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"Look," Dustin called with that polished, Tenebrean accent of his. "There is another one here."
Cor rose from his crouched position, forcing his eyes from the fuming wreckage below, and followed Dustin's voice.
After months of slowly building intel from foreign rebellious forces, they had found one of the MT facilities. Bad luck (or more likely a mole) had them find it disemboweled in the middle of the Gralean snow, half of his walls in shambles. Whoever had betrayed them had warned Niflheim too late for their army to be sent to protect this place and had chosen to destroy it instead, preventing them from finding out the secret behind their unlimited source of soldiers. By the look of things, it couldn't have been more than a day or two since Niffelheim destroyed the place. Their arrival had scared the Empire enough they bombed everything without checking if the work was correctly done. Cor had been able to boot up the computer two levels below to retrieve valuable information, and they kept finding incubation rooms full of dead MT soldiers.
Most of them looked unsalvageable, but Cor hoped they could still bring some specimens back to Insomnia to be studied.
When Cor reached his level, Dustin gestured towards the row of pods. Eyes squinting, he found the one his partner was referring to. It stood out from the rest, for it was the only one unbroken. Inside laid another one of those blonde children's bodies, identical to so many others.
Except for the fact its eyes were open and moving.
"I think this one is alive." In the five years they had been working together, it was the first time Cor heard Dustin's voice showing emotion.
"It's so fucked up." In a few strides, he found himself in front of the pod.
"Agreed."
The child was watching them.
Despite the chilling redness of his pupils, he looked as astonished and confused as Dustin and Cor were.
"He can't be more than six or seven," Dustin murmured before slowly taping the glass, and added louder, "can you hear us, young one?"
The child blinked once and made no sounds of acknowledgement, still floating in the greyish substance all the pods seemed to contain. He slowly brought the palm of his hands against the glass, focused on Dustin's face. With his arms closer to the glass, ports of entries buried connecting the machine outside to the flesh of the tiny human within became obvious. It made Cor's stomach roll in a very unpleasant way, and if he didn't think better of Dustin, he could have sworn the other man had gagged at the vision.
"We need to get him out of here."
"Fear not, little one." Dustin gently tapped the glass again, the eyes of the child riveted on his gloved hand. "You should be free soon."
After a few minutes of fumbling with the terminal, they managed to unlock the pods of the room and started to manually open the latches when the alarms went blaring.
Roars of said alarms weren't enough to cover the sounds of the machines coming to life, hissing and roaring. Cor could only watch with horror as the main tubes filled with black ooze. Gurgled down, the heavy liquid flushed down the broken pod next to theirs, as if the whole installation was spitting it out in anger. Dustin picked up the smell seconds before Cor did.
"Fuel."
In the pod the tube locked on the child's face by a muzzle and forcing its way through his throat was filling as well. Cor didn't need to give any instructions to Dustin. The both of them started hitting furiously on the latches locking the boy in with both hammer and sword. When they finally gave in, the boy was choking, eyes revulsed and fingers clamming around the muzzle attempting to free himself.
Cor caught the falling boy in the middle of glass shards and slimy water.
"That fucking goddamn thing won't...! Dustin, get me a screwdriver!"
The next moment said tool was in his hand, and Cor swore in his head he would never tell Clarus that Dustin was just a useless bureaucrat ever again. In his arms, the kid was sizing, flailing arms and legs battling against the clutches of death.
The lock soon gave in but the boy was already unconscious. Cor nothing but ripped the offending muzzle out of his way before breathing four strong gulps of air into the boy's mouth while pinching his nose. Cor let out a trembling sight of relief when he saw the liquid draining from the kid's mouth and nose as soon as he laid him down. Dustin helped him hold the child, eyes staring holes at his wristwatch. Before the two minutes limit hit, he summoned from the armiger a Phoenix Down and crushed it into flames into the boy's chest.
Cor felt the boy somersault back to life in his arms, but instead of the expected panic and show of flailing limbs, the crownguards are met with a limp body and a blinking face. Dustin broke a vial of remede over the child for safety, making the young one turn several shades of green and vomit the remaining liquid stuck in his stomach.
"A phoenix down and remedee should have been enough to clear him of the chemicals. We might expect complications in the near future, should we not provide him with the necessay medical care."
Leaving the MT prototype where they found him should have been the first option to go. Dustin clearly had disregarded that solution as fast as Cor did. Bringing back one or two bodies had been on the agenda, if luck were on their side, but Cor wasn't sure how they could adapt their trip back to a sick child.
"Looks like he spitted it all out." They would have to find some way to clean the boy. There were uniforms in the dormitory they had passed by earlier, his mind provided. With luck on their side, they would even find one to fit him. This part of this facility seemed to only hold pods with MT prototypes of his age.
"I wouldn't have believed it, should have I not witnessed it from my own eyes." Dustin sounded a little bit more like his cold, placide self. "Machine soldiers made from their own children. Niffelheim seems to hold no regards to morals and humanity anymore."
"I doubt the Empire would consider them humans," Cor gestured at the broken pod next to them, where only what looked like bones were left in the puddle of fuel, "considering the self-destruction system they implemented."
"Do you really think that is what it was?"
"We must have triggered it when we forced the pod open. That's usually how they go with it. They use the power source of their machinery to design the destruction system. This way it's harder for an outsider to deactivate it."
Dustin only hummed . They both looked down to eight-year-old looking humans in Cor's arms.
Fuck.
They loaded one full MT and a couple of spare pieces in the truck alongside as many files they could salvage. Whatever the scientists wouldn't be able to find in the reports, Cor hoped the full MT and the stolen data he gathered on the terminal would be enough to answer the mystery of MT making. Dustin carefully stores in the glovebox of the truck a USB key full of the facility pictures.
By any means, the success of the mission was undebatable. Yet, by the time they reached the coast of Graela to embark on one of the Lucian army boats hidden in the bay, the feeling of pending failure felt heavy on their shoulders.
The boy - Prompto, according to the name of the First Sonata of the Rebirth opera - wasn't going to make it.
The realization made Cor's heart lurch against his ribcage.
The days in, Prompto developped a bad case of cought which seemed unshakable, no matter how many vials of remedees and elixirs they spent on him. When the fever left him alone, the boy would look around with a look of utter wonder and bewilderment. Cor could spend hours showing him the snow and the trees through the truck window. Their tiny radio, once that wouldn't connect to nothing but four gralean music stations, proved to be the best entertainement for him.
After a week, not even Dustin's secret humming technique could put the child to sleep. Whenever exhaustion stole Prompto to the land of dreams, a coughing fit would wake him up again. Cor starrted to hold Prompto against his chest at night, afraid another fit would take him without them knowing.
Despite all, whenever Prompto would be lucid enough to understand, he sent that small, heart-breaking smile to them and curled up even deeper into Cord's chest, sulking up all the affection he could get away with. These times kept getting shorter and fewer in-between.
By the time they reached the safe walls of Insomnia and the medical staff of the royal hospital, Prompto barely breathed on his own.
"The case is quite severe," Dustin murmured to him after the first week they came back. Monica had closed the door of his office ensuring they wouldn't be disturbed during their meeting. She wasn't fooled by their coffee breaks but allowed them anyway, going as far as ensuring they wouldn't be interrupted.
"I am afraid I got too invested with the child. I asked not to be updated anymore."
"So that's why I heard you were to be sent to Tenebrae until further notice." He really tried not to let judgment cloud his voice.
"Best to making myself useful while I am at it. " Dustin might just have read his mind. "Besides there are other children I can actually help."
"The Prince and the Oracle?"
Dustin shrugged. The gesture looked weird on him.
"If not, at the very least we should be able to gather information. And while I don't like to get my hopes up, I would like nothing more than to bring these two back to Insomnia, rather to let them in the hands of people for whom human decency is nothing but an accessory."
Cor tried no to hold any grudges.
But when he waited by Prompto's bedside for the doctor's update after his next shift, he still felt like he was let down.
By the end of the month, they let him enter the room whenever he felt like it to hold Prompto's hands. The kid kept clutching at the chocobo plush he gifted him on his arrival at the capital with too frailed hands. Regis and Clarus came and went, watching him cry.
***
"Who's that?"
Cor looked up from the stove. With Ignis's stunt last week, Cor's wounded pride had some serious points to take back. He might not have the skills to match Ignis' curry but stir-fry? Stir-fry was his thing.
Prompto was holding some old photographs.
"Where did you get that?"
"The cardboard box with my things in the attic. It was in there?"
Cor squinted and couldn't help but smile.
"Well, that's because it's you." He pointed at the scrawny child curled up onto the man's lap. Shadows tinted the picture. He remembered taking it with his mobile phone a little bit after they had passed Caem, once the local team had retrieved them and given them properly working phones.
"You probably don't remember it since you were so sick, but I took the picture during the trip when we brought you back. This man," he tapped at the photograph," is Dustin. He was me when we found you in Niffelheim."
"Really?! What happened to him?"
"He had to cut ties to keep doing his job properly. He's been working with Monica since late March so you might have not seen him yet."
Prompto turned silent for a moment. Cor kept working on their diner and plated it, setting it on the table before gesturing to his son to wash his hands. He had long learned to let his child digest the information he needed in silence.
"Think we could invite home, sometimes?"
"I think we could, kid. I think we could."