "How did the Lab find me. Heh. Well, to answer that I'd have to tell you about my family, wouldn't I?"
Shion canted his head at the bitterness in Nezumi's voice. "You can talk around it, if it makes you uncomfortable."
"It's impossible. They're where it all started."
Was he really going to do this? He talked to precisely no one about his family. Then again, until Shion, there had been no one to tell. Nezumi didn't want to reminisce for the sake of satisfying Shion's curiosity, but he had seen the momentary doubt on Shion's face when the Lab agent ran his mouth about Nezumi's motives. If he and Shion were going to work together—fight together—they needed to trust each other implicitly. Their lives were on the line, and Shion needed to understand the nature of the monster they faced.
"My parents were part of the first trials." A weight settled over him as the words left his mouth, but Nezumi pushed on. "I'm not sure whether the test subjects were volunteers or forced into it—they never talked about that part—but back then, the Lab's goal was to create 'super soldiers.' The idea isn't terribly original, but I suppose their approach was…."
Shion nodded, a little hesitantly, as if he was afraid of showing too much interest. "What were your parents' powers? If I can ask?"
The corner of Nezumi's mouth curved up. "Papa had shark teeth and Mama could control the weather. When they argued, it was like watching a run of Sharknado."
Shion's eyebrows raised the appropriate degree to convey both amusement and surprise, and Nezumi chuckled dryly. "Anyway… An older woman who worked at Horizon Labs helped them and a few others escape. Your dad among them, I suppose. They never went into detail how, but it doesn't really matter.
"The old woman and my mom were close, so she stayed with them when they found a cabin up in the middle of nowhere to hide, and eventually, live. I grew up there, and for the first few years, I didn't know anything about the Lab, or that having powers was abnormal. I thought the old woman was my weird dud grandma; she made me call her Grandma, and my parents played along. But when I turned five or six and started asking to come with my dad on errands, they finally told me a bit about the Lab, so I would know to be careful of strangers in town."
Nezumi paused. The shed seemed so much smaller than before, so much darker. Shion's large brown eyes looked like blackholes. He hadn't so much as twitched since Nezumi dived into the abbreviation of his home life. It was possible he hadn't breathed either.
Shion could sense the twist coming.
Nezumi raised his gaze to the clouded window at the opposite end of the shed. He wet his lips. "I think it was the trips to town that tipped the Lab off, but who really knows. What matters is that the Lab found us."
Nezumi didn't let himself think about that day in his waking hours. The memory was an ever-present ache, a bruise he could only look at askance. But the details of it visited him in nightmares.
His father's shout of horror. The way the bright summer sun blotted out from the sky like a fist had closed over it. The sudden maelstrom called by his mother's fear, snow and rain beating against the windows, the thunder that rattled the wood like the terrified bellows of a mighty beast. His mother's trembling voice as she told him to get under the bed and stay there and be quiet, please please stay quiet whatever you hear. The bodies, riddled with holes. Their eyes: staring blankly at the living room ceiling; down the hallway; at the bloodspattered mail a foot from her nose.
"They killed the old woman first, but no one knew it; I didn't find her body until after. So when they broke down the front door, it was a complete surprise." Nezumi's voice came out steady, as if the details meant nothing to him, as if the wound was properly scarred over. But the truth was he had gone numb. "My father held them off while my mother carried me to the back of the house. I hid under the bed and she guarded the door. My mom's powers weren't the best inside, but she managed to take down a few agents before they shot her in the hall."
Nezumi's mouth twisted as the memory lanced through him. When the bullet punched through his mother's chest it hardly made a sound, but Nezumi saw the impact, and it stung as if he had been pierced too.
Shion's face crumpled in pain. He looked as though he might say something, so Nezumi barreled on, desperate to finish the story and be done with this moment.
"I don't think the Lab intended to kill them, but my parents… They were fighters." Nezumi's mouth twitched, but it was more grimace than smile. "What I know about Horizon Labs and its experiments have been collected rumors and accounts twisted out of agents' mouths, but I believe all of them, because I know this one hard fact: My parents would rather die than go back to that place."
Shion swallowed. He dropped his gaze to the floor and said nothing for a loaded moment. "How did you escape?"
Nezumi narrowed his eyes. Shion's voice was thick, as if he were barely holding back tears. The sound made Nezumi's insides feel hot and snarled. Furious. How could Shion be close to tears? He hadn't been there, he didn't see the things Nezumi saw. The loss wasn't his to mourn. How dare he cry when Nezumi's voice wouldn't even wobble?
"When the agents found me, they tried to lure me out like I was some idiot child," Nezumi spat. "Like I didn't just watch them murder my mother. I knew the basics of my powers then. I told them to forget me and get the fuck out."
The reality was less self-possessed. Nezumi's face had been burning, his chin dripping with snot and tears. His voice had trembled and cracked when he commanded the agents to forget they saw him and to leave the house and never return. But his grief and terror sent the order through their minds like a shockwave. It was almost as frightening to see every face fall slack in unison, to watch them turn like wooden soldiers and march lockstep out of the house into the snow.
"I'm…" Shion's breath shuddered. "I'm sorry."
Nezumi folded his arms over his chest and turned his face away, as if he would stop hearing the heartbreak in Shion's voice if he didn't have to see his desolate expression.
"That's… How could they do that? I thought they wanted us alive?"
"Because that's who they are, Shion. The Lab doesn't see us as humans; we're an idea to them. A pet project that they only tolerate so long as we obey their orders. They don't want to help us—they want to use us. And if they can't do that, they kill you. Do you understand now?"
"I'm sorry," Shion repeated, and this time it sounded like he was apologizing for more than Nezumi's childhood trauma.
Nezumi glanced at him. Shion still looked pained, but there was a harder edge to the shine in his eyes.
Shion sucked in a breath. "I know you didn't want to tell me, but I'm glad you did. I needed to understand your side, because... Because I know you, Nezumi. Not as well as I hope to, but enough to know you wouldn't hate with no reason—and you have more than enough reason. And what I've seen of the Lab myself, I don't like. They hurt people who stand in their way."
Shion's mouth twisted to the side and he straightened. "I know I said this before, but now I really do mean it. I want to help you take down Horizon Labs."
Dust motes drifted between them in the wan morning light as they stared into each other's eyes. The ice that had seeped into Nezumi's veins was thawing, and a slow burning fire was rising in its place. He had been fighting Horizon Labs for so long, fantasizing about tearing it down—brick by brick, agent by agent if he had to, because that was all he could manage alone.
But he wasn't alone anymore. Shion's eyes flared with conviction, and for the first time in nine years, Nezumi felt hopeful. He felt powerful.
"Well then," Nezumi said, his voice a little rough around the edges, "we better start training more. Revolutions don't run on dreams alone."
Shion smiled. "Nor on wounded soldiers. So would you please let me…." He trailed off as he leaned in.
"Hey, what're you...?" Nezumi pressed himself back against the wall.
Shion huffed and leveled a beleaguered look at him. "I just want to put this bandage on your chin. You're still dribbling blood and it's annoying me, so sit still."
Nezumi clenched his jaw, but he let Shion press the bandage to his chin. This was a mistake, because Shion next demanded he be allowed to swab Nezumi's knuckles with disinfectant, and whined so belligerently about it that Nezumi was forced to concede in order to shut him up.
"You do know I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself?" Nezumi rumbled as Shion wrapped his knuckle with a tight, neat line of gauze and tape.
"I do know. But I'm here now, and I think you deserve a break." Shion smiled at him. "Don't you?"
Nezumi blinked. That was all he did, because he could think of nothing to say in response.
Shion gave Nezumi's bandaged knuckle an accomplished pat. "All done. So, should we get moving? Or do you want to stay here tonight?"
"We should…" Nezumi scrunched his face at his brain's continued sluggishness. He dug his thumb nail into his palm until the sting brought his wits back. "We should move again. Somewhere much farther, and away from any other towns."
Shion nodded as he slipped the first aid kit back into the backpack. "Alright. Let's eat these," he murmured, pulling a few squished granola bars from his pockets, "and then we can head out."