Chapter Text
The catastrophes have piled up within the shortest space of time: a critical main generator on the remote lower deck has completely given up the ghost, leaving the emergency lighting to plunge the hallway into an unsettling, rhythmic flickering. To make matters worse, the communication link to the Scottish mainland is lagging massively due to the storm, and over the crackling radio frequency, the ruthless higher-ups at Cadal are exerting non-stop pressure, demanding immediate reports and solutions for a problem that simply cannot be fixed at the snap of a finger.
In the midst of this logistical and administrative nightmare stands Rennick. His patience is strained to the uttermost limit, his jaw muscles clenching so hard they stand out beneath his skin.
This internal chaos is reflected one-to-one and without any filter upon his head. His snakes are no longer the relaxed, curious, and affectionate creatures of those last peaceful evenings. They have mutated into a wild, unpredictable, and dangerously boiling nest of pure, naked stress.
Every single one of the small serpents shares the simmering frustration of its bearer. Their usually smooth scales are standing almost perpendicular to their bodies, making the snakes look visually larger and more menacing. Their necks are aggressively reared up, their tiny jaws thrown wide open. A deafening, vengeful hissing, hundreds of voices strong, fills the narrow, echoing corridor. It is a terrifying sound, like the screech of escaping, boiling steam, causing every technician and crew member in the hallway to instinctively take three steps back. Nobody dares to even approach the furious boss at this moment—the air in the corridor is electrically charged, and the living nest atop Rennick's head signals unmistakably: whoever makes the wrong move now will be mercilessly bitten.
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Just at the moment you step out of the radio room, your head spinning with the latest unsatisfactory status reports, Rennick comes storming down the corridor. His steps are heavy, energetic, and echo like dull claps of thunder off the bare concrete walls. His tinted glasses sit rock-solid on his nose like an unobtrusive yet insurmountable barrier, and his jaw muscles are clenched so severely that they stand out as hard, white lines beneath his skin. He radiates an aura of pure, compressed fury that would put any normal human to flight in an instant.
But a young, obviously still inexperienced Cyclops worker has fatally missed this warning sign. Clutching a thick clipboard tightly to his chest, he comes toward Rennick in the flickering light of the emergency illumination. He takes an uncertain step forward and, with a trembling voice, starts to address him:
"Mr. Rennick, sorry, but regarding the oil pumps on Deck C, we don't know if—"
The unfortunate soul gets no further.
The mention of yet another problem is the final straw that breaks the camel's back. Before Rennick himself can even react verbally, the pent-up stress of their host body breaks loose through his hair. Three of the larger, black-and-white snakes on the left side of Rennick's head strike forward in perfect unison and with terrifying, lightning-fast speed. Their bodies coil and snap like deadly steel springs.
With their jaws thrown wide open, flashing the pale pink flesh of their throats in the dim light, they bare their needle-sharp fangs. They unleash a hissing so vicious, hateful, and blood-curdling that it whips through the hallway like the explosive screech of a ruptured steam line.
The young worker turns pale instantly, as if standing face-to-face with death itself. With a hoarse, panicked cry, he scrambles backward so hastily that he trips over his own feet. The clipboard slips from his trembling fingers and clatters loudly onto the wooden floorboards. He just stares up at Rennick with a wide, terror-stricken eye, utterly incapable of uttering another single word.
"Out o' the way!" Rennick barks at the trembling worker, without slowing down his murderous pace for even a fraction of a second. His voice cuts through the deafening roar of the storm like a rusty blade. In his tunnel vision, driven by sheer stress, adrenaline, and the crushing weight of responsibility, he doesn't notice at all how aggressively and dangerously his hair is reacting to the environment.
At this moment, the snakes have taken complete control of his subconscious defense mechanisms; they are now his pure, unfiltered survival instinct. For their reptilian senses, there is no logical thinking left, no hierarchies, and no civilized manners—the nest knows only one single, fundamental rule: anyone who gets too close to him in this state is unconditionally classified as a threat and marked for elimination.
You recognize the explosive gravity of the situation instantly. If Rennick enters the tightly packed control room in this condition, flanked by a brutal, bite-ready army of serpents, it will trigger a full-blown mass panic among the already rattled crew. The absolute last thing the station needs right now are screaming technicians and a completely paralyzed command center.
With a pounding heart, but fiercely determined, you throw all caution to the wind. You bravely step directly into his path, cutting him off just as he heads for the heavy steel office door with his coat billowing behind him.
"Rennick, wait just a second—listen to me!" you start, trying to keep your voice as steady and calm as possible, and take a deliberate step toward him to force his attention.
Ssssssssshh!
It happens in terrifying fractions of a second. A shimmering, black-and-white snake, coiled in attack position directly above his forehead, strikes forward with the force of a tripped steel spring. Its jaw is thrown so wide open that the joints are nearly dislocated, its eyes fixed on you with pure, unadulterated hatred. It snaps directly and without warning at your hand, which you have instinctively raised to protect yourself.
Your survival instinct saves you: you yank your fingers back at the very last, absolutely critical moment. It is so close that you literally feel the icy gust of its rapid movement and the razor-thin brush of those needle-sharp fangs against your bare skin.
Instantly, as if they had only been waiting for this signal, five other surrounding snakes join in a furious, deafening, and rattling hiss. A whole fan of reared-up, hissing heads fixes you with deadly precision, ready to collectively finish the failed attack of their nest-mate. Every eye, every forked tongue is locked onto you.
And then, as if struck by a sudden bolt of electricity, Rennick freezes dead in his tracks.
Through the deep-dark lenses of his glasses, he stares as if spellbound at your outstretched hand, then at the snake above his forehead, which is still twitching aggressively, thrusting its forked tongue in your direction. It is as if someone in the entire corridor has abruptly hit the pause button. The deafening, aggressive hissing and snapping atop his head dies down for a moment in sheer shock. The snakes seem to reflect the sudden, icy freezing of their host one-to-one.
"Did they..." he starts, but his voice breaks mid-sentence. It suddenly sounds completely stripped of its dominance or anger, turning raw, cracked, and filled with a deep, naked panic.
Without losing a second, he immediately takes a large, almost frantic step backward to put as much protective distance between himself and you as humanly possible. He throws his hands up, palms facing outward—an instinctive defensive posture, as if he himself had just accidentally fired a deadly weapon at you and realized what he had done in utter horror.
"Did they get ye?!" he chokes out, his thick Glasgow burr sharp with dread, his eyes behind the tinted lenses frantically hunting over your skin, searching for those characteristic two red punctures. "Did they bite ye?!"
Even though he is a Medusa and his hair doesn't consist of ordinary venomous snakes in the classic sense, you know well enough that a bite from them is a bloody painful affair. Their secretion causes an immediate, highly inflammatory, and feverish reaction in the tissue. Yet far more than the thought of physical pain, you are startled by the expression on his face. Breaking through the hard facade of the unapproachable boss is naked, unvarnished fear—the pure terror that he might have caused harm to you, the person he has so cautiously grown closer to over the last few days.
"No, no, it's alright! Absolutely nothing happened," you say quickly and urgently. To slow down his racing pulse, you hold your open palm out toward him and turn it slowly back and forth, offering the visual proof that your skin is completely unscathed. Your voice sounds remarkably steady and calm, even though your own heart is hammering like mad against your ribs at this moment and adrenaline is coursing hot through your veins.
Rennick lets out a long, shaky breath that ripples through his entire upper body like a shudder of profound relief. As if they have understood that danger is afoot—albeit from within—the snakes on his head slowly retreat. They back away from his forehead and temples, slinking into a dense cluster, visibly unnerved by their host's sudden, fierce wave of guilt. Still, they are far from relaxed; they coil nervously into one another, their scales still slightly flared, emitting quiet, defensive clicks and soft hisses that sound like the restless crackle of a dying fire.
"Bloody hell..." he murmurs, his voice thick.
He raises his right hand and presses his palm against his forehead with noticeable force, roughly and ruthlessly shoving the snakes sitting there backward, as if trying to physically force them into silence.
"I am right sorry," he gasps, his thick accent heavy with exhaustion. "It's... everything's gone tae absolute shit down on Deck C, the pumps are about tae seize up clean, and Cadal... Christ, I've just no' got a handle on them right now. No' a single one o' them, so I haven't."
He looks at you. His tinted glasses have slipped slightly askew on his nose from the sudden movement, giving him an uncharacteristically vulnerable look. In this dim corridor, lit only by the flickering emergency lights, it hits you with terrifying clarity just how crushing the weight of this godforsaken island and the merciless expectations of the corporate higher-ups truly are on his shoulders right now. He is standing at the very edge of his strength, and the creatures atop his head have merely screamed out what he is trying so desperately to hide: pure, overwhelming exhaustion.