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"I would like to speak to Newt."
The thing in the chair looked at him, licking its lips before giving a crooked smile. He'd heard it speak in its true voice before, an echoing, alien voice, but when the mouth opened it spoke in Newton's.
"We're sure you would."
Gottlieb stood before it, leaning on his cane and staring it down. The containment facility, if it could be called that, was primitive at best. The base was still in the process of being rebuilt, so instead of a brig the being currently inhabiting his old coworker was being held in what had once been an antechamber to a Jaeger hangar. The doors were thick and needed specific clearance to get through, and a chair had been bolted to the floor while Newt was inbound for the express purpose of keeping it contained. It was still strapped to the chair, as it had been since Lambert had brought it in, and God knew how long that situation would be maintained. Eventually they'd come up with a plan, with a method, with something other than this glorified interrogation room, but until that happened...
"Newton, can you hear me?"
"Doubtful," said the thing in the chair. "He tired himself out from all the screaming in Japan. You really should have heard the guy, he fought tooth and nail but," it clicked its tongue in a pitying manner, "so feeble, this one. It'd be adorable if it wasn't so sad."
The scientist tapped the bottom of his cane into the ground impatiently. "I'd highly suggest you shut up, since the possibility of Newt being alive in there is the only thing keeping us from putting a bullet in your head."
The smile widened. "You wouldn't."
"I'm certain I wouldn't have to. There are plenty of officials much more willing to get their hands dirty, especially considering the casualties of the last 24 hours."
"Not you," it rolled its eyes. "So literal. Your people wouldn't."
"And why wouldn't we?"
"Well first of all, you know you're not killing us. You'd just be killing the vessel. We live on unhindered, and both of us lose a plaything. And moreover, its just plain not in your nature. You're all so-" the thing wiggled its fingers in a vague motion, looking past Gottlieb, "curious. I'm not alive because you think there's still some humanity in here. I'm alive because your military thinks I'm an asset. Look at you all, sticking your noses where they shouldn't be, poking things with a stick and being surprised when it bites off your hand." The eyes fixed upon the man before him again, the sickly smile returning. "It's what made it so easy."
A shiver ran down Hermann's spine. The thing waited for a response, and the man was determined not to give it what it wanted.
Several seconds passed, and when it was sure Gottlieb wouldn't respond, it leaned forward, grin widening. "He was so fascinated. You, now, you were a lost cause. All numbers, analytics, cold hard logic. We had only nightmares for you. You said you still have them, didn't you?" A pause. "But Newt, ah, Newton. He was so intrigued, so curious, and, most of all, so lonely and desperate for genuine connection. He was so willing to listen if we threw him the merest scraps. And so we did. Bits and pieces of a world he loved so much he inked it onto his own skin." The forearms flexed in their restraints, Kaiju tattoos rippling with the muscles beneath. "He couldn't resist throwing the doors of his mind wide open for us." The muscles tightened as the thing balled its hands into fists. "And now we get to tear it apart."
Gottlieb barely remembered turning around, leaving the room, barely heard the thing laughing Newt's laugh as he left, but he remembered heaving, the taste of bile, the horrible sinking feeling in his chest of Oh Newton, what the fuck have you done.
****
He heard it from Pentecost and Shao, in a conversation he probably wasn't meant to overhear. At this point he was so exhausted yet on-edge that the very mention of Newt's name was enough to catch his attention, and he limped as fast as his cane would take him to the discussion he wasn't invited to.
"He spoke to you?" he asked, breathless due to the fact he'd gone at a near sprint across the room and through the sudden cold fist that had clutched his heart. "Newton? The real Newton?"
Jake blinked at him. For a second, a horrible second Hermann was expecting some bureaucratic nonsense, something about clearance and information being top secret and-
"Come with me."
He was shown the footage via holo, a grainy three dimensional version of Newt sitting in a chair across from him, picking at his fingernails as his eyes darted from him (not him, Pentecost from earlier, who'd been sitting where he now was) to the corners of the room, or occasionally up at the ceiling as he blinked back tears.
"I-I'm sorry. It wasn't- I tried- it's just-" Newton struggled for the words. "I need you to know I really did try to-"
"There'll be time for that later," said Jake's disembodied voice, slightly distorted from the recording. "What can you tell us about the Precursors?"
"I can't- See, it's still- It won't let me tell you much. Trust me, I would if I could, and God do I want to, but it's not... it's still here, even right now, it's here with me now."
The expression shifted and a cuffed hand raised, waggling a couple fingers in a sly wave before Newt seemed to grab his hand back, rubbing them together and muttering under his breath.
"What can you tell us?"
"He- they're angry. So angry. We're- God, they're- not giving up. They think this is funny, the whole thing. Me, this, us, the whole situation is a joke to them-"
Rage, burning, hot rage that now seemed like a constant state of being flushed through Hermann's veins as he watched his former lab partner try to frame the thing in his head in the simple terms he was allowed, sometimes stopping in the middle of a word, sometimes lips moving even though he made no sound, then stopping, starting again, trying to make a straight line out of wandering circular language. Jake's recorded self tried to help where he could, but the two of them couldn't spin much sense out of anything, and Hermann could see Newt's frustration growing with every useless explanation. Eventually he stopped and just stared at the wall for about a minute. When he spoke again even Gottlieb couldn't tell if it was Newt or the Precursor.
"How many people died in the attack?"
Before an answer could be given, Newt's head was in his hands and his shoulders were shaking. "God, there were so many, so many people, I never meant to-"
"Newton," said Jake's voice, remarkably steady, remarkably soft. "That wasn't you."
"It might have well been, I never meant to- just- please, tell Herm I didn't-"
"How 'bout you tell him yourself next time he comes around. I'm sure he'd-"
Newt's holographic head snapped up, eyes somehow impossibly making direct contact with Hermann in the chair across from him.
"Hermann's been here?" he asked, desperate, hopeful- but then he seemed to twitch, fought himself for a moment, then leaned back into the chair, his entire demeanor changed. "I think visiting hours are over, Ranger Pentecost. Thank you so much for stopping by."
Gottlieb was already out of the room, limping at his maximum speed toward the holding cell. Jake didn't even try to stop him, just followed behind silently. He jogged ahead a couple steps so he could open the door for Hermann, who locked eyes with the thing in the chair.
"Newton," Hermann said forcefully as he stopped before it.
The thing made a faux-buzzer noise with its mouth. "Wrong answer, try again."
"Newt Geiszler you get out here right now and speak with me." He punctuated it by slamming the end of his cane into the floor before him.
The thing just shrugged.
"Listen to me you infuriating, brilliant, stubborn, stubborn man-" Hermann pointed his cane at him, "you fight this thing with all the vigor and fury and unyielding force with which you used to fight with me, do you understand? I am going to speak with you whether you like it or not so kindly get your shit together and say something."
There was a shudder and the grin faltered, then another and it fell. Newt's body fell forward in the chair and gasped a breath, then another, shakily. He looked up and met Hermann's eyes for a moment and he was nearly convinced that it was him he was there it was him.
And then it let out a loud, unseemly laugh directly in Hermann's face.
It was still laughing when Hermann limped out of the room, a hesitant Pentecost following behind him.
****
The room got nicer. With the help of Shao Corp, the base had been rebuilt in record time, and now the thing had its own little cell. They'd learned that while it was brilliant and dangerous and not to be trusted, its physical form was limited. It was only as strong as Newton had been, which was about as strong as a near-40-year-old xenobiologist/Kaiju enthusiast was expected to be. Interrogations were a regular occurrence, be it Ranger Pentecost, or Shao, or, most often, Gottlieb.
Progress was uncertain and exhausting. One day the thing would seemingly indulge them, answer questions politely, ask how the other party was doing and if perhaps it could get some music for Newton because he'd been pestering it about that lately. Sometimes it just scoffed or screamed or refused to acknowledge anything outside of itself. Certain sessions were no different than an average conversation with Newt himself, or the times Newt would call for someone, ramble quickly and desperately that he'd gotten a handle on the precursors and was holding them back, and he had to be released immediately to stop their plan to end the world, only to revert back when he was refused, or just laugh in the face of whoever it had nearly convinced.
Some days, some particularly awful days, it would sit vacant, weeping, sometimes sobbing, and on those days Gottlieb couldn't tell if it was the exhausted Newton crawling to the surface or the thing mimicking his friend in agony.
Once after a particularly exhausting session its head lolled around before it caught Gottlieb's eye with a lazy smile and asked "You love him, don't you?"
When he refused to answer, it continued. "We know you do. You all think you're so complicated, and maybe you are to one another, but we know. We've been inside your head, remember?"
For a moment, just a brief moment, the hard eyes widened by a fraction. There was a flicker - surprise, disbelief, grief, hope - gone before he had the time to analyze it, but it was there. He was in there, still. Or maybe the thing was getting better at acting.
"This one, he's not even sure about any of it. Maybe he liked you. Maybe he was so desperate to be loved he'd take anything he could get. You know, it was a little game we played to lure him in. Flood the right part of the brain with the right chemicals and it's the same as love. Just as addicting, just what a lonely and desperate and pathetic creature like him needed. We could convince him he never needed anyone else. He danced for us like a puppet on a string."
Gottlieb wanted nothing more than to be able to crack Newton's head against a wall, expose the brilliant, idiotic brain inside of his skull and scoop the Precursors out with a melon baller. Unfortunately, science was never quite that easy, and this situation had been out of Hermann's depth since he'd first seen him on the landing pad, arriving with Shao and her company.
Time passed, incomprehensible, unstoppable time, and the thing in Newton's body became twitchier. Good days became fewer and farther between. Smug arrogance was replaced with open contempt and rage. It threw tantrums in its cell, dug its nails into Newt's skin, kicked the wall so hard several of his toes shattered.
Hermann had a theory. The brain had been found in Newt's apartment, the ramshackle drift equipment hooked to it like some sort of eldritch virtual reality setup. The Precursors were a hivemind, and from the attack on Hong Kong ten years back he knew that Newton's initial drift with them had caused a residual connection, but he'd always assumed it had worn off with time and with the closure of the breach. There was no doubt that something - an echo of the Precursors, perhaps - had implanted itself in Newton's brain. However, from the setup in Newt's apartment and the wear on the equipment, it was obvious that Newt had still drifted with the Kaiju brain regularly.
Seeing the thing become more and more irate and desperate, Gottlieb could only theorize that it was going through a period of withdrawal. An entity used to being connected to the whole of its species was now entirely cut off from its hivemind, stuck in a body that didn't fit, and it was choosing to take it out on the vessel itself.
It was banging its head on the concrete wall in a steady rhythm, not stopping or even seeming to acknowledge Hermann as he entered.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Gottlieb.
The thing ignored him. A small trickle of blood ran from Newt's nose, past the lips, down his chin.
"Without him you have no foothold in this world. Damaging the brain of the one human crazy enough to open his mind for you is hardly-"
The words died on his tongue as an idea struck him. It was brilliant, idiotic, so simple he was amazed it hadn't occurred to him before.
He'd expected Pentecost to tell him no. Shao had her objections, very understandably, but Jake- Something in his eyes as he explained the risky and frankly borderline insane plan reminded him so much of the man's late father. You shut up. You, keep going.
"We can't afford to lose you," he said. "You're the most brilliant mind we have. And it would give the Precursors access to everything you know. You'd better have a good argument."
"Sir," said Gottlieb. "I have reason to believe that the Precursor inhabiting Newt is no longer connected to the greater hivemind of the species. It is a dangerous entity that is definitely intent on the destruction of not only our species, but our very planet itself-"
"Okay, current argument? Not so good."
"-but in its current form it has no contact or communication with its homeworld. It's an isolated threat. Now, I believe that the mental strain of hosting the Precursor is too much for one human brain. It is able to control Newt through its own superior willpower. However, I believe that if that mental load is split between more than one person, the being will be able to be suppressed."
Jake's eyes narrowed slightly. "Didn't you already drift with a Kaiju?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you said that went-?"
"Badly, sir, but if I may," he said, "I wouldn't be drifting with a Kaiju. I would be drifting with Newt."
"Newt and the alien living inside his head."
"Yes, sir."
Pentecost nodded, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "And if you're wrong? If it's strong enough to overtake both of you and now it has both of our most brilliant anti-Kaiju scientists working against us from the inside?"
"Sometimes science requires sacrifice." Hermann looked at the other man with a desperation in his eyes that had been there since Newton had been lost to them. "Sir this is the best solution we have."
"Sacrifice, huh." There was another thoughtful pause. "If I were to say no, you'd just do it anyway, wouldn't you?"
"Almost definitely, sir."
The Ranger's face broke into a smile. "Well then, let's find you a rig."
****
They rolled Newton in on a chair, securing the proper restraints and hooking the headset up to him with surprisingly little resistance. Hermann himself hadn't drifted since his first last and only attempt with Newton ten years earlier, but he knew drifting was standard practice for both Newt and the Precursor.
Jake was talking to him, or, rather, at him, about how to lean into the drift and how to not cling too tightly to any passing memories, but he was too preoccupied with staring at Newton, who was leaning back with his eyes closed, to hear more than a few scattered words.
"You gonna be alright?" Pentecost asked, signaling the end of his speech.
"What? Oh. Of course. Why wouldn't I be?" said Hermann, not looking away from Newt.
"We can pull you out at any time," said Jake, "and we will if it starts looking bad."
"Alright," said Hermann.
"Are you ready?"
"As I suppose I'll ever be," he said. "Besides, it's just Newton."
"Newton and the Precursor that lives in his brain now," reminded Pentecost.
Hermann sighed, moving toward the rig. It was the one the cadets trained on, and the helmet was snug, maybe uncomfortably tight if he took the time to notice, and smelled like it had been used by a number of sweaty teenagers that was greater than he wanted to imagine. Newton's eye cracked open and he smiled up at the other man.
"Hey Hermie," said the thing. "Ready for more nightmares?"
"I think I've had enough to manage whatever you can throw at me."
It laughed once. "Oh, Hermann, we've barely scratched the surface with you." Its eye closed again, looking almost peaceful. "I can't wait to get started."
"Ready?" called Jake, standing a few feet in front of the two of them.
Hermann just nodded, his heart pounding in his throat and preventing him from speaking. He reached forward and pressed a few buttons, and then-
He'd forgotten what it felt like, like he was being pulled off his feet and backwards and-
He barely had time to breathe or think and it was on him, around him, inside him, prodding, tearing into him, finding parts of him he barely knew were there and sinking its teeth in. Somewhere outside of it all he heard someone yelling, then someone else, quieter, which cued him in that the first person he heard was himself. There was darkness and blood and destruction and hatred and death, so much death, and monsters beyond his wildest imagining-
The second voice was shouting, telling someone to abort the drift sequence. Hermann ripped himself away from the thing that was on him, in him, was him? No, not him, not now, not ever. He threw it off and clawed to the surface, and maybe, maybe hopefully if he was correct, managed to yell to the people outside of his own mind that he was okay, that it was fine, not to pull the plug, not yet.
He took a gasping breath like a man at the surface of a deep pool and then dove back in. The thing was waiting for him but he pushed against it, pushed through it, yelling into the darkness for a familiar mind to reach out and meet his own.
The last time they'd done this there was separation - different childhoods, different upbringings, different backgrounds and thoughts and hopes and dreams - but then unity. Two sided remembrance of written correspondence, years of lab work seen from two perspectives simultaneously. All of this knitting them together as they took on the Precursors as one, sharing the load equally.
But now was... isolation. Years in a lonely apartment, an interesting but stark and demanding job, Alice, always Alice, a desperate, lonely man's only connection to his former life and passions, becoming more and more of an addiction as the awful thing took root in his mind.
And then- chaos.
He'd heard of pilots getting stuck in a particular memory, following the rabbit to the call of the past, but he'd never pictured it like this. Vivid flashes, one after another, jumping like a scratched record, each as real and immediate as the last. For a while they were too quick to nail down specifics, just intense and overwhelming waves of pain and regret and anger and fear, and then he found his footing. Japan, on a rooftop, watching as the city and the Jaegers were torn apart - one Newt cheering and laughing, another beside the first, pressed up against the railing of the observation deck and screaming his lungs raw as he could do nothing but watch, and Hermann, a ways off, watching them both. Before he could even get a step forward the floor fell out from under him and he was with them, strapped to a chair, except it was Newt, real Newt, strapped to the chair and yelling for someone, anyone, please, help me while the Precursor paced around the room, looking bored. Time melted like wax in a flame and then there was him, in front of the chair, his face hard, saying something-
"This is your fault," said the other him. "I told you not to but you just couldn't help yourself, could you?"
"Herm," Newt said, nearly whispered, nearly cried. "Hermann please-"
"All of those people are dead because of you, do you realize that? Your damn obsession finally got people killed, are you proud?"
"This isn't real," said Hermann. "Newton, that never happened."
The Newt in the chair turned at the sound of his voice, their eyes meeting for a moment before the scene was ripped away again. Now they were in the command room of Shao Corp, and Newton's hand was around his throat, and he was there, he felt the crushing fingers, the rush of oxygen deprivation, stars popping in his vision as he struggled for a breath, felt his own hand try to caress Newton's around his throat as if telling him in the only way he could this is not you, this is not your fault, I know you're in there and it's going to be okay. And then the memory split and a false version of himself went limp in Newton's grasp, eyes rolling upwards as the pulse pounding into Newt's fingers fluttered and stopped.
Newton dropped the body and stumbled backwards against the table in the middle of the room. "Oh god, oh god, Herm, I'm sorry-"
"Newt, listen to me," Hermann said, stepping towards the other man. "This isn't real. These memories, they're not real-"
The room started to pull at the edges and Hermann planted his heels, gripping to the shared memory with all his mental might.
"Hermann," Newton whispered. "I'm not strong enough. I can't do this."
"Yes you can. Dammit man," Gottlieb dropped his cane and grabbed Newton's face with both his hands. "Newton Geiszler you are the most strongly stubborn man I've ever had the pleasure to know. If anyone can fight this thing it's you."
The thing roared on the periphery of the memory, anger and hatred and malice swarming around and through and against them, but he held fast.
Newton shook his head in Hermann's hands. "I've tried. It's too strong. I'm not strong enough-"
"Then let me help you," screamed Hermann, trying to fight both the thing trying to tear them from the shared memory and his partner's own doubt, fed into by ten lonely years and the twisting insidious nature of the thing that held his body and mind hostage. "You might not be strong enough but we are." He leaned his head forward, pressing his forehead into Newts. "Newton, please," he whispered. "Help me help you save yourself."
The thing screamed and he felt a shift, like a key clicking into a lock, and suddenly Newton's mind was open to him and his was open back, and the Precursor was there between them but less immediate, less threatening, though it was just as angry.
Hermann's eyes lifted to see a worried looking Pentecost and several technicians who spoke about vitals and the neural handshake and other things he would normally have listened to but for now he could only whip his head sideways, looking toward the other headset.
Newt was there, still strapped to the chair, breathing hard but looking into the distance like a blind man who had just discovered he could see. His brow knit in confusion, exhaustion, then relief that washed over both of them simultaneously, because they were there, they were together, they were them and Newt was him and it was impossible but it was real and-
Hermann moved to step towards Newt, only to be stopped by the helmet's tether. Newt looked to him, reading his mind, literally, and they both looked to Pentecost.
Jake looked from one of them to the other, trying to judge the state of them. "You alright? You still you in there?"
"Yes sir," said Hermann. "We both are."
"Are you ready for us to pull you out?"
He swallowed. They both nodded in sync.
Jake nodded to a tech and the drift began to dissipate. The places where Newt's mind overlapped with his own began to sift away like sand through his fingers, and as he felt it go he remembered his mission, his own goal for this drift.
With the dregs of the drift connection he reached out to the Precursor and dug his nails into it, yanking and pulling what he could as it receded with Newt. He felt the other man panic, felt his thoughts - not all of it, god, not all - and reassured him - not all, just enough, we'll take it together.
And then the link was closed and the helmet was removed and he felt it, felt it angry and slithering and writhing in his mind, whispering of destruction and death and genocide and nightmares, endless nightmares made real, but he could manage it. He pushed it back, knowing it would be a problem for later, and moved to Newt.
He was still in the chair when Hermann was upon him, turning his head this way and that, looking into his eyes as if searching for something in particular.
"Hermann- Herm, you did it- I can't believe-"
"Newton that had better be you," he said, still searching, as if expecting the face to shift beneath his hands and the thing to laugh at him again.
"Jesus, Herm, it's me, it's- okay it's mostly me, but the mostly part is new. I'm not gonna lie it's still here and it is pissed but I-"
He was cut off by a sudden and unexpected kiss from the man standing over him, awkward through the face plate of the drift helmet still on Newt's head and that the other man was leaning over the chair to reach his face but not unwanted or unpleasant - a mutual longing expressed in the moment of drift and almost unconsciously agreed upon. It lasted not nearly long enough for either party but the room was crowded and Hermann's cheeks were already burning from breaking his strict rule about public displays of affection and there was someone talking about being held for observation until they could be sure there was no immediate threat but Hermann didn't care, couldn't care, even as the thing in his brain curled around like a coiling snake and he felt its emotions mingle with his own - anger, resentment, contempt, but most worrisome a hint of amusement and the feeling that maybe this was what it had been waiting for. But none of that mattered, not now.
Newt was back, his Newt, and he'd be damned if he ever let him go again.