The suno. It was going down. It had been hours and he was exhausted. The sides of his feet hurt badly despite the callouses. Having the rings in them didn't help in the slightest. He had to keep going though, because if he didn't, he knew he would topple over and lose consciousness. Projekto Nivelo Up had to have caused this effect on him—the aftermath couldn't have worn off this soon.
Suddenly he remembered why he wanted to see the Outside so badly. He remembered why he had an unhealthy fear of those scientists. Projekto Nivelo Up was something he thought would become a mere myth in due time, something that would never actually happen. It had taken years but they actually tried to put him through it. All those tests and diet changes were preparations for it. They were trying to make him physically able to endure Projekto Nivelo Up. They failed horribly. If not for that explosion he would've died from energy depletion.
He felt his body shutting down for the day. To spend a night out in a strange new world was the last thing he wanted, but he would be forced to do so if this continued. The fascination of the Outside was gone. Now it was a scary place full of scary people. His body, however, didn't care nearly as much as his mind and he started to stumble. The bright side of this was that there was no one around to see him this vulnerable. The downside was that he couldn't find a place good enough to rest in. Even if he did, he realized it would have to be unoccupied. Right now his exhaustion was trying to get him to believe that any place was good enough for the time being, but he knew better than to trust that kind of idiocy. It had, over the years, become very clear to him that most places were not good places.
Besides, he was too different. Society here would never accept him. He was marked by silver rings that went straight through his hands and feet—how could anyone possibly find that an everyday sight? He'd come to know that anything strange was usually investigated. Out here, he was the strange one. He couldn't have anyone looking into his history for fear of capture. It was weird that just a moment ago he longed for someone to find him, but now he only wanted to disappear from their radar. They might try to complete Projekto Nivelo Up. Needless to say, he would never be in any rush to relive that kind of horror. The very thought of doing it all over again was more than enough to make him shudder.
Several more minutes passed. His eyes quickly grew heavy and he barely managed to hold his head up. His feet dragged and his movement became all the more sluggish. But fortune seemed to be smiling upon him today as he looked up through half-lidded eyes just in time to find a huge building. It was enormous and reminded him of the facility, although it was very clear that this building had no connection to the facility. That was good enough for him...hopefully. There was a possible tie for any of these buildings.
He had no choice and finally let his mind settle on what he needed most—rest. Going into that building was the only option he had right now, whether he liked it or not.
He saw a perfect entry. There was an open window with a large green thing right beside it. It was climbable but...the only problem this plan posed was actually carrying it out. To climb up the brown part of that green thing, as well as the slimmer brown parts that branched out, seemed to require the use of his hands. Obviously his hands were out of the question. If he could gather enough strength to compensate with his mouth, wrists, and elbows, then it could be possible to get though that window.
It was a relentless and unforgiving climb. His rings were caught multiple times, occasionally enough to make him squirm instead of keep in mind the sense that he could carefully slide them off the brown thing. It was made even harder when he discovered that his weight could cause some of the brown things to break. For this reason exactly he kept his limbs on different parts of it. He made sure to keep a stronger hold by bending his wrists and elbows around some things while using his knees to lift himself upward. His mouth helped out with that, functioning as a makeshift hand. He tried not to pay attention to the rough texture and bad taste.
It was only after a climb accomplished by hard work and immense difficulty that he was finally able to greet the window, diving through like his life depended on it—which it did. Inside was very dimly lit, natural light being its only source of illumination. The floor was soft, but it wasn't herbaro like his first assumption. He really couldn't identify the material, but it was all too soon before he could care about nothing more than curling up somewhere and falling asleep. He chose a corner and positioned himself in a way that wouldn't make his rings dig into the covering.
It felt like mere seconds before he was startled awake with an ear-shattering shriek. The first thing he noticed was that he'd been asleep for a long time. It had to be midday—the natural light was strong.
The second thing he noticed was a female a little shorter than himself. She had jet black hair, also like his, purple eyes—the likes of which he had never seen before, and purple lipstick. He only knew what lipstick was because there had been a rare few female scientists. Her body was up against the wall opposite of him, one hand covering her mouth while the other was spread out beside her, also against the wall. Her shirt was black and her skirt was a plaid purple color. And she was scared of him. The question running through his head was, why? He never intended to scare anyone and he certainly never did anything to her. In fact, this place was supposed to be completely empty. It was the only reason he chose it. Well, that and he really needed to sleep.
Her breathing hitched as she seemed to come to a realization. He soon found out the worst—she was an English-speaker. She meant nothing but bad intentions. That is...if she ever knew who he was. If he could just hide his identity somehow...
"Who are you?!" she yelled, causing him to flinch at her words.
It sounded more like a question than a command but that didn't mean he was in a position to answer her. If she spoke Esperanto, now would be a great time to do it. If she had any direct ties to the program or had helped out in deciding how to prepare him for Projekto Nivelo Up, she should know he only understood Esperanto. She should know he wasn't an English-speaker like she was.
"Who are you?!" she yelled again, this time seeming to take more fright and confusion as to why he wasn't answering her.
"I-I'll call the cops! I will!" she continued to rant. "Don't think I won't!"
He watched her and suddenly realized that she was probably scared because he was still curled in a tight ball and she could've thought he was hiding a weapon. But if he dared to move, she could take it as a possible threat and do something about it—what she could do was unknown.
He lifted his head and used his eyes to silently plead with her to stop panicking. She clearly didn't get the point, as he found out when she said something else about "call the cops". He couldn't hide his confusion any longer and it became obvious that she saw it. She was calming down, but still saying things. He wondered if she even knew what she was saying anymore—he certainly didn't.
At last she moved from the wall over to a small, boxlike table and shakily grabbed one of the little devices he'd seen yesterday. She tapped on it with her thumbs for a bit, looking at him every few seconds to make sure he wasn't going to do anything. As if he would even think of that...
She held the device up to her ear and spoke into it. "Tucker, come over here now."
He heard a muffled response from the little thing and she took it from her ear, tapping it again before placing it back onto its rightful spot on the table. The little thing was foreign, new. It was apparently very common among the English-speakers in the Outside.
"Why are you here?" she asked him, much more calmly than before. "Who are you?"
He only wished he could answer her. He didn't know how to let her know he didn't understand her. He also wanted to tell her that she had no reason to keep as far away as she could in this room. She shouldn't be afraid of him considering how obedient he was and how opposed he was to any type of violence. Having been repeatedly hurt himself, he had no wish to inflict damage upon anyone else.
"Have you been stalking me or something? Is that why you're here?" she continued.
He tried to repeat some of the words in his head, but her sentences flowed together, making it hard to break it down. It was like how the scientists spoke in Esperanto, fluent and casual, like it was second nature to them. At least he was able to understand them though—not like with her.
"Seriously, who are you? And where did you come from? I don't even know you!"
He unfurled himself and pressed against the wall to pull himself into a standing position, trying to prove to her that he had no weapons and therefore wasn't a threat. She immediately looked at his hands and feet, realizing that he couldn't do much with the rings in him.
"You can't move," she pointed out.
Somehow he knew she had figured it out, that he was too greatly restricted to do anything complicated. Even most of the basics had become that much more difficult thanks to these rings. Walking was basic and was already a well learned skill, so he brushed that off as not much of a problem. Being unable to hold things was a different story. It was the first thing an infant learned how to do, and he could no longer do it. It was a good thing he'd never known what humiliation was, because if he did, having such an easy skill taken from him would've been humiliating.
The girl relaxed once she saw just how disabled he was—once she knew she had the upper hand against him. He knew that with the rings in, she was undoubtedly stronger than him. What she didn't know was that even if he was the strongest experiment in the world, he wouldn't hurt anyone or anything. Despite that one time when he was delighted to see the entire facility burn down to a crisp, he never had a dark side. If he did, then it wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to make him do something wrong.
But what if she ordered him to do something? Would it be considered wrong to show disobedience when he didn't know what she was saying? If that was the case then this really was an unfair world.
"Are you mute?" she asked. "Is that why you aren't answering me?"
He hung his head and stared blankly at the floor, desperately trying to figure out how he could get her to understand that he didn't have the slightest clue what she was saying without making himself look like a potential threat. If he moved, she might have the wrong reaction to it. If he didn't move, she could take it as pure defiance. There was no room for defiance at the facility, but the Outside was such an unpredictable place. To show defiance in the Outside could have even more dire consequences than at the facility.
He looked up only to find himself in a sudden deadlock. Her eyes were piercing. She was studying him, wondering what to do now that he had come to her. Technically, though, he never meant to come to her. In all honesty it seemed more like she had come to him rather than the other way around.
Seconds turned to minutes, and he could've sworn an entire three hours had passed when there was a loud tone that rang throughout the building. It broke them both from the stare down as the girl rushed downstairs.
Almost immediately she came back up, dragging a dark-skinned boy with her. He stood firmly in the corner, more than ready to curl back up into a tight, protective ball.
"I don't know what to do with him, Tucker," she panted, her eyes falling back on him.
Thoughts of escape were immediately banished as she seemed to peer into his soul. Not that he was thinking of actual escape, but by curling back up, he could escape her stare.
The boy drew a sharp but steady breath as he, too, looked him over.
"Who is he?" the boy finally said.
The silence, the deafening silence, settle back around them all for a few moments. His appearance must've been new to them, because neither of them seemed to know what to do; nor did they seem to grasp what was actually happening.
"I don't know," the girl answered. "I don't think he can talk though—he didn't say one word when I kept asking him questions."
"Did you ask him if he could talk?"
"Yeah, but he still didn't answer me. Tucker, he didn't even shake his head yes or no."
"Well..." The boy stopped when he saw the rings and quickly scanned them. "What are those, some kind of accessories?"
The girl rolled her eyes. "Oh gee, no, Tuck, they're parasites. Of course they're accessories!"
"I was only asking because I mean... Don't you think those are weird places to put body rings? How can he hold things, how can he even walk? I mean look at him, he's standing on the sides of his feet. I've heard of earrings, belly rings, even lip rings...but I've never seen anything like that before," the boy said.
"Maybe he came from a different country and stuff like that is popular there?"
The boy waved his hand in dismissal. "He looks American to me."
"Well...America tends to have some pretty strange characters in it..." she murmured.
He heard the conversation but wasn't paying much attention to it. It was about him no doubt. It was always about him. Normally he felt a certain dislike for such conversations but Projekto Nivelo Up was once more taking its toll. He was starting to think that yesterday had been the same, but he had been far too preoccupied to notice it. His insides were hurting. His skin was hurting. His eyes, nose, and mouth were hurting. The same exhaustion was beginning to take over—whether or not it was from lack of rest he didn't know. Either way, it was only a matter of time before he would pass out.
"Hey!" the boy shouted. "Look at his hands!"
Even though he was tired and wanting to get away from them both, he let the boy grab his wrist. He flinched, but that was usually allowed at the facility—after all, it was an instinct.
"What are you doing?! We don't know him!" the girl hissed.
The boy traced a finger down to the hole where the rings had been pierced through him and he grew jumpy, edgy. The holes were bleeding profusely, probably due to the painful climbing experience yesterday. It wasn't too surprising that the wounds had reopened, but few people had ever touched them before.
It was when the boy began to examine the bleeding that he jumped back and pushed himself as far into the corner as possible, digging his heels into the floor to keep him shoved back. His body acted on its own accord and he pulled his hands up to his chest as he dropped down and instinctively curled over himself, almost every vulnerable point protected.
"Tucker, you're really scaring him," the girl said, a hint of curiosity in her voice.
"He's more scared of us than we are of him," the boy replied. "It doesn't make any sense..."