At the back of his mind, Knox realised he was in deep shit. The syringe was poised in his hand as he paced. Shit. SHIT. This was trouble. All the ferals were walking around being nonchalant about their boniness and he was here shitting bricks because these were 'test subjects' and he couldn't off them if they turned on him. He needed a better plan. He capped the syringe back and stuffed it into his pocket, jogging through his memory.

Stefan had been in a cage hadn't he? Stefan was a beautiful glowing feral test subject who was contained behind bars while an evil scientist injected things into him and controlled him with some fucked up shit in his brain that made ghouls blow up. Of course at that time, he had never met a glowing feral with a name like Stefan. He was beautiful with his shiny, glowing skin that darkened around his ribs and shoulder blades. Knox had brushed a palm over that skin and gotten the familiar tingling sensation of radiation. Stefan watched him, tipping his head like he was interested in a smoothskin like him. Then, the feral scratched him. You'd think a name would humanise a creature. (Yeah, like Moriarty.) He remembered thinking 'what a waste' as he saw the glowing one lying dead by his feet, still beautiful in death.

He realised he needed a prison of some sort. Lure one of the ferals into the prison thing upstairs in the museum and lock the cage while somehow plunging the needle into the feral. He needed restraints, like the ones raiders had. The many messed up things in the Wastes were going to help him. Great. He glanced at his ever stoic bodyguard who exuded a kind of boredom, while still managing to make him feel like he was in one of those observation cells in the Vault. Hey, the guy had probably spent years standing in the corner of a hellhole of a bar. Watching a punkass fret about injecting ferals wasn't that much more entertaining.

"Charon."

"What is it?" The flicker of a pale gaze ran over his face.

"Think you can hold off a feral from raping me?"

Bad fucking idea. He was separated from his bodyguard, running like a crippled radroach through the halls. The one feral was chasing him. He could hear the progressing flat footfalls following him. At least it was just one and not the whole horde. Sure it was a bad idea but it was working wasn't it? Okay, so around the next corner, up the stairs and he would reach the 'prison'. He banged the cell door open, the metal clanging against the wall. Fuck. That would surely alert many other ferals. He scurried his way up the stairs, feeling the fast swipes from a clawed hand right over his thighs. Knox yelped. He jumped over the railing, gauging that he would break an ankle when he landed onto the table. Sure enough, he heard the crack, then the echoing one as he broke a damned finger when he twisted his body over it. Pain shot through his body but he pushed himself up with a guttural growl and forced himself to move DAMMIT MOVE. He limped, jumped, ran to the still open door. Charon turned the corner. His heart leapt to his throat at the sight of his bodyguard. A territorial roar behind him spurred him on. He pushed himself, sprinting as best as he could to the cell door. Then the metal brushed the side of his shoulder as he collapsed just outside the bars. The grill clanged shut behind him as he came to himself, swallowing huge gulps of air and sliding a palm over his sweat-slicked body, patting around for lifejuice. His lungs hurt and his breath was noisy and erratic as he inhaled and coughed in between his exhales. When his working fingers felt the tip of a blood pack, he wrenched himself up and bit a corner of the pack, the first taste of crimson flooding his mouth. It calmed him even as it dribbled down his chin. He licked his fingers and he finally noticed his bodyguard staring down at him with something like curiosity. The trapped feral was doing the same but it was pressed against the bars, an odd grin on its face. Knox shuddered.

"Good job, man," he wheezed, coughing again. "Thanks for watching my ass." Charon nodded but stayed quiet. Knox licked his lips and slurped the rest of his lifejuice, ignoring everything else for the moment.

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Holotape Log 1

Are ferals monogamists? I mean, I thought all creatures were more into orgies and shit. But these ferals totally ignored me when I was feeling Test 1 up. Shit. Not like that. Well, okay. Like that. It was just a touch and a grab, an idea I got from one of those expeditions downtown. From Stefan. Shut up. You got better ideas to lure a feral into a cell? No, I don't fucking think so. Um… so I managed to inject him with the serum while he was sleeping. No signs of anything yet. He's just walking around the same way every other feral walks around….you know…clueless and lost. I left him some meat but he hasn't touched it. I'll give Test 1 another dose in 13 hours.

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