SHOUTOUTS:
jsumptersgirl - lol right-o. mean old government peoples… in the story at least.
Roxy Eno - I hope you're right, seeing as I haven't written it yet… I've got a couple possibilities
Alexandria Queen of Dreams - ha. I love how everyone's reviews were all anti-gvmt. this chapter….
What Lurks in Shadows - ha. Not so fast on getting the chapter out, but here it is… waiting for my other reviewers, see… guess they'll just have to come along later.
Miss Loaf - ah. Yeah. I can see where the guys wouldn't quite get it. My boyfriend don't. stinkers.
Brownie/Melody - well the other thing's typed up as well, you'll just have to viddy it tomorrow, but are you going to be here? I think not. Damn YIG.

Chapter Twenty-One

The following days were a series of people interrogating me.

Where had Maxwell come from? I don't know. How did he get here? I don't know. Why is he here? I don't know. They expected me to be the expert, when they could have simply asked him. I didn't know much.

But I don't believe that they were exactly on speaking terms quite yet. If ever. They had problems with his speaking telepathically because they couldn't understand or study or explain it. He had a problem with speaking aloud because it was a hassle and he had to borrow Brian's voice, quite literally. If it hadn't been for him, Maxwell explained, speech would have been impossible for him. Never quite said why, I mean, he obviously could make sound, since he growled and hissed and roared and all that. Something about forming words, probably.

Some answers I could give, though. And I'd given up fighting with them at this point. The story was out already. It was all over the news and it could only get worse if I didn't say anything and everything was left to doctors and rumors. So I thought, fuck it, y'know? There was no point in resisting, really.

So I told them about Brian's death, how I'd found the letter and then I'd found Maxwell. About how I tried to kill him at first. About how we'd come closer and about how he behaved, what he did, ate, things like that. How I thought he felt and thought. They made me tell and retell about the effects of garnet about a thousand times. They wanted to recreate that effect; I wouldn't allow it.

I would visit him daily. The space he lived in had been made more comfortable, although the atmosphere was still sterile and void of any real comfort. There was a futon couch-bed, a table, chairs, some rugs. A treadmill, which Maxwell held terrible disdain for. Any sharp corner had either been sanded down or padded. The TV was too dangerous; it stayed on the other side of the glass box. Like in an insane asylum.

Maxwell was upset because none of the furniture matched. The scientists failed to share his understanding of a harmonious room.

Mostly when I came in we'd lie on the futon and hold each other and talk in that way where they couldn't hear him, at least;he was only in my head. He would tell me about the tests the ran on him while they milled around processing the results outside the cage around us. He told me about the needles, the pills, the injections and the stress tests and the x-rays and CAT-scans and the questioning and anatomical sketches and so many otherthings I wish I'd notlearned about.

Shocking, degrading, sadistic things I'd expect from one of those Nazi concentration camp labs I'd heard about on a TV show. I saw the scar where he told me they'd cut him, repeatedly, hundreds of times in the same spot, until he'd been unable to heal the cut as he usually would. A process that took hours. And this wasn't a small cut, either, but a pretty good-sized gash, which they'd had to hold him down shaking and screaming to inflict. Over a hundred times.

I myself was subject to the sort of sexual shit they put us through. Even then, as I would lay with him and talk, someone was always there watching, taking notes. They went ballistic if we so much as kissed, even though I'd already told them time and time again that yeah, we'd had sex, neither of us had side effects or whatever shit they were looking for. To him they did more extensive testing in that area, I could never get him to say how much more, but on those days I could feel how hard and tense he was. And angry. It was inhumane, humiliating, and I couldn't do anything about it. If I raised too much of a fuss, I was sedated for the sake of "science." Simple as that. And the tests went on.

Some days when I came in he would be angry; he would hate everyone and lash out even at me. And rather than let me deal with him, the men in white coats would come and "rescue" me and drug him. Sometimes he was already drugged when I came in. But then I knew he'd been fighting, and it was right for him to rebel.

It was killing him, though. There were charts posted all over the place. Some for him and some for me. A lot of numbers I couldn't understand, some I did. The graphs were what made it obvious. My graphs all went upwards, and it was true, physically at least I was feeling better than I had in years. My psychological analyses were still fucked up, but what the hell do you expect?

Maxwell's graphs were going down at first. Then they were plummeting.

He was shaking, and twitching. He could no longer heal himself at all. He lost interest in eating, so they put him on an IV-type thing. He didn't communicate with me anymore. But I could just look and see that he was in pain. Physically, he looked just as magnificent as ever, but there was something different when you touched him. This fragility I could feel but not see. He was dying inside; this place was killing him. Not anything in particular, but everything.

The doctors wouldn't listen to my pleas to free him, end this. So looking at those charts, I made up my mind.