Chapter Text
Yegor’s in a bind.
The first project had failed, and he’d lost track of Adam. It was only on the Queen’s good graces that they hadn’t executed him for his catastrophic blunder. Pale cared not for his mistake, but Pale didn’t care much for anything besides the thrill of destruction. After all, the logistics of all their schemes was all the product of Yegor’s planning, not him.
Which was fine. He could deal with that. Having had to deal with his unrequited affection and jealousy for the love between the prince and his test subject? Fine. Having Adam and Eve running off to elope in Heldogort? Fine. Having to go through all the re-education drills again, to make sure that he’s still worthy of living, under the critical eye of the Senate? Fine.
But the riots, Meta’s disappearance, Raisa’s death—
That was where he drew the line.
“We’re down half the team and you still have the gall to laugh it off?” Yegor remembers asking, only to feel the full weight of Pale’s stare like a million daggers aimed at his eyes.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Pale had crooned, a cocky smirk gracing his lips as always, “After all, you should know better than me that people are expendable. Aren’t they, Black Baron?”
A chill ran down his spine at Pale’s cold words, back then. Yes, he had sent many men off to do his bidding before, probably to their deaths. Extortion rackets, decoys, canon fodder to throw against MKL’s ever-present forces and all that. But to him, they were faceless grunts, nothing more than numbers fluctuating with every recruitment drive and every public insurgence.
Was that how Pale saw them, saw him? Expendable?
“Besides,” Pale had muttered, snickering, “Meta is… alive, at least. I merely used her as a bargaining chip for our safety.”
You sold her out to save your own skin, Yegor realized, but he managed to bite his lip before saying that. No point doing that when Pale’s clearly not quite in control of things.
No, no point painting a target on his own back.
What to do now, though…
He’s yet to receive his new orders from either Pale or Alice, confined to his apartment ever since the riots. No way to contact either of them, not that he’d want to, and no way to know his fate.
“Yegor Asayev.”
He’s shaken from his thoughts by a rough hand pulling him up, pushing him out the door. He wonders where they’re taking him—frog-marching him really, muzzles of guns pressed to both sides of his head—before the Institute shortly comes into view.
But he doesn’t get any answers until he’s deep inside the bowels of the labyrinthine dungeons below the Institute. And, to his gobsmacked surprise, a familiar face waits for him at the end of a long, dark hallway which leads to a single doorway.
The man raises an eyebrow, dismissing his men with a casual wave. When they’re gone, he rakes his eyes across Yegor’s body, sizing him up.
“The Black Baron, I presume?”
Yegor seizes up at the epithet, surreptitiously glancing around him in fear of someone else overhearing. But no, it’s just the two of them. Him and this strange man who looks the spitting image of Pale.
The man who’s polite enough to wait for him to calm his nerves, simply clasping his hands together in front of his chest.
“…I don’t know what you mean—”
“Oh, no need to play coy!” The man laughs, and Yegor can’t help but hear Pale’s voice echoing within that laughter. “My dear twin brother has told me all about your troubles, Mr. Asayev.”
Twin brother? “Then, you’re Pale’s—”
“It’s a complicated thing,” the man sighs, and he hasn’t even given Yegor a name, how rude, “but no need to linger on that. I’ve heard of your,” a pause, “failure… to keep the prince in check, so I’m here to give you a second chance. Alice herself recommended you as well.”
Silence. Yegor’s face is frozen in a mixture of incredulity and distrust. This man knows both the Master of Malice and the Prophet Queen?
“Ah, forgive me, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself.” Clicking his tongue, the man gives just the slightest bow before his lips curl into a smile that shows far too much teeth for Yegor’s liking. “My name is Seth Twiright, head scientist of the second Project Ma, and my task for you is to watch over…”
With the push of a button, the single door unlocks, swinging inwards to reveal a stark white room, empty of all features save for a woman chained to a chair, a woman with a very familiar face—
“My candidate, Meta Salmhofer.”
The weeks fly by in a haze, and not once has his former fellow criminal looked him in the eye.
Yegor understands. He wouldn’t know what to do if he met Meta’s gaze, either.
Seth has her kept in what he’s dubbed the White Room, and only Yegor is allowed to bring her food and drink. He can’t imagine being held in her position, chained up and treated like a wild animal.
Not to mention all the antimagic runes inked into the walls, hidden by virtue of being white paint on white. Even being in the vicinity of the room is enough to set off Yegor’s fight or flight response, despite not having much magic potential himself.
Maybe she already has become a wild animal, with the way she pulls wildly at her restraints and bares her teeth when Yegor comes too close. He’s surprised she hasn’t tried to bite her, but then Seth allows him to witness one of his tests that he so often runs on her and he’s not surprised anymore.
He’s also more than a little bit sickened by the scientist’s clear disregard for ethics and clear preference for electrocution.
It’s one of those days when there’s nothing scheduled for Meta that Yegor lingers just a bit longer than usual, watching her tear apart her meal, the cracking and grinding of bones and gristle being the only sound filling the silence.
When her feeding frenzy slows to a lethargic nibbling on whatever’s left, Yegor makes a move to leave, but a hoarse, scratchy voice has him rooted to the spot.
“Where’s Pale?”
Not once in all this time has Meta spoken to him, and the first thing that comes out of her mouth is to ask about the man who abandoned her?
Yegor wants to laugh, or cry, or some combination of the two.
He only wanted to do what’s right, topple the gilded, corrupted cage of MKL’s government from the inside out.
(He had ideals, once.)
(He isn’t sure if anyone else in Apocalypse shares his ideals, not anymore.)
(What he is sure of, is that Pale only looks out for himself.)
His prolonged silence is answer enough for Meta, who lets out a guttural, heart-rending wail when he leaves without a word, locking the door behind him.
On the way out of the dungeons, he passes by Seth, who only gives him an all-too-knowing smile.
The fated day comes and goes, and Yegor watches out of the corner of his eye as Meta gazes longingly at the glass tubes holding her twin children captive.
Belatedly, he wonders if she’s ever been loved.
(He might have loved her, once.)
(Him and her and Raisa, stuck in Pale’s shadow, with only each other to depend on for some scrap of fondness.)
(And like a fool, he’s only realized it after it’s far too late.)
Meta runs, taking the god twins with her.
Yegor, sure that he’s signing his own death sentence, turns a blind eye to her escape.
(He hopes she makes it to Heldogort, and that the forest god will be kind and merciful enough to shelter her, as heretical as that may sound.)
Queen Alice’s disappointed gaze is a far harsher punishment than anything else.
But there’s also a spark of relief, and that confuses him more than anything.
Once again, he’s jailed in the confines of his own home, placed under house arrest until the Senate can figure out what to do with him.
The days turn to weeks turn to months turn to years.
Yegor feels himself wasting away, and revels in the irony of it all.
Famine, indeed.
One night, Yegor awakens to the sound of shattering glass and a muffled scuffle.
Then Pale is there, having broken in through his window, wild-eyed and not quite in control of things.
And there’s a girl bound, blindfolded and gagged in his arms.
The 4th Project Ma candidate.
“Kill her,” Pale hisses, before Yegor finds a gun pressed into his hands and a blade pressed to his throat.
He’s wrong.
Adam and Eve’s escape wasn’t enough to ensure his execution.
Meta’s escape wasn’t enough to ensure his execution.
This, however, will be.
You’re selling me out to save your own skin, Yegor realizes, but there’s no point in saying that out loud. Not anymore.
(And like a fool, he’s only realized how expendable he is after it’s far too late.)
Squeezing his eyes shut, Yegor pulls the trigger—
The Queen herself visits him in the White Room.
She says nothing, but her tired gaze is more than enough.
Yegor feels the full weight of it like a million daggers aimed at his eyes.
“Failure,” she spits, pressing two glass bottles into his hands. And then she leaves, and the door is locked behind her.
He looks down at her final presents to him.
One, a bottle of murky green liquid that smells like roses.
(He knows what it is. He’s helped enough with Raisa’s alchemy-brewing sessions to recognize Gift anywhere. And with a dose this potent…)
The other, a bottle containing a rolled-up parchment.
What kind of choice is this?
Die, or—
Yegor retrieves the message from the bottle, and then he wants to laugh, or cry, or some combination of the two.
Hidden in its folds, a single key clatters to the floor.
And written on it, a single word.
(“Live.”)
Like Adam and Eve and Meta before him, Yegor runs.
Deep into the heart of the forest, with only the moon and the stars in the evening sky to guide him, he makes his escape.
Sitting in her parlour, Alice sips at her cup of tea, wondering idly if her parents would be furious at her latest failure in a string of absolute failures.
She hears footfalls behind her, closer and closer, until there’s a pair of ice-cold hands wrapped around her neck.
“The prisoner has escaped from the White Room,” there isn’t any wrath in Seth’s voice, only a quiet, tired disappointment.
She cranes her neck to look at him looming above her, his eyes glinting in the shadows, pupils slitted like a snake’s.
“Is that so?” She croons, revelling in her victory. “What a surprise!”
Silence.
“…If that’s the way you want to play it, then two can play at this game, Irina.”
And then she’s dragged deep into the bowels of the labyrinthine dungeons below the Institute.
And then she’s in the White Room, and Seth locks the door behind him.
And then she’s left all alone.
(But that’s alright, because this loop is only the beginning.)
(They have all the time in the world, after all.)
The forest is dark, far too dark, and Yegor’s not one for regrets but he can feel the shadows and his sins crawling up his back.
He feels like he’s running out of… running out of what? Energy? Time? Second chances?
With lungs burning, legs aching, and arms full of scratches from the branches and thorns, he runs, and runs, and runs, and—
Falls into the embrace of someone he hasn’t seen in a long time.
“Oh dear,” Eve tuts, fretting over his condition and pressing a red, red fruit into his hands, “this isn’t a night to be out and about, Mr. Asayev. There might be bears in the woods!”
With only a half-hearted struggle, Yegor lets Eve lead him to a cottage, warm firelight streaming through the windows.
He steps inside and sees Adam and Meta playing with the god twins before they look up at him in surprise and understanding and feels Eve draping her arms around his shoulders and he, and he—
He doesn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or some combination of the two.
So Yegor does both, laughing and crying, because there is no Alice or Pale or Seth to keep his mouth shut around anymore, and revels in the irony of it all.