Hello Everybody!
Here it is, Part 0 – to be read after Part 4 but set looong before Part 1. Originally I was going to incorporate this into Part 2 (or was WAS part 2, before it got divided up into parts 2, 3, and 4) but I just couldn't make it work. I loved it too much to let it go.
I actually wrote this out of sequence, finishing this one before Part…3, I think? I'd never written Worth before, so if he's OOC just pretend it's because of the AU nature of the story. I based all the writing of him in the previous chapters on this one here. This was, surprisingly, ridiculously easy to write. I sat down and did it in about the span of an hour and a half.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to continue on with this new AU after its finished or even now, actually, please, I encourage you to do so. Just send me a link or something so that I can read whatever it is that you've written or see whatever you've drawn. I'm all fan-girly like that.
But for now, I bid you farewell and present to you: Part 0.
I do not own Hanna is Not a Boy's Name, nor any of the characters/locations therein. I also do not own Repo! The Genetic Opera, nor any of the characters/locations therein. I do, however, own the story.
Escape from Crucifixus – Part 0
They had called it a plague, an epidemic, a disease. It was the disease that nearly wiped out half of humanity. It was the disease that made the world so cruel and dark. It was the disease that turned the people of the city into nothing more than greedy animals, ever searching for their next fix. They blamed the disease for everything. But he saw through that. He knew what humanity really was, and he knew that it had nothing to do with the organ failures that spanned the globe.
It was the city itself that had done it - the city that had done it to them all; turned them into monsters of the worst kind.
Crusifixus was the disease.
He ground his cigarette out on the soot-laden wall. It made him sick to his stomach to think about the whole situation, but he supposed that if he wouldn't then surely no one else would. Why couldn't they see? Why didn't anyone hear the rumbling of the body trucks as they rolled through the streets in the middle of the night? Gods, was he the only sensible person left anymore?
But it wasn't just the people. Oh no. That wasn't even half of it. Humanity may have gone insane but it had had help. GeneCo was the worst of all. Because of that foul blot on the surface of the once pure earth, the horrors of the plague seemed like nothing more than a bad summer cold. Because of Geneco, there was no compassion left in the world. No one even batted an eyelash if you were found dead in the gutter with your throat slit and your lungs torn out. No one gave a second thought to just where that new set of kidneys had come from – ripped from their neighbor's body and then sewn into their own. Someone else's life to feed their vanity.
Because of GeneCo, murder, fuckin' murder, was now legal. Repossession, they called it. But fancy names didn't change what it was.
He spat in disgust as he mulled these thoughts over in his head. How had it come to this? Where had they all gone so horribly, disastrously wrong? When you could change your DNA with just a simple pen stroke on the devil's contract, did being human even mean anything anymore? Was there any value in life at all, or was it just another commodity that could be bought and sold to the one holding the most cash? His stomach churned.
He eyed the filthy little hovel that had become his home. A rusted gurney sat despairingly over in the far corner, older machinery and trays of dusty surgical tools along the wall beside it. A row of cabinets stood on the opposite side of the room, their pilfered contents striped of all bar codes and serial numbers. All of it stolen from GeneCo itself. The thought made him smile just a little bit. It was his way of fighting back, of spitting in the face of the very people who had made them all their slaves. It was thanks to that god-forsaken company that he was forced into the underground in the first place, might as well use its own supplies against it.
He had come to this city because he had wanted to help people. When the plague first started he had taken in anyone who came to him, whether they could pay or not, losing many but saving dozens more. Once the Largo Family had stepped in, he thought the worst was over and that he could simply treat the sick – be a doctor instead of a surgeon. But no. Rotti's company promised to give life to a dying world; instead, it drained it even more. If you were one of the lucky ones who had the money, then you could also afford to make yourself "beautiful" in the twisted eyes of a decaying society. You could "enhance" yourself, make yourself "perfect." Turn yourself into something not human, plastic, hollow, false.
For everyone else, it was a different story. If you couldn't pay, you financed. If you couldn't finance, you died. If you could finance but still couldn't pay, you were subject to repossessions and an even more gruesome death. And that's when people had started coming back to him. They knew that he would take them in, help them, do the best he possibly could to save their existence. He didn't do the cosmetic surgeries, he refused. But if you were dying he would usher you inside his office without a word. Eventually, his resources and contacts began to dry up and he was forced to start pilfering the much-needed supplies from passing GeneCo trucks or buying them through the underground off GenTerns who would sell things on the side. He had even, once or twice, had to procure that damnable blue drug from a grave robber in green face-paint that had just happened to stumble by.
But then GeneCo got wise to independent doctors and began to systematically snuff them out; either by absorbing them into the company itself, or by silencing them. Rotti wanted to make sure there was no competition. One day, the GeneCops had come knocking on the door of his tiny clinic with a message stating that he had been offered an official position as one of GeneCo's top surgeons. He turned them down with a scowl.
"I know wha' this is, and I know what'll happen if'n I don't respond in kind. I ain't doin' it. Get the hell outta my office."
They were back the next week to shut him down, but by then he was long gone.
And so he disappeared, out of the sight of Rotti Largo and his death doctors. He wished he could have left some kind of notice to his patients, the dozens of people who had come to depend on him for help, just to let them know that he was still around, that they could still find him and come to him, but he knew that it would have led Rotti right to him. So all he could do was hide away and continue to practice in secret, hoping that the people who needed him would be able to locate him before it was too late. Hoping that those who were looking for his blood didn't.
As he had fled to the underground, he had allowed himself a rare emotional moment. He grieved for the ones he had helped, would now most likely not be able to help again. He grieved for them because it was those people who showed him that there still was a glimmer of hope for humanity. These people were genuine, real, flesh in a world of plastic and cookie-cutter molds. And he was abandoning them. Running away to this tiny little one-room cell in a vain attempt to save his own skin and still find away to save the skins of others. He knew that he couldn't have it both ways.
Sooner or later he would have to leave.
He was yanked viciously from his musings by something smashing into his door. He heard the wood splinter under the force of the blow. "What the hell?" He stood up and shifted from behind his desk. Cautiously, he put his hand to the battered door and leaned his ear beside it – listening. He heard the sound of someone begging, heard them being slammed against the wall, heard the blood curdling screams of pain. Oh god…
"Repo."
He stood frozen against the rotting wooden door as the sounds of slaughter rang throughout the alleyway beyond it. He bit his tongue. Finally, finally, the screaming ceased and a new sound took its place – the sound of retreating footsteps as the RepoMan vanished back into the shadows from whence he had come, prize wet and dripping in his refrigerated bag. With his stomach already lurching from earlier memories, he had to fight to keep from dashing off to the sink and purging his guts into the drain.
In a fog, he moved to undo the latch, ancient hinges screeching as he pulled open the door. A young boy, no older than eighteen, nineteen at the most, slumped inwards against the doorframe. The door opened a little further and the boy fell limp and lifeless to the dirty floor. His hair was a bright, fiery red – a rare color for the city if it was indeed natural. His eyes, now dull and staring, had once been electric blue, he guessed, and a pair of black-rimmed glasses hung on the tip of the boy's nose. Glasses. Those eyes were real. Then he looked down; a huge, jagged cavern spanned the entire length of the boy's abdomen, most of his innards gone.
Even after the act his ears had just witnessed, he was still human. And he just couldn't leave another human being out in the grime of the street. At very least he could cremate the poor blighter in the blaze of the furnace in the back. Spare them the ride in the body truck. Holding back his revulsion at the sight of GeneCo's latest victim, he knelt down to close the boy's eyelids. And got the shock of his life.
The boy moved his head a fraction of an inch towards him, dull blue orbs locking onto his own dark brown ones. He stared in shock. The kid had moved. "Yer still alive?" he breathed in disbelief. The boy twitched as if trying to speak, but he put a hand gently on his shoulder. "Dun' go movin' now. You'll jus' make it worse."
And then suddenly he was all doctor; surgeon's need to help, to save taking full control over his mind. He had to get the boy out of the middle of the entryway and onto an operating table as quickly and as softly as possible. Somehow, he managed to scoop the dying boy into his arms – the kid weighed hardly anything at all now that his chest was hollow – and deposit him on the long metal table. Deftly, numbly, he flicked switches and pushed buttons until all of his machines whirred to life and he was able to connect them to the boy's failing body. Then he went to work.
Hours later, the red-haired kid was stable, neatly outfitted with all the latest in stolen GeneCo property.
Surgeon mode deactivated and he peeled off the bloody latex gloves. With an exhausted sigh he sat back in his desk chair, head in his hand. It was a miracle that the boy had held onto life just long enough for him to stitch and staple him back together. It must have been the work of the gods themselves that he survived at all.
It was then that he knew.
He couldn't save the soul of the city, he couldn't save its people from their own self-induced nightmare; hell, he couldn't even save himself! But he could save this one. He knew a sign when he saw it. This kid would be his last shot at redemption before he, too, was dragged down into hell with the rest of humanity. He would stay until the kid woke up. Once the kid was well enough, healed enough to travel, to flee, he would leave this city. And he would take the boy with him. Even if he couldn't save anyone else, he could save the two of them.
It would be days before the boy with the ginger hair and the glasses and the blue eyes would wake. A week or two more before he was able to sit up on his own, able to walk. But he managed, and he secretly praised the boy's vitality.
"Wha's yer name, kid?"
"…Hanna."
"Doc Worth, nice'ta meet'cha."
And together they would run. Together…
…They would escape from Crucifixus.
Musical Muse: none
Four more parts to go!
