Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The subject laid on their bed, staring up at the ceiling as they waited. The guards wouldn’t come around to bring the next meal for a few hours or so—it was the longest uninterrupted stretch of downtime in their schedule, save for their resting period—so there was no need to be at attention.

Or, do anything, really.

Their life was structured. Predictable. Not every day was the same as the last, but there were certain patterns that would never deviate. 

Two meals per day, except for every eighth day when they would only get one. One checkup every day, right after they were woken from their resting period. Two testing sessions per day, except for the days when they only got one meal which had one long session, and the day after when there would be none.

Every four days, they had a testing session that they couldn’t remember, including the long days. They simply seemed to appear in their room afterwards, no memory of what had happened even a second earlier. The only evidence left behind was a full-body ache that made them tremble every time they tried to move and the fog in their head being thicker than usual.

Today was a normal day. Yesterday had been a forgetting day. They had another two normal days before the long day.

They laid on the white blanket that covered a white mattress, resting their head on a white pillow while looking up at the white ceiling, the white walls visible in their periphery.

There were no surprises. There never had been.

The subject—mistakenly—did not think there ever would be.

A distant metallic screech was the only warning they got before the world was suddenly upended with an ear-piercing crunch, launching the subject off of their bed and across the white tiled floor.

An eternity seemed to pass as everything around them shook violently, unwilling to allow the subject a moment to regain their balance. With a hard jolt, the room tilted upwards at one end. The floor became a slope that the subject tumbled down before they could grab ahold of something, causing them to slam into the wall.

And just like that, it was over. Everything went still.

The subject didn’t move for a few moments, their brain apparently catching up with what had just happened. Once they realized that they were still alive, they braced their right arm underneath them and tried to push themself up.

Their left shoulder hurt. In fact, their entire left side hurt, but their shoulder must have taken the brunt of the impact because even just moving it sent sharp pain shooting across their body.

They were shaking too much to stand up, so they shifted to sit against the wall. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, but they stopped to catch their breath and try to calm their racing heart, and that’s when they noticed.

It was quiet. Very quiet. More quiet than they had thought was possible.

The gentle hum of the air circulation system was gone, as was the buzzing of the lights. Something else was missing too, but they couldn’t quite pinpoint what.

They listened. Now that they were paying attention (or perhaps now that their ears were no longer ringing), they realized that it wasn’t completely silent. There were little creaks and thumps every now and then, which… probably was not a good sign. It suddenly occurred to the subject that they may still be in danger.

Right as the thought entered their mind, however, they noticed another sound: footsteps. Approaching the door on the far side of the room.

Their first instinct was to assume that the guards had come to retrieve them, bring them to another white room and continue to run tests and bring them meals and make them forget all about the events of the past few minutes.

On reflex, they sat up straighter. Made themself appear neutral. Obedient. Pliant.

But the door began to shift, clunking back and forth in place instead of gliding open smoothly like it usually did, and the subject blinked hard. No, this wasn’t normal. This was new, different. They didn’t know what to do when things were different.

The door continued to jostle for a few moments, before finally opening a crack. Something was slotted through the opening, a piece of black metal with a forked tip. Then, with a series of loud creaks, the door was slowly forced open, bit by bit, until the subject was staring up at a man.

He wore a long white coat, similar to the ones that the people who ran the experiments wore, but of a different make. It was also covered in a splatter of red blood. In his hand was a tool of some kind, a bar made of black and red metal with curves on either end.

Glasses sat over a pair of red-brown eyes, and the subject could just barely see his light pink hair pulled back into a loose bun from this angle.

They realized belatedly that this was the first time they’ve seen a human face in… as long as they could remember. The guards, the people who ran the experiments—they always wore masks.

The man grabbed something from near his waist, and suddenly a bright light was shining directly at the subject. The man’s eyes went wide as he seemed to notice their presence for the first time.

He stared at the subject. They stared back.

“… You okay?” The man’s voice was deep, slightly nasally. It was reminiscent of… something.

The subject looked down at themself. There was no blood. Their left side still hurt, but it was manageable. They nodded.

The man’s eyes flicked around the room, taking in the… rather sparse layout. He glanced back at the subject with a new emotion in his eyes. “We should get out of here. Think the guards are all dead, but who knows how long it’ll be before someone comes to investigate, and I don’t exactly know who I can trust not to shoot me right now.”

The subject may have been having trouble reading the man’s expressions, but they could at least parse the meaning behind those words. I don’t know who I can trust, but I’m trusting you.

The guards were dead. The people who ran the experiments were nowhere to be seen. The schedule had been disrupted. Everything that the subject knew of their life was gone.

The man suggested that they leave. The man trusted them.

They nodded once more.

Chapter Text

Despite the man clearly wanting to spend as little time as possible lingering about, it took a few minutes for him to help the subject escape their room. There wasn’t a whole lot to grab onto to keep steady as they climbed up towards the door; the man ended up taking off his coat and dangling it down for them. They figured he must be quite strong when he was easily able to pull them up from there.

They then stood in one of the small, gray-walled chambers that sat between each room. Except, it was… twisted. Most of the metal floor and parts of the walls were shredded and bunched up, pushed together so that the entire space was a fraction of its normal size.

It was buckled at an angle as well, meaning that the other door in the chamber, which the subject knew led into a thin hallway filled with more doors that they never saw open, sat at the bottom of a downwards slope just like the door to their own room did. It was like someone had bent a metal rod in half and they were standing along the break point.

The man shined his flashlight around with a pensive hum. After a few moments, he let out a little victorious ‘aha’ and settled the beam of the light on a spot on the ceiling.

The subject noticed for the first time that there was a tear in the metal plating along the roof and partially down the wall. They couldn’t see what was beyond it from where they stood, but it looked like it might be big enough for them to squeeze through if they approached it from the right angle.

“I think that’s our ticket outta here.” the man mumbled, almost under his breath. He handed the flashlight to the subject wordlessly. They didn’t really know what to do with it, so they just. Continued to point it at the same spot?

“Little lower.” Ah. They lowered it slightly, illuminating the section of the hole that was closest to them. That… made sense.

The man reached up and placed his hands on two spots along the bottom of the hole, pushing lightly as if testing to ensure it would hold his weight. Eventually, he seemed to be satisfied and pulled himself up and through the hole in one quick motion.

They didn’t see him for a few moments. Then, he popped his head back in and gestured at the subject with his hand. “Alright, c’mere.”

The subject walked towards him, cautious with their footing as they stepped along slanted, uneven ground. They grasped onto his outstretched arm as soon as they were close enough to do so, and once again he hauled them up to his level without difficulty.

“Careful,” he warned as he was setting the subject down on their feet, “I don’t know how stable this platform is.”

The subject was hardly paying attention, however. They were distracted by the strangeness—the newness of the scene around them.

A long, smooth tunnel lined with gray bricks. One end was straight for a while before curving, but the other stretched on and on and on, far past the point that the subject could see what lies beyond it.

What was more perplexing, however, was what filled up the tunnel. Lying strewn around down its length, crushed and broken and destroyed, were dozens of huge black rectangular objects. Some of them were still connected at slight angles compared to their neighbors. Others were completely overturned, thrown against the wall of the tunnel and sitting in odd positions. Others still were almost unrecognizable, looking like little more than heaps of rubble and scrap. They could see a massive pileup of the objects further down the tunnel.

The subject stared ahead. They were… having trouble figuring out what they were looking at. What it meant.

Just a few moments ago, they had been in their room. They left through the door, then climbed out of a hole, and now they were here. They glanced down at the metal mesh platform they were standing on, and then at the black box that it was connected to.

… That was their room. Their room was inside that box.

The hallway with the doors that never opened was in the box next to it.

The checkup room, the testing rooms, the room with the big glass wall in it. All of them, every single room they had seen, everywhere they had spent any time that they could remember. It was all just… boxes.

It felt like that revelation should mean something. They weren’t quite sure what.

“Uh… you okay?”

The subject did not startle, but they had admittedly forgotten about the man’s presence for a moment. They nodded.

The man nodded back slowly. “Right. Lemme see the flashlight.” The subject returned it to him, and he turned to shine it at the ground below the platform, then around at the walls of the tunnel. “Looks safe to jump down here. Stay here, I’ll help you down in a sec.”

He grabbed onto the side of the platform and dropped down, his boots crunching on the gravel below. As soon as he recovered his footing, he looked up at the subject and brought his arms up above his head. “Alright, c’mon down. Take it slow.”

The subject copied the man’s motions with much less grace, ensuring their grip on the platform before letting one leg hang down, and then the other. They dangled there for a second, unsure of what to do next. They didn’t really want to just drop down, like the man had. That seemed like it would hurt.

“Just let go whenever you’re ready. I’ll catch ya.” the man reassured, still hovering his arms in the air below the subject.

The man said he would catch them. And the subject believed him.

They let go.

A split second of panic, of heaviness in their stomach as they fell, untethered to the world. And then, as quickly as it had come, the sensation was gone, replaced by the feeling of strong arms bracketing around their waist.

“There ya go.” the man grunted, lowering them down to the ground.

They felt little stones digging into the soft flesh of their left foot, sharp but not quite painful, and the familiar yet strange phantom touch of their right foot as well.

They were sure that they had not winced or made any kind of discernible reaction, but the man seemed to notice somehow anyway, glancing down at the subject’s feet. “Oh. I didn’t realize you weren’t wearing shoes. Uh… sorry. I’ll keep my eye out for anythin’ you can wear.”

The subject was a bit confused as to why he was apologizing, but they nodded regardless.

With that, the man stepped back and pointed the flashlight down the tunnel, towards the end that curved and away from the big pileup. “We should keep movin’. I don’t really like the idea of just walking down this tunnel until we find something, but I’m not seein’ any other options.”

The subject tilted their head in confusion, looking back in the opposite direction. They could have sworn they’d seen something from up on the platform…

And indeed, about halfway to the pileup from their current location was a door embedded in the wall of the tunnel. Maybe the man hadn’t noticed it? It wasn’t particularly hard to see.

Or perhaps he had, and had already ruled it out as a viable route for some reason the subject wasn’t aware of. They decided that that was probably the case.

They must have been gawking at it for a bit too long, however, because the flashlight was suddenly beaming down the tunnel as the man seemed to follow their gaze to the door. “Oh. Didn’t see that. Good eye, kid.”

The man started walking towards the door, leaving the subject frozen in place for a moment. Good eye, kid. That was… praise. Right? It felt like it, though they didn’t really have a frame of reference for such a thing. Praise was not a part of the schedule.

When they still didn’t understand it after a few moments of thinking, they forced their legs to move and followed after the man. He said they had to keep moving, after all.

When the man reached the door, he stopped and bent down to inspect it with the flashlight. He let out a discontent grumble. “Padlocked. Of course.” He looked over at the subject, hovering a few feet away. “You might wanna stand back. This is probably gonna be loud.”

The subject backed up a step. The man seemed satisfied, giving a small nod as he retrieved the black and red tool from earlier off of his belt. He touched the tip of it against the lock, then slowly reeled it back in an arc.

In a flash, he swung the tool down onto the lock, eliciting a loud clanging noise.

This time, the subject did feel themself flinch, their breath catching and muscles seizing up.

Before they knew it, though, the man was at their side. “Hey, you’re okay. That was it, I got the lock off.” They felt a hand grip their shoulder and squeeze lightly.

The subject didn’t know how to react to the contact. It was never good when the guards touched them, and they rarely did so with their hands. But the man drew back after a moment and simply gave the subject a weird look with soft eyes. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything bad.

So, the subject closed their eyes and allowed the tension to leak out of them, slightly surprised that they didn’t have to force it. Somehow, it felt like they were even a bit looser than they had been before.

They opened their eyes to find the man still waiting patiently. “You ready to go?” They nodded.

The two of them walked through the door, entering a small room with a stairwell that led upwards and an open hallway that turned off to the left.

“Hmmm…” the man hummed as he took in the space. “We should probably head upwards first. I dunno if it’ll be a good idea to travel along the surface, but we should probably try to get our bearings, at least.” He side-eyed the subject. “Sound like a plan?”

He was asking for their input? That was weird. Why would they know more than he did?

He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so they just nodded. He nodded back—something he seemed to do a lot—and began leading the way up the stairs.

After climbing the first few flights, the subject’s left leg was starting to ache. They pushed onwards, trying their hardest to keep pace with the man.

They must have failed, though, as he paused on a landing and glanced over at them. His gaze slid down to their leg as they limped up a step, and he pursed his lips. “Right. Stairs. Here, lemme—” he came over to their side and wrapped an arm around their torso, bracing them and lifting slightly. The next step was much easier and much less painful as a result.

“Does your, uh… other side hurt as well?” he asked as he steered the subject towards the next flight of stairs. They shook their head, and he nodded.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to climb for too much longer until they came upon another door. The man carefully pulled away from the subject, keeping his hands out until he deemed them steady enough to stand on their own.

He turned to the door, placing his hands against it.

He hesitated. For just a moment. Then he pushed it open.

Bright light poured through, soft and golden and so unlike the harsh white of the subject’s room. The man stood in the doorway and looked back, holding out a hand.

The subject stared at him, then realized what he wanted them to do. They stepped forward and placed their right hand in his, feeling the not-quite-touch of his skin.

He pulled gently, bringing them past the threshold and out into the sunlight.

The scene before them—no, not before them. It wasn’t just in front of them, it was everywhere, all around them. The world was so open, so immensely sprawling with no distinguishable limit beyond the dusty gray-blue backdrop that seemed more like infinity than an ending.

They were standing up on a high ledge, looking out over countless shapes— buildings , their mind provided, rooftops. They were red and orange and beige and blue, tiled and paneled and domed and flat. There were things sticking up out of them and small glass-covered openings and cables that ran between tall wooden poles.

The buildings alone would have been an incredible sight, were it not for the towering thing that loomed far, far over it all despite the distance at which it sat.

Just as the rest of the view was indescribably vast, the tower was unimaginably gigantic. It reached up and up and up, so far that it faded into the hazy expanse behind it, not as if it had ended, but rather that it seemed to continue past the edge of reality.

The subject’s head spun as they tried to grasp what they were seeing. Some parts of the view felt… familiar, though it all felt new at the same time.

They were so caught up in their thoughts that they didn’t notice the man had also stilled beside them. Not until he started to speak, his voice low and wavering unlike the subject had heard from him before.

“What is that?”

The subject wanted to glance over at him, to respond to his question, but their gaze was stuck glued to the structure above them.

They didn’t have an answer, anyway.

Chapter Text

The subject felt the man’s eyes flick over to them for a brief moment, then back to the tower. “I’m guessin’ you’re just as lost as I am.” he muttered with a soft huff.

The subject wasn’t sure if it was possible for someone to be as lost as they felt at that moment, but they nodded anyway.

What really puzzled them was how something about the tower felt… different. Which was strange, because everything felt different, but it was a different kind of different. When the subject looked at the buildings and the streets and the rooftops, their brain sorta… filled in the blanks, despite not being able to conjure up a single memory outside of the place they came from.

They knew that people walked on streets and lived inside of buildings, that the openings with glass were windows to let sunlight come through—they knew what the sun was, and they definitely didn’t have that in the rooms in the black boxes.

But when they looked at the dark, hulking structure on the horizon, nothing bubbled to the surface. There was no purpose that came to mind, no idea of how they should feel about its presence. Even the name they had ascribed to it in their head, ‘the tower’, did not feel concrete, like they were just assigning a label to something they knew nothing about.

The only thing they could say for sure was that looking at it made their head spin, but it was hard to focus on anything else.

They heard the man’s breath catch beside them, and suddenly a hand was wrapped around their wrist, pulling them away. They stumbled slightly as they allowed themself to be hurriedly walked back inside, the door shrieking as it was slammed shut behind them.

“I saw soldiers.” the man quickly provided, releasing the subject’s arm. “I dunno if they’re with the same people that were on that train, but I’m not takin’ any chances.”

He looked at the subject with a hard set to his eyebrows, then glanced at the stairs. He nodded to himself, walked up to the subject and placed one hand along the middle of their back, then leaned down and suddenly, the subject was being carried.

“Shouldn’t be takin’ the stairs with that leg. It’d be too slow, anyway. Don’t know if they saw us or not.” the man said as he descended the staircase with the subject docile in his arms.

They weren’t sure why he was bothering to explain that to them. They wouldn’t have protested if he had just wordlessly slung them over his shoulder; it wasn’t important that they know things, so long as they were obedient.

Still, it felt… nice. To be talked to.

They reached the bottom of the stairs much faster than they had climbed them. The man carefully placed the subject back on their feet, once again keeping his hands nearby while they regained their footing.

He then walked straight over towards a stack of crates in the corner of the small room, grabbing one and pushing it over in front of the door that led out to the tunnel, then dragging another over and heaving it on top with a grunt of effort. 

“Alright, that should slow them down.” he commented, still staring at the boxes. “Hopefully.” he added under his breath.

He turned back to the subject, as if he just remembered that they were there. “We’re probably going to be walking for a while. Potentially running, if we come across any of those soldiers. Do you think you’ll be able to handle that with your leg?”

The subject didn’t answer right away, shifting their weight to see how much pain the action caused. Their left side was still rather sore, but it didn’t feel like they would collapse anytime soon, so that probably didn’t matter.

Though, the man had said that they would be walking for a while, maybe even running. Sometimes, the people who ran the experiments would make them run on a treadmill for a long time, either until they said to stop or the subject’s legs gave out. They hoped that that wouldn’t be the case this time.

Before they could respond, however, the man continued to speak. “I mean, you’re pretty light. I could probably carry you if you want, though we’d have to take breaks. Which wouldn’t be the end of the world. Better than causin’ some kinda permanent injury, so…”

He was doing that—that thing again. Where he talked to the subject, but it was more than just talking. There was something else, something behind it.

The people from before used to talk to the subject, occasionally. The guards would bark commands; so would the people who ran the experiments, though their voices were quieter. Cold, like the white walls and the white tiles.

Sometimes they would ask questions, too. They’d show the subject an object and ask what color it was, or they’d prod something on their right side and ask if they could feel it. It was only ever done to collect information, extract the data they needed from the subject’s mind.

They weren’t sure why, but the subject had the distinct impression that talking wasn’t the only way that the people could see into their head. Just the easiest.

However, as he had proven many times since they’d met, the man was different from the people who ran the experiments. He still gave orders, but they didn’t feel like orders. There were lots of unnecessary explanations, reassurances, warnings. He was imprecise, used words like ‘should’ and ‘might’ and ‘want’ that left room for uncertainty and questioning.

The people who ran the experiments were always absolute and unyielding. They spoke to the subject like they were just a machine that outputted results when prompted.

The man spoke to the subject like… like they were…

“So, uh… walk or carry?” the man awkwardly asked once more, startling the subject out of their thoughts (and what a strange idea, that there were thoughts to be startled out of to begin with).

The subject blinked. Right, they needed to answer right now. Without thinking about it any further, they opened their mouth and blurted out, “W-walk.”

Huh. So, that’s who the man’s voice reminded them of. Themself.

The man, having been hovering his gaze around the general area of the subject, immediately snapped his eyes onto them. He was silent for a moment, before clearing his throat and nodding. “Right. Uh… walking, it is. Lemme know if you need to take a break, or if you, uh, change your mind.”

He hesitated briefly, then turned and started down the hallway that they had passed by earlier. The subject quickly strode up behind him and followed.

The passage led into a series of winding corridors, far smaller and more cramped than the gaping tunnel they had come from. Pipes lined the walls, hugging corners and sometimes hanging from the ceiling, but never blocking the path. Barrels and crates were scattered about, apparently holding nothing of interest to the man since he ignored them completely unless they were in the way.

For a while, progress was relatively unimpeded. Every now and then, they would be stopped by a gate in a metal wire fence, or a stack of boxes, or a locked door. The man solved most of their problems with a well-placed swing of that black and red tool of his. He seemed to be rather experienced in wielding it, and the subject didn’t miss the little flashes of a satisfied grin whenever he used it to bash something in.

At one point, the man stopped in his tracks. The subject looked over at him and saw his face all scrunched up. “Eugh. What is that smell…?” he murmured.

The subject took a cursory sniff, but couldn’t really detect anything in particular that would elicit such disgust. They watched the man as he continued forward, taking a slower pace with his body slightly crouched down, steps nearly silent against the concrete floor. The subject tried to do the same, but it was difficult to prevent the metal of their right foot from making noise when it touched the ground.

The two of them stalked down the hall towards a room that opened up ahead, but before they reached it, the man recoiled with another repulsed expression and held his hand out in front of the subject to stop them. “Okay, that’s not just normal sewer smell. Stay here for a second, I’m gonna check it out.”

The tool gripped tightly in his hands, he stepped into the room, looked to the left, then to the right—

The subject’s ears were suddenly assaulted with perhaps the most horrible sound they’d ever heard, like a howl mixed with a moan of pain and terror, but distorted and muffled. It sounded like a person but wrong, so, so wrong as it ramped up into a loud wail that echoed off of the walls.

And wrong was exactly how they would describe the thing that stumbled into view as the man hurriedly backed out of the room, pushing the subject further away. 

Just as it sounded like a human, it looked like one too, but where it should have had a head was instead a bulbous, fleshy creature. It had four spindly legs that hung down from where it was draped atop the thing’s neck, and no visible eyes, mouth, or face.

The rest of the body was clothed and looked relatively normal, until the subject noticed the long, bony claws that took the place of its fingers, covered in dried blood.

“Get back!” the man shouted, and the subject was immensely grateful that a direct command managed to free them from their frozen state and allowed them to backpedal away.

The thing shuffled towards the man, limping with twisted limbs in a way that human bodies were not supposed to move, all while still giving off its bloodcurdling cry.

Luckily, it was not very fast, and the man was able to dodge out of the way as it swung its grotesque-looking claws at the space he had occupied a moment prior. Immediately, he surged forward with the tool and smashed it across the thing’s head—or… whatever you’d call it.

It staggered back from the blow, but the man was already swinging the tool over his head and slammed it down, the forked tip stabbing into the creature on its head and causing dark red blood to spray out.

It slumped to the floor, letting out a strange high-pitched shriek quite unlike the noises it had been making previously, before going silent and still.

The man stood over it, his tool ready and poised to strike again. But the thing did not move, and eventually he stepped back and let out a relieved breath. “Okay. There are… headcrabs, here. That does not bode well.” He glanced over his shoulder at the subject, his impassive face splattered with the creature’s blood. “You okay?”

Logically, they knew that they had been far away from the danger and thus could not have been harmed. However, they… couldn’t feel much of their body at the moment, distracted by the thumping of their heart against their chest. They tried to nod, but their muscles locked up and refused to cooperate, so they ended up just standing there, staring at the man.

The man furrowed his brow in concern. He placed the tool back on his belt and took a small step towards them. They didn’t flinch, and he seemed to take that as a sign to get closer. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe now, it’s dead.” He gingerly laid a hand—the one that wasn’t dripping with dark red ichor—on their arm.

Finally, they managed to relax, their eyes fluttering shut as their shoulders drooped forward. They took a deep breath and nodded.

“Now, I will warn you… the fact that there was one of those things around here means that there will proooobably be, uh… more. Like—maybe a lot more.”

The subject opened their eyes to give the man a slack-jawed stare. They then leaned their head back and pressed the heels of their palms against their eyes with a quiet groan.

To their surprise, the man let out a laugh at their reaction. “C’moooon, it’ll be fiiiiine. I don’t mean to boost my own ego, but you saw how nasty I am with a crowbar. I can kill zombies in my sleep at this point.”

The subject hoped— trusted that he was right.

Chapter Text

“Here ya go—put these on.” The man stood from where he’d been crouched over the dead ‘zombie’ and offered a pair of beaten, frayed boots.

The subject took the boots and stared at them for a moment.

Every day, for as long as they could remember, they had been given the same thing to wear: a papery white gown and a pair of shorts. It never changed, never deviated. There were no surprises.

This would be the first time they wore something on their feet.

“Might be a little uncomfortable without socks, but uh… I don’t think you wanna wear this guy’s socks. He kinda smells.” The subject blinked and saw that the man was no longer looking at them, having returned to picking over the corpse on the ground.

Right. They had been told to put the boots on.

The subject sat on the ground and began pulling them on. Their right foot was easy to slot in, the metal frame slender and more flexible than flesh and muscle, but they struggled a bit with getting their left heel to fit through the opening. After some rather forceful tugging, the subject finally managed to cram both feet into the boots.

It was an odd feeling, having something squeeze their foot like that. The man was right that it would be a bit uncomfortable, though they weren’t sure how socks would make it better when they already had to curl their toes slightly to get them to fit.

In any case, they were done doing what the man had told them, so the subject stood up and waited for him.

He eventually sighed and got to his feet as well. “Suppose it was a bit too much to ask that this guy would have anything else useful on him.” He turned to the subject and glanced down at the boots on their feet, giving them a small nod. “At least we won’t have to worry about you steppin’ on glass, or something. Let’s just get moving again.”

The two of them continued on down the seemingly endless series of damp corridors. The man’s pace hardly slowed down, though he was now taking greater care to keep an eye on their surroundings. Each time they came to a turn, he would hold his hand out to stop the subject as he peeked around the corner. Most of the time, he would then step out and gesture for the subject to follow him.

They did, however, encounter a few more zombies in their path. The man was far less surprised to see them after the first time and, true to his word, he had no trouble dispatching them. His movements were swift and precise, swinging the tool—a crowbar, he’d called it—at the creatures that were latched onto the zombies’ heads, each blow sending a sickening thud echoing through the tunnels.

Their screams never got any less unnerving.

With each one that he killed, he would stop for a moment to search through its pockets—for what, exactly, the subject wasn’t sure, though he didn’t seem to have much success in finding it. The only thing they saw him take was a metal bottle that he screwed open and sniffed the contents of.

Whatever he smelled, it didn’t draw much of a reaction beyond a slight narrowing of his eyes. “… Last resort, I guess.” he muttered to himself as he slipped the bottle into a pocket on the inside of his coat.

After a while, they reached a massive, rusty door that appeared to have been deliberately barricaded by a pile of crates and a tipped-over metal shelf, as though someone had pushed them there to prevent entry.

The man halted, crossing his arms with a thoughtful expression. He glanced to the left, where the passage continued in much the same fashion as where they’d come from, then back to the door.

“Keep an eye out.” he instructed absently as he surveyed the objects blocking the door. The subject quickly turned to follow the command, flicking their gaze between either direction of the corridor and watching for any movement.

As the man began deconstructing the barricade behind them, the subject snuck glances at him over their shoulder. The manner in which he moved the objects seemed calculated and precise, never letting anything fall or using more force than he needed to. Before long, the barricade was dismantled and the door was fully exposed.

A sudden shriek made the subject recoil as the man abruptly pulled the door part-way open.

“Sorry. Shoulda warned you.” the man apologized, noticing the subject's wide-eyed expression. “Loud noise incoming.” he warned as he shoved the door open the rest of the way, emitting another sharp screech.

The subject was aware that they were meant to be keeping watch, though they found themself unable to resist peering into the room beyond the door.

(They pushed down an errant thought about how they couldn’t recall a time they’d ever disobeyed an order, even in such an insignificant way.)

Their eyes immediately caught on the visible rays of golden light that cascaded down from small windows near the ceiling of the room, indicating that they were once more at the surface.

Directly across from them was a door that likely led outside. The left wall was adorned with a strange, colorful design that resembled words but made no sense to the subject.

To the right was an alcove with a tall, blue box in it. As the man entered the room and the subject followed, they both gravitated towards it to take a closer look.

The majority of the box was covered in a picture of a droplet sending ripples through water. The right edge was black with a series of buttons going down it, and in the top left was text written in blocky letters:

‘DR>ERETS PRIVATE RESERVE’

“Eret…?” the man mumbled. “Why does Eret have a vending machine named after them?”

The subject didn’t know who Eret was, though they were surprised to hear that the man apparently did. Until now, the man had shown only a fraction more understanding of the world around them than the subject themself did.

“Well,” the man glanced over at the subject as he pulled the crowbar off of his belt with a flourish and an upward tilt to his lips, “I dunno about you, but I’m thirsty.”

He wasted no time in wedging the flat tip of the crowbar into a seam on the side of the box. In one clean movement, he yanked the long edge of the crowbar back and wrenched the whole front of the box open, causing it to swing outwards like a door.

The subject stood back and observed as the man rummaged through the complex machinery. There were rows and rows of blue metal cans held inside—each with the symbol ‘>E’ on them—and they watched the man reach in and grab one. As he examined it, though, his expression soured slightly with disappointment.

“No power, I guess…” he murmured. “Welp, room temp, it is.” He pulled on a metal tab on the top of the can, causing it to make a strange click-hiss sound, brought it up to his mouth, and slurped a small amount of the liquid that flowed out.

The man made a contemplative expression as he smacked his lips. “Hmmm… tastes like…” He tipped the can back again to take another sip. “Tastes like Powerade.”

The subject did not know what ‘Powerade’ was. They did not ask.

The man took another can out of the box and held it out to the subject. “Even if you’re not all that thirsty, you should probably try to get some of this in you anyway. We’ve been walkin’ for a while.”

The subject accepted the can. They gathered that the man wanted them to drink from it, but they hadn’t gotten a good look at how he had opened it. They began inspecting the top of the can with the hopes of figuring it out on their own.

“Besides,” the man continued, seemingly unaware of the subject’s struggle as his gaze wandered over to the door leading outside, “things might start to get a little, ehhh… intense, once we get out there. Doesn’t seem like those soldiers followed us down here, but I’d bet they’re patrolling the surface looking for us.”

The subject tried to pull the tab on the top of the can, but it was almost completely flush with the surface of the metal. How had he…?

“We might not get another chance to relax like this. At least, not for a while. As soon as they figure out that we’re still around here, we’ll need to move quickly.”

The metal fingers of their right hand scrabbled uselessly at the tab, unable to get underneath it.

“They’ll wanna set up a perimeter around our last known location to stop us from gettin’ too far, then close in on us from there.”

The nails on their left hand were too short to pry anything; the people who did the checkups trimmed them regularly, once every four days.

“Our best bet is to push past ‘em before they can call too many reinforcements in, and then stay on the move from there so they can’t pin us down.”

The subject had been told to open the can and drink it, but they couldn’t. The man wasn’t even watching to make sure that they did it. He trusted that they would follow orders, yet they were failing.

“So, we need to be in the best condition possible before heading out. Although… hmmm…”

The man turned his attention back to the subject. They froze, their throat tightening in panic.

“Your injuries might—oh.”

The subject tensed as the man stared at them clutching the can, a nonplussed expression across his face. Then, unexpectedly, he snorted. “Let me see it.”

They gave the can to him almost automatically. It wasn’t until it was out of their hands that they realized that they were, in fact, quite thirsty. The drink was gone now, though. Taken away because they couldn’t accomplish their task of opening—

Click-hiss! “Here ya go.” The can was suddenly being placed back in their hands. There was a hole in the top now, showing blue liquid inside.

The subject glanced over at the man, but he already had his head tipped back as he drank from his own can, letting out a satisfied ‘ahhh’ when he was finished. He didn’t seem to be paying any mind to the subject’s perplexion.

Once they looked away from him, however, they could’ve sworn that they saw him peering at them out of the corner of his eye.

The drink was open now. The man had taken it from them, but then he gave it back. He had also said that they needed to keep their strength up.

They were still thirsty.

Slowly, they lifted the can up to their lips and took a sip.

Sweetness immediately flooded their mouth, followed by an unanticipated saltiness. The food and drink they had been given before tasted like nothing; in comparison, this felt like it was setting their taste buds alight with its intensity.

They took another, larger sip.

The man finished his drink soon after. He started taking more cans out of the box, placing them in the many pockets on his coat while muttering about ‘finding a backpack.’

A few minutes passed while the subject quietly sipped their drink. The man seemed to run out of things to busy himself with, so he just leaned up against a wall and stared at the door.

Eventually, he broke the silence by clearing his throat. “I’m thinkin’ we might actually want to stay here and rest for a while.”

“I know this isn’t exactly the most comfortable place to sleep,” he gestured around the mostly empty, concrete-floored room, “but I’m pretty sure they still don’t know where we are. If we rest now, we should wake up when it’s still dark out, and it’ll be a lot easier to sneak around at night.”

The man looked directly at the subject, his gaze lingering for a moment before he spoke. “That sound alright to you?”

The subject felt something in their chest tighten at being asked for their opinion again.

Why did he keep doing that? It was a useless endeavor; he knew that they would simply just nod their head in agreement, so why bother? He never even seemed displeased with their thoughtlessness, yet they couldn’t shake the feeling that they weren’t responding in the way they should be.

It was… frustrating. The part of them that wanted to be more than just a nodding head, a predictable machine, was chained up, a prisoner in their own mind.

Their resistance finally wore thin, their body moving on its own as they gave the man a nod.

It felt like a defeat.

He nodded back, seemingly ignorant of their internal conflict. “Alright, cool. We should probably barricade the doors so nobody, like, jumps us in our sleep.”

Under the man’s instruction, the subject aided in gathering crates from the tunnel to block the door leading outside. It was a menial, laborious task; though, in a way, that was a good thing.

With each passing moment, the subject could feel the fog in their brain growing thicker and thicker. Any thoughts unrelated to the immediate task before them began to be swallowed up and lost. All they could think was do what the man says, lift the crate, walk through the door, place it down, repeat.

They welcomed the haze. It was relieving, to not have to think about the events of the past day, to find reprieve from the turbulence of their emotions.

The subject was practically swaying on their feet when the man decided that they were done. He sat on the ground, his back against the wall with the weird design on it, and patted the ground next to him. “C’mon, sit.”

The subject complied with the order, gracelessly plopping down beside him and leaning their head back onto the concrete.

Their eyes slipped shut without their permission. They were out within seconds.