Collaboration with Glorifiedscapegoat.
Lab Coat checked up on Shion a few times since the experiment. He buzzed with excitement as he droned on from beyond the glass wall about Shion's test results. Shion tried to focus on the words spilling out of his lips—just in case they carried something useful he could utilize to aid in his eventual escape from the cell—but Lab Coat's voice drifted in one ear and out the other. Shion gave up trying to decipher his scientific jargon and instead nodded and mumbled where appropriate.
"…an interesting change in gray matter that could be the answer to how your telekinesis works. I would like to get an MRI and have you practice throwing several different sized objects against the wall just to—" Lab Coat paused. "You're not listening."
Shion jolted back to reality. His legs dangled over the edge of his cot; he'd been kicking them back and forth. He thought about lying, but realized there was no point. "I'm sorry," he said.
"Ah, no matter. It was nothing terribly important at this time." Lab Coat reached into the pocket of his crisp white coat and pulled out a beaten red pad of paper with a black pen hooked to the spirals. He pulled the pen out and scribbled a few notes on the pad. "Your focus seems a bit…scattered since our previous experiment. How has your sleep schedule been?"
"Fine," Shion replied. Single-word responses were safest. Lab Coat had no use for flowery words or drawn-out explanations, and the less Shion could give him, the better. For both of them.
"Your appetite?"
"It's fine, too."
"Mm, I see. And your bowel movements?"
Shion closed his eyes in disgust and huffed. He didn't enjoy Lab Coat's probing questions—he'd been dealing with too many of them for the past few days—and he especially didn't like having to talk about private bodily functions with his companions sitting within earshot.
"Fine, too," Shion said through his teeth, hoping Lab Coat wouldn't ask any further questions about the matter.
Lab Coat scratched down a few notes. He murmured to himself, far too soft for Shion to hear. His lips moved too quickly to discern any notable words, but Shion suspected it was nothing of use. He sat on his cot and resumed kicking his legs back and forth, looking up at the ceiling while he waited for Lab Coat to finish up so he could get some privacy.
After the experiment, Lab Coat had taken extensive notes about the physical changes in Shion's appearance. He'd photographed the entire length of his markings for "posterity," pulled a few strands of Shion's white hair to study under a microscope, and he'd taken a few skin samples from the raised red scar wrapping its way around Shion's body. He'd taken the sample from Shion's forearm; it still itched, the bandage Rikiga had slapped over it and the salve to soothe the sore flesh stinging.
It was a continuous struggle to keep from flinging Lab Coat into the nearest wall. Rikiga injected Shion with tranquilizers to transport him into the examination room, but Shion could still feel the cling of his telekinesis buzzing in the back of his brain. Rikiga had kept his word, despite the obvious fear he had about the success of Shion's escape plan, and in return, Shion had bided his time to seek out the perfect opportunity.
"Fascinating," Lab Coat said with reverence. He flipped through the pad of paper, reviewing his notes from his previous sessions with Shion. "Now, if we could only discover how gray matter reacts with a stronger serum…." A sickening gleam flashed through his pale eyes. Shion swallowed the lump in his throat. "Ah, but it still needs a bit of tweaking. Although your assistance has been integral to the success of this project."
Shion curled his fingers into the thin sheet covering the thin cot beneath him, ignoring the look of excitement that erased all other emotions from Lab Coat's personage.
Lab Coat didn't stick around long. He said a few quick things about another check-up in the morning and—barring some sort of tragedy—a second, follow-up experiment.
Shion's skin crawled at the thought of Lab Coat injecting him with another burning liquid, something that would do God knows what to him this time around, and as he watched the doctor drift out of frame, murmuring to himself and expertly navigating his way through the basement without looking up, Shion vowed that the second experiment would never happen.
⁂
Shion wondered what time it was when he finally laid down on the cot for the night. As he'd begun to stretch out, the sore muscles in his shoulders and the ache in his lower back preventing him from slipping straight to sleep, Shion became aware of just how cold his prison cell felt. Or perhaps Lab Coat had begun filtering cold air in through the vent to prepare him for whatever new experiment he had planned for him.
He fiddled with the threadbare blanket draped over his legs. The scratchy fabric kept the worst of the chill away from him; not enough for him to comfortably sleep, but enough for him to find that strange place between exhaustion and insomnia.
Shion turned on his side, away from the locked cage door.
He wanted to sleep. He felt as if enough time had passed that it was sometime in the middle of the night, but he understood that it could have been a trick of the light. Where the dim light came from, he had no idea. He sometimes wondered if the walls were equipped with a luminescent mechanism that kept the material bright enough to allow prisoners to see. He didn't want to think that Horizon Laboratories was that advanced, but he'd learned better.
Sleep evaded him, and although Shion's body felt heavy and devoid of strength, his mind simply would not slow down. The realization that escape loomed on the horizon struck him like a truck. Shion's thoughts raced, each possible scenario firing through his head and being scrapped the moment Shion realized it wouldn't work. He kept aspects of the plans that failed slightly less than others and tried to patch them together into some Frankenstein's abomination, praying that this time—this time he could find a way out.
Rin snuffled in their sleep, and Shion realized he'd been laying on his side long enough for his shoulders to hurt. He exhaled softly and rolled onto his other side, staring out through the glass wall. The empty, dark hallway peered back at him.
He didn't want to be burdened with these thoughts anymore. Possible escape; Lab Coat's strange experiments; the sinister gleam in his eye as he relayed to Shion all the questions he had that he hoped to soon answer; the Lab and its disgusting obsession with turning human beings into weapons for some unknown purpose—Shion wanted to forget all of it.
Except Nezumi. As much as Shion wanted the past few weeks to slip into nothingness, he refused to forget the gray-eyed boy who'd breezed into his life only months ago. Those gray eyes, filled with intelligence and cynicism, and just behind that, love.
Remembering him now—the feel of his hand slipping into Shion's own, his lips brushing against his cheek before the sharp end of the tranquilizer dart plunged into his throat and dropped the world into darkness—Shion felt a swell of misery spike through him.
He wrapped himself in the thin blanket and buried his head against the pillow. It smelled like must and bleach, not at all like the lavender scent of his own bed back in Lost Town.
What were Karan and Safu doing without him? Had Horizon Laboratories left them alone once they realized that Shion had escaped with Nezumi and neither of them knew where he'd gone? If his escape plan failed and Lab Coat did decide to kill him, would the Lab even bother informing them of his death?
He shoved the thoughts aside. He couldn't think like that. If he thought he would fail, then it was almost certain that he would.
Instead, he tried to think about the warmth of Nezumi's arms wrapped around him. He tried to think about how good it would feel to walk away from the wreckage of the Lab with Nezumi's hand clutched in his own, their hands swinging back and forth as they left the nightmare behind for good. He closed his eyes and tried to dream about something pleasant.
For the rest of the night, Shion hardly slept. He had no idea how much time passed since he rolled onto his side, away from the cell door, and stared back at the wall if only for a change of view. He listened to the sounds of Rin's soft breathing, muffled by their face buried into the pillow. They slept on their stomach and complained about back pain the next morning. Shion suggested sleeping on their side, but Rin claimed burying their head in the pillow was the only way they could sleep without nightmares. In that case, Shion supposed a bit of lower back pain was a fair tradeoff.
It felt like an eternity before the door clicked open with a low creak. Shion rolled over to blink at Rikiga as he walked into the cell with a plastic cup of water. He set it on the floor beside Shion's bed, then quickly shut the door as he left without a look back. The lock slid back into place.
Shion exhaled and eased himself onto his elbows as Rikiga lingered outside. Lab Coat must have instructed Rikiga to give him…something, because now that he looked down at the plastic cup, he saw that the surface seemed cloudy and strange. Not like water at all. He squinted through the dim light to see if he could identify the substance.
"Not water, I suppose?" Shion whispered.
Rikiga flicked a glance at the small camera nestled in the corner of the room. Shion had already learned that there weren't any audio transmitters feeding their dialogue back to Lab Coat, but he must have been watching them.
"Not sure," Rikiga replied, shifting to his side and trying to look nervous for the cameras. Or maybe he was actually nervous. "It kind of smells like spices, so it'd probably be best not to drink it."
Shion looked over at the camera. He didn't think he could dump it without Lab Coat noticing, and if he went to the bathroom immediately after taking a sip, Lab Coat would assume that he'd spat it out in the toilet bowl.
Well…might as well do something about it.
Shion pretended to reach down with great difficulty and bring the plastic cup up to his lips. The contents did smell like spices, an unnatural hodgepodge that made Shion's thoughts swim. He didn't want to imagine how terrible it would taste sliding down his throat, or what it would do to him the moment it entered his system.
He shifted the liquid around in the tiny cup, pretending to be deep in thought. If he poured the liquid into his mouth and pretended to swallow, then laid down on his cot face-down, he could spit it out on the pillow without Lab Coat figuring anything was amiss. He'd have to lay with his cheek pressed into the wet patch to keep it hidden until morning, but it was a small price to pay for the opportunity to burst his way out of the cell.
He glanced over at Rin's cell. The child lay stretched out in their cot, oblivious to the world around them and the plan burning its way in Shion's mind. Hitomi snuffled from her own cage, the little whimpers she made indicating that she was deep in the midst of a bad nightmare. His heart ached at the thought that when she woke he might not be able to comfort her.
But if Lab Coat had given him something to knock him unconscious….
Shion lifted his head and stared back at Rikiga. Lab Coat's unwilling assistant had made good on his promise not to dose Shion with the power dampeners. With no reasoning beyond a sliver of hope that he, too, might be free of the Lab, Rikiga had thrown himself into aiding Shion's crusade. He'd followed his requests as best he could with the tools he'd been given, covering the tracks and making sure to keep Lab Coat off the scent as long as possible.
Shion lifted the plastic cup to his lips and gave a small toast to the empty air between him. As soon as the words of their plan left his lips, he'd dump the contents into his mouth, let Rikiga take the cup and pretend to sleep until the time was right.
It wasn't a perfect plan, and so much of it could go wrong at a moment's notice, but it was better than sitting in his cell and waiting for Lab Coat to turn him into a glorified guinea pig. Nezumi would have been pleased with the amount of thought Shion had placed into his planning, at how well he'd bided his time and searched for the perfect opportunity to deliver a violent blow that would cripple Horizon Labs for good.
And now it was time to begin.
"Mr. Rikiga?" Shion said quietly. "We need to talk."
⁂
Shion stretched out on the cot and listened to the thumping of shoes against the stairwell as Lab Coat descended happily into the basement sometime after lunchtime. Having spent weeks in the cluster of cells down in the basement—God, had it really been that long since those gentle nights at the cabin, curled in Nezumi's arms?—Shion had grown accustomed to the difference between Rikiga's slow, heavy footfalls and the almost dancing nature to Lab Coat's. The tapping of his dress shoes echoed down the metal steps, a bit more excited than Shion had ever heard them.
He rolled his shoulders, feeling the tight springs beneath the thin mattress and the damp fabric of the pillow mashed against his face. Not the most comfortable bed in the world, but Shion had slept on worse in his few weeks on the run. In fact, he'd begun to gain some semblance of a sleep routine down in the comfortable silence of the basement evenings, comforted by the sounds of his companions' breathing. Hitomi snored—not loud, but enough to be noticeable—and though Shion sometimes shared little smiles with Rin, neither of them felt like embarrassing her over it.
Shion lay on his stomach, his face turned toward the glass wall of the cell. He lay with his eyes half-closed, pretending to be drowsy. The concoction Rikiga had brought him on Lab Coat's behalf tasted like herbs as Shion let it sit in his mouth, his eyes watering as he pretended to swallow it and then settle down on his stomach so he could spit the mouthful back up. He'd had to deal with the stench of it in his face for the rest of the night, but it was a small price to pay for the potential of freedom.
Lab Coat's strange serum had finally worked its way through his system in the few days since the explosive experiment. The physical side-effects remained; Shion could see his stark-white bangs lingering on the edge of his sightline. The vibrant red mark embedded in his flesh stood out like a brand on the back of his hand, and Shion's fingers often trembled as the aftershocks of the serum bled their way out of his muscles.
Shion ran through his conversations with Rikiga in his head again and rehearsed his role until he felt confident in it. Anxiety had fluttered across Rikiga's face last night as he revealed that Lab Coat intended to set Shion up for another experiment this afternoon.
"He's got some…new serum he's been perfecting since the last experiment," Rikiga said quietly, shuffling from one foot to the other. "He thinks it's ready to test, and he wants to try it on you since, I don't know, you kind of helped make it?"
Shion's stomach churned as he remembered the ache of the serum burning its way through his veins, the pounding headache that threatened to crack his skull. He didn't want to imagine what Lab Coat's new serum would do to him, even if the successes from his previous tests had resulted in its creation.
That's fine, Shion thought to himself as he nodded to Rikiga. Tomorrow, we're breaking out of here. He quickly laid out the plan. Rikiga nervously fiddled with the hem of his uniform, mumbling "all right" as Shion explained Rikiga's purpose in enacting the escape. He lowered his voice and murmured it on the off chance that the others happened to be listening in.
Shion hadn't told his companions that he planned to enact their escape today. If things went wrong—and the probability of that was extremely high, he couldn't deny it, as much as his heart screamed at him to deny it—Shion didn't want them to know how close freedom had been, only to lose it.
If he was going to be gunned down by Lab Coat or whomever else lurked in the Lab, he didn't want to drag his companions down with him.
Shion's heart raced, as it had been for the past few days. Every time he saw Lab Coat wander by his cell, pacing like an excited tiger as he checked up on him, Shion had restrained the urge to try and punch the glass open. He suspected he could do it now—he could feel his power radiating through him like a strong cup of coffee, buzzing in his nerves and leaving him anxious late into the night. But it would be easier to throw Lab Coat aside without the glass between them, just in case.
Shion wanted to play it careful.
He needed to play it safe.
Shion recounted the last few days in his head. He converted Rin's laughter to memory, Hitomi's gentle smile, and Aki's quiet understanding. He even tried to remember the gleam in Rikiga's eye at the prospect of freedom from the Lab. Rikiga still smelled like a bottle of broken beer, but Shion hadn't seen the glaze in his eyes that meant he was intoxicated. He hoped Lab Coat wouldn't look too deeply into them to notice anything out of place, hoped Lab Coat was too blind to his unwilling assistant to notice minute changes in his sobriety.
He lay on his stomach, listening with bated breath as Lab Coat slowly appeared outside the walls of his cell.
Shion stared over at Rikiga, looking at him through half-lidded eyes from just beyond Lab Coat's shoulder. His dark eyes flickered over to the doctor, nervous to be so close to him with the knowledge of what was about to happen fresh in his mind.
Rikiga's terror was outshined by Lab Coat's excitement. He buzzed with it. His eyes flashed behind his spectacles, his toes practically tapping against the floor. A crisp white lab coat clung to his thin frame, free from stains and wrinkles, as if he'd fished out his best one for a special occasion. His hair even seemed combed and glossed. The sight of him made Shion's stomach churn.
"Ah, excellent," Lab Coat sang, heedless of how loud his voice was. "The sedative's seemed to have done its job marvelously. I was half afraid I'd minimized the ratio and he'd be up and moving by now."
"What, ah…" Rikiga shuffled awkwardly. "What did you do?"
"Oh, just a muscle relaxant. We've been experimenting with it in Section P, and the VCs seem to be responding well to it. I thought I might have given too small a dose, but if he's still out, then it's worked better than expected." Lab Coat nodded and made a quick mental note of Shion's prone form and partially closed eyes. "He's not quite asleep, but he should be weak enough not to give you any trouble moving him."
Lab Coat gestured for Rikiga to unlock the door. Shion's body tensed as the door clicked, the sound clanging through his body like a death knell.
He counted down the moments in his head, staring at Lab Coat through his eyelashes, taking in the shape of his shoulders and the complexity of his limbs.
Shion had grabbed someone before—hoisted them into the air as if they were nothing and hurled them across a yard—but he'd been in a different mindset then. His thoughts had raged against a fate he and Nezumi could avoid if only Shion was strong enough to make the threats disappear. The thought of hefting another human being into the air like that made Shion's stomach clench with terror, but there was no avoiding it.
Rikiga stepped into the cage, the glass door fully retracted into the floor behind him. Lab Coat reached out with a hand to close it—
And Shion struck.
He exploded off the mattress and locked his gaze on Lab Coat's outstretched hand; the man's pale eyes widened as Shion's power seized his arm and dragged him into the cage.
Rikiga shrieked and hit the ground. Lab Coat's right foot struck the door frame as he tumbled unceremoniously into Shion's cage, hard enough for the bone to break. Shion ignored the terror that bolted through him as he pulled the source of all his pain and suffering closer and closer to him with only a thought.
He hadn't used his power like this in ages. He'd tried so hard to contain it in his youth, spent hours poring over relaxation exercises that bored him and Nezumi's teachings which gave him a chance to finally gain control over his life. He'd been caged and imprisoned, poked and prodded with needles and treated like an animal.
And this man…
This horrible man…
No, Shion thought as he angled his head upward. Lab Coat's body moved along with his gaze, as if a strong rope connected him to Shion's retinas. Not now.
Lab Coat, for all his secrecy and strangeness, seemed to understand when he was in danger. His pale eyes blew wide open as his glasses slipped off his face and hit the floor; the lenses shattered upon impact. Shion held him in the air, the top of his head nearly kissing the cement ceiling that Shion had stared at for so many sleepless nights.
Rikiga scrambled to his feet. Recovering quickly from his shock, he hurried out of the cage and stood outside, dumbstruck. Shion focused his full attention on Lab Coat. He gripped him on his shoulders and his forearms, around his waist and his thighs. Enough anchorage to keep him from plummeting to the ground and breaking every bone in his body, but more than enough to make his point known.
Lab Coat didn't say a word as Shion backed quickly toward the door. He didn't trust what would happen if he stopped looking at the man. Even broken and banged up from a bad fall, Shion suspected Lab Coat would be a formidable enemy without a cage between them.
I won't be needing mine anymore. He can have it.
"Come on!" Rikiga shouted. Shion couldn't see him from where he stood, but there was an almost feral terror in his voice. "Jesus Christ, come on!"
Shion whipped toward the opening and bolted out of it. His bare feet kissed the tile, and as soon as he cleared the threshold, Rikiga slammed his hand down on the glass and the door shot up and locked in place. The mechanical clicks and electronic hisses assured Shion it was closed tight.
His heart hammered in his throat as he stared into his cage. Into. The room where he'd been trapped for so long lay in front of him, separated by a thick wall of reinforced glass that not even the strongest of superhumans could hope to shatter. His body thrummed with adrenaline as he stared back at Lab Coat, who struggled in midair against the invisible manacles keeping him suspended above the floor.
"Holy shit," Rikiga gasped. He looked up at Lab Coat, at the closed glass door, and then down at Shion, who stood beside him on the opposite side of the cage. "Holy shit."
Shion lifted his hands and stared down at them. He could feel the power racing through his veins, his blood singing and his mind racing as he realized what this meant.
He was free.
Finally free.