Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For exactly two days, Grian had been a parrot. Left laying in the corner of his cell, red wings slowly clawed themselves from his back as blood coated the flimsy gown covering him. Large feathers, jagged and furled hang in a mess of blood and sinew. Muscles stretching in new ways they’d never had too before and his shoulder blades bending to accommodate the new bones growing from his back. Every single bone in his hands and feet broke as they curled in on themselves as jagged and sharp claws twisted their way onto his hands and feet. The LED lights glowing bright white above him suddenly whined in his ears. Every breath and sob he took echos in his ears and rings in his head.

He’d held Jimmy and Pearl when their wings had emerged in a bloody mess from his back. Their hands shattering and breaking in his grasp as helplessness curled in his stomach. Now they sat with him. He hadn’t wanted either of them to be there, but as his body curled in on itself, bones cracked to shape new appendages on his back, he instead held them as tight as he could. When the guards had come to collect the two for dinner right when his body had started to sweat and vision swirled with pain, he’d instead held his siblings closer. He’d ridden the waves of pain, choking down sobs as Pearl tried to keep water in him and Jimmy had just held his hand. The small comfort only served to remind him that Jimmy only a few months ago had gone through this. Grian was 16– practically an adult. He was supposed to be the mature one. The one that comforted his baby brother. Not the other way around. Just when the pain reached its fever pitch– it stopped and two large red wings covered in dead skin and blood hung limply on his back.

Only then did the scientists, in their lab coats and notebooks, show up. The beeping of the glass wall holding them in the room sliding open and the scientists stepped in. He was too weak to even lift his head. His entire body soaked in blood from the experience, and he feels the loss as he tried to sit up. His arms shook as he collapsed against the cool linoleum floor. “Ex.003,” He isn’t supposed to look at them, that would remind the scientists hurting him and his siblings that they were more than just an oddity for them to prick and prod at. Eye contact reminds the monsters holding him that he isn’t just a frog or a rat they’d stabbed with needles. In the first year here his mother had told him to make them see his humanity. Now she was dead and Grian kept his eyes downcast. “Stand up.”

“He can’t,” Pearl snapped back before Grian could pull himself to his feet. He watches half helpless as she plants herself in the scientist's pathway. A whimper escapes his lips as he tries to get her to stop. He can’t stop any of the ire being directed towards her back to himself right now. Not when his body is so weak he can’t even lift his head off the tile. “You nearly killed him!” Her wings flared out, still too large for her fifteen-year-old body, as the guards behind the scientists advanced. One pulls out the electrified rod that they loved to swing at anyone daring to step out of line. Distantly he could hear Jimmy crying behind him. Could see Pearl’s shoulders tensing as she waited for the blow.

“Wait,” Grian croaked out. He’d promised that he would protect his siblings. He promised he’d keep them safe. “I’m fine,” He tried again to stand, listening to that voice in his head screaming that if he didn’t get up then that electrified rod would strike Pearl again and Grian would fail his siblings all over again. He gets to his feet, swaying with each step as he marches towards the scientists who did this to him in the first place.

“Grian…” He casts Pearl a glare. She should know better by now that they shouldn’t be using their names in front of the scientists. He takes another halting step. Jimmy whimpers and Grian cringes at the sound. It was only yesterday that Jimmy was taken, and his body stretched to its limits as the scientists tested his new wings abilities, and now it was Grian’s turn. As soon as he’s in their grasp, the needle jabs him before he can even tense up. Only realizing when his legs give out beneath him and his vision swirls that they’d sedated him.

He doesn’t remember the rest of those two days of being a parrot. The time spent them tethering in unconsciousness as the scientists poked and prodded at him. His body strapped down and wings spread as instincts he couldn’t even begin to understand screamed at him to close his wings and protect his vulnerable chest. The new appendages being studied and measured as the scientists discussed above him. “I think we should give it the serum again,” One of them says while measuring the new claws on Grian’s hands. The blood from breaking through his skin flaked off in their gloved grip. “It’s more resilient than the others.”

Another had agreed. Mouth hidden by a medical mask and eyes hidden by large goggles. “We don’t need another avian advancement anyways. It’s expendable.”

He half sobbed as they prepared another shot. The bright purple liquid coursed through his veins burned worse than before as they pressed the syringe into the crook of his arm again. The pain blurred his vision and a scream escaped his lips before a muzzle was wrapped around his head. They changed him and it was too much. The pain and inherent wrongness is immediate, as if every single individual feather was being stabbed with an invisible needle. Like every single nerve ending those wings had was being shocked over and over again. Sweat broke out across his entire body and he’s half confident his blood had boiled. He’d screamed around the muzzle and bit his tongue so hard he’d choked on his own blood. The scientists above him began to mutter at each other, his head spinning so bad that he can’t even follow what they are saying. He didn’t wake up for about two weeks according to Pearl. Two weeks of his body fighting the foreign intrusion as his blood turns from red to an acidic purple much to the scientists' growing worry and excitement. The red of his wings and the brown of his eyes turned the same purple. Only when he’d awoken had the downside to these changes been discovered. His body glitched. That was the only way to describe it. As if all of his molecules had been scrambled as the seizure ran through his body and purple particles hovered around him– coming from a source that the scientists never found. Every step on his newly clawed feet ached, exhaustion carrying his body down with each movement he made.

No one even realized that he could mimic others' powers until later. When they put him in a room with Lizzie with the expectation of a fight– a simulation they’d called it– and as soon as his first punch connected his wings vanished. Painfully receding into his back as a tail and gills carved themselves into his skin, leaving him gasping for breath as his lungs worked in overtime to accommodate the changes. His spine snapping and repairing itself in seconds as a tail breaks through skin on his lower back. His vision shrunk to pinpoints of light and blood pooled from his ears as the clamor of voices overwhelmed ears no longer meant to hear that much noise. For five horrible minutes he was no longer even a bird. Then suddenly it was all gone, receding just as painfully as it had come back into his body. His purple wings returned leaving his head spinning and chest heaving as he and Lizzie just stared at each other.

In just five minutes he went from an oddity to a necessary component to their research. Constant tests– constant use of powers his body could barely handle. Each new time sending seizures to rip through his body, jerking against the floor unable to control himself as the scientists watched. Each new seizure prompted another wave of tests. Each new wave of tests prompted another seizure. Each new seizure created another worry line in Pearl’s forehead and a tightening of Jimmy’s shoulders. Actions that Grian understood–no knew– were unacceptable.

“G?” He opens one eye as he’s pulled from his musings, the pale white light that was constantly present casts Jimmy standing before him in a sickly white glow. The medical gown twisted in his brother's grasp as he stood before him. His small yellow wings trying to wrap around him and the bandages from the injuries accrued from the tests earlier served no other purpose than to remind Grian of his failures. “Can I?” Grian opens one of his massive wings instead of speaking any words. His bright purple feathers welcoming his brother into his embrace. A shadow of warmth and comfort that Grian tried and failed to be able to provide in the hell that they’d found themselves in. Jimmy was an adult now. Twenty if he and his fellow prisoners had done their math right. A small selfish part of Grian was happy that Jimmy still sought him out for cuddling even as an adult. He still remembered when Jimmy was very little– before they’d become trapped in this white room– he’d crawl into Grian’s bed every night and give their parents a heart attack when his bed would be empty. For a moment the two lay comfortably. Grian threads a clawed finger through Jimmy’s sunny hair as he waits for whatever is on his brother’s mind to bubble to the surface. “Tell me about our parents?” The quiet question finally breaks through the silent night air.

He cleared his throat, continuing to card his hand through Jimmy’s messy curls. “Our mom had blonde hair like you,” He says softly. Cautious of both the guards outside and Pearl sleeping a few feet away. Pearl didn’t crawl into Grian’s wings anymore. He tried not to be too disappointed. “She was an artist. We traveled around the world with her,” It was that very thing that made them prime targets to the Watchers. Their small family vanished with no one to report them missing in the first place. “And our dad had a beard,” It was the first thing the Watchers took from him. Shaved his face down in order to study his brain for their experiments. Grian could scarcely recognize him in the end. “He was a potter and we lived off the land mostly,” He remembered being so upset he didn’t have the things he saw other kids have. He remembered him and Pearl arguing with their parents late into the night as they fought to go to public school, maybe stay in one place for more than a few months, and get a Wii. Stupid things really. Things that now, all these years later, didn’t matter anymore. “They gave us the best life they could,” The Watchers had immediately begun experimenting on their parents when they got here. It took even the Watchers and their shaky ethics a few months to do more than simple blood tests and CT scans on children. They got over that hurdle after both his parents died. Constantly talking about the sacrifice of the few for the good of humanity. “They loved you,” He remembered his mother going first. Her body slowly went cold in the corner of their shared cell after the guards returned her half dead. Pearl had been the first to return and the first to find her. His sister's screams haunted him to this day. His father went a few days later, clutching Grian’s hand in the middle of the night, begging Grian to protect his siblings from the horror show they’d found themselves in. The still cooling body was ripped from Grian’s hands before Pearl and Jimmy even woke.

He looks down at Jimmy curled underneath his wings. His brother’s eyes a million miles away. Quickly he presses a kiss to his brother’s forehead. A silent apology for awakening memories of people that Jimmy could barely remember. “Thank you,” Jimmy whispered, letting out a quiet chirp into the still air that Grian immediately returned. It had been eight years since their parents died. Nine since they had been plucked from their taxi on the way to a hotel in New York. Grian looked towards the bulletproof glass that kept them in this cursed cell. He’d tried– just once. He looks at the scars now marring Jimmy’s skin and towards Pearl’s silent rage that still boiled beneath the surface. His own scars hidden just beneath his hospital gown. Never again. Not when they’re one time they tried resulted in Jimmy’s near death and their only friends in the ranks of the scientists and guards lost to the same experiments they had been subjected to for years. Never again, he vowed to himself just as he did every night, holding Jimmy just a little closer, thumbing his finger over the metal collar wrapped around his own neck and taking a shuddered breath. Never again.

…

Every day was the exact same as the last. At exactly the same time, the blinding white lights would turn on and stupid buzzing noise would return. Breakfast would be delivered and those who would be experimented on were taken, their nutrition bars left until they come back from whatever torture they’d been subjected too. If they weren’t taken for the day, they would sit right in front of the glass and watch the gray concrete hallway— waiting for their family to come back. Then came the only part of the day Grian looked forward too.

Outside time was the only gift the Watchers had ever given their experiments. Even the Watchers understood that people trapped inside all day would go crazy– or in 12 year old Jimmy’s case bounce off the walls and rip feathers out of his wings out of sheer boredom. Once an experiment started hurting themself we’re they were allowed “outside” for thirty minutes a day for dinner. The plain nutrition bars tasted bland as paper regardless if they were outside or inside, but to sit in the small courtyard with a metal grate— glorious fresh air flowing down— above them with all the other prisoners kept Grian going.

“Grian!” He’s pulled from his thoughts as Mumbo and Scar wave him over. Jimmy beelines for Scott. The icy blue haired man was sitting in the corner of the concrete room with bandages wrapped around his neck and hands, the after effects of over using his powers clearly seen as he shivered and shook even under the rays of the setting sun above them. His skin is almost as blue as Scar’s. Grian smiles softly to himself, the blue haired man had curled in on himself for years now but Jimmy was persistent and was still the only person to get a smile out of the other. Pearl heads towards Gem and Joel. Both had been here almost as long as Grian’s family. Their… advancements given by the Watchers were far more advanced than the simple wings on his family’s backs and collars to suppress their advancements were wrapped as tight around their throats was the same as his own. Grian had seen Gem without the collar lift almost twenty thousand pounds and punch through slabs of concrete. Joel on the other hand could duplicate himself. Exact copies that lasted for a few minutes and much to the Watcher’s ire and Joel’s detriment– that few minute time limit had yet to be dismantled. Not that Joel was doing himself any favors either. Constantly shouting and fighting back against the Watchers no matter how many times they hurt him and nothing Grian said could get through to him. Today Joel’s arm was wrapped in a sling and a metal muzzle tied tightly around his face. Neither of these things stops the older man from pulling Pearl into a tight hug. Joel and Lizzie despite their refusal to follow the rules had been a godsend after the loss of their parents. The couple had been newlyweds when the Watchers had taken them alongside Gem and Cleo. He remembers hearing the grumbles from the scientists that they’d only taken Joel and Lizzie because they happened to see Gem and Cleo’s kidnapping. The two were at the wrong place at the wrong time and now they were as trapped as the rest of them.

After seeing his siblings settled, Grian turns his attention to the rest of the room. Lizzie was skipping around the room towards Gem and Joel, her sparkly blue skin shining in the sun. Her advancement had made her more animal than anyone in Grian’s family. Her long axolotl tail and gills marked her as fundamentally different even among a ground of strange and different people. He walks closer to Scar and Mumbo. Cleo was still missing; he immediately noticed with a frown. The red haired woman had been missing ever since their escape attempt a year or so prior. Mumbo had confirmed to them all time and time again that she was still alive and yet they hadn’t let her anywhere near the rest of them. They’d all killed people trying to escape. There was blood on Grian’s clawed hands that he’d been thoroughly punished for. His claws had been filed down after he tore through the chest of a guard holding a gun to Jimmy’s head. Yet something about Cleo and what she’d done that night was considered too dangerous to ever let her out of isolation. Whatever she’d done when she’d turned back to give the others time to escape had painted the hallway red and scared the Watchers. He walks further and sits down with Scar and Mumbo. Immediately leaning his head on Mumbo’s shoulder as Scar passes him a nutrition bar.

“Did they take you today?” Grian directs his attention to Scar’s concerned look. They were the newest additions to hell. Former guards who had tried to help in their escape. Former guards who granted them kindness, earned their trust and learned their names. People who Grian had worked and planned for years with to guarantee their escape. Every bit of knowledge that Grian had accrued as the longest prisoner in this place was used to their fullest extent and it still wasn’t enough. Now Scar and Mumbo were as trapped as the rest of them. Mumbo’s skin is cold and clammy against Grian’s. His heart no longer beat and his lungs no longer filled with air but he still laughed the same as Mumbo and he still smiled the same. It didn’t change the fact that he died. A mistake that would haunt Grian but in this concrete box they were never able to escape, the Watchers didn’t care if you were dead. Cleo’s blood, with her own undead state, mixed with the dreaded purple serum brought Mumbo back to life– or as much alive as Cleo is alive. A blessing and a curse as his friend was alive yet now subjected to the same experimentation they were all victims too.

“No,” Grian says quietly, talking had become harder and harder as the years passed. His throat was built for the chirps and clicks of a bird. “Just Timmy,” His brother had come back with weak knees and a quivering lip as he’d been shoved back into the glass cell.

Scar frowns swiveling in his wheelchair towards Jimmy chatting animatedly with Scott. “Yikes,” He finally says. His pale blue skin and deep angry scars are the only indications that the Watchers had changed him. Much to the scientist’s ire, Scar had been their first repeat. Barely controllable strength trapped under his friend’s skin. Too powerful for Scar’s body to handle and trapped him in his chair as the serum destroyed him from the inside. “I was thinking about this cat I saw a good twelve years ago I think now and looked just like Darth Maul! I mean the glare and everything I just–” He allows the rambling story Scar launched into to wash over him. He loved this half an hour. To sit in the small room with his family and just breathe in the fact that they’re all alive and here.

“Grian!” He looks up to see Gem and Joel standing there. A large grin on Gem’s face that he’s sure is mirrored on Joel’s muzzled face. He sits up from his place in the crook of Mumbo’s shoulder and cocks his head. A silent question for the two to answer. “We have an idea.”

“What?” He croaks out. Already dreading whatever these two have cooked up.

“We’ve been planning…” Gem looks over her shoulder at the camera in the corner. The metal table bolted to the floor sat directly in the camera's view so he couldn’t even begin to think about what she was planning. Before he could even begin to question her, Gem nodded her head towards Pearl and Lizzie still sitting on the concrete floor.

Pandemonium descends upon the room. The two women go from chatting with each other to at each other's throats. Gem and Joel drag him over to the fight as Pearl and Lizzie launch themselves at each other and Joel immediately joins in the fray. Gem pressing something into Grian’s hands as she drags both of them into the fight. Fists flying, one hitting Grian across the jaw as he rips himself from Gem’s grasp and struggles his way through people he calls friends to get to his sister.

A whistle blows through the air. Guards flood into the room. Electrified batons swiping through the air as the batons strike them. One catching Grian in the stomach and he fights back a scream as the guard shoves him to the floor. He stops struggling, goes limp in their grasp as he watches his sister fight and claw against the two guards holding her down. Only stopping her screeches and flying fists when the electric baton is shoved into the small of her back and her angry shouts turn to screams. Joel and Lizzie are immediately separated even as the two reach for each other– fighting against the guards holding them back from each other. Gem, even without her super strength is still strong, decking a guard across the face and baring her teeth at the guards still flooding in. Grian doesn’t resist as he’s roughly lifted to his feet. He’s dragged from the room watching the pandemonium with eyes hazy from pain. Jimmy and Scott curl around each other in the corner. The batons crackling with electricity holding them in place. Pearl gets shocked across the face when she refuses to comply. Joel and Gem in similar boats. Three guards hold Gem down. One guard screams as her teeth sink into the unprotected flesh around his ankle. Mumbo and Scar– nowhere near the fight– are being yanked around as the guards cleared the room.

He’s dragged down the hallway. They don’t bother waiting for him to stumble to his feet or even expect him too. Just another reminder of his weakness. “Sir!” One of the guards says as the head scientist rounds the corner. An imposing man with steel cold eyes and a judgmental grin. “The subjects got into a fight!”

The head scientist sighs and shakes his head, a facsimile to Grian’s mother’s disapproving shake when Grian would shove Jimmy or pretend not to be pushing Pearl in the back of the car. His limber body bending down as his gloved hand grips Grian’s chin, observing the quickly forming bruising on Grian’s cheek. “Pity,” He says with a click of his tongue pulling back up to his full height and turning his attention to the two guards holding Grian. “I was going to study Ex.003 tomorrow…” He pauses and taps his chin. “But no matter, I’ll do it tonight.”

“Sir?” One of the guards asks cautiously. “It’s already–”

“No matter,” The man repeats, already leading them down the hallway to the lab. Grian doesn’t bother struggling. He knows better. “Humanity's next step doesn’t wait for things as mundane as the end of the work day. Besides, my wife isn’t expecting me till nine,” He looks towards Grian like he’s a particularly interesting bug. “She understands science waits for no one,” He winks like he’s letting Grian in on a joke. “Not even dinner.”

They strap him to the table. Grian lets himself float as he’d done a million times before. The snap of gloves and sharp smell of antiseptic fill his senses. You can’t stay present, he remembered telling Joel and Lizzie when they’d first arrived. The couple just looked exhausted at his words even though they’d just been there for a few days but Grian meant it. All these years later he still practices it. The second he hears that snap of the gloves he just… vanishes. Eyes going empty as the scientists work above him. They didn’t even need to strap him down for most procedures anymore. It’s easier this way. The pain of fighting back is not worth it in the long run.

The head scientist hums to himself as he prepares the needle. A blood draw then. Enough blood so that they can study him without needing to drag him from the isolation cells he was confident he was about to be thrown into. He stiffens as the needle enters the crook of his arm, remembering ages ago when Scott and his twin first joined them they’d been horrified by the blood draws. The two made a big stink about anemia, and were horrified at the bruising around the site of the needle and IV’s entry. All that earned the two were muzzles around their mouths and the other subjects worried about yet another thing that might kill them. Grian looks towards the crook of his arm. The skin around the needle was slightly yellow and bruised from the years of blood draws. He looks away as his purple blood begins to flow into the vial. The ever present headache returns with full force as his head begins to spin and sweat coalesces on the paper held tight in his hand.

“Ex.003 responds well to testing and no longer needs restraints,” He shudders as the needle is pulled from his arm and the head scientist begins to talk into his recorder. “Two pints were removed from the subject. We will be testing our new hypothesis tomorrow and see if Ex.003’s blood if the changes are based upon its blood or serum 82A. It will remain in isolation due to an altercation between subjects earlier.”

Grian can’t help the weak groan escape his lips as he’s lifted from the table. The guards return and carry him away. His head spinning and he’s certain he’s going to vomit as once again he’s dragged down the halls. His limp body pulled into the crushing darkness of the isolation cells. Distantly he hears the muffled sounds of Joel cursing the world out. He pitches forward barely able to catch himself in time— wing flaring out—as the guards throw him into the cell. The door slamming with a definitive finality behind him.

He curls in on himself. Wings wrapping around him and shielding him from view. He knows the punishment for fighting like the back of his hand. One week in isolation. No one will visit him. No one will feed him. Two nutrition bars, a plastic pouch of water, and a toilet were in the corner. That was it. Isolation was barely big enough for Grian to stand and nowhere near large enough for Grian to stretch his wings. He would stay curled in a ball until they came for him. Until they decide he’s learned his lesson.

He’s grown used to the stark white of the lab and his cell. Where the lights were never fully dim and the cold sterileness became his only reality. Isolation is nothing like that. Isolation means a cold dread trickling down his back and hunger clawing at his stomach. They don’t chain him up, at least understanding he didn’t start the fight. He hates when they would chain him. His seizures happen every couple days and when he’s chained his limbs can no longer shake the way they want to as the fits overtake him. At least when he has the seizures in isolation no one would study them instead of helping him.

He looks down at the small scrap of paper that Gem had shoved into his hands. What was so important that Gem and Joel had gotten Pearl involved? His vision begins to adjust to the dark as he stares down at the sweat stained sheet. It was… Grian suppresses the urge to cry or maybe even scream. It’s a map of the facility. A different map than the one he had made previously when they tried to escape. He narrows his eyes. The map is of… the ducts? He looks up, the small vent in isolation is too small but the vents in his cell… He shakes his head. Escape will end with people dead. He looks down at the tattoo on his wrist: Ex.003. As permanent as his wings and eyes, etched upon his skin. A reminder that he will never escape. That even if he were to get free it wouldn’t matter. The Watchers own him in all senses of the world. His seizures and purple wings made him something to poke and prod at. A position he welcomes willingly, anything to take the heat off the others. Anything to prevent his sister and brother from taking the pain that rests on his shoulders. He would go under the knife again and again if that meant Pearl and Jimmy could escape the Watchers gaze for even just one day. His brother could avoid being prodded for more powers he didn’t have, each day a step closer to his brother being scrapped as a failed project in comparison to the others. His sister and her prey drive, forced to kill and fight to prove her advancement was important for the survival of the human race. He remembers just days after Pearl’s change, her claws and owl wings still covered in blood, when they put her in a room with two guards. He remembers holding her after the first time, they’d beat her to a bloody pulp. After that, holding her when she’d killed her first guard and only received praise from the scientists. No one had even bothered to wash the blood from her claws.

He presses his fist to his forehead. Are his friends stupid? They must be. They can’t try to escape again. Not after last time. Not when it resulted in all of them getting locked away. Any little freedoms left ripped from their hands. All kept in isolation for months, chained to the walls and only allowed back to their cells after Grian had begged and pleaded. After Grian took permanent consequences for planning the escape. The message was clear: escape was meaningless. They hadn’t needed to drive that point home. He understood he would never leave when he watched helplessly as a guard shot Mumbo for trying to protect them. When they were running through the halls, alarms blaring and Cleo turned back to bide them all time. The belief cemented when Jimmy was shot as soon as they got to the elevator door marking their freedom. The last vestige of their hope held back by the guards standing in front of it. He had attacked with the restless abandon of someone who had nothing left to lose and instead his baby brother got gunned down. He didn’t even know– all those months in isolation– if Jimmy, Mumbo and Cleo even survived. They can’t go through that again. Last time they got lucky. He looks down at the ductwork map. They won’t get lucky again.

Chapter Text

He’s shaky and half delirious with blood loss and hunger as the guards wrench the door open. “Ex.003,” He looks up with half-lidded eyes. Grian knows how to go without. He knows how to last days with only the barest of food and make what he does have stretch. That doesn’t make doing it suck any less. “Stand.”

It had been something that Xornoth had tried to teach them the science of their torture in the few weeks they knew him. He’d been in college with his twin working to become a nurse before the Watchers cut his life short. He’d said a lot of big words but in the end what he meant was blood loss combined with no food meant you are dying. The subjects of project W spent most of their time losing blood and a lot of the time getting exactly the nutrients they needed and nothing more. They’re all always dying. The loss of his blood is immediate as he stumbles to his feet. Entire body swaying in place as the Guards drag him from his cell. He looks around. The other cell doors were still closed. That either meant he was first out or they wanted to experiment.

They drag him to the elevator. The metal machine that once signaled all their freedom but now all he can see is when the metal doors were painted with his brother’s blood. The paper he’d flushed down the toilet ate at him as he’s dragged down the hallway into the training room. Scott and two guards hold his swaying friend up, telling him immediately what is to be expected of him. “Ex.003 and Ex.011,” A voice crackles over the speakers and Grian is unceremoniously dropped by the guards onto the cold stone floor. He closes his eyes for a moment adjusting to the sudden advent of light and the waves of nausea running through him. “Demonstration simulation 227A for purposes of Ex.003 study number 40. Begin,” Grian had never bothered to memorize their codes. He knows what he is here for.

He moves before Scott does. Half running half flying across the concrete room to where his friend was still climbing to his feet. The faster he got this done– the better the show he put on– the quicker him and Scott could get back to their cells. Back to the routine that ruled their lives. He reaches forward and lays the palm of his hand on Scott’s bare arm. He shudders and drops to one knee clenching his teeth as his veins freeze. Ice cold water fills and freezes his veins as he struggles back up to his feet. His body swaying with the effort as he and Scott stare each other down. They both understand what is suppose to happen. They both understood the consequences if they don’t perform to the level expected of them.

Grian breaks the stalemate. Scott’s power came from his sweat. Water coalesces and turns to ice projectiles and platforms. His body barely has enough water to keep him standing. Scott’s power allows for more sweat production but that doesn’t eliminate the problem that he doesn’t have any sweat left in his body to begin with. His head aches and his chest heaves as he produces what little water his body had left. The pitifully small ice shards shoot towards Scott who leaps out of the way. Slower than normal, Grian immediately notices. They must’ve been using Scott to make up for the lack of other subjects this week. His normally elegant face pale and sallow and deep purple bags frame sunken eyes.

Scott swipes a hand forward, sending his own small volley Grian’s way. As the ice spikes shoot towards him– Grian knows he has to decide. His movement grows slow, snail's pace as Scott’s ice sails towards him. If he takes the hit and goes down then Scott will be spared from more testing. If Grian takes the hit they’ll drag him off to the labs.

He knows what he’s going to do before he even makes his decision, curling his chest in to protect the vital organs as the first ice spike pierces the skin of his arm. Bright purple blood begins violently rolling down his arm as the second spike grazes his neck. He chokes down the urge to scream as more blood begins to flow down his neck and soak his hospital gown. He goes down. Vision swirling as the last two spikes shoot over his head and shatter against the concrete wall behind him. He sees Scott freeze, hands shakily raised and chest heaving as Grian slumps against the cold concrete ground.

“Get up Ex.003,” The speaker crackles as his eyes threaten to close. He was so tired. He sees Scott waiting for him to get up but he can’t find it in him to move. He’s so hungry. His head spins and his eyes try to water but there is no water left. He hears the speaker crackle as the scientists wait for him to crawl to his feet. He hears the scientist sigh over the speaker and he can’t stop the flinch that courses through his exhausted body. “Escort Ex.011 to its cell,” The voice booms. “Bring Ex.003 to Lab C2.”

Grian makes momentary eye contact with Scott as hands grab his arms. A hiss escapes his mouth as the gloved hands of the guards wrap tightly around the bloody wound on his arm. Scott struggles for second as the guards begin to drag him out but Grian just shakes his head. He will be fine. They march him towards the swinging doors of the lab that haunted him. This wasn’t a hill to die on. He will be fine. He is always fine.

The same grey hallways pass by his hooded eyes. His strength leaves him as the time limit on borrowing Scott’s powers runs out. His body goes limp in their grasp. His breath raspy as he slowly bleeds out. He sees shapes dance before his eyes and the bright lights of the facility kaleidoscope outwards in a stunning display. He knows it is coming before it happens. His body bucks in the guard’s grasp. The purple particles begin to float around him and his body starts to shake. The guards holding him ignore the way he thrashes in their grasp. Unable to even control the way his body twists and turns.

“Get it up on the table,” He hears a scientist snap but Grian in his own blood and horrible decisions. His head spins as it slams against the metal table. He hears the click of recorder and the snap of gloves and he’s not in his body anymore. “Subject Ex.003 performed below average in demonstration simulation 227A. Damages to the subject provide evidence to failure,” He hears a disembodied voice say and the faint hiss of a camera’s flash. Visions of goggles and masks flash before him as he twists against the hands holding him down. The lights burn in his eyes. More of the purple particles that surround him float upwards towards the light. His legs kick out and chest spasms against the metal table. “Further study must be made to determine depth of damage,” He sucks in a breath. Hands wrap around his arm and hold him down as the familiar feeling of an IV entering his arm and another needle poking at the slice in his arm rather than sewing it back together. The blood still flowing from his neck and arm is collected into vials. Every bit of him studied and cataloged as scientists flock around him. “Preparing test 27A, study in comparison to subject Ex.011. Initial hypothesis, failure on the part of Ex.003 comes from a lack of training with Ex.011’s advancement. Further study required,” A bright light shines in his eyes again. His head pounds and chest rattles as his eyes slip closed. The cocktail of drugs and nutrients in the IV overwhelming his senses As his eyes slip closed he hears the faint sound of someone screaming and recognizes as unconsciousness overtakes him– that it was him.

…

He wakes slowly, rolling over onto the familiar cold hard floor of his cell. He blinks into awareness. First smelling the blood. The metallic scent is immediately overcome by the sterile smell of disinfectant. Second, the overwhelming pain from his arm and neck. Blearily he opens his eyes and sees Pearl’s concerned face staring back at him. That gets him moving. Body shuddering into awareness, every limb weighted down and heavy against his skin. “Water,” He croaks out as Pearl helps him sit up and leans him against the cold concrete wall. Immediately, the slim plastic pouch of water is pressed gently into his hands. The tepid water flows down his throat, soothing his screaming innards. “Thank you,” He half chokes out as Pearl pulls the water away. His vision stops swirling and becoming more stable by the second. He locks his gaze on Pearl. Immediately taking in her ruffled and messy feathers and a still healing bruise on her cheek. “What did they do to you?” He croaks.

Pearl makes a face. “I’m fine G.”

Grian frowns. “That’s not what I asked.”

Pearl groans, scrubbing her hand down her face as she turns towards him. “What do you want me to say?” She asked quietly. “That I faced the consequences of my actions?!” Her lip curls. “That it wasn’t worth it?!”

Grian remembers the paper. The dread fills him again. “None of that is worth it!” His head spins as he stares at his sister, certain she’s gone insane. “You got hurt! I got hurt! Jimmy’s been–” He looks around the cell, its white walls distinctly missing the bright yellow feathers of his younger brother. “Alone without us! What on earth would possibly possess you to think any of this was a good idea!?” If he could stand he would. His limbs tremble as he stares at Pearl from the floor. Her eyes narrow into slits and her wings puff as she stares.

“What possessed me?” She hisses out. “How about the fact that you can’t stand right now!” Her voice grows in volume. “How about the fact that you're as pale as a ghost because they keep taking blood from you! Those monsters dropped you in this cell while you were still bleeding out and seizing!” Her wings are fully fluffed and her words come out half screeched. Seconds away from devolving into only the squawks of a bird rather than words. “What are we supposed to do Grian!? Just wait until they kill us and never try to get out again!?” For a moment Grian doesn’t see Pearl. He sees Jimmy’s scream as he’s shot. He sees Mumbo with empty eyes laying in a pool of blood. Scar being dragged off the labs, drugged to kingdom come and unable to even fight back. He sees his family– the ones who’d taken him and his siblings in– fighting tooth and nail, yet still failing. He sees himself tearing into the throat of the guard who shot his baby brother. He had fought and fought. It still wasn’t enough. “God,” He looks up at Pearl. “You’ve accepted that,” Grian can’t handle the overwhelming pity in her eyes. “You’ve really accepted that we're never going to escape.”

Grian freezes, ice melting over his heart as Pearl stares at him. “We're not getting out of here,” He tries to say as softly as possible. First and foremost, he is a big brother and sometimes that means telling your little sister the hard truths. The truths he tried to shield her from for so long. “We tried,” He looks towards the glass door keeping him and Pearl trapped. Scott’s cell is across from them. Only Scott stays in that cell now, empty and alone and Grian cannot allow that to happen to anyone else. He cannot fail– “And we failed. It got Mumbo killed,” He remembers the first day they’d finally been allowed back in the courtyard. He remembers Scar, gently leading Mumbo as he stumbled into the sunlight with shaky legs and sagging skin, pale and sallow. His eyes are as empty as Cleo’s are. “Jimmy got shot! I’m not risking it!”

“We have to!” Pearl shouts right back. “The rest of us won’t accept this! We won’t accept them treating us like we're animals! Worse than animals! I won’t accept that! Joel and Lizzie won’t accept that!”

Grian’s head spins. His vision was half blurry. Why isn’t Pearl listening to him? Does she not see what he sees? Does she not see the risk? Does she not see that they are better off if they just accept their place here? At least if they stop fighting they’d be safe. None of his family will get hurt again if they just let the Watchers do what they need to do. “And what,” He hisses. “Do you expect to happen if we get out?” He gestures to Pearl’s massive wings. “Do you think people will just accept those wings? That Lizzie will just be able to walk into a coffee shop and get a job?” He scoffs. “If you, me and Jimmy could hide the wings on our backs!?” Anger rises hot and heavy beneath his skin. “Do you think they’ll never come after us?” He hisses gesturing to the world outside their cell. “Even if we do get out we will never stop running! Not unless we kill every last one of them!”

Pearl’s eyes are hard as she looks down at him. “Then we'll kill all of them.”

For a moment Grian doesn’t recognize his sister. “What?”

“Don’t they deserve it?” Pearl snaps. “They’ve tortured us! For years! They killed our parents! They killed Scott’s brother! They killed Cleo and Mumbo and they’re not going to stop until we're all dead and we both know that death isn’t going to be the end! They’re never going to let us rest! They’re never going to let us go! So we have to fight for it!” Pearl paces the length of the cell. Clawed feet clacking against the concrete, eyes darting to and through. “They’re never going to treat you as human just because you roll over and accept their torture!”

“I’m not accepting this,” He growls, skin buzzing and head spinning. “I don’t see any other option!” He knows one day he’d be killed. One day the Watchers will go too far. One day they’ll tie him to the lab table and he’ll never wake up again. Will they let him rest at that point? Carve his body apart like they did with Xornoth? Or revive him like they did with Mumbo– further using Cleo and her blood to bring him back to life? Continue letting him walk around with empty eyes and cold skin. His body is already falling apart– would bringing it back finally make his body collapse in on itself?

Pearl’s glare cuts into his soul. “I do,” She snaps, gesturing vaguely to the air vent above them. “I see a way out Grian,” Her voice goes soft as she steps toward him, leaning down and taking his clawed hands in her own. Their long clawed fingernails had been filed down after they attacked during their escape. “I’m getting us out of here,” She half whispers. “You don’t have to do anything,” She leans forward and presses a kiss to Grian’s pounding forehead. “I’ll save us. I promise.”

He goes to respond. To say something to assure his sister that she doesn’t need to save him. To say something to stop the way his heart was clawing at his throat. Pearl didn’t know what she was talking about. He’d kept her from as much of the planning of their previous escape as he could and allowed– planning for– the pain and punishment to fall on his shoulders. It had but the Watchers were smarter than that. When he’d tried to argue that it was all his idea all they did was tie a muzzle around his mouth and punished everyone almost equally. He’d never told Pearl what they’d done to him after he’d begged and pleaded, doing everything in his power to convince them that he’d been the one to plan the escape. It didn’t stop the punishments falling upon his family but it stopped the worst of it. It stopped the rest of them from experiencing the brain surgeries as the Watchers tried to figure out why their precious experiments tried to leave them when all they were trying to do was save humanity. Constantly reminding Grian that he was the future of humanity. His abilities– all his family’s abilities– would save humanity from itself. His confession stopped the guards– furious at the deaths of their friends– from taking their own pound of flesh from anyone who wasn’t Grian. The time in isolation was miserable, sure, but no one else knew–

The cell door slides open. Silent and smooth as it always did. Jimmy’s body dropped at the door. He scrambles towards him, crawling across the ground as his body refuses to stand, cupping Jimmy’s head in his lap. Unconscious but breathing. Grian can’t see anything wrong with him on the surface. No bruising and no blood. He looks towards the hallway. Just like always, an unconscious brother and a cell door cutting them off from the world again.

…

Pearl stops talking to him and Grian was expecting that. Even as his soul ached at his sister's silence and Jimmy’s quiet nervousness as he watched the two of them. The Watchers didn’t take any of them that day. A miracle that Grian took whole heartedly. He could still barely move as he limped out to the courtyard. Back aching from where the electric baton had been shoved there after he fell twice on the way out. Jimmy half held him up as Grian’s limbs trembled from hunger and blood loss. “Oh my god!” Lizzie was by his side in the second. Immediately taking him from Jimmy and half carrying him to the table and sitting him down next to Mumbo. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Grian says with a light cough.

“They made him fight me after his stint in isolation,” Scott immediately counters, pressing a nutrition bar into Grian’s hands. An unnecessary apology for what happened but a welcome one nevertheless. Grian offers a shaky grin the blue haired man’s way. “He threw the fight.”

“Jeez,” Joel says, running a hand through his hair. The movement betrays an injury hiding beneath his hospital gown. His face twitching as he lifts his arm up. “Why’d they do that?”

“Because they hate us,” Pearl snaps, unwrapping her nutrition bar with a vitriolic fury. “Isn’t that right, Grian?”

The table goes silent. Mumbo shifts uncomfortably next to him. He reaches down and clutches Mumbo’s hand tightly in his own. “I didn’t have enough water to win,” Grain mumbles, looking down at his hands wrapped around the nutrition bar. He was so hungry. Body near shaking as he raises the bar to his mouth and takes a bite of the sawdust-esc dry bar. “If I’d tried then me and Scott both would’ve lost,” His throat closes up as he speaks. Words are hard, he’d used all of them up in his and Pearl’s argument.

“Well,” Scar says with a laugh and a thunderous clap of his hands when it was clear Grian wasn’t going to continue and Pearl wasn’t going to explain herself. “Shall we discuss the elephant in the room?”

Joel chokes and Gem slaps Scar alongside the head. “Scar!” She shouts.

“He’s right though,” Lizzie says, brow tight and eyes hard. Her bright blue skin paler than it was the last time Grian saw her over a week ago. “The–” She looks around with a sly glance on face. “Air is our only shot.”

Something in him clenches as the entire table nods their heads. Another thing in him snapping as even Jimmy nods his head alongside Lizzie’s words. “Everyone has the layout,” Scott says and Grian finds himself nodding along even though he didn’t memorize it, just flushed it down the toilet as soon as he could.

“Tomorrow,” Pearl says and stares Grian in the eyes as she did. “We get out.”

Her words echo in his head later that night. Her conviction. The ringing anger of her words. He looks over to where Pearl and Jimmy are entwined with each other. Their wings wrapped around each other. Jimmy’s mouth is half open as he snores. Grian desperately wants to go over and wrap his large wings over them and coo himself to sleep but he can’t. Not while his mind is racing for solutions just out of his reach.

They can’t leave. That would mean pain and suffering. He closes his eyes for a second and painting his eyelids is Jimmy’s body slumped against the elevator doors. Mumbo with empty eyes and pale skin. He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes. He knows what he has to do.

The Watchers open the door when the lights flicker on. The artificial electric glow passes over Grian’s pale skin as he watches them pull Joel from his and Lizzie’s cell down the hall. Even after all these years, Joel still fights to get back to her. Still struggles in the arms of the guards dragging him down the hall ever since he’d been shoved into that cell with his wife. His shouts and the subsequent sharp noise of electricity hitting Joel echoing down the hall.

“What are you doing?” He doesn’t look back at Pearl. Her voice coated in the haze of sleep and tinged with exhaustion.

Their cell door opened. The glass sliding open and two guards step in. “Ex.002,” One guard says, barely looking at them as he steps inside.

“Wait!” Grian shouts quickly. All the heads in the room swivel towards him. “Please–” He begged. “I can–” The electrified baton strikes him as Grain falls. Head ringing and body aching as he pulls himself back up. The blood loss and pain from the days prior catching up with him as he slowly pulls himself to his feet. “Please,” He half whispers, arms shaking as he pulls himself up. The guards move past him and grab Pearl by the arm. The guards barely even look down at him. Their arms wrapped around Pearl and began to drag her from the room.

“Wait,” Grian’s savior approaches. The head scientist in his stark white lab coat marches down the hall. His cold hand grabbed Grian’s chin. “What are you trying to say Ex.003.”

He makes brief eye contact with Pearl. Her eyes wide and panicked, head furiously bobbing in silent fury before Grian stares directly at the nose of the scientist. Unable to even begin to look towards the eyes of the scientist as he holds him. “I want to volunteer,” He says quietly. “I–” He swallows tightly, throat closing up in panic. “I believe in the message. I believe what we're doing is for the betterment of humanity,” He sees the smile cross the lips of the scientists.

“I remember,” The man says, voice growing in volume and dramatics. “So many years ago. You’d volunteer for every single procedure,” He’s studied under the man’s gaze, every single inch of him was placed under a microscope. “You believed so much in our message then,” Grian remembers that too. All of his energy was spent trying to keep Pearl and Jimmy from going under the knife. Practically throwing himself under the hands of the guards and the scientists, letting them think that he believed in the message. That he wanted them to cut him up or take his blood. That the torture they were putting him through was good. “I’d thought you’d forgotten Ex.003,” He shudders at the reminder of his place here. That no matter how much he’d done to convince those who’d held him here that he was one of them, he would never be one of them. The head scientist smiles. “We’ll be looking into Ex.003 today,” His smile grows wider even as Pearl is thrown back into the room.

“No!” Pearl shouts. Clearly, just as Grian was remembering, the pain he’d gone through yesterday and the whole week. His body aching and the wounds all over his body scream at him as he’s pulled down the hall.

The cold hallway scrapes against his clawed feet as he runs what he’s going to say as he’s dragged to the lab. “I want to run tests A7 and A9,” The head scientist announces with a snap of his gloves. The noise immediately caused Grian to go slack. Laid out on the table without so much as a single bit of him protesting. Only as the needle approaches does Grian pull himself out of the corner of his brain he shoves himself into.

“Wait!” He called. For the first time in years he sits up from the table. Two other scientists in the room reach forward with panicked hands and shove him back against the metal table. “Wait!” His heart beats from his chest. The hands grow tighter even as his struggles increase. “Wait–please!”

The head scientist frowns. “Get the muzzle,” He says disappointedly as he tests the needle full of purple liquid on the back of his glove.

“No!” He scrambles desperately against the hands holding him down. “Wait! Please!” He sees the muzzle out of the corner of his eyes, approaching him, the harbinger of his own demise. The cold metal presses against the side of his mouth. “Wait! They’re planning an escape!”

The air in the room freezes. The muzzle stops being pulled over his mouth. The cold metal resting against his chin. The head scientist stops testing his needle and looks down at Grian. “What do you mean?” He asked tightly. The hands holding Grian loosen but he didn’t resist their grasp anymore. The head scientist marches closer. “What do you mean!?” He yells.

“I–” Grian looks around, light headed and desperate for anything to stop him from saying this. He knows no such excuse is coming. He closes his eyes for a second. He can save everyone, he reminds himself, all he has to do is speak.

“Spit it out Ex.003,” The head scientist spat, invading his personal space. The medical mask is blocking almost all of Grian’s vision. “What’s going on?” He reaches through the hands holding Grian down and grips his chin again. “You believe in our mission– don’t you?” His eyes meet Grian’s own for the first time, leering down at him.

Grian takes a steadying breath even as the urge to float away well up from his core. “I want things,” The words escape his mouth as he gasps for breath that will not come to him.

The head scientist's face becomes murderous. “What do you mean?!” He thunders, hand tightening on his chin and shaking him. “You are mine,” He growls. “You do not demand anything from me.”

Grian summons the only courage left in his veins. The images of his dead siblings and dead family propelling him onwards. “You won’t know how,” He says with a tremor in his voice. “I need promises. We can…” He swallows tightly as the grip on his chin tightens. “Be better with some promises. Not trying to escape anymore.”

He gulps as the purple veined face of the head scientist slowly calms. “Fine,” The scientist says calmly–placatingly. “What are your demands, Ex.003.”

“Beds,” Grian gasps out. “For everyone,” He can make their lives here better. They will never escape but he can try– to make their lives better until they die. “And–” He’s stuttering, can’t stop his shaking. “An hour outside,” He can’t stop the way his body threatens to give out in the head scientists grasp. “Experiments can– can only–last seven hours. Like– Like a job.”

For a moment silence fills the room before the scientist laughs, the noise followed by awkward chuckles from the other scientists and guards around them. The energy in the air crackles as he lets go of Grian’s chin and steps away. “Clever bird,” He finally says with an awful grin. “Fine, guards–” He says, turning towards the two guards at the door. “Lock down–” He pauses, turning back to Grian with a slimy smile on his face. “They don’t know you did this, do they?” Grian doesn’t need to nod his head. They both know. He holds a hand up for the guards to pause. “Ex.003 understands his place. He follows our mission and knows that our purpose is greater than the individual. How we are going to save humanity,” Grian wilts under the man’s vitriolic gaze. “It’s time for our other subjects to learn that as well,” He gets in close. “Tell me everything.”

Chapter Text

He’s not taken back to the cell, instead dropped into outside time. After his nerve wracking conversation he isn’t exactly surprised when they still put him under the knife but he’s still disappointed. He half stumbles into the room as all his family’s heads whip towards him. “Grian!” Jimmy scrambles towards him, helping him limp over to the table. All his old injuries and blood loss were exacerbated by the fact that they took more blood from him.

“I’m fine,” He says as he sits down. “It was just a blood draw.”

Jimmy scoffs. “They took you for like forever,” He argues. “And you volunteered for Pearl,” The accusation coats his brother’s tone. Grian’s eyes dart over to Pearl sitting on the rough grey concrete floor with Gem and Lizzie. Clearly trying to ignore Grian even as he watches her hand nervously tapping on her shin betraying her. Her scream of his name that morning further betrayed that even if she was mad at him– she is still his sister.

“I’m fine Tim,” He says, reaching up and holding his brother's hands in his own. “Just tired,” He flashes a grin to Jimmy’s suspicious face. Tonight this would all go to shit but it would be worth it. They would be getting an hour– an hour!- outside. The scientists wouldn’t torture them for ten hours a day like they sometimes did. He remembers the times that they’d take Joel or Scott and make them use their advancements over and over again until they passed out, then wake them up and make them do it all over again. That threat of overwhelming exhaustion was gone. They would get a bed– something that Grian is sure Jimmy can’t even remember but he can. The warmth and comfort that was missing from their grey glass cell. All he had to do was… He looks towards the group. Joel and Scott talking excitedly with each other in a corner with many hand movements. Mumbo and Scar hovering just beyond where Jimmy and Grian were sitting, waiting for the signal that they can come and coddle Grian too. His family was about to make a mistake that was going to get them killed. He had no choice. “Mumbo,” He says softly. “Scar, come join us.”

He smiles to himself as Jimmy leans into his side and Mumbo and Scar sit across from him. The rest of his family scattered around and he was going to help them be safer– happier. The Watchers– the scientists and guards holding them– were inescapable. This was their hell they were trapped in and he was finding his family a reprise, something to make their horrible circumstances just a little bit better.

“You are coming with us?” They’re all back in their cells and Grian is staring down the barrel of Pearl’s hard eyed stare. Jimmy wide eyed behind her but just as resolute as all the others in their mission to get themselves all killed.

He sighs before nodding. “I have to protect you. I will come to protect you,” The words escape him frantic and wispy against his lips.

He watches Pearl mull it over. Her eyes go hard and angry. “Do it for yourself,” She snarls. “Even now you're still self sacrificing! You volunteered for me today after they tortured you yesterday for what!?”

“To protect you!” His father’s cold hands on his own as he dies with those words on his lips. “I will do anything to protect you! I–” He runs a hand down his face. “We don’t have the luxury of doing things for ourselves,” He says quietly, looking towards Pearl and reaching out a hand. “I do everything for you–” He looks towards Jimmy, standing just off to the side, looking nervously between the two. “And you too, Tim,” He says with a soft smile. “I made a promise years ago that I would always protect you two,” He looks down at his feet as Pearl and Jimmy take his hands. “I’ve failed time and time again but I will do anything–” He meets their eyes. “Anything to keep you both safe.”

“You haven’t failed,” Jimmy says quickly. “I–” He swallows tightly and Grian allows Pearl to sink the three of them to the floor. His body is grateful for even the short respite from standing. “I don’t remember them,” He says softly. “All I remember is you,” He looks towards Grian and offers him a dim smile. “You’ve the closest thing to a parent I’ve got.”

Grian swallows the lump in his throat. He was the reason that Jimmy had been hurt so badly because Jimmy believes in him so thoroughly. He once believed they could escape so Jimmy believed they could escape and that got Jimmy shot. Now he had the chance to rectify that mistake and make their lives better. “He’s right,” Pearl mutters. “I remember them but…you raised us in here. When the world was so scary that I was afraid we’d break under the pressure you weathered the storm. Every single time one of us came into this place– you helped them through the transitions and the pain. You planned the escape,” He meets her eyes. “Let us help you now. Let us repay this to you.”

For a moment he doesn’t know what to say. For a moment the desire to tell them the truth threatens to crawl its way out of his mouth but he swallows the words before they emerge. This was for the best. This would make everything– “Okay,” He says quietly and hates the way the lie burns in his chest.

He doesn’t move from his spot on the floor, holding Jimmy and preening his brother's wings as he watches Pearl pace. As soon as the lights go dark, then Pearl moves. She darts into the air, reaching up with her great wings and large clawed fingers. It didn’t matter that the guards had filed her fingernails down. She had enough power in her claws to rip the whole thing off. Moving with a grace that Grian didn’t know she possessed– she grabs the shredded vent and places the metal gently on the ground. “Come on!” She hisses and Grian doesn't have the same night vision as Pearl, the dim glow outside their cell allows him to half drag Jimmy upwards with a single powerful flap of his wings.

His knees scrap against the cool metal of the vent as they trudge forward. Each thump of their knees hitting the vents sends a shudder through all of them. His knees ache through what he’s half certain is 8 years of crawling before Pearl pauses causing Jimmy to bump into Grian. “Joel?” She calls, voice barely above a whisper, before reaching down and kicking the vent trapping Lizzie and Joel. Grian tenses and waits for the clang of a metal vent hitting the concrete floor but it never comes. Instead Pearl just grins before reaching down and pulling them both up, the vent’s cover held safely in Joel’s hands.

The air grows more tense as the group grows bigger. Gem just rips the vent off and jumps in. Her half feral grin breaks the darkness before they move to the next cell’s vent and she reaches down. Even with the collar on she’s still able to punch the vent out and reach down to pull Scott up with the group. Grian felt his heart beat out of his chest. Freedom and the promises the scientists have made to him fills his chest as they crawl through the truly endless expanse of cramped metal tunnels. His wings ached as they stayed in a scrunched position and dragged behind him. Jimmy’s hands constantly pulled on the feathers as they all silently crawled. His knees and hands aching as the blood loss from the days– the years of anguish— catching up with him all at once. Sweat coats his back as he trudges further. Closer and closer to their goal.

Pearl pauses before looking back at all of them, sweat soaked hair sticking to her scalp as she looks back at all of them. An excited smile crosses her face before she reaches down the vent and grabs Mumbo in her clawed hands with Scar clinging onto his back. “Well fancy seeing you all here!” Scar says far too loudly and far too cheerfully.

“Shh!” Gem and everyone else immediately shushes him. “Mumbo,” She then whispers while reaching forward and pulling Scar on her own back. “Your ninety pounds wet, let me take him.”

Silence laughter ripples through the group as the crawl continues onwards. Muscles cramping but Grian doesn’t complain. Not when he’s so close to his goal. They all still believe they’ll get out of here. That this plan won’t ever end in anything other than Jimmy’s body slumped against the elevator’s door or Cleo locked away unable to even see the sunlight anymore. A friend who they’d unspokenly left behind to flee. Grian wasn’t leaving her behind. He wasn’t leaving any of them behind. He was getting them beds. More time in the sun. Less time spent being tortured on cold metal tables and all it took was… his betrayal. He looks towards Pearl in front of him. She would have to forgive him eventually. That rage in her eyes that he was so sure would come flying at him in minutes would dim as she realized what he’d gotten for them. They would all realize that Grian made the right choice. His family is alive. He couldn’t ask for more than that. The Watchers had long since made sure they could never ask for more than that.

The crawling slowly comes to a halt as Pearl reaches the end of the vent, flashing another grin towards them before pulling the final vent and dropping from Grian’s sight. His heart catches but he immediately follows her, wings flare as he lands in the dark of the storage cabinet. The cabinet he knows is just two feet from the elevator promising them freedom.

He hears his friends behind him, dropping down into the silent air of the storage room. He catches Pearl’s eye. A glimmer he hasn’t seen in years glows back at him. Grian swallows tightly and looks away towards the door. His head spinning and stomach lurching as Pearl takes a few careful steps forward. Grian subconsciously follows her before Jimmy grabs his arm and pulls him back into the darkness of the shelves.

She wraps a clawed hand around the door and Grian fights the urge to scream for her to stop– something in him lurching as the door opens. “Pearl–”

“Freeze!” His heart catches as a guard forces themself into the room. Black visors blocking their eyes from view and gun barrels point at Pearl’s chest.

They were fish in a barrel. Jimmy yanks Grian back as he slams into the shelf behind them. Bottles smashing onto the ground as too many people begin to scramble back. He distantly hears screaming even as his head spins. Eyes growing blurry as he shoves Jimmy behind him. He watches half floating away from his body as Pearl is slammed to the ground and dragged from the room. Her face wet with tears as she makes eye contact with Grian before being wrenched from the room.

He looks away only to see Lizzie and Joel ripped from each other’s grasp and Gem unable to properly fight back with Scar on her back– hitting the ground hard as thick chains are wrapped around her wrists. “Grian?” He hears Jimmy whisper behind him as Grian shoves them both further back into the corner of the storage room they were in. He can’t find anything in him to respond. Unable to trust his voice as a guard stalks towards them.

“We–” His throat threatens to close up. “We surrender!” The gun slowly goes up and everything slows down around him. Joel and Lizzie are ripped from each other’s arms. Scott desperately fights against the guards dragging him from the room. Gem and Mumbo try fruitlessly to keep Scar safe from where he lays on the ground. “We surrender– we surrender!” He half sobs as he is yanked forward. Hands wrap around his arms and pulling him to the ground. His head spins as Jimmy is ripped away from him. Eyes blurry as he’s hoisted to his feet and dragged into the hallway.

The ever elusive elevator doors stay shut before them. Pearl thrashes in the arms of the guards holding her– tears streaming down her face as Grian and Jimmy are dragged out. Everyone is fighting against the guards holding them. Gem tied in chains and Joel muzzled both left of the floor with guards standing over them wielding electric batons. Lizzie and Mumbo glare at the guards holding them– unable to even move or get over to Scar, who’s been left in a corner. Grian just slumps further in the hands holding him.

“It was an admirable effort,” He sees the head scientist make their way towards them, leaning down and gripping Pearl’s chin in his gloved hand. His eyes dart over to Grian for a brief moment as a smile breaks across his lips. “Shame it–” Pearl rears back and spits. Saliva and blood mix and splatters against the scientist’s face. The effect is immediate. The scientist rears back as Jimmy and Mumbo let loose a cheer. In a second, the head scientist reacts. His hand jerking forward and striking Pearl clean across the cheek, jostling her body against the steel grip of the guards holding her. The uproar is immediate. People shouting as the scientist stands up and swipes the blood and saliva off. “That’s enough,” He says, a crease in his forehead and a dark look in his eyes emerging as the noise continues. “That’s enough!!” He roars and Grian cannot hold back his flinch. “Thank you,” He says with a smile that stretches too far into his gums. He turns towards Grian, that dark look still beating in his eyes. “Take them to isolation,” His smile gets wider. “You will find mattresses in there,” All eyes turn on him. Sweat breaking across his skin and heart threatening to beat out of his chest. “Courtesy of Ex.003 and its devotion to our mission,” His smile turns almost welcoming as the guards holding him up drop him. Grian hits the floor and doesn’t bother to pull himself up.

“Grian?” He hears Jimmy distantly say as his family’s enraged shouts fail to make it to his ears. He just looks towards the elevator. Their freedom is so close and yet impossible to obtain.

“Escort Ex.003 back to its cell,” The head scientist turns away from him. “It is the only one,” He stands in front of the elevator. Grian looks at him and understands– he’s enjoying this. “With any devotion to our mission which must be… rewarded.”

The elevator behind him dings. For the first time in his life, Grian sees the elusive elevator doors open. A guard with messy brown hair and a beard enters, “Hello sir,” The bearded guard says with a gruff voice. “Our shipment was retrieved,” The guard looks around the room and for a moment his blue eyes go wide.

The head scientist sighs. “Remove them,” He says gruffly and Grian watches helplessly and fairly nauseous as his family are dragged off. Pearl glares, angry words on the tip of her tongue even as tears spill over Jimmy’s eyes. His family’s shouts of anger and pain fade into the distance. Only when the room is empty, leaving only him, one guard and the head scientist does the elevator dings again and a gasp get stuck in his throat as two men, unconscious and strapped to gurney’s come rolling in. One man was in red street clothes with shoulder length blonde hair with red tips. The other in a cheap looking suit with a red tie and messy black hair. The scientist approaches, pulling out a small flashlight and flashing it briefly in both men’s eyes. “What do you think, Ex.003,” He asks.

“What?” Grian croaks out before remembering himself. “Sir?”

“We have new subjects,” The scientist says, pulling out a stethoscope and placing the metal on the chest of the man in the suit. “Ex.014 and Ex.015,” He moves on to the man with the red tipped hair. “In the perfect age bracket for our serum to take hold. In prime health as well.”

Grian stares at the two men's sleeping faces as the urge to vomit rises up. So deeply unaware of what they had just been dragged into. So unaware of what was awaiting them. The great plan of project W that they had no choice but to participate in. He looks towards the elevator doors sliding closed behind the initial dark haired guard and his strange companion. Pearl has to believe now… they’d all have too. He’s led away, following the two gurneys. Half dragged across the floor as the elevator disappears from view. Escape was always impossible and he has just proven it.

The scientist does not explain himself to Grian and Grian does not expect him to. He’s half dragged through the halls as the guard holding him trails behind the two gurneys. He tries to dig his heels in as they approach the main operating room. He doesn’t want to see them inject these two strangers with that awful burning purple serum.

They don’t even bother tying him down. Just drop him on the floor as the scientists crowd around their two new subjects. Grian watches through blurry eyes as the large syringe of purple serum is injected in the blonde man’s neck. His body even unconscious thrashes against the straps holding him down. Grian watched hollowly, waiting for the man to change and hearing the mumbles as nothing happened. “Ex.003,” He hauls himself to his feet and slowly approaches, knowing what they want from him. He reaches a shaky hand out and touches the man’s hand.

It’s instantaneous. Similar to when he uses Gem’s powers— his muscles and sinew shift around his legs and then suddenly he’s moving. Body sprinting out of his own control before he crashes into a med cart and trips into a wall. His head aching as a guard jumps him and shoves the electrified baton into his side. “What happened?!” The head scientist shouts, ignoring Grian’s screams of pain. “Ex.003,” He snaps. “What did you do?”

The electricity stops and Grian curls him on himself gasping for breath. “I don’t know,” He gasps out. “I don’t know, sir.”

The head scientist looks down at him with a curious look in his eyes. “Do it again, Ex.003,” Grian nods his head, closing his eyes as the world spins. He takes a step and then appears on the other side of the room. “Fascinating,” Another scientist says. “Ex.014 has some sort of speed advancement,” He speaks into his recording device. “Further testing necessary.”

Grian slumps onto the floor again. Head aching and hot as the advancement slowly seeps out of him. He closes his eyes as the scientists excitedly discuss their theories above him. He watches them move onto the other man.

“Subject Ex.015,” The scientist announces loudly, leaving Grian and the blonde man to lay on the floor like puppets with their strings cut. “Injecting now…” Grian watches as another needle enters the other man’s arm. For a moment Grian closes his eyes and prepares to stand up again.

“Heart rate spiking sir,” The erratic beat of the heart rate fills the air. The room becomes a flurry of activity as an oxygen mask is wrapped around the man’s face. The beating grows louder and louder in Grian’s ears every second an hour before the flat line reaches him. The long drawn out beat that pierces his very soul. He stares at the man’s slacked face and rapidly paling skin. “Starting compressions,” Came the monotone voice cutting through the long whine of a man dying.

Grian watches as the man’s chest manually rises and falls as the scientist's hands press down on his chest in a lesson of futility. “Time of death,” He hears the head scientist say with a growl, voice painted with rage. “9:50,” He turns to the guards. “Bring subject Ex.006,” Grian hears his heart catch at the mention of Cleo’s name and sure enough just a few minutes later Grian watches from the floor as Cleo is wheeled in. Her body thrashes against the heavy restraints holding her down and a muzzle wrapped around her face. Her green eyes flashing in the air and pale skin covered in stitch markings.

Grian watches in mute horror as a needle is connected to Cleo’s arm even as she continues to fight against her restraints and shouts muffled beneath the muzzle. Bright red blood flowing into the other man’s still body. He doesn’t know what he wants. Did he want the man who he didn’t even have the chance to meet to live even as a shell of himself? Or did he want the man to die here? Not even aware that he’d been taken and experimented on. “Ex.015 with support of Ex.006 and through study of Ex.013 proves our current hypothesis of the extent of Ex.006’s full abilities. We will continue to watch Ex.015 to see any signs of life.”

The recorder clicks off. The head scientist approaches, towering above Grian. “You’ve done well today, Ex.003,” He says as Grian just waits for the other shoe to drop. “However I must know who planned the escape,” He offers a toothy grin. “We both know it wasn’t you.”

His heart drops. He can’t rat any of them out. Can’t let them go through what he’d gone through after the last escape. He would do anything to keep his family in the isolation cells they’d been shoved into. Isolation cells where they will be safe. He shakes his head furiously. “I don’t know, sir,” He half whispers. “They told me last.”

The scientist's face betrays nothing. The two gurney’s holding the new prisoners wheel out. “A shame,” He drawls, writing something down on a clipboard and gesturing for the nearby guard to grab him. “That means we’ll have to punish all of you equally,” The guard hoists Grian up and holds him against the wall. The scientist whirls around, a crackling baton in his grasp. Grian closes his eyes and waits for the pain to start. “I guess I’ll have to start with you.”

…

Martyn sighs as he places his headphones back over his ears. The large sensitive stupid things jut out of his head and hear everything. The sneeze twelve blocks down. The cars rumbling down the highway and the sounds of the city all around him. If he had it his way– he would’ve disappeared into the woods and go live with the deer. Deer didn’t have fights at two am or honk horns for no reason. He frowns to himself and looks down at the computer in front of him. Rows of code flashing before him as he takes a slow sigh. He was in the city for a reason. A noble reason. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t exist without his headphones. That his ears ached from being trapped underneath the soft foam of the headphones.

He rubs a hand over his face. It had been months since they’d tried to get all the people still trapped inside Project Watcher. The loss of Scar and Mumbo and the unknown of what had happened to them still hangs heavy over the small apartment of what was left of the Listeners now huddled in. An apartment with sagging walls and boarded up windows that was exactly two blocks away from the gleaming metal building that proudly housed the Watcher Corporation. Two blocks away from the secret lab beneath that gleaming building that holds people– who are being experimented on and tortured for nothing other than the hope that they will hold the future of humanity. He looks towards the clue board, as Skizz calls it, smiling glossy photographs of people who had no idea of the horrors they would face. Entire families vanishing from the face of the earth and reappearing in the screams that filtered into Martyn’s ears. They hadn’t even been able to concrete match a scream to a face for everyone. So many people just blanks, only able to be referred to by the numbers they were so often called.

He wants to keep his headphones off. To keep listening into their screams of agony and despair even as his own ears bled from the sheer outpouring of noise. He was listening to the prisoners when they tried to escape. Ears bleeding from the bursts of gunfire and screams. He was listening when Scar and Mumbo got caught. The deafening blare of gunfire and the prisoners' mutters of hope turned into panicked screams of pain. He listened as the people down there tried to support each other even as hopelessness sinks into their skin. The same hopeless painting his own skin with each scream. It had been eight years since he and Ren escaped the horrors of the Watchers labs and prison cells. The two sobbed in each other's arms, smearing blood and snot over everything as the fact that they were free began to sink in.

They never forgot, even as they began to try and reintegrate into public life, about the others down there. The small family, whose parents died only days after Ren and Martyn were kidnapped off the streets and shoved into a glass prison. The three kids left were so small and so scared even as the Watchers put them under the knife over and over again. Their screams were the loudest in Martyn’s ears. So many nights spent before his escape holding his hands over his ears to block out Grian’s muttered assurances that his two younger siblings would be okay even as the other two sob about the wings forced upon their backs. Some nights Ren would cup his large furry hands over Martyns ears trying desperately to keep the noise of children slowly dying around him from permeating his ears. They left Grian and his siblings behind when they escaped. They left more people, individuals that Martyn doesn’t even know the names of and had never met but the sound of their screams are as familiar to him as his own.

“You're gonna drive yourself crazy man,” Martyn looks up to see Impulse and Etho sitting on Martyn and Ren’s terribly squeaky bed. Etho leans back against Martyn’s pillow and flips a knife in his fingers, his face half hidden by a black mask and eyes as sharp as they’ve always been. The white haired man has been their information broker for years, maintaining a connection to the Watchers for years at this point. Desperately collecting information to try and build a court case against the Watchers and their corporate lawyers. His partner Bdubs is trying to piece together a court case all while keeping under the radar of the every presence of the Watcher corporation. In the beginning when they first became the Listeners– Martyn had been so hopeful that Etho and Bdubs would get the others out through the courts. That the atrocities being committed would be stopped. Instead, he’s forced to watch the two men put in hours after hours of work only for the thread of information or the whistleblower to vanish into thin air, leaving behind years of worthless work and a new thread to pull. It was Ren in the end who suggested the prison break. The group took a full year of planning to try and save those trapped and then deal with the legal ramifications once the prisoners are free. It had been a seamless plan, hooking up with Scar and Mumbo to Grian. Two guards who were horrified by the conditions and the person who had been trapped in that facility the longest. It was supposed to work.

Martyn looks towards Impulse, who in turn looks concerned. With a sigh and a scrub down his face– Martyn leaves the window and sits down next to his friends. “He was supposed to be back an hour ago,” He says quietly, looking towards Ren’s sunglasses still resting on his side of the bed slowly collecting dust.

Impulse’s easy grin turns into a soft frown. He rubs his arm and Martyn looks away. He’s not the only person missing people right now. The riskiest plan they’d ever undertaken, sending in Tango and Skizz as prisoners. Martyn’s friends were entering the lion's den, to finally provide an avenue for escape to the people trapped there. Their friends are willing to lay their lives on the line, potentially facing the same torture that Martyn and Ren had. The changes or advancements as the bastards had called it, that Martyn and Ren had been forced through.

They’d only escaped the torture because Ren’s “advancement” had mutated. The Watchers had thought they’d just been the wolf-man form that had initially appeared. Only in the dead of the night months after the fact that Ren even realized he could change his appearance to anyone, not just the wolf-man. It was shockingly easy to escape after that, luring a guard into their cell and then jumping him and Ren disguised himself as the man. They’d fled in the dead of the night and left behind children. Children that were going to get out of the nightmare they had been living in. He took his headphones off and honed in past all the noise of the city to the basement they were all trapped in. He closed his eyes and waits for Tango and Skizz screams.

Chapter Text

Tango wakes up slowly. Every single inch of his body aching as he slowly sat up. With a groan he clutches his head and looks around him. It was exactly as Martyn and Ren had described it. Three white walls and one glass one. A security camera staring into the room from the outside. Quickly, he takes stock of his situation. His hand moves down to his neck, hands locking around a metal collar wrapped around his neck. This isn’t what he was expecting to find. Had the monstrous Watchers already experimented on him? Had they already changed him in ways he could never undo. His wrist aches as he moves and Tango’s heart catches as he stares at the tattoo on his wrist. Ex.014, the Watchers had already labeled him. The same tattoo he’d occasionally caught glimpses of on Martyn and Ren’s skin now stained his own. He takes a steadying breath. This is what he signed up for. He knew the risks. He knew what he would be subjected too. He looks towards the glass wall keeping him trapped here– knowing didn’t make it any easier. With a shake of his head, he looks around the room and eyes locked on to Skizz’s body laid in the other bed in their cell.

“Skizz?” He calls, attempting to stand but finds himself barely able to stand. Half crawling across the floor as he works his way towards his friend. “Skizz?” He says slightly louder as he reaches his friend’s bed and shakes his shoulders before recoiling at the bone cold skin beneath his hands. “Skizz!” He shouts. His breath caught in his throat. Skizz can’t be dead. They’d just gotten here. They’d just started their mission. They all knew the risks but they had barely begun. He can't already be–With a gasp, Skizz lurches forward. Eyes wide and panicked and yet his chest doesn’t move with each breath. “Skizz!” His hands waver over his friend. Unable to discover what was wrong.

“I’m–” He coughs and a bit more panic spills out of his chest as blood splatters on Skizz’s hospital gown. “I’m okay, Tip-Top,” He gasps out, the use of the nickname doing nothing to assuage the worry thumping beneath Tango’s skin.

“What–” He searches his friend for injuries. Anything to explain his deathly pallor or lack of breathing. “What did they do to you?”

“How the heck am I supposed to know!?” Skizz shouts back and Tango does not blame him even as he reels backwards. “I’ve been unconscious!” He looks towards Tango with wide eyes and a panicked grip on the hospital gown Tango had found himself in. “What did they do to you!?”

“I–” He looks down at himself and nothing seems to be amiss. “I don’t know,” He finally says, looking around the stark white room. His hands shake as he holds Skizz’s cold hands in his own tightly. “Do you think Martyn can hear us?” He looks upwards to the ceiling above them. As white as the walls holding them and looking far too solid. Suddenly, his confidence in the Listeners plan vanishes in the wind. They couldn’t have been here for more than a day and already Skizz had been changed. Already Tango had been tagged and marked like cattle.

“They’re our friends,” Skizz says quietly, pulling Tango up onto the bed next to him. A simple mattress with no blankets and on the floor looking practically out of place in the stark room. “They’ll come for us,” His quiet confidence does nothing to raise Tango’s spirits.

They sit there quietly, his heart racing next to Skizz’s still chest. No heart beat for him to track as the minutes ticked into hours. The only way they could even tell that any time was passing was the occasional passage of guards. Not a single other prisoner to be seen.

Eventually the door opens. A single guard slides in a plastic tray with two plastic wrapped grey bars. One labeled Ex.014 and one Ex.015. Tango stares down at them. Skizz clears his throat. “The real question,” He says with a hackled cough that leaves more grey blood on the front of his gown. “Are you 14 or 15?”

Tango can’t help the barked laugh that escapes him but he passes Skizz one of the bars without even glancing at the numbers. Desperately wishing that the hospital gowns were long sleeved to hide the numbers tattooed on each of their arms. Numbers that Skizz clearly hadn’t seen yet. Martyn and Ren had tried to prepare them but he wasn’t sure he was truly prepared for the reality of the situation. He was in a box and sure his friend’s had a plan. A plan that for weeks had been grilled into his head and yet that didn’t change the creeping helplessness that’s clawing its way up his shoulders. He takes a bite of the bar and nearly spits it out. Grey tasteless mush closer to sawdust than food fills his mouth. He laughs again. “This whole situation is absurd,” He finally says. “How did we get ourselves in this situation?”

He looks towards his friend who stares off with a far off look in his eyes. His chest remains still even when breath should be flowing through him. “We knew what we were getting into,” Skizz says firmly. He looks towards the hallway. “And we’re going to get everyone in here out,” His grin is contagious. “No matter what.”

Tango tries to hold onto the optimism as days pass. Only on meal number six did a guard enter their room. “Ex.014,” The tattoo on his wrist burns as he makes eye contact with the guard. “Stand,” For a moment Tango hesitates. Only scrambling off the bed when the guard pulls out a black baton. The tip crackled with electricity.

“I’m coming–” He barely gets those two words out before the baton swings through the air and strikes him in the chest. He screams before he can even stop himself. The electricity surges through him and he collapses against the concrete floor.

“Tango!” He hears Skizz shout as he grits his teeth as the electricity finally stops. Why had the guard done that? What had he possibly done to deserve that? He’s grabbed, not even allowed to get his feet underneath him as the guard drags him from the room. He’s dragged through the halls. Eyes darting to and through as he passes empty identical cells. His heart thuds in his chest with each thunderous step of the guard’s feet. His own bare feet dragging across the concrete floor.

Doors slide open as the guard drags him into a large room. A viewing platform with one way glass blocking his view of whoever’s watching him. The concrete space was large and empty as the guard unclips the metal collar around his neck. As soon as the metal is off of his neck– the changes the monsters had made to him became immediately apparent. His muscles tighten and move beneath his skin. His body threatens to vibrate out of his skin.

He takes a step forward and all the pent up energy moves– he blinks and emerges on the other side of the large concrete room. Head spinning as he clutches the wall. The door opens and Tango turns around to see another guard drag in another man. Large purple wings on his back and bruising on the side of his face as the guard drops him and unlocks a similar collar around his neck. Tango takes a step towards him and instead finds himself smacking into the wall on the other side of the room, stumbling back and clutching his head. “Hi–” He tries to say but the other man holds up his hand. Purple eyes darting up to the viewing platform with trained wariness.

“Ex.003,” A speaker crackles as a voice booms through the room. “Ex.014,” The man straightens at the sound, clearly waiting for further instructions. “Demonstrate simulation 014A for purposes of testing the current hypothesis regarding Ex.014’s advancement.”

Only when the speaker turns off with a crackle does the other man turn towards him. “What have they done so far?” He asks quickly, eyes darting up to the glass before finally looking towards Tango.

“I–” Tango clutches his head. His skin vibrates and moves even as he stays still. “I don’t know.”

The man nods. “You're really fast,” He says quietly before leaning in closer. “It’s my job to help you get a hang of your advancement,” He leans in even closer. “It’s my job to teach you the rules,” His soul and vibrating skin stutters to a stop as the man seriously nods his head, wrapped up in his own words. “Don’t make eye contact, don’t speak unless asked a question, and whatever you do– don’t make them think you're a threat.”

“What?” Tango croaks out. Head spinning as he tries to keep up. “What do you mean?” He wasn’t even sure what he was asking about.

The other man ignores him. “I’m going to copy your advancement,” He says quickly. “And we’re going to figure out what makes you useful to them,” Before Tango could even unpack all of that, the man reaches forward and brushes a clawed hand against Tango’s arm. Immediately he doubles over as his legs spasm out from beneath him. The muscles of his legs shift as he does. “Okay,” The man says quietly, standing with shaky legs. Then he’s off, racing forward so fast that Tango can only see a blur of purple before skidding to a stop next to Tango again. “Wow,” The man says quietly. “Your…” He rubs his calf. “You’ll be very useful,” Tango can’t hide his grimace. He doesn’t want to be useful. He didn’t want to be considered useful to the monsters holding them. The man’s cold eyes momentarily soften. “I get this is scary,” He finally says, the words sounding closer to a well practiced speech than something off the cuff in a horrifying situation. “This is your life now,” He looks towards the window again. “Either you do what they want or you suffer the consequences,” Tango remembered the baton on his side earlier in the day. The immediate pain that encompassed all his thoughts as soon as he spoke a single word. So many of the people they’d identified as potential kidnapping victims were children or college students when they were taken. How many times do you have to be electrocuted or shoved down by your captors before you accept that this basement they were locked in was their life. The man frowns, seeing the look on Tango’s face. “I’m sorry,” He says, not sounding very sorry at all. “I hate that your here but now that you and 15 are here–”

“Skizz,” Tango says, cutting him off. “My name is Tango.”

The man smiles, for the first time it was genuine. “I’m Grian,” He says and Tango tries to ignore the way his heart thuds in his chest. This was Grian? The man who’d been the life line of the last escape attempt? Who’d planned and schemed and done everything in his power in order to help his fellow prisoners escape? He looks towards the man in front of him. His face was gaunt and pale. His body was bruised and fundamentally changed from the photo of the boy that was on their wall of clues, grinning ear to ear with his family. What had happened to make him this docile? This subservient? “Come on,” Grian says, offering a hand to him. “Let’s see what you can do.”

…

Grian cherishes the mattress. They didn’t give blankets or even a fitted sheet but Grian loves the mattress all the same. He shoves the three mattresses together and sits waiting for Pearl and Jimmy. His feathers fluff underneath him as he waits for his siblings to come back.

He isn’t sure how long it will last. His siblings punishment that is. How long he’ll be left alone with Skizz and Tango as his only companions. His punishment was over, his joints still aching from the sheer amount of electricity that they had poured into him. As if they needed to remind him that he was never going to leave this place. As if he needed yet another deterrent. His siblings– his family– however clearly needed the deterrent. He couldn’t hear his family’s screams but he could feel it in their bones. Somewhere in here his family was being hurt and this time Grian couldn’t stop it. That wasn’t even the only people he was failing. Tango and Skizz were trapped here too. Tango was barely able to even move once the collar went off. No matter how much Grian tried to teach him how to manipulate the muscle mass that the man hadn’t had just days prior. Yet, Tango was unable to keep in one place much less control the speed he now has thumping beneath his skin.

After the second failed attempt for Grian to teach him, they stopped letting him in the room with Tango. Clearly their new experiment just needed more testing and not more practice. Grian flops against the mattress, cherishing the way his feathers brush over the soft material. He looks towards the glass door and Scott’s empty cell. Tango would be fine. His advancement was useful enough that the Watchers would put the time needed into developing it. Skizz however, he’d have to keep an eye on. The Watchers didn’t need three dead people. At least one was expendable and he could not lose Mumbo again. Not after– He shakes his head. Mumbo would forgive him. They would all forgive him. They would all understand that he was doing what was best for all of them.

No one visits for days. No outside time. No guards besides the one who shoves his food in his cell twice a day. Grian doesn’t dare ask him what’s going on. His body still bruised and aching as he laid on the bed.

Footsteps approach his cell. Grian doesn’t bother to sit up. “Ex.003,” A guard says as the glass door slides open. “Stand,” He hears the guard snap but he can’t find it in himself. What would it be? Another day of testing? Another day of blood draws. Another day of waiting for his family to return to him. He hears the crackle of electricity when he doesn’t move. “Last chance Ex.003,” The guard snarls as the electric baton swings down and strikes Grian in the stomach. He grits his teeth and swallows the urge to scream before rolling to his feet. Knees hitting the concrete floor.

Slowly, painstakingly, Grian pulls himself to his feet. It had been weeks, would he be able to see his siblings? Would his family finally be back? The guard roughly grabs his arm half dragging him from the room. He watches the endless halls pass Grian’s hooded eyes.

He hears the chatter before he sees the voices. Soft murmuring voices as he approaches the iron door that marks the courtyard. His heart skips a beat. His family was… The door flings open and Grian is flung forward. His body hitting the ground as he skids across the concrete. The voices go silent. He looks up and sees his family staring down at him. Pearl and Joel, both wrapped in bandages and supporting matching black eyes. Their faces are hollow and pale as they stare at him.

The door stares shut behind him with a deafening clang. He sees Scar roll forward and Mumbo limping behind him. Gem is still muzzled and body so bruised that Grian can barely tell when skin began and bruises ended, the red haired woman leaning heavily against Lizzie’s side. The axolotl woman’s eyes are hard and her skin paler than it should be. “Oh look!” Joel shouts, face twisted into a growl. “The big hero is back.”

“I–”

“No, no,” Joel says, holding up a hand, glaring down at Grian on the floor. “My turn to talk now,” Grian waits for someone to say something. Desperately looking towards his sister– his family. None of whom will meet his eyes. “Do you know what you did!?”

Grian can’t help it. “What I did?!” He climbs to his feet. “I saved–” Joel’s fist connects with his face before he can get his sentence out.

Grian stumbles his back hitting the metal door. The rivets digging into his back and wings flaring out as he does. “Saved us!” Joel shouts. “Saved us! What–” He gestures to the room and Grian sees him, half huddled under Scott’s bruised arms is Jimmy. His brother was staring at him with wide eyes. His neck wrapped in dark purple bruises and eyes sunken into his face. Eyes that are looking at Grian with horror. “What do you think you did?” He snaps. “Got us mattresses!?” He sneers. “Our saviors can only torture us for eight hours now?” His tone takes on a mocking lilt as he gestures to the concrete room around them. The two new members of their group, Tango and Skizz, look on with horror as Joel advances on him. “We’ve got two new people in here with us! Our last–” His voice wavers. “That was our last chance G,” Joel’s fist connects with the metal door. The echoing sound moves through his ears. “Our last chance,” He whispers. “They fixed all the vents. There are more guards. They–” He cuts himself off but Grian knows the end of the sentence. He knows what the scientists did to them down in the isolation cells. The torture that had no science involved. The torture the Watchers didn’t record for future experiments. The torture for torture’s sake that Grian couldn’t save them all from this time.

“Better that,” He half whispers but knows everyone could hear it. “Then dead.”

Joel is beyond words. Face so twisted that Grian is half convinced he is going to explode. “Shut—”

“Do you really believe that?” Jimmy’s shaky voice reaches Grian’s ears. His eyes go wide as his brother stumbles forward. Barely able to put weight on his knee and feathers on his golden wings drooped and messy on his back. So clearly un-preened and dirty feathers as Scott half carries his brother towards him.

Grian looks towards his brother. “We aren’t going to escape,” He whispers as even Joel takes a step back. “I tried to tell you all,” He shakes his head. “We got off easy last time. We got off easy last time and Mumbo died! You got shot! I–” He cuts himself off with a shake of his head. “You think this is bad?” The ever familiar anger rises in his stomach. “You don’t even know what they did to me after last time!”

“You didn’t tell us!” Grian jolts from his rage as Jimmy shouts. He can’t remember the last time Jimmy had ever yelled. He’d certainly never yelled at Grian. “You never said they’re going to–” The scars on Grian’s back ache. He remembers the grin on the guard’s face when he raised the barbed whip. The promise of pain that came after the death of the guards and the promise those guards fulfilled that day– that week really. They’d… he looks towards his brother's bruised neck and pained eyes. Did they do that to his brother? Had his brother experienced the crack of the whip and the scorching pain as flesh was torn from his back and feathers ripped from wings. Had Grian failed that badly? “They–” The words tear themself from Jimmy’s chest. “They did this to you last time and instead of asking for help– telling your family– you– you hid it from all of us!” Grian’s chest heaves as he takes in his brother’s rage filled face. He’d never seen Jimmy angry before. “And then betrayed us!”

“I didn’t—“

“You did!” Hot tears bubble in Jimmy’s eyes as Grian stares at his brother. He doesn’t know what to say. He just stares. He doesn’t recognize the person in front of him. “We could’ve escaped! We could’ve made it out and finally—“ His voice breaks. The tears are fully flowing down his face now. The rest of the room is silent. Scar and Mumbo won’t even look at him. Their gazes cast down to the concrete floor. Gem and Lizzie’s bodies are half wrapped around Pearl’s form. Her massive wings were as dirty as Jimmy’s and flared out. Eyes glaring into Grian’s soul. “Be free!” Pearl looks away. “And who—“ Jimmy laughs but it’s not the laugh that Grian remembers from his younger brother. The laugh of their childhood. It was instead brittle and aching from somewhere deep in Jimmy’s chest. “Cares it if it would've killed us!” The oxygen has been stolen from his lungs. He looks for someone to object. “At least that way this nightmare could end! I can’t even remember what life was like outside of this stupid place! All I have is this and you ruined our one chance of getting out!”

“Jimmy—“

“Leave me alone!” His brother buries his face in Scott’s chest and the blue haired man turns his murderous gaze towards Grian. His eyes are as ice cold as his advancement.

“Tim—“

He tries to take a step forward but is blocked by Joel’s dark gaze. “He said to leave him alone,” Joel says, tone dark and low. Practically promising violence. Grian wilts under his gaze.

“Okay,” He finally says. He spends the rest of the now hour-long break in the corner. Wings wrapped around him and shielding him from view, tears he couldn’t stop dripping from his face. It didn’t matter if they were whispering. His hearing was too good not to hear them.

Pearl and Scott talking in hushed comforting whispers to Jimmy. Joel’s growled words that Gem— face muzzled as it was— nodding her head. He heard Scar and Mumbo’s muted mumbles. The heartbeats of all his…. He peeks through the feathers at all their bruised and beaten forms. He didn’t regret it. He didn’t. They’re alive to hate him. They’ll understand one day.

They escort him back to the cell when their time is up and dump him on the floor as Pearl and Jimmy get to their own feet. Pearl growls as she sees the beds, whirling around and before he can say anything, she launches forward. Her fist connects with his cheek. Grian stumbles back even as Pearl advances. His hand rising unconsciously to his cheek. “You really thought,” A laugh overtakes her as Jimmy looks away from Grian and begins dragging two of the mattresses apart. “That we would want anything to do with you?” He looks away. When Grian doesn’t say anything Pearl’s glare grows deeper. “I can’t believe you!” She snarls. “After everything! You lied to me! You lied to your family!” Grian takes an unconscious step back. “I believed in you!” Anger flies from her voice. She reaches forward– clawed hand wrapping around Grian’s hospital gown and slams him against the glass keeping them all in. “Tell me,” She growls out. “Why shouldn't I put you into the ground right now?”

Grian struggles in her grasp, her claws however dull piercing his skin and purple blood beginning to stain the front of his gown. “Pearl–” He gasps out. “Please–”

“Please?” Pearl snarls. “Do you think please will save you?! That please will stop the harm you’ve called!? Are you asking for forgiveness now!?”

The glass down slides open and Grian goes sprawling backwards. Back hitting the ground as Pearl sprawls on top of him. Before either of them can recover an electrified baton is shoved into Pearl’s side as she screams and rolls off him. The wave of electricity still coursing through her body as she convulses on the ground. Hands wrap around Grian and haul him to his feet as he continues to watch Pearl’s torture. “A shame,” He goes still as the head scientist rounds the corner, looking at the group before him. “I thought we’d gotten through to you Ex.002,” Pearl can’t even muster up a snarl as she slumps in the grasp holding her. The baton has yet to be pulled from her side as whimpers and screams rip themselves from her throat.

“Stop!” Grian shouts. “Please just–”

He cuts himself off as the head scientist turns towards him. “Ex.003,” He says firmly. “I thought you understood our message,” His grin leers down at him. “Understood what must–” Pearl’s scream cuts him off. “Be done to achieve a better tomorrow for humanity.”

Grian finds himself nodding his head. He meets Pearl’s eyes and sees the tears streaming down her cheeks. “Let her go!” He hears Jimmy shout in the background and the scream that erupts from his brother’s lips as a guard advances on him with an electrified baton.

The head scientist looks towards him. A silent question in his eyes. Grian bows his head. His family screams ringing in his ears. “I understand,” He says quietly. “I understand!” He shouts even louder when the torture around him doesn’t stop.

The scientist smiles, teeth stretching across his thin lips. “I’m sure you do,” He looks inquisitively towards Pearl’s convulsing form. “I’d hate for my prized experiment to be hurt by..” His gaze turns fowl. “Unruly subjects,” Grian finds himself nodding along, unsure what he was even agreeing to, just hoping that the scientist will stop if Grian agrees. “So you agree,” His smile stretches wider. “Best be kept separate then,” He gestures to someone behind Grian and he watches the guard he’d seen the other week, the one with the thick beard, open Scott’s cell door and pull the blue haired man from his cell. “Ex.011,” The head scientist says loudly. “You’ll be joining Ex.001 and Ex.002,” Grian’s eyes go wide and panic grips his soul. The electricity continues to rip through his siblings and their screams echo in his ears. Yet before he can protest he’s thrown forward. The arms wrapped around his own vanish as he falls into Scott’s cell. His body smacks against the concrete ground and screams on the tip of his tongue as he scrambles to his feet. Fist banging on the glass as his family’s screams continue to reach his ears, eyes wide and panicked as he’s left– completely alone.

Chapter Text

Tango winces as another scream rips through the still air. He shudders and leans in closer to Skizz’s cold clammy side. “What do you think is happening?” He asks quietly. His teeth ache from the electrical torture the guards put him through earlier. For the sole crime of moving towards his food too fast when they deposited it in their cell. If you could even call what the Watchers were serving as food.

Skizz’s eyes are locked on a point that Tango can’t see. “I thought we were prepared,” He says quietly. Not answering Tango’s question.

Tango sighs. “I don’t think anyone can be prepared,” Martyn and Ren had tried. Doing everything in their power to prepare them. Practicing the painful and invasive exams and blood draws. Testing a taser on their fragile skin. It didn’t matter. There was nothing that could’ve been done to prepare Tango to sit next to his best friend who’s chest no longer moved. There was nothing to prepare him for Grian.

First there was meeting the man and the cryptic warnings that fell from his lips. The deference to their captors that he hadn’t had just a year prior. The broken look in his eyes that shone with full force when they were all in the courtyard. The other captives warned him and Skizz away. That Grian, of all people, had betrayed them. Told their captors that they were going to try and escape. Even Grian’s siblings and closest friends held nothing back. Tears of rage and pain bubbling in their eyes. Their bodies destroyed after a week of nonstop torture still stand strong against the onslaught. It was Pearl, once a young girl in the photo on their wall of clues now a woman with massive brown wings on her back and shaved down talons, who truly clued them in right before Grian entered. “Grian’s always been the first to follow the rules,” She’d admits quietly, taking Jimmy’s hand in her own. “I just never thought he believed it.”

Skizz sighs, pulling Tango back to reality. “I’m worried,” His friend admits. “If we can even get everyone out of here,” He struggles with his words for a second. “Me and Mambo—“

“Mumbo.”

“That’s what I said— have been experimented on together and I just—“ Tango wasn’t used to this melancholy Skizz. He didn’t know what to do with his friend who wasn’t bouncing off the walls, always thinking and doing. A Skizz who’s chest stayed still. “There’s a woman they keep down there. Who’s psh— dead as a doorknob but still kickin like me,” Tango can’t help the flinch at the idea that Skizz could be dead– that Skizz was dead. “She’ll be a nightmare to get free— I mean even these stupids are scared of her!” He half shouts gesturing to the hallway outside their cage.

Tango finds himself nodding along. He looks up at the concrete above them. Can Martyn hear them? Are the Listeners planning their escape now? He lays back on the mattress, pulling Skizz with him. “We’re going to get them all out of here,” He says with none of the confidence he had a week ago.

Skizz smiles. “We are!” He says confidently. “We’re going to get out of here!” He shakes a fist at the concrete ceiling. “Do you hear me Martyn!” He shouts. “We're getting out of here!”

Tango laughs and curls around Skizz’s side. For a moment desperately wishing for his friend’s warmth and instead met the cold hard reality of ice cold skin. The stained mattress springs digging into his side and he desperately wishes he had his fuzzy weighted blanket from home. The one he’d left in Impulse’s capable hands with the demand that he buries Martyn and Ren under the thing every time the two refuse to sleep for days on end. “Do you remember…” He says quietly. Voice breaking the still air and soft hum of the dim lights above them. “When Martyn didn’t sleep for five days and hallucinated a ghost and Impulse believed him?”

Skizz laughed, a hollow wet thing. Tango wasn’t even sure his friend could cry anymore or if the moisture in his friend’s body had all dried up. “I remember you screaming like a big baby when Martyn thought you were the ghost when you were just going to the bathroom,” He laughs just a bit harder and Tango holds him just a bit tighter. “You jumped out of that room like your butt was on fire!” The laugh dissolves into a cough and Tango has to swallow his rage when Skizz spits up blood. The red liquid joining the other mysterious stains on the mattress. “I’m okay,” He gasps after a few heaving breaths even though his chest stays still.

“I know,” Tango whispers to the darkness, looking desperately upwards. “I know.”

It’s strange, how one can get so used to the routine of torture. Tango could almost understand how the other captives could get so used to the horrors they were being put through. Like clockwork the lights turn on, two guards come and deposit the awful nutrient bars and then take them off to be tortured. Skizz dragged off with the mustache man– Mumbo to the depths of the facility to be with the one prisoner he hadn’t met and Tango was off to be tortured.

Today, the torture was simple. He tries to remind himself that he’s letting this happen as the guards drag him across the hallways to the large room and he barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. Back to trying to control his super speed then. The two guards drop him on the concrete floor. Knees hitting the concrete as he waits for whatever the invisible forces behind the one-way glass want him to do. “Ex.014,” He shudders as the speakers rattle on. “Run to the wall and back,” He sighs as the collar doesn’t turn off. The speed that is constantly vibrating beneath his skin is still trapped beneath the collar around his neck. He takes a breath. The first time they had him run across this massive room, he’d barely put any effort in and the consequences were severe for messing with the Watcher’s data collection. Now he ran the distance as fast as his body, left to rot in a white room and barely fed, could do it.

“Ex.014,” His chest heaves as he places a hand against the wall to stabilize himself. He wasn’t exactly someone who went to the gym before being taken and the torture that they’d been putting him through hadn’t helped. “Try again,” The guard in the room steps forward and the collar around his neck clicks off. He still can’t control his speed. Feet tripping over themselves as his body shoots forward. It doesn’t surprise him as much anymore. He can stabilize himself and stop– being able to stop was a new achievement. An achievement that Tango showed off today, stopping at the other end of the wall just centimeters from the hard concrete he’d smacked into over and over again. He looks up towards the one–way glass, almost expecting some sort of acknowledgement for his achievement. “Test 81.14 achieved,” The speaker crackles. “Ex.014 has shown a growing mastery of the Serum 84C’s advancement,” His collar clicks back on and the vibration he’d barely started to grow used to vanish. “Again, Ex.014,” Tango looks across the wide room. Eyes wide as he takes in the length he’s going to run over and over again. He hears the crackle of electricity from the guard behind him, swallowing his pain and rage and starts to run.

When they let him go, Tango is sweat covered and exhausted, stumbling forward as the guards shove him along. The cave in his stomach rumbles as they approach the door to the pit that all the other prisoners called outside. He winces as his bare feet scrape against the concrete ground. The running had torn open the soles of his feet and blood now flowed from his feet. Tango took only a little bit of pleasure in the fact that some idiot guard would have to clean up later.

“Oh buddy!” He sees Skizz first. His friend quickly approaches him and half drags Tango to one of the metal benches. “Eat! Eat!” An unwrapped nutrition bar appears in Tango’s shaking hands as the room stares at him. Everyone else is pale and worn but no one else looks hurt. The bruises from last week start to fade to a sickly yellow and Tango swallows the self hatred inside himself as he realizes he’s happy that his fellow prisoners are only slightly hurt.

“I’m okay,” He says even as Gem and Pearl huddle around the blood that was drying on the floor.

“I can’t believe they let you just walk away,” Gem grumbles, poking her finger at Tango’s blood left on the floor. “With all this uncollected blood,” She raises a dramatic eyebrow as she does with a shake of her head, imitating the head scientist keeping them trapped. A laugh ripples through the group and Tango can’t help but laugh alongside them. For once the delicate threads of kinship reach out to his fellow prisoners.

He finds his eyes drag across the room as his eyes catch on the purple wings huddled in the corner and can’t help the frown pull at his cheeks.

“Ignore him,” Lizzie and Joel sit down next to them. Lizzie’s skin finally turned the shade of sky blue that he’d been assured was her normal color and not the pale blue it had been in the week that Tango had known her. She smiles at him as she speaks. Teeth sharp and glittering under the sunlight. “He’s experiencing the consequences.”

Tango frowns but before he can say anything Joel cuts him off, slinging an arm around him and pulling him closer. “Your family now,” He says cheerfully as he passes Tango, another nutrition bar. “We…” For a moment Tango thinks he’s going to launch himself at Grian again. “We protect each other.”

Jimmy and Scott sit on the floor in front of them, the yellow winged man leaning heavily against Scott’s side. “Did anyone teach you guys the rules?” Scott asks, playing a finger through Jimmy’s hair.

Tango looks over at Grian again, catching a glimpse of wide deep purple eyes beneath the wings of the same shade. “Grian did,” He finally says, remembering what the man had said that first day back in the room. Barely able to lift his head up as the other tried to protect him from the monsters he’d found himself in.

For once the other people around him seem to accept Grian doing something. Jimmy nods his head. “He always does,” Jimmy mumbles out quietly, the solemn acceptance running through their group. Tango leans against Skizz’s side, trying to wrap his mind around the two opposing things happening in front of him. Grian had been rejected– fundamentally by his family. He betrayed all of them and halted an escape attempt, to the other prisoners in the room Grian had doomed them all. Yet… he was still trusted to tell the rules. Everyone around Tango just accepts that Grian not only would tell Tango the correct rules but also that whatever he’d told Tango wouldn’t need to be corrected or changed. “They moved him,” Jimmy says quietly. Hand wound in Scott’s as the blue haired man holds Jimmy close. His ice blue eyes locked on the point that Tango cannot see. “Scott’s in me and Pearl’s cell now,” Jimmy curls a bit deeper into Scott’s side. “I–”

“Good riddance,” Pearl growls. Their small group grows as Gem, still with blood on her hands sits next to Tango and Pearl settles next to Jimmy, her hands twist into fists and hovers just a few centimeters away from touching Jimmy’s side. Her wings fluff as she glares in the vague direction of Grian.

“Pearl–” Scott says quietly. The most emotion Tango had seen yet entered his eyes. A brief flash of rage that quashes back into the dull blue.

“He got what he deserved,” Pearl growls out, any argument dying against her fiery eyes. “He ruined– everything,” Tango swallows the lump in his throat as he looks towards Skizz, makes brief eye contact and slowly Tango shakes his head. He looks up towards the camera whirling away in the corner. “We’ll never be able to get out of here,” Her tone turns dark. “Because of him,” Her finger jabs in the direction of Grian, the ruffled pile of purple feathers that showed no acknowledgement that he was hearing anything they were saying. The conversation dies to Pearl’s rage and silence overtakes the group.

Back in the cell, Skizz and Tango stand in the middle staring at each of each other. “We have to tell them,” Skizz shouts, just a little too loud. “They’re giving up hope, man!”

“I know,” Tango says, pacing and wringing his hands. “I know!” He looks at the camera still beeping away in the corner. “But we have to be careful! And wait!”

Skizz growls before slumping onto the ground, a marionette that had its strings cut. “I just hate it,” He says quietly. “I mean did you see them all today? They’re all so exhausted, man. I don’t know what to do," he admits. “Just tell all them y’all to what? Keep waiting?”

Tango sits next to him and looks up at the concrete ceiling again. His heart thudding in his chest as he slumps next to Skizz. “Hey Martyn,” He says, voice barely above a whisper. He knows Martyn can hear him. He has to believe Martyn can hear him. “We’ve got ten people down here,” He says quietly, hearing Skizz next to him take a sharp inhale. “One is kept separate. She’ll be harder to get too.”

“Her name is Cleo,” Skizz cuts in, offering a smile Tango’s way. “We have to say their names,” He says quietly. “They deserve that.”

Tango finds himself nodding off. “We can confirm Grian, Pearl and Jimmy are still alive,” He continues, the photo of the smiling family on their wall of clues stays trapped in the forefront of his mind. “Joel and Lizzie, married couple. Cleo,” He says with a nod towards Skizz. “Gem and Scott,” He remembers when they were digging through missing persons cases and coming across a report about a college student and his twin brother disappearing. The Scott in the photo had brown hair and green eyes but it was the same man. “Scar and Mumbo are…” The lie gets trapped in his throat even as he says it. “Still alive,” He smiles as Skizz snorts. “We’ve got to get them out soon,” He finishes.

“Whatever you're gonna do, Martyn my man,” Skizz picks up where Tango left off. “Do it soon,” Tango looks towards the concrete ceiling and closes his eyes.

…

Scott’s cell, now Grian’s cell he supposes, is cold. He lays on the floor, back to the glass as he stares at the mattress in front of him. He was so cold. The lights turn on, the hum filling the air and Grian doesn’t move. He lets his eyes slip shut again. “Ex.003,” He didn’t even hear the door open behind him. “Stand up,” He doesn’t move. The mattress is in front of him. Who was he kidding? “Ex.003,” The guard says again. Grian doesn’t move. Not even when he hears the crackle of electricity. Not even as the baton is shoved into the small of his back and a scream rips itself from his throat. Yesterday, he would’ve swallowed the scream. He doesn’t have anyone to protect anymore.

The guards haul him to his feet. The aftereffects of the electricity are still spasming through his body. He refuses to look towards Pearl and Jimmy as he’s dragged past their cell– his cell. “Ex.003,” He blinks and he’s on the table. His head pounding as a scientist enters his vision. Needle large and deadly looking in their hand. “Test 74.A,” His eyes wander across the room, he sees him wrapped in chains and down on the table next to him was the new guy– Skizz– metal muzzle on the other man’s face. Blue wide eyes meet his own as the needle pierces the side of his neck. Grian closes his eyes even as his pounding head begins to throb in ways he hadn’t thought was possible. Go into a spot in your brain, he remembers telling his family whenever someone new joined them, and bury yourself until they stop. He can’t find the spot in his brain. Teeth hissing as the needle pulls out. Purple blood running down the side of his neck and plopping into a metal pan he’d never noticed before. “Ex.015,” The scientist continues. “Proceeding with test 74.A.2,” Grian watches with wide eyes as his purple blood goes towards Skizz’s unmoving neck. The man struggles against the manacles holding him down as the needle goes towards his neck.

The needle pierces Skizz’s neck and Grian can’t yank himself out of his body. “No–” He shouts as the scientist presses down on the syringe, reaching forward with a desperate hand before hitting the wall of an electric baton. They hadn’t chained him down in years. He surges forward towards the man in front of him, meeting the scientist's stunned face before the baton slams into his stomach.

A scream rips itself from his lips as he drops like a stone onto the cold concrete floor. Cheek pressed against the ground as the baton swung down over and over again. His body spasming on the ground as scream after scream is ripped from his throat. His chest heaves, nothing in his body left to puke up as he convulses against the ground. He hears muffled shouts from Skizz, his eyes sliding shut as hands wrap around his arms and yank him to his feet. Sweat dampened his forehead and slicked his hair as he sobs. “Ex.003,” He sees the scientists, his purple blood coating the scientist's gloved hands. “What is the meaning of this?” Grian can’t muster the words. Can’t shout to the heavens that he wants all this to stop. Just hangs there in the guards grip as his tears drip onto the floor. “Stop crying!” The scientist snaps, raising a hand as Grian flinches backwards, shuddering against the arms holding him. He looks at Grian with a curl of his lip. “Oh just get rid of it,” The scientist growls out with a dismissive wave of their hand. “I have work here to do.”

“Course madam,” The guard on his left says, even as Grian’s heart skips a beat. He struggles against the arms holding him as he’s dragged out of the room. Eyes catching Skizz’s own wide ones. The needle is still sticking out of the other man’s neck even as he struggles on the metal table. The guards drag him out of the room even as blood and tears trail down Grian’s face. He knows where he’s going.

The dark dingy isolation cell greets him. The chains with old dried blood crusted on them are wrapped around his wrists. He hangs there, stuck in the present. Unable to pull himself away from his thoughts, from the pain running through his body. Through the tears trailing down his face.

“Ex.003,” No one had ever opened his cell door before. Not when he’s down in isolation. He barely looks up. Eyes catching the white coat and polished shoes of the head scientist leering down at him. “I’m disappointed,” Grian remembers how Pearl had spit at those shining shoes. Eyes glowing with rage. He hangs there, staring at those unscuffed shoes. “No words, Ex.003?” He clicks his tongue. “I thought you believed in our mission,” He says quietly, shoes disappearing from few as his brown pants appear in Grian’s view. Then the scientist's frowning face. “You told me you believed in our mission.”

Grian’s chest freezes. His heart stops and then beats in his throat. “I—“ Tears he can’t stop begin to bubble in the corners of his eyes. “I—“

“Do you not believe in us?” The head scientist asks. “In our future in humanity?” He takes in Grian’s form, reaching out and running a hand through Grian’s dirty wings. “What you’re sacrificing for the future of humanity?”

Grian’s tongue is stuck to the top of his mouth. He stares into the eyes of the head scientist. “I’m sacrificing everything,” He finally gasps out. The tears bubbling in the corners of his eyes before hanging his head. “For the future for humanity,” He watches tears drip onto the concrete floor, something carving its way through his soul.

“I don’t believe you,” The head scientist says with a click of his tongue. He lets go of Grian’s wings. The polished shoes coming back into his view. “We’ll try again in a week,” The door slams shut behind him. The clamp of feet against the ground echoing in his ears.

Guards hook him up to an IV on day 2. Grian can barely keep his eyes open as the hours pass. You’ve done this before, he reminds himself even as the darkness bores into him.

He isn’t sure how long it is when the cuffs cut into his wrists and deep purple blood begins to run down his wrists. His head grows fuzzy. He waits. He stops crying at some point. He stops thinking at some point. Eyes grow dry even as the blood continues to flow, going over the dried crusted blood and drips onto the floor. He thinks they might’ve put something in the IV bag. He tries to sleep but every time his eyes shut he remembers Pearl’s fist connecting with his cheek. Joel’s vitriol. Jimmy— yelling at him.

He hears shouting, barely raising his head as he sees shadows running through the small pinpricks of light beneath the door. He doesn’t move, just sways in place as the footsteps grow louder and more frantic.

Bang!

He jolts. Chains banging against the wall as a spray of gunshots echo down the hallway. Shouts bouncing off the concrete walls. Familiar shouts as his door is wrenched open. The lock busted off and clattering to the floor. He looks up, bleary eyed to see… Cleo, hospital gown soaked in blood and a gun in her hands. Her pale grey skin riddled with scars, suture wounds and bullet holes sluggishly bleeding but her eyes are alight with a rage Grian could hardly recognize. “Wow,” She says, leaning against the door as another burst of gunfire sprays against the corridor and echoes in Grian’s ears. She reaches into her long red hair and plucks out a piece of bloody flesh trapped in the curls before throwing it onto the ground with a sickening squelch and offers him a blinding bloody smile. “You look like shit.”

Chapter Text

Pearl lays on her mattress. Jimmy and Scott had sequestered themselves onto the other two and Pearl can’t help the smile that crosses her lips at the two of them curling around each other. Whatever joy that wells up in her is immediately crushed as she catches a glimpse of purple wings lying in the cell across from her. Grian was the reason those two were afraid to hold hands. Why those two clung to each other yet jumped apart as soon as any guard was around. She rolls over, putting her back to Grian. They could’ve been out by now. Her brother could’ve been happy by now.

She doesn’t move when the lights turn back on and Jimmy and Scott slowly wake up. She hears the slide of a glass door but it’s not theirs. Then she hears the screams. Pearl shoots up, head swerving to the glass door. Half expecting it to be Jimmy screaming but instead it’s Grian. His body convulsing on the floor as the electrified baton. Screams that Pearl had never heard come from her brother’s throat echo down the hall.

“Grian–” She turns, Jimmy sits there, feathers drooped and eyes horrifically wide. Scott next to him, hand halfway to his mouth. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t anything that hadn’t been done before…

Another scream rips through the still air. Pearl watches, hands going numb as Grian’s body jerks on the ground. Not even curling in on himself to protect his vulnerable bits from the electric baton. “What is he doing?” She hears Scott ask incredulously.

Pearl swallows the lump in her throat as the torture ends. Grian with tears and blood dripping down his face is dragged past them. “I don’t know,” She says quietly, the years and years she’d seen him take a baton hit he’d never acted like that. He’d never screamed like that. He’d never been like that.

They don’t bring him back. Not even as they were escorted for their outsider time. The small bits of the sun's rays that reach them warm her skin as she looks around. Half expecting the purple feathers to be in the same corner. Instead she’s met with everyone’s drawn pale faces and the corner empty. “What now?” She asks quietly, almost not expecting an answer.

“Do the cameras have microphones?” Tango asks suddenly. The entire group looks towards him with wide eyes.

“No,” Scar finally says with a curious shake of his head. “Sometimes the guards try to read lips but that’s for the humor not the–”

Tango exhales quickly. “None of you can react,” He says quickly looking towards the camera, then at Skizz then back to all of them. “Please,” Pearl finds herself nodding to his words, looking towards everyone around her. Confused and drawn faces looking towards the two men in front of them.

Pearl furrows her eyes as Tango and Skizz look nervously at all of them. She looks closer towards him and Skizz. Really look at them, the nervous way his hands wrap around them and the way Skizz eyes as wide as a deer in headlights. “What do you know?” She asks furrowing her brow and giving her best stink eye their way and watching the two grow increasingly nervous.

Tango takes a deep breath before blurting out. “Me and Skizz were sent here,” He looks towards Scar and Mumbo with desperate pleading eyes. Half begging them to understand. “We're here on purpose to collect evidence!” He takes another frantic breath. “We’re Listeners.”

Pearl watches Mumbo and Scar’s eyes go wide. “Oh,” Mumbo says. “Oh!” The pale man nearly rises to his feet. “You–”

“Don’t react—” Skizz says quickly. “Don’t let them–”

“How am I supposed to not react!?” Mumbo half shouts back. “You– your both– you!” He slumps.

“I’m sorry,” Gem says, drumming her fingers on the table as she stares at them. The energy in the room starts to rise as everyone leans in a bit closer. Pearl makes eye contact with Joel and Lizzie, watching their eyes narrow at the two other men. “Explain,” Her tone does not leave any room for argument.

Skizz swallows tightly. “The Listeners,” He says carefully, flashing a careful look towards the camera again. “Tryin to force all of this to stop and just end–” He gestures to the room. “All of this.”

Pearl gapes. She looks towards everyone else. She looks back at Skizz and Tango’s semi sheepish faces. “What?” She says, a touch too loud.

Tango winces. “We’ve got a legal team,” He says quietly. “We’ve been trying to sue for years. Doing everything we can to get you all out of here.”

Pearl stares. She blinks a few times and pinches her skin a few times. “I’m sorry!” Gem shouts. “I’m sorry!?”

“You guys agreed to not react!” Skizz shouts back frantically.

“How!” Gem shouts back, dramatically holding her arms forward. “How are we supposed to not react!?”

“Can you actually?” Everyone looks towards Lizzie, her quiet voice cutting through the shouting. She looks up, Joel reaches out and takes her hand, rubbing his fingers over her blue scaled hands. “Are you actually getting us out of here?”

Tango and Skizz exchange a glance, Pearl can’t breathe. She can’t understand what’s happening. She can’t comprehend what’s happening. She can’t breathe. “We hope too,” Skizz says softly, carefully reaching out a pale and shaky hand as he pulls Gem back down to the table. “We have contacts outside. But…” Pearl nods her head, an inner Grian rises up. Of course there is a catch. Of course they're not actually getting out. Of course– “We think we may need to just bust on out of here! Two pronged attack!”

“The Listeners on one side and us on the other. And–” Tango blushes as he looks towards everyone with careful eyes. “Tonight. I know it’s short notice and it’s dangerous–”

“I’m in,” Everyone freezes as Joel speaks up first. “What?” He says defensively. “We’ve gotta get out of here! I’ve been gunning for it since we got snatched into this awful place!” He looks around at all of them. “What do we have to lose!?”

Pearl mouths over the words. What did she have to lose? She looks towards the door. In about… She looks towards the sun setting, six minutes until the guards come back in. There are more of them than there are guards who enter. “I don’t have anything to lose,” She looks towards Scott and Jimmy huddled next to each other on a bench. She wants to get her brother out. She wants to get out. She wants to touch the sun. To stretch the wings the monsters had forced upon her and fly across the sky.

“I want out of here,” Gem growls. “I don’t care what it takes,” Lizzie nods her head in agreement.

“It might kill us all,” Scott said, his blue eyes looking up towards the setting sun. “It will probably kill all of us,” His eyes sweep over all of them. “I can live with that,” He clutches Jimmy’s hand just a bit tighter. “They come in six minutes,” His tone leaves no room for argument.

“Woah,” Mumbo says, raising his hands. “The Listeners are just going to be there? They’re willing to risk their lives for us?”

Skizz looks towards him. “You did,” The pale skinned man looks towards all of them. Tango flashes a nervous glance towards the camera as Skizzz rises to his feet. “You're all willing to sacrifice everything for each other!” He gestures to the ceiling again. “Our friends on the other side are waiting for us! They'll be there for us! All we have to do–” He nods his head solemnly. “Is take the bull by its horns,” His dark eyes track over all of them. “When I was in high school I was in a drumline and one day I couldn't get the rhythm right. It didn’t matter how often I tried! How I worked till my hands cramped! And you know what my coach said one afternoon?” He looks towards all of them as if he’s expecting an answer.

“Try harder?” Lizzie asks in the silence.

“No!” Skizz shouts, hands hitting the metal table causing Mumbo to jump. “He said: Skizz, why are you bashing your head against the wall? We’ve got a whole drum line outside this practice room! This–” He gestures to the room again. “Is the practice room! Outside–” He nods his head. “The drum line.”

Pearl blinks slowly as silence overtakes all of them. She looks towards Tango for answers and finds none. “Okay,” Jimmy finally says, rising from the table, his wings half spread out. “But we have to go get Cleo– and–” Pearl knows what he’s going to say. “Grian.”

She waits for the outrage. Instead she watches everyone nod their heads. Tango smiles and Skizz nods his head. “Okayyyy!” Skizz shouts. “Let’s do this!”

…

Cleo knows only darkness. A melodramatic statement but a necessary one. The darkness of her cell was as biting as the chains on her arms and neck. She’s honed her senses in the darkness. Every trickle of footsteps and mumble of guard’s voices filtering into her dead ears. She could tell based on their footsteps what the guard’s emotions were. She could tell when they’re happy based on the pace and the chatter. She could tell when they were upset and pacing quicker as they went. She could tell when they were dragging one of her friends away.

Sometimes they let her out. Sometimes she’s dragged from her cell as a special treat from the monotony of the darkness. She gets to see Mumbo then, that was nice. A small smile crosses her face and tugs at the surgical scars on her face. There was no one who could see it but it was a nice thought anyways. There was a new guy. Who hadn’t had the smile beaten out of him yet. Who cracked jokes while the scientists tried to figure out what to do with their three dead guys. She laughs in the darkness. They’re all too valuable to get rid of. Even with three of them. No, no, she’s too valuable to get rid of. No matter how many of them she kills.

She hears shuffling. The chains clinking as she looks up at the door. Not happy guards. Too quick and too panicked. Happy guards stepped lighter. This was too many steps. Too many guards to be anything but a panic. The door unlocks. Cleo looks up, smile stretching wider as she sees no guards in front of her. Instead she Pearl. Claws coated in blood and the ricochet of gunshots echo down the hallway. “Oh hello!” She says with a laugh as Pearl ducks behind the door before returning fire down the hallway. “Fancy seeing you here!”

“Hi Cleo!” Gem is suddenly there, her red hair looks dipped in blood as she bounces forward. The collar constantly around her neck is missing. “We're getting out of here!” She reaches forward and wraps a muscled hand around the chains and rups. Her hands barely strain as the chains holding Cleo down snap in her grasp.

Cleo stands, shrugging off the chains as she does. “I can see that!” She laughs as the sounds of gunshots and bodies dropping fill her ears. She rolls her neck, all her bones snapping and heal themselves as she pops them. “Got a gun for me?”

Gem laughs. “Do you even need one?” Cleo flashes her a knowing grin.

“No,” She says, looking towards Pearl returning fire down the hallway. “How many are there?”

“Five,” Gem says, bouncing forward as Cleo stalks forward. “We’ve got to get past them to get to Grian.”

Cleo nods her head. Red hair falling into her eyes. “Let me at them,” She races forward. Past Pearl and Gem as she reaches forward with a scream of rage. Gunfire blasting into her and she does not stop. She doesn’t care about the gunfire. These bastards killed her. Their gunfire means nothing.

She reaches the first guard and clocks him in the face so hard the bones in her hand shatter. She kicks him in the balls for good measure. Bang! She turns, a bullet entering one side of her head and emerging on the other. Bits of greyish blood and brain dripping from the hole. She smiles, blood pooling into her mouth. She spits, greyish blood and a shining tooth clicking onto the concrete floor. The guards in front of her pause their fire. Their mistake. The Watchers were training her. Truly training all of them to be the future of humanity. Their mistake.

They all die quickly and painfully. Bits of flesh stuck between her teeth and blood pooling onto the concrete floor. The last remaining guard screams as Gem’s fist connects with the helmeted head. The black body armor crumbling beneath her hand like a soda can. Her fist came away bloody but her grin is wide. “God!” Cleo shouts, voice echoing down the hallway. “I’ve missed all of you!”

Gem laughs. A true, throwing your head back laugh. Her shining red hair whipping through the air. The baby blue hospital gown is absolutely coated in blood as she slings an arm over her shoulder. “I missed you too!” She crows, Cleo smiles. Her and Gem had shared a cell once. The two were taken together for the sole crime of happening to be the right age and in the same rarely habited park. Gem had the misfortune of being far from home and Cleo had the misfortune of never having much of a family to begin with. She almost felt bad for them. They had no idea what they were messing with.

“Come on,” Pearl jogs up to them. Her claws not covered in blood and Cleo notes with a frown that they were significantly shorter than she remembered. Instead now those dangerous hands are now wrapped around a gun. A serious look on her face. “We’ve got to get Grian.”

Cleo just laughs, half skipping forward as she heads down the hallway lined with doors she never wants to see again. “What’s that loser doing down here?”

In a single second, the energy in the room has been sucked away. Pearl’s grip goes white around her gun. Her stern expression grows dark. Gem’s steps falter and her smile dips. “We’re getting everyone out,” Pearl says, eyes fixed on a point far away. “It doesn’t matter what they did.”

Cleo wants to ask. Her blood boils to ask and her brain goes a million miles a minute. What could Grian have possibly done to invoke Pearl’s rage? What could he– the man who made it possible for their initial escape attempt in the first place– have done? She remembers his impassioned speeches at the metal table. The memorization of guard schedules and Mumbo pretending to do routine checks only to sneak them maps and secrets. She remembers their failure and turning back to protect them, to try to give them a fighting chance. The gunshots that pierced her body and the beating that followed. Being wheeled away and taken to Mumbo’s still and cooling body. Her blood was taken from her body and made Mumbo breathe again. His eyes were as empty as her own. His breath was as short and stilted as hers.

Gem’s hand touches her shoulder and her head shakes. “Don’t ask,” She says quietly. “You don’t want to know.”

“I really do,” Cleo says with a laugh that falls apart in the stilted air. “Don’t I?”

“He betrayed us,” Pearl snaps, still not looking their way and stopping in front of a door. Gem steps forward and wraps her hand around the doorknob before looking towards Pearl. The younger woman’s chin wobbles for a second and her eyes go hazy. Cleo looks towards the door. He betrayed them? That… She could scarcely believe it. Couldn’t believe it. She swallows tightly.

“It’s okay,” She says, stepping forward and laying a scar covered hand on Pearl’s shoulder. “We’re all here.”

Pearl nods,eyes wide and hands shaking. “Okay,” She says and Gem nods her head. Hand flexing and yanking down. The doorknob crumbles in her grasp and the metal door swings open. As her eyes adjust to the gloom she takes in Grian’s form. His wings slumped and hair slick with purple blood as he slowly raises his eyes towards them. His eyes look empty.

Cleo can’t help it. She can’t stand a world where Grian looks like that. She won’t live in a world where Grian looks like that. “Wow,” She says, cracking a smile as his eyes dart to her and go wide. She’ll make him smile, even if it’s the last thing she does. “You look like shit.”

…

Pearl can’t help but feel worry creep up her spine as Grian laughs at Cleo’s statement. The laugh that turns into a hacking cough as Gem rushes forward and easily breaks the chains around his wrists.

“You okay?” Her voice breaks through Pearl’s haze as Gem supports Grian. His body dangling in her grasp. Deep gashes and bruises already emerging on his wrists and a large gash on his forehead. The blood now matted in the corner of his head and crusted across his hair.

“I’m fine,” Grian croaks out. His eyes locked on the concrete floor.

Cleo thankfully steps forward and wraps a hand around Grian, taking him from Gem. “Want this off?” Gem asks, not waiting for an answer and instead leaning forward and ripping the metal off Grian’s neck with a sickening crack. The twisted metal falling to the ground and revealing the deep scarring around her brother’s neck for the literal years and years that metal had been hanging heavy on his neck.

Grian’s hand raises shakily to his neck. Eyes going so wide that Pearl thought they might bug out of his head. He looks around as if noticing what’s happening for the first time. “What’s going on?”

A streak of hot rage races through Pearl’s bloodstream and before she can start it, her mouth opens. “We’re escaping,” She snaps. “Taking the power in our own hands,” She looks down at him, waiting for him to argue with her. “Do you have a problem with that?”

For a moment a flare of guilt streaks through her when Grian just bows his head further. “No,” He whispers. “How?”

“We’re going to kill them,” Gem says simply as they continue down the hallway past the bodies. “All of them,” Grian’s eyes go wide as they pass the bodies. Half hobbling and half clinging to Cleo as they slowly make their way past them.

“Got a problem with that?” Pearl can’t help but snap again as they reach the door leading to the rest of the underground facility.

Grian’s eyes lock on a point she can’t see. As he had done so many times before. She remembers when he started doing it all those years ago, sitting in their shared cell for hours and staring into space. She remembered getting angry at him. Furious that he refused to engage with her and Jimmy. That there would be days where he wouldn’t talk to anyone and would just stare. “No,” Grian finally said. Eyes still locked on that infinite point that Pearl still cannot see. “I have no problem with it.”

Cleo laughs and goes to slap him on his shoulder before pausing and tapping him much more gently. “Of course you don’t!” She says with a laugh even as Pearl cringes. Her mind immediately jumped back to his face when she propositioned him to kill all the bastards who kept them trapped here. “Open the door Gem!” She shouts, passing Grian off to Pearl’s arms as she races forward. “Let’s kill these guys!”

The door flies open before Pearl can protest the sudden weight of Grian in her arms. His legs buckling under the sudden shift as his wings, dirty and twisted, flare out to stop his fall.

The immediate barrage of gunshots fill her ears as she drags Grian forward. The gun weighs heavy on her back as she drags him behind a tipped over medical cart. “Oh hi Pearl!” She looks up to see Scar with Mumbo sitting on his lap. The mostly dead man now as riddled with bullet holes as he provides a human shield to Scar. The man in question waves to Grian. “Hi Grian!” Grian finally looks up as if emerging from a dream and waves to Scar and Mumbo. His wrist limp even as she offers a shaky grin.

“How’s it going?” Pearl asks, cutting through any of the potential side conversations that could emerge from Scar’s train of thought.

“Tango’s gotten to the elevator,” Mumbo reports. “He’s knocked out half the guys as he did but the rest of us are still making our way,” He looks towards the carnage. “Joel got shot but he doesn’t seem to be miffed about it.”

Pearl winces but nods. “Provide me cover?” She asks, gesturing to Grian. “We’ve got to keep moving,” It was the mistake they’d made in their first escape. They’d paused too long. They’d tried to savor their escape from hell. Not this time. This time they’re taking their justice and getting out before the reinforcements that crushed their previous escape could arrive.

Scar laughs, taking the gun from her hands and reloading it. “You know what the Watchers never thought about?” He says with a laugh. “That they turned trained guards into experiments,” He laughs before firing a perfect headshot into an approaching guard.

“Really an oversight on their part,” Mumbo says dryly, as always pulling a hoarse laugh from Grian’s throat.

Pearl grins, hoisting Grian to his shaky feet as Scar rolls forward. The human shield and returning fire clearly works as Scott and Jimmy join them. Her brother looks almost soaked in blood and ice has grown up on Scott's side and his arm. A clear sign of an overuse of his advancements. His breath white in the air as his chest heaves.

“Reinforcements,” He gasps out. “We– We were doing a sweep and they’re– they’re coming.”

Pearl swallows the lump in her throat. This is what she was worried about. This is what she was anticipating. “We just have to keep moving,” She looks towards Mumbo and Scar’s determined eyes. She refuses to look towards Jimmy. To see the hope shining in his eyes or worse– to see nothing. To see another brother who’s given up. Who believes that this nightmare is the only thing for them. That they might even deserve this–

“Let’s go!” Scar shouts, opening fire as he does. Pearl picks up the pace as Scott helps her carry Grian. His wings dangling behind him as they hussle down the hall. She sees Gem and Cleo bashing skulls as they go. The carnage those two were causing sprayed across the walls and the floor. Scott turns around and with a heave of effort that leaves him stumbling in Jimmy’s grasp and dropping Grian back into only Pearl’s arms– a thin wall of ice protects them from behind as they reach the group. Joel and Lizzie at the front. Joel’s shoulder bleeding heavily even as clones of himself race all over the place and distract the guards for Scar, Cleo and Gem to kill in their moment of weakness. The real man is leaning heavily against Lizzie’s side as she desperately tries to stop the bleeding. Tango and Skizz rapidly spam the going up button.

“The elevator!” Pearl shouts desperately. Already hearing the thunderous footsteps of the reinforcements coming from behind. Scott’s ice wall won’t hold. It won’t hold against the riot gear and gunfire that the reinforcements have. The tasers and pain that was promised the moment they got captured. The overwhelming pain that came with their last escape attempt. The objective torture they were all put through, not for any scientific purpose but instead just actual torture. Torture for the sake of torture. She looks at her family. They’re not going through that again.

Bang!

Bang!

Gunshots rip through the air as Scott’s ice wall shatters on impact. Guards in armor that were thicker and heavier than the armor that they had previously torn through advance. Their steps are confident and eyes obscured by helmets but locked on them as they advance. She desperately looks back to the elevator doors that were still closed. Skizz and Tango’s terrified faces telling her everything she needs to know. “Freeze!” She hears one shout as they advance closer and closer. Joel’s clones running towards them are shot down effortlessly and even the combined efforts of Cleo and Gem seem to be doing nothing in the face of the coming horde.

Pearl swallows the lump in her throat. “Retreat!” She shouts, heart thumping out of her chest as the elevator doors are still closed. She drags Grian forward, ducking as bullets race across the air. They’re not aiming to kill, a mantra in her head repeats. If they kill us they lose all their work. She looks at Joel’s bloody shoulder. His clones all dissolved into goo and sweat beads at his forehead. They’re trying to injure us, clarity springs to her mind. If they can injure us badly enough we can’t escape. The realization hits, head dizzy as she stumbles forward carrying Grian. There is no dying today, she realizes, just escape or their continued torture. She casts a fleeting glance behind her. The bullets have stopped as the guards realize they're cornered. Either the elevator opens or they get captured. There is no other option.

She sucks in a shaky breath. Someone has to stop them. Someone has to stall them long enough for the elevator doors to open. For a moment she closes her eyes and touches the elevator door behind her. Freedom just within her grasp. She looks towards Jimmy, supporting a half unconscious Scott in his arms. Lizzie fretting over Joel and Cleo staring down the guns with a snarl on their lips. Gem bloody and bruised beside them ready to go down swinging and their two newest members of the family, risked their lives, accepted torture to get them out. Her family’s sacrifice will not be in vain. Their struggle and strife will not be in vain. The Listeners on the other side of the elevator, waiting for them at the surface will not be left waiting for long.

She doesn’t know what to do with Grian. She looks down at her brother, half unconscious in her arms and presses a kiss to his forehead, just as their mother had once done to all of them so many years ago. Her parents' faces are just blurry memories, all images now interspersed with memories of Grian’s smiling face. She watches his hazy eyes go wide as realization crosses his face. He always could read her better than anyone else– knew her more than she knew herself. “I’m sorry,” She whispers, shoving him back and bending her knees to shoot forward– wings spread out–

“No!” Grian shoots forward and turns, suddenly more aware than she’d ever seen him. Purple eyes blown wide. His pupils dilated and frantic. He reaches up a hand and before Pearl can scream, ice shoots from his hand. Tinted purple as his body pulls blood when it has no more sweat to take. A wall thicker than one she’d ever seen Scott shoot covers the entire hallway. Only offering her a wobbly view of the otherside. Her head spins. She didn’t even know he touched Scott, much less borrowed his advancement. When did he even get his collar off?

“Grian!” Her fist pounds on the ice but it's no use. Hot useless tears spring to her eyes as the guards descend on her brother. Streaks of ice fill the air as he attempts to fight them off. “Grian!”

“Pearl!” Gem’s hand is suddenly on her shoulder, dragging her away from her brother. “We’ve got to go!” She hadn’t even realized the elevator door was open. “I’m sorry we have to go!” She claws at her friend's hand as she’s dragged back.

“No!” The scream rips its way from her throat as she sees Grian go down. The overwhelming stench of blood fills her nose as they all shove themselves into the elevator. Barley registering Jimmy’s claws digging into her arm as he holds her tighter than he’d ever had before. “No!” She screams even as the elevator doors start to close and the ice wall shatters, offering her one final glance of her brother unconscious on the cold concrete floor. “Grian!” The doors slam shut and the elevator dings.