Collaboration with Glorifiedscapegoat.

FROM: ishikawa

TO: rashi

SUBJECT: VC-221

Marked as Highly Important!

Dear Officer Rashi,

It is with deep regret that I find myself composing this message. I have been over most of the audio and video recordings in the last three days, and have spoken to our infirmary team regarding VC-221. While the injuries inflicted upon him were in no way life-threatening, it has been determined through a rather thorough investigation conducted by both myself and Chief Officer Masahiro that they were inflicted without just cause.

The fact of the matter is: you went overboard, Rashi. Plain and simple. We have in our possession several complaints made in the past few weeks regarding your sector and the treatment of VC-221. The amount of resources and time that went into acquiring this specimen far outweigh whatever petty rivalry you seem to believe the two of you have.

After thorough discussions with the medical team and Chief Officer Masahiro, we have come to the decision that VC-221 will be removed from your sector and relocated effective immediately.

I have scheduled a meeting between the three of us for this upcoming Monday, 9 AM. Please be advised that any irrational decisions made within the next few days will be taken as an act of retaliation and will be taken up the chain as needed.

Regards,

Ishikawa Hoshitake

⁂

Nezumi hadn't returned to his cell in Section M. For the past three days, he'd been dozing on and off in the infirmary. The brilliant LED lights peppered along the ceiling dimmed and brightened at regular intervals, giving Nezumi the first sense of time he'd had since arriving at Horizon Labs.

He didn't remember what happened after Rashi knocked him unconscious with the buzz baton, but he'd been told, by the creepy doctor in the white lab coat and a skittish intern who didn't like to be in the room with Nezumi alone, that Rashi had kicked him in the face, the ribs, and the stomach after he'd collapsed to the ground. Rashi had continued to kick him until he'd been stopped by another surge of guards who responded to the video footage of Rashi beating Nezumi senseless.

Nezumi didn't remember the incident, but the bruises marring his body confirmed their story. There was a deep, purpling bruise on his cheek and below his eye. His right side burned as if one of his ribs had been cracked at best, broken at worst―if it had, Lab Coat hadn't told him about it―and his legs ached.

He hadn't felt this bad since the day he woke up in the Lab.

Nezumi stared up at the ceiling. On the outside, he appeared calm and calculated, the subservient puppet the Lab expected him to be. On the inside, he was seething.

Inukashi wanted him to fight back, come up with a new plan, and escape. But if Rashi was going to smack him around simply for existing, Nezumi had no idea where to start. The days that had gone by since Nezumi woke in the Lab blended together into one singular nightmare, a period of almost unbearable tension and strain interwoven with flashes of burning anger and frozen sorrow. Those moments of crazy rebellion shuddered through his mind now, encouraging him to continue searching for an answer. There had to be some chip in Horizon Lab's armor, some angle he could exploit.

Nezumi didn't have much of a plan. Escape didn't mean much of anything. A number of concepts flitted through his mind as he lay in the infirmary bed, recovering and plotting. None of them worked out. In all scenarios, Rashi pumped him full of bullets and left him bleeding out on the tiles. He didn't know how long it would take for the Lab to give him enough wiggle room to figure out another way to break free. There was no telling how many days, months, years he would spend suffering in this place―but it would be worth it. It would be worth it to put the ones who'd taken every good thing in Nezumi's life away from him into the ground.

There weren't any clocks in the room, but the brightening of the LED lights let him know it was sometime in the morning. Nezumi knew the routine by now. He'd only been in the infirmary for a few days, recovering from Rashi's impromptu beating and suffering a few blood tests from Lab Coat. In the mornings, the intern would stumble into the room, check Nezumi's IV, and scurry out of the room before he could get much of anything out of her. She always wore a scarlet scrambler, and Nezumi was too weak to bother Reaching out to her even if she hadn't been wearing one.

After the intern vanished, Lab Coat would swing by, rambling on about the results of Nezumi's blood tests and what fascinating insights he'd obtained from his studies. Nezumi didn't bother listening to him. He nodded and mumbled when appropriate, but the crazy doctor's words bled from one ear to the next. He didn't ask about Rashi, and Lab Coat didn't offer up the information. All Nezumi knew was that Rashi had either chosen not to come by the infirmary to see his punching bag or simply wasn't permitted to.

At night, lying in the pitch darkness, Nezumi thought about an escape plan. If he could somehow get Lab Coat to be a hostage, maybe he could bargain with the Lab officials to let him leave.

No, that was reckless and stupid.

Perhaps if he could find a way to remove Lab Coat's scrambler and dig into his mind, he could figure out the layout of the Lab and escape. No, that wouldn't work, either. There were cameras and audio devices everywhere, and the moment Nezumi got the scrambler out of Lab Coat's ear, he'd be marked as a compromised asset and be eliminated the same way Mirai had been.

Nezumi had slept less in the past few days than he ever had in his entire life. He was terrified of talking in his sleep. If the Lab caught wind of what he was scheming―but did it really matter? If they knew Nezumi still had some fight in him, what would they do with it?

Some nights he lay in the darkness, staring at the tiles in the ceiling and counting them, simply to focus on something else. When he did fall asleep, it was in short, thin intervals, lanced through with strange dreams. He didn't see Shion with his bleeding neck or his father with his chest full of bullet holes. He sometimes heard the phantom sound of his mother's lullabies, but those dreams were easily broken.

That morning, the door to the infirmary clicked open. Nezumi darted a glance to the door, expecting the intern's sheepish brown eyes and poorly dyed blond hair―but instead, he spotted an old man dressed in a crisp black suit hurrying across the room and coming to stand beside his bed.

He was far shorter than Lab Coat or Officer Rashi, but no less intimidating. There was something off about him. Something in his pale blue eyes that made Nezumi's blood run cold. The old man's suit was pressed, expensive, and the lapel was embroidered with the Lab's orange and gold insignia. His balding head glimmered beneath the lights, and a pair of spectacles sat on the end of his bulbous nose.

Does every psycho in this goddamn place wear glasses?

He grinned from ear to ear as he looked down at Nezumi.

"Good morning, VC-221!" he said, much too loud.

Nezumi narrowed his eyes. His eyes darted to the old man's ear. A scrambler sat loose in his ear canal, but Nezumi felt that it was more of a challenge than an opportunity. The old man might have been grinning at him, but there was no doubt that he'd come into the infirmary well prepared to deal with chaos.

"Um." Nezumi swallowed a painful lump in his throat.

"Oh, of course! How foolish of me!" He gave Nezumi a mischievous smile, as if he were a grandfather who filled his grandchildren full of sugar before shipping them back to their parents. "It's a pleasure to meet you, VC-221. Or, do you prefer Nezumi? May I call you Nezumi?" He didn't give Nezumi a chance to respond. "My name is Deputy Officer Hishimoto, though you can just call me Nosuke. I have some wonderful news for you."

"Um," Nezumi said again, pretending to think for a moment. He darted a glance to the cameras, then to the door behind Nosuke. In the fogged glass, he could see the outline of a person in the hallway.

"I'm sure this has all been very scary for you." Nosuke gave Nezumi's hand a sympathetic pat; Nezumi flinched at the contact. "I've been briefed on your situation, and I'd like to extend my sincerest apologies to you. I'm sure things haven't been easy for you after what happened to your parents―and your friend." His mouth twisted down into a pitiful frown. "I read his case file, too. Poor thing. If there was any way we could have kept him around, Nezumi, please understand that we would have. I know you must have some pretty nasty thoughts about us, but I assure you, we're not in the business of killing children."

Nezumi clenched his fists. Hatred rushed through him, twisting inside him like a serpent. He forced back the first thought that came to mind, a vicious retort that would have gotten him punched in the face if he'd said it to Rashi.

"Bullshit," he spat, gritting his teeth. Pain trembled through his body as he shifted on the bed; his ribs were definitely cracked.

He didn't have more fight in him than that. At least, he couldn't let the Lab think he did. It was a struggle to lay there on the mattress, staring at the ceiling and pretending he didn't want to kill the man sitting at his side―but Nezumi thought about his end goal. How satisfying it would be to watch Horizon Labs crumble to the ground. He swallowed the lump in his throat, closed his eyes, and focused on the feeling of the blanket over his body to work on calming himself down.

"I understand," Nosuke said sympathetically. He patted Nezumi on the back of the hand again, and didn't seem to notice when Nezumi pulled his hand away in disgust. "In any event, I thought you might like to know that you won't be returning to Section M."

Nezumi looked up at him. "What?"

Nosuke cleared his throat and recited, as if he'd spent all day practicing in the mirror, "After what happened with Officer Rashi, we feel it's no longer…productive to keep you in his care. We've reviewed your case, and we've agreed that it would be for the best to have you relocated to Section F."

A bolt of terror twisted through Nezumi's stomach. Section F. What did that mean? If he got moved to another section of the Lab, the little information he had about the Lab would amount to nothing. He didn't like Section M, but he understood how it worked. He understood how Rashi worked―for the most part―and having to understand new agents and commanding officers was a task Nezumi wasn't certain he was up to tackling just yet.

"But… I…" Nezumi said, unable to come up with any reason to stay in Section M.

"Oh, it's no trouble! We've discussed it with our CEO, and he believes, based on the number of reports, that it would be best to have you relocated effective immediately." He gestured over his shoulder to the door, where the silhouette loomed. "My second-in-command, Ishikawa, has already arranged your new room. We're actually preparing to have you transported in the next hour or so. The doctor would like to take one last look at your vitals and make sure it's acceptable to move you at this time. He's a bit preoccupied at the moment, but don't worry! He'll be in to see you shortly!"

Nezumi stared mutely as Nosuke turned and hurried for the door, fluttering his hands excitedly and chattering about how much he was certain Nezumi would enjoy Section F. The door clicked open, and Nezumi caught only a sliver of the hallway before it shut behind Nosuke and left him alone in the infirmary.

Nezumi looked back up at the ceiling, his thoughts running wild. Section F. Was this some form of punishment? He didn't know anything about the other Sections of the Lab, or what manner of creatures lived there. And if it was a punishment, did that mean the agents who ran it were worse than Officer Rashi?

He shook the thoughts aside and tried to focus on the positives. Relocating meant a change of environment, and a chance to escape from Rashi's torment. If Nezumi would learn how to manipulate the old man and whatever other agents functioned in Section F, then perhaps he'd been handed a golden opportunity to escape.

He closed his eyes.

There was nothing he could do except wait.

⁂

"I have a present for you," said Lab Coat in a singsong voice.

Shion blinked up at him. The doctor had sent Rikiga in to fetch him from his cell shortly after breakfast time. A terrified glint made its way across Rikiga's face as he mouthed an apology, sliding the needle into Shion's arm and sedating him for transport into the workroom.

Shion didn't want to be upset at Rikiga. For the past few days, he'd been doing exactly as Shion had instructed him. He pretended to administer the power dampeners, but Shion could feel them steadily working their way out of his system. Like an illness that had ravaged his body for weeks on end, Shion felt the suppressants bleeding out of his system, trickling out bit by bit with each drop of sweat that escaped his flesh. His mind felt clearer each day, his muscles less tense; he never realized how badly the dampeners were affecting his well-being. He wished the others could feel what he did, but when they talked over the plan with Rikiga, the man flat out refused to stop dosing all of them.

"It's too risky," Rikiga had whisper-yelled. "The more people we have unblocked, the greater our chances of blowing our cover is. That kid," he hissed at Rin, "tries to use his…" Rikiga paused and squinted. "Her? What are you anyway? I've never thought about it before."

Rin leaned up on the glass and pulled a formidable Cheshire grin. "I'm a pyrokinetic," they said and nothing else.

Rikiga scoffed and continued. "That kid—whatever they are—tries to use their powers all the time, even with the blockers! I can't trust them. I won't risk cutting the dosage for anyone else. Just you. If you do slip, we can maybe play it off as your power being strong enough to break through the serum."

Shion had been disappointed, but no one fought back on the point. Rikiga assured them that when the time came, he had a way to counteract the blockers and jumpstart the others' powers. They just had to pull off the first phase of the plan.

Shion relished the sensation of his telekinesis tickling the back of his mind. It was an itch he was desperate to scratch, an impulse he had to physically restrain himself from acting upon. The moment he felt it scurrying at the base of his skull, Shion wrapped himself in his paper-thin blanket, buried his face in the pillow, and grinned all through the night.

"You do?" Shion asked, pretending to be fascinated by Lab Coat's prompt.

Lab Coat had him strapped down to a chair in the middle of the workroom. Shion sat straight up in it, his wrists and ankles secured with thick leather straps. Behind a panel of shatterproof security glass, he could see Rikiga watching him, worrying his bottom lip. He'd been fidgety today―far more than Shion would have preferred.

"Oh, yes!" Lab Coat picked a syringe up from a metal tray set beside the chair. He'd turned on a series of lights, each one shining down on Shion's face as if he were about to be interrogated. Through the vibrant haze, Shion could see a metal tray laden with heavy iron screws and nails. "You remember our deal, don't you? You'll assist me, and I'll provide you information on your friend."

Shion's heart lurched. "Nezumi." He sat up, his spine aching with the effort. "Is―is he all right?"

"All that in time," Lab Coat tutted. He flicked the syringe to clear out any air bubbles. His bright purple gloves seemed far darker in the strange golden light, and Shion could barely see the clear liquid in the vial. "We're going to run a few tests first. Depending on your cooperation, I'll tell you what's been happening with VC-221."

Shion leaned back against the chair and exhaled. Nezumi was all right. Lab Coat wouldn't have been acting so giddy if he'd come to deliver bad news. Or perhaps he might've. Shion didn't know enough about the mad doctor to say how he would behave one way or the other.

Lab Coat swabbed a cotton ball and some rubbing alcohol over Shion's bare arm, in the crook of his right elbow. "This is a serum we've been experimenting with," he said softly. There was a reverence in his voice, as if he were confiding a deep secret in Shion that he could never confide in anyone else. "As of this moment, it's never been tested on humans. We've experimented with lab mice, and the results have been acceptable enough for us to believe that human testing will prove non-fatal."

Shion's stomach plunged.

"Don't look so panicked―you're in no danger." Lab Coat looked over the syringe one last time, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Should anything go awry, there are fail-safes to prevent the worst of the damage. Mr. Rikiga and I are both trained in CPR if we need to resuscitate you." He angled the syringe away from himself. "If my calculations are correct, this serum should be the answer to the question we've been mulling over for years."

Shion swallowed a painful lump in his throat. "And…what question would that be?"

"Why," Lab Coat said with a wide smile, "how to make superhumans stronger, of course."

Shion flinched as the doctor pressed the tip of the needle into the crook of his arm and pushed down on the plunger. The ice-cold pinch of the needle breaching his skin coupled with the shock of the serum entering his bloodstream sent shivers down Shion's spine; his stomach gave a painful little lurch as terror welled up inside him.

"There," Lab Coat said simply. "The serum's effects should become apparent shortly. For the moment, all I want you to do is knock that tray"―he gestured over his shoulder to the metal tray full of screws―"onto the floor."

"But…my powers are…"

"Dampened, yes." Lab Coat waved his hand through the air. "With this serum, it shouldn't matter too much. Give it a moment to work itself through your system, and then give it a try. You should be able to bypass the dampener's effects on your abilities, at least a little bit. That's what we're experimenting with today."

Shion pursed his lips.

"Are you worried about what happened with VC-301? Don't fret. If you get sick, Mr. Rikiga will clean it up. We'll get you a new jumpsuit, a shower, and some anti-nausea medication. How does that sound?"

Shion lowered his gaze to the floor. It sounded nice, in theory, but then he remembered how Rin had doubled over and emptied the contents of their stomach onto the floor. How the blood had flowed easily from their nose like a leaky faucet. A hazy memory of Nezumi staring back at him, silver eyes haunted and face smeared with blood, rose to the forefront of his mind; Shion shoved it aside. He didn't need to think about that right now.

Lab Coat seemed to take his silence as affirmation. He said a few things over his shoulder to Rikiga, and then went to stand behind the shatterproof glass. Shion followed him out of the periphery of his vision; behind the glass, he could make out the top part of a panel, as well as a series of boards and papers stuck to the wall with tiny writing scribbled all over them.

Shion looked at the glass and found himself wishing it was one-sided so he wouldn't have to see the hungry gleam in Lab Coat's eyes as he waited for something to happen. He inhaled and let a puff of breath out between his lips, allowing a calm wave to settle around his shoulders like a cloak.

Knock the tray aside.

OK.

Shion lifted his head and squinted through the darkness. The haze of the lights caused bright red stars to glimmer across his vision, blurring out the edges of the tray and the heavy screws on top of it. To knock it off the table would be a breeze for him at minimal strength; with the dampeners already slowly leaving his system, it felt like nothing at all to stretch out his thoughts and bat the tray aside.

Shion looked at the tray and shoved.

It wasn't so much a shove as a burst of energy. He thought about doing it, and the effort it took to cross the distance between himself and the table was as quick and easy as breathing. He thought about using his powers the way a hungry person might tackle a tray of food placed in front of them. He could feel the pull―the itch―burrowing in the back of his skull like a furious wasp, desperate to escape.

He'd gone days without access to his powers, but Shion had been living with them for years. They were as ingrained in his existence as his fingers and his toes, and it took no effort to tap into them now that he understood how they worked.

It felt…good to access his powers again. Weeks of having them stripped from him left him weak and powerless to the Lab's whims. But with them, Shion felt as if he'd donned a thin veil of armor, just enough to put a barrier between himself and those who would harm him.

When Shion shoved at the tray, it shot off as if Shion had punched the thing with all his strength. The nuts and bolts and screws careened into the air and rained onto the tile floor in a cacophony of pings and metallic clangs, sending a bolt of anxious terror through Shion's stomach. The tray itself winged across the room and struck the wall. It crashed onto the ground with a heavy bang, but the edge had dented into the wall at least an inch.

Shion reeled back as a startled cry erupted from behind the shatterproof glass―Rikiga, from the sounds of it―and then something inside him shifted.

The metal wall had developed a strange, dark ripple across its surface. The room shuddered beneath a thin haze, as if someone had turned the heat up. Shion's hands trembled as a burning sensation coursed through his veins, beginning at the injection site. He sucked in a deep breath and squinted through the haze, trying to focus on…something…

And then pain.

Shion rocked back in the chair as it surged through him―a pain so fierce and sudden that he couldn't even make a sound. It cracked through his bones, his skin, his muscle, tearing through him as easily as a knife through wet paper.

He felt it like a shriek in the very core of his being. Shion writhed in the chair, his wrists straining against the leather straps. He clenched his teeth to force back the wave of nausea that burst through him, a living thing that threatened to burst out of his flesh and spill him all over the tile. Shion's vision went white as the pain exploded through his nerves, erasing him until there was nothing left but a blinding ball of agony―

And then it was gone.

Shion collapsed back on the chair as his vision steadily bled back. His eyes darted around the room, desperately seeking the source of the pain that'd rippled through his body. His mind was racing, his heart hammering behind his ribs, his blood surging until he couldn't feel anything except the cold ice wiggling its way through his veins.

In the room behind the shatterproof glass, Shion could hear Rikiga shouting. He sounded much clearer than he had a few moments ago. It nearly sounded as if he were standing in the room right beside Shion, his panic a palpable thing that caused Shion to turn his head in his direction, his fingers trembling and his knees weak.

The glass was gone.

It'd erupted into pieces, embedded in the steel wall. Rikiga stood behind the metal table, shouting to Lab Coat, who was slowly pulling himself out from beneath the desk. He and Rikiga must have ducked beneath it as soon as…whatever happened had happened.

Lab Coat's eyes were wild with excitement as he beheld the damage to the glass wall. He reached out and pressed his finger against the jagged shards, fascination spreading across his face. Shion could barely see him as a dark fog drifted across his vision, dulling his thoughts and pushing his senses into the shadows.

"Incredible," Lab Coat breathed. A breathless laugh escaped his throat as he looked around the room, at Shion, and then back at the dented wall. "Incredible! That wasn't even at full strength." He whirled to look at Rikiga and said, his voice growing faster and louder as the excitement rocked through him, "Do you know what this means? Can you imagine what would happen if we gave it to him without the dampeners?"

The rest of his words disappeared beneath a painful blur of red and gray. Shion slumped to the side, his vision turning white as he slipped into the darkness. The only thing he could feel was a cold wave washing over him, pressing so deep into his skin that he was certain he would never be warm again.