Most of the next morning was spent by Roy and Ed trying to feel each other out.

Well, really, Roy did most of the social exploration since Ed was content to just lie on the couch in a haze of medication—medication that Roy had needed to forcefully shove down his throat... the experience had not been pleasant for either of them—as Roy tried to figure out what to do with him. When Roy had decided that he was going to take Ed into his home, he had originally intended to treat the transformed boy as he normally would have—with short jokes, sarcasm, et cetera—but Ed was certainly making it difficult.

He wasn't acting like himself. That was hardly surprising, given the circumstances, but Roy hadn't really been prepared for this chimera's complete lack of "Edward." Roy had figured that once Ed was safe and under the colonel's care that he would settle and more of his personality would shine through. That assumption was wrong, apparently. If this creature was acting anything like Edward, then it was a side of Edward that Roy had never seen; he was skittish and depressive... but also very affectionate at times. After he'd woken up in bed next to Roy this morning, Ed had pawed and nuzzled his superior until Roy finally caved in and petted him a little. It was really hard not to be tempted to treat the child like a dog, especially when he looked and acted so much like one.

Well, best not to dwell on it too much at the moment; there were more important things to worry about than how to socially interact with a half-human chimera.

First things first: the kid needed to be fed. The vet had told Roy to give Ed only a little bit of food at a time, since his body was still in starvation mode and an overload of food in his system could send him into a potentially deadly kind of shock. She had recommended giving him small portions of watered-down canned dog food several times a day, but there was no way in hell that Roy was going to give him dog food... whether or not he was mostly dog at the moment.

Roy finally settled for warming him up a bowl of broth with little slivers of meat in it. He figured that it would have enough protein to sustain Edward for a while, but still be light enough not to make him sick. After he'd finished preparing it, he moved to set it on the floor, but then hesitated. He really didn't want the kid to have to eat on the floor... but it would certainly be too difficult for him to sit upright at the table. Well, it wasn't as if Ed's human sensibilities were going to suddenly kick in and make him refuse to eat off the ground, so Roy just set the bowl down on the white tiled floor of his kitchen with a frustrated sigh and called Ed over.

The kid gulped it all down without preamble, hunched and trembling, not even bothering to chew the chunks of meat before swallowing them. He lapped up the broth with a depressing amount of desperation, greedily emptying the bowl within seconds and then licking the floor where stray droplets had been spilled by his fervor. Roy watched him sadly, chewing his bottom lip. God, the poor kid was so hungry... Roy was tempted to give him more, but knew that this would not be a good idea; he would probably just throw it up anyway, the sudden excess of food too much for his stomach to handle. Well, maybe Roy would give him something else in an hour or two.

Even after it was empty Ed continued to lick the black ceramic bowl clean, his long nose pushing the dish across the floor with a harsh scraping noise. Roy crouched down to retrieve the empty dish and put it in the sink, but Ed growled threateningly as he reached down, his hackles raised in warning. Roy drew back, a little startled by Ed's aggression. Ed snarled again for good measure and turned back to the bowl.

"Okay, okay... I get it." Roy mumbled to him, standing upright again. He supposed that it was normal for a starving dog to be aggressive around food... but that didn't make Ed's behavior any less disturbing. Roy decided to just back off from the kid until he calmed down a little and went into his living room, depositing himself on the sofa. He cast his gaze around at the impressive stacks of manuscripts cluttering his coffee table and suppressed a sigh.

Roy had, stacked before him, every known article of The Sewing Life Alchemist's documented research—everything from published academic journals to random notes scratched out on coffee-stained napkins from that little cafe on 23rd street. It was going to take him an eternity to get through it all... and unfortunately the unpublished stuff wasn't even organized. These were Tucker's personal notes that he had certainly never intended for anyone else to see, so they were not written to be understood by anyone but himself. Some of the notes that Roy had looked through last night before going to bed were barely even legible, just loose ideas scrawled in quick bursts of inspiration. Roy himself was consistently guilty of doing the same thing when alchemic theories struck him—sometimes the writing was so rushed that even HE had trouble reading it the next day—but it was still frustrating to think that he was going to have to try and decipher each little bit of these notes if he expected to learn anything about the depraved man's practices.

Leaning forward to grab a random folder of notes, Roy caught sight of Ed slinking out of the kitchen quietly. He was walking very stiffly, no doubt in pain. The veterinarian had prescribed him some mild painkillers, but Roy knew that those would barely even take the edge off the agony in Ed's twisted body. He watched Ed move slowly to the other side of the couch and try to pull himself up, but the strain of trying to lift himself made him give a low, pained whine and he gave up quickly, opting to curl up on the floor next to Roy's leg instead.

Roy clenched his jaw and just tried to ignore him, pretending not to notice the warmth of Ed's breath on his bare foot. Instead, he just opened the file and began his search.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Shit. Roy hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that unspeakable things had happened in this place. It was like nothing that Maes had ever encountered before in his career. It was like a bad dream. It was like Hell.

Lieutenant Colonel Hughes shuddered, both from the cold air in this damp, badly lit place and from some unseen force that ran a chilling finger down his spine. God, he couldn't wait to get out of here and he could tell that his men all felt the same way; they were all rushing about purposefully, every one of them eager to finish their tasks so that they could leave. Maes and his men had been here for the better part of the day and, now that night was falling and their assignment was almost finished, all of them were getting irritable and antsy... and the ominous, disquieting air packed inside the lab really wasn't helping.

"Sir!" one of Maes' men called, jogging over to him, "We found more bodies in the basement. And some animals. We've already taken pictures and documented them."

"Good work. Go ahead and get them loaded in the truck. I think we still have a few more up here, too."

"Yes, sir. Also, Lieutenant Perry told me to bring these to you," the man said, producing a thick stack of files, "He found them downstairs."

Maes took the files and read the labels curiously. The top two read "EXPERIMENT #27" and "EXPERIMENT #28." Maes smiled grimly.

"Ah, excellent." he said to his subordinate, "Thank you. Colonel Mustang needs these... Tell Perry to finish up down there so that we can head out; I'd like to get out of here as soon as possible and I don't think I'm the only one."

The man smirked empathetically and saluted before running back toward the staircase. Maes watched him go and then lowered his eyes back down to the files. Good. Maes had been half-worried that the Anarchists had taken these files with them when they fled, for—as Maes and his men quickly discovered—it seemed that they had taken a great deal of the other documents before abandoning the lab. All of the file cabinets on the first floor had been completely gutted and it appeared that most of the "test subjects" had been taken as well, leaving behind only a few twisted bodies... some of which Maes was almost positive were going to give him nightmares tonight. Failed experiments, no doubt.

The lower level, however, was a different story. There was still a lot of evidence down there that had been left behind: files, bodies, chemicals, equipment... you name it, it was there, rotting and growing mold in the darkness. It looked as if the Anarchists had left in a hurry, driven by the fear of being caught. They needn't have been so rushed though, for according to Maes' best estimate these soulless people had been gone for weeks before Roy had even received the tip-off that Ed was here. Something must have scared them off, something above and beyond the thought of going to prison... or worse, if Roy ever got his hands on them.

Maes sighed. The military would probably never really know what had happened here... and it seemed that the higher-ups were more than a little uneasy about this investigation to begin with, so Maes highly doubted that he and his team would be allowed to do much more than a preliminary investigation. The Fuhrer wanted this thing hushed up and locked away in a vault before the citizens of his country got wind of it. It would not look good for the military if some of the more educated people in Amestris heard of such high-level alchemy being used in this way, since it wouldn't take long for them to suspect that those frighteningly powerful State Alchemists might have had a hand in the atrocity...

That wasn't true, of course... or at least Maes didn't think it was. He was on good terms with several of the State Alchemists and was best friends with one of them, and he knew without a doubt that none of them would ever even imagine taking part in something like this. Unfortunately, the public still viewed them through the blood-tinted lenses they'd been gifted with in the wake of the Eastern Rebellion, and it wasn't exactly a far stretch to think that those Destructors of Ishbal would practice such heinous experiments as these.

Still, in spite of the risks involved, Maes was furious that the Fuhrer wasn't allowing a more thorough investigation. The Alchemic Anarchists had been around for years, keeping just below the radar so that they never got caught, but this was far beyond their usual levels of depravity. This was mass murder. Who knew how many people had been taken by these monsters? Who could say how many children like Ed had been kidnapped and tortured for the sake of science?

Maes exhaled another low, frustrated sigh and walked over to one of the lab tables in the corner. Well, it didn't really matter right now, he supposed. The Anarchists were long gone and the most important thing at the moment was fixing Ed and identifying the bodies so that their families could be notified of their deaths—they would, of course, never be able to actually take the bodies for burial... not looking the way they did. After they were identified they would be disposed of quietly and no one outside of the military would ever know how badly they had been disfigured. Only Maes, Roy, and their men would remember these faces as they were now. Only they would carry the burden of their deadly deformities, recalling the twisted arrangements of teeth, eyes, and limbs as they lie awake at night.

It was just one more horror to lock away with the thousands of others that lurked in the dark corners of Maes' mind.

The lieutenant colonel shuddered and dropped the files onto a lab table, the surface of which was slightly less fouled by blood and mold than the surrounding tables. He pressed his hands against the scrubbed wood and leaned over the files, his wedding ring flashing in the sickly yellow light of the naked bulb suspended from the ceiling above him. He opened the file labeled "EXPERIMENT #28", and scanned over the handwritten charts and logs that were housed therein, but most of it consisted of symbols and transmutation circles and alchemic jargon that Maes didn't understand. Hopefully Roy would be able make sense out of it; it looked like there was a lot of information here.

Maes flipped through the documents, glossing over some of the logs. At the back of the file there was a series of photographs, each taken in the murky darkness of the downstairs portion of the lab. The first picture was of Edward as he had been before his transformation. He was being held still by two strong-looking men whose faces had been obscured by black ink to hide their identities. Ed had been stripped naked and his automail had been removed, his empty ports glinting in the camera light. His lip was split and his left eye was swollen shut, but even so the expression on his face was absolutely murderous. If he had been afraid, he didn't show it. The only emotion coming from him was a hate so potent that Maes could almost feel it like a wave of heat radiating from the photograph. He was pissed.

A chart below the picture read:

SUBJECT: #28

SEX: male

AGE: approx. 12-15 yrs. Exact age unknown.

HEIGHT: approx. 5 ft. Subject too violent for accurate measurement.

WEIGHT: approx. 90 lbs. Subject too violent for accurate measurement.

COMMENTS: #28 was taken from the streets of Central city. He is uncooperative and will not give any information about himself, but we are assuming that he is a thief by trade given the fact that he had a State Alchemist's watch in his pocket. He is, however, quite skilled in alchemy himself and has tried to escape using his arts several times...

"God, these people are idiots..." Maes mumbled to himself as he read on,

...He is volatile and should be treated with caution; HE IS TO BE BOUND AND GUARDED AT ALL TIMES UNTIL THE EXPERIMENT IS COMPLETE.

Maes smirked in spite of himself, looking at the picture again. Damn right, Ed was volatile. Frankly, Maes was surprised that they'd been able to keep him here for so long... then again, who knew how long his clever mind had been human enough to think of a way out? The lieutenant colonel worked his jaw, his eyes wandering over the photograph of Edward's naked, beaten body.

"Hang in there, Ed," he whispered softly, running his thumb over the edge of the photo.

"Lieutenant Colonel?"

Maes shook himself and looked up, blinking back the sudden grief that had misted his vision. "Yes, Lieutenant Perry?" he asked, clearing his throat as he closed the file.

"Everything is all packed up, sir," Perry said, his head tilted to the side in a quietly sympathetic way. He knew what that file contained and he was well aware of Maes' fondness for the Fullmetal Alchemist. "I think we're just about ready to head out."

"Good... That's good," Maes nodded, tucking the files under his arm and straightening. "Then let's get the hell out of here. I'll send for a crew to come in tomorrow and finish the clean up now that we have all of the evidence. Tell the men to be back at the vans in five minutes."

"Yes, sir."

The man saluted and turned to obey without another word. Maes hugged the files to his chest and silently prayed that Roy would be able to get some use out of them.