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There is very little to do in Site-107.
There is even less to do in Site-107 when it’s sideways, and there is very mind numbingly, insanity inducingly, little to do in Site-107 when it’s sideways and you are its second contained human anomaly. Perhaps formerly human, Klein’s report said, and Lancaster wondered if she was looking at him at all when she wrote that. Formerly human - easy for her to say as head of Research, all too used to watching things behind bulletproof glass and from the highest indoor balconies, safe from explosive blasts and the weight of having to call her friend an it.
No, Lancaster thought, frustrated, that’s not true. He could hear the hesitation in Klein’s voice, the Lanc on the tip of her tongue when she calls him 3B, remnants of a lighthearted time long past when she joked room service, comin’ through as she brought him a tray of rations every 7:30 AM (a cold can of pears he had to slurp like a dog, bland and flavorless and cut in massive chunks to keep away from anything even vaguely resembling particulate matter, and Lancaster laughed a little to wonder what they were imagining he’d do, because he hadn’t had any urges since the -1 was torched off, and even then was never so disorganized as to start drawing on the walls in food like a five-year-old…!)
There was a moment where he was complaining to her, about how cold his room was, about how empty it was and how gross the smell was, about how he had work in Psychology to get back to and couldn’t just shove it all on Dr. Chappel - something he’d done quite a lot lately because he’s never been someone to take up much space but god dammit who could blame him really? - and she laughed and reached her hand forward in a moment of lapse, a moment of forgetting she was a Site Director talking to a human anomaly, before blinking and clearing her throat, stuffing her hand back into the pocket of her lab coat.
It took a second for him to realize she was going to ruffle his hair, or use the top of his head as an armrest, a habit she probably picked up from watching him and Harley’s constant back-and-forths, affectionate inside jokes, casual physical contact Lancaster didn’t think he would ever miss as much as he did now, and the rest of the interrogatory questions about his urges and how long and in what form did they come to you were completely zoned out in favor of just wishing Klein’s hand stayed a little longer.
His room was cold and barren, pitch black when the fluorescent lights outside shut off, like a hollowed-out hospital room, the furniture taken out and piled into boxes in the hallway to minimize catastrophe when the Site flipped back to normal making it look a million times emptier than it should’ve been - the mattress was hard and uncomfortable, with only one pillow to speak of, though that meant little when he hardly slept anyway.
Site-107 was never meant to contain humans. The Foundation was to be prepared for every dire possibility, but it must never have crossed the minds of the containment personnel of yore that the colorful crack they found in the ground would require keeping humans in cages one day. When the time came, when they saw an armed -3 instance having a psychotic break trying to cut someone open, when they popped a road flare into its ankle to take it out, the containment chamber they brought it to hardly looked any different than the one of 6320 itself.
Head throbbing with the scent of ammonia, he couldn’t sniff to clear his congestion, and breathing through his mouth only brought in a disgusting blend of the harsh chemical smells of his room and the gunk in his mouth by virtue of the fact that toothbrushes were a thing one could potentially snap in half and draw a -1 with.
Klein said something about bringing him something to record his thoughts on, and a bitter part of 3B swallowed down the thought that it was just to keep people from coming in to interview him, because God forbid he see any face that wasn’t the stone cold Site Director here to deliver him his kibble and drill him about his crazy thoughts, right?
…but honestly, a tape recorder was better than nothing. He was itching to listen to a voice that wasn’t his handlers’ - and Harley hadn’t come on the intercom for a concerningly long while, something that drove an old, worrisome part of Lancaster’s brain mad. Isolation and withdrawal are common symptoms of PTSD, and may be worsened by pre-existing factors such as substance abuse or other mental disorders, as the afflicted individual becomes hyper-aware of traumatic triggers in their day-to-day life, and may perceive social situations as a danger, especially if trust has been breached somehow, by a loved one or a best friend you’ve been stuck like glue with for the past year, holding you down as you struggled to breathe and taking a knife to your arm —
SCP-6320-3B shut his eyes tight, repeating to himself that whatever that was it wasn’t him, and he knew it wasn’t true, he remembered cutting into Harley’s arm with his own two hands, blood hot and sticky on his knuckles that he felt like if he was able to take the mittened restraint gloves off he would still see seared right in there like that mark on the other D-Class, but if he was faced with that fact he knew he would break, and break even harder than before.
“And… and why can’t you just get your jacket back from the greenhouse?”
A fond amusement was audible in Lancaster’s voice, his lip quirked into a smile as he leaned forward against his friend’s desk, propping up an elbow - it was Sunday, the best any of them could tell, Harley knee-deep in another insane story about the social psychology of Site-107’s various departments (something even the Head Psychologist himself couldn’t parse half as well as Harley did) with little sign of stopping, and Lancaster wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Botany gets scary when you mess with their plants, Lanc. I forgot to pick that hoodie up off the ground and it’s dead to me now as far as I’m concerned - claimed by the earth, buried in the soil like a forgotten corpse!” Throwing his hands up, Harley gestured about incoherently for emphasis, at a point slamming his fists down on his desk and sending a pencil flying - “I was just hanging out there, getting my vitamin D like all good little Site-107 employees, I get up and realize my hoodie crushed the stem of a tomato plant and just had to bolt before they started to suspect me-”
“Okay, but, but you, you’re- okay.” Lancaster clasped his hands, trying not to laugh, but the amusement on Harley’s face watching him fumble was contagious. He stood for a moment, taking a cursory glance around Harley’s office, before grabbing a chair from the opposite end of the room and pushing it over, “Let me just, let me just unpack what you just said. Consider this your monthly- your monthly psych evaluation.”
“I’m not crazy, doc,” Harley pitched up his voice and did something with his throat in what was genuinely the worst imitation of D-1 Lancaster had ever heard.
He dropped his head into a hand, trying to stifle another laugh. “Oh my god, shut uuppp.” It was here he noticed how dusty Harley’s desk was, running a finger through a stack of papers with an offhand “you really need to sweep in here”, finding himself compulsively trying to brush it off with his hands.
Brush, brush…
…
Why was his mouth watering?
He made a face, bringing a concerned hand to his lips, wondering if a sudden bout of nausea was coming. That couldn’t have been right - he’d eaten moderately well today, which was to say he’d done it at all on the way to harass Harley before he got too worried about him (who was who in that sentence, he couldn’t tell) - and the lapse of silence was enough to jog the other out of his overdramatic Botany bit.
“Y’alright, man?” A beat of silence as Harley adjusted his glasses, watching Lancaster stare at his dust-covered hand for a few seconds longer than was probably appropriate. “I, uh, I suck shit at cleaning, sorry.”
The dust was making his mouth water.
Particulate matter doing to his brain what the smell of bacon would do to the average person, and this small realization made Lancaster shudder, a tip of an early domino in the tragedy that would occur a few weeks from today. It took another moment for him to regather his thoughts, realizing he looked genuinely crazy right about now…
“…oh, I was just, uh,” Lancaster forced his eyes to avert from the dust in his hand, feeling his fingers unconsciously kneading at his palm, and he didn’t even have to look down to know the shape his fingers were pressing the dust into. “s-s-s-s-s-s…” Christ, was now the time for his stutter to act up? “—s-s-ssspacing out, sorry. God. I don’t know why my brain didn’t want me to finish that sentence.”
“Trying to save you from the terror that is trying to psychoanalyze Edmund Harley.” Harley joked, jogging Lancaster’s mind and making him remember oh, yeah, we were doing a bit.
“No, no, I was, I was born to do this. I spend my free time every day trying to figure out what to diagnose you with, this’ll be a cakewalk.” He chuckled, steepling his hands together and pushing up an imaginary pair of glasses. “So, I, uh, in, in your opinion, is it the plants that make the Botany Department into, into… snakes, as you put it?”
“Yes.” Harley replied, with a quick bluntness that would give Raddagher a run for her money, though that woman never had the self-aware, amused crinkle in her eye that Harley did now, the blatant face of someone who’s realized what they’re saying is completely insane but too far into it to back out now.
Lancaster nodded, “o-okay, and, and this has nothing to do with your… your…” he could hardly get the words out, because this specific combination of them he’s sure he’s the first person in history to ever utter - “…plant parenting trauma?”
Something changed in Harley’s eyes, like Lancaster had just swung a bat at a hornet's nest, and he couldn’t even open his mouth to add to his sentence before a rant Lancaster was convinced Harley was waiting to give for years now came tumbling out —
“ABSOLUTELY not, how DARE you, my poor English Ivy was an UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT but they still won’t stop bringing it up?!? Like, it was only one time but I haven’t fucking FORGOTTEN the SHIT that BASTARD told me about it, and he haaaad to have told all of his weird friends and that’s why they give me those weird looks, I swear to GOD I am going to KILL HIM ONE DAY—”
— sending him into a cackling fit that made him almost forget the saliva building under his tongue.
Agent Nari Love was chock full of nothing but good plans, and as she prepared to climb the rope ladder up to Harley’s office with Dumptruck plastered to the top of her head like a spelunking helmet, at the ripe hour of 2:23 in the morning, she considered what she was doing as nothing but another cool, awesome, epic plan.
“Alright, hold on tight, little guy…!” She slapped the palms of her hands onto Dumptruck’s back like she’d just found a watermelon in the produce aisle, hoping his natural delightful stickiness would keep him clung to her head, and maybe he’d absorb some of her hair into his skin and fuse them together and make them one, or something. That would be sooo cool!
She hitched a boot up onto the first rung of the rudimentary ladder going up the hallway, and prepared to climb better and faster than anyone else, a fact she would absolutely shove down Klein’s throat.
Operation: Cheer Up Harley was a go!
It had all been rough on her. Like, really rough on her, but she couldn’t say she had it worse than Harley. She still couldn’t believe what she was seeing the day the Site went sideways, the beginning of the end, Lancaster’s pants leg rolled up to reveal a glowing -1 in his ankle, surrounded by rotting, blackened skin that looked like something a Civil War doctor would come in with a hacksaw to amputate - Love felt sick thinking she’d let her friend’s wound fester somehow, he told her when it happened that he got bit, but she never thought that it could’ve done… that, and she’d never seen Harley so scared before - the slice on his arm, his chest bloodied when Raddagher helped him stand, the way the light in his eyes had faded a little since that day…
“Nuh-uh, Nari,” she whispered to herself, hands curling around either end of the rudimentary rope ladder, “none of that. You’re going to reach out to people and not be an angry reclusive little shit like you were after the Shift…”
It gave her flashbacks. Acting like erasing people was no big deal, seeing her coworkers all become strangers in an instant, all horrified for their safety and unsure of their futures, pissing in bottles with most of them having been unable to eat in three days because they didn’t know what parts of the Site were and weren’t even accessible anymore - Love swore to God that being in here too long would make her hair gray by the time she was 30.
For the first time in a while, she’d heard a stupid smug remark from some Records bitch and actually let it get to her. She saw red, and before she knew it, was entangled in a fistfight and ripping the girl’s earrings out - Lancaster would’ve really been mad at her for that one, if he was around.
Raddagher hadn’t spoken to her since the incident, but Love could feel her repulsion even more when she stepped into their office that day - news traveled fast, someone had to have told them hey, your friend…? The person she’d gently taken the mask off of and made life plans with just a week ago, now silently curled in on themself and hiding their face again the moment she looked at them…
It hurt. It really, really hurt.
But she wouldn’t let it happen again.
“…it’s gonna be different.” Love assured herself, bouncing a little dangerously on the rope ladder’s rungs in anticipation. “It’ll all be fine…” Not today, probably, they all just needed to tough it out ‘til the next Reset, but… one day, it would all be fine. The 14Bs would get back to being friends again, and they’d all laugh to remember the distance between them now, maybe they’d get a movie night together, or do another Outer Kingdoms session… Exhaling, she steeled herself to climb again, but not before slapping another hand onto the mulchy potato creature on her head. “Right, Dumptruck?”
The -2 shifted a little, with a hardly audible damp squish, to which she gave a weak smile and took as an affirmative. At least somebody believed in her around here!
Harley was being crushed again.
He didn’t know what his office had needed such a big filing cabinet for - much less recently, when everything he wrote down would be put back after thirty-two days - but it didn’t make a difference to him now, as his gasps for air came weaker and weaker, the pain just as great every time this memory was relived.
Blood was filling his lungs, a disgusting metallic taste that didn’t do his crushed torso and troubled breathing any favors, red streams dribbling out of his mouth like saliva, his hands shaking with the pain, his skin growing cold, his vision starting to spot and turn to static.
Thud.
The door opened a crack.
A dark eye peeped through, a vague mash of different odd memories, its owner’s expression unreadable through the small opening in the door - hazy and dreamlike, features blending and blurring together, the curls of his hair pulsating and breathing and his blank, cold stare shifting into smiles and laughter and exhausted snaps and miserable drunken sobs and back again like the moody clouds of an oncoming storm.
Thank God you’re here.
Please help me.
Words Harley couldn’t tell if he was voicing or not. This memory replayed constantly in his head, like a rewound tape - he remembered reports early into the Shift about an uptick in -1-related nightmares, and he never thought they would come for him, but it wasn’t about the -1, really, it never was.
His best friend and Site-107’s Head Psychologist and his drinking buddy and the Minstrel of Mysteria and the person he decided he loved in a secret he would keep deep in his chest because neither of them were in the state to worry about such things and the person he couldn’t want to forget more and the person he couldn’t want to forget less and Orion Lancaster and the -3 that took his place all fished in their pockets for a moment, an object flickering in and out of existence before settling in the form of a small, sharp scalpel.
Could I have stopped this?
Could I have helped you?
The figure standing over him opened his mouth and spoke, but no answer came - incoherent moans and half-formed words, like he was hearing Lancaster from a million light years away, his voice sampled into an unintelligible background noise, his face wobbling and melting, the shadows of the sideways Site-107 threatening to swallow him whole.
There would never be an answer. Someone who worked at the SCP Foundation could understand that, but being faced with it here and now, nothing was more heartbreaking. An unpreventable tragedy, because there were no humans pulling the strings or making the decisions, only an extradimensional rift in a stone wall at the bottom of a disused copper mine in ██████, Nevada, and if their current situation was any indicator, that extradimensional rift cared very, very little for the human lives inside of it.
Someone hurt me, Lancaster.
You’re always the one I go to with these kinds of things, so give me some advice. I’m asking for it, for once.
Someone hurt me. What should I do?
Is now really the time to be bitter? But how can I just… forgive and forget? Act like it didn’t happen? Like none of it matters because all of it pales in comparison to being trapped in a goddamn pocket dimension for the rest of our lives?
I want you to tell me, Lancaster. You’re a psychologist, you should know these things, come on!
The pain of the first incision was never something Harley was prepared for. It was always different - not like he didn’t remember what happened, beat by beat, he could map it out by the goosebumps and blood splatters if prompted, but no two cuts in these dreams were the same - sometimes the -1 would complete, and at that point, his mind would go blank.
Today, Lancaster wanted to peel the skin off of his forearm and eat it. Harley couldn’t make out any words he was saying, but he remembered Lancaster’s cadence that day all too well - a distant, casual cheerfulness, like this was all completely normal, no evil monologue locked and loaded, just bright excitement at getting to show off his newest theory - like he simply saw Harley crushed there and thought it would be a funny idea, like cutting up that pair of jeans to get a laugh out of him.
He’d struggled like mad when it first happened - writhed about and punched the wall and screamed for help - but that couldn’t fix anything now. It was only ever him and Lancaster - Lancaster, who always came to help him first in disasters like this, and when Harley needed it most, he’d…
Sometimes I think… I’m ashamed I was ever your friend.
Sometimes I think I hate you.
But if I did, I wouldn’t still be thinking about it, now, would I?
Drool mixed with the blood bubbling up his forearm. He wanted to vomit on the wall, but the contents of his stomach probably couldn’t even make it past his crushed ribs. Pain like his arm was on fire, he watched Lancaster hold his wrist in an iron grip with one hand and carve open his flesh with the other, working the scalpel like he was peeling the skin off of a potato, the blood sticky on his fingers, the stinging harder than any of the dreams he’d had before, feeling the scalpel’s blade being replaced with dull fingernails and the odd agony making his mouth water and eyes well up, before he realized what was happening and jolted awake in bed.
“Gh… ouh, shit, shit… nnghh, ow, ow, fucking — ow…”
Harley could feel something nasty under his fingernails, and something even nastier on his other arm.
The lights were off for the night in 107, no fluorescent humming, monitors all in sleep mode, bathing his office in a pitch blackness. Raising his arm, he knew he’d been scratching at the scalpel cut in his sleep again (a habit he said he’d renounce after Dr. Gravett gave him the most cold, terrifying warning imaginable, but, well, look at him now), but all that registered of it was pain and an ugly dark smear of blood. He couldn’t even tell what was the wound and what wasn’t…
Fabric rustling and clothes shifting, he squeezed his arm and sat up on the pile of blankets on his wall - his best approximation of a bed these days - sticky and sweaty, his work clothes stiff and crumpled, his heart still thumping hard in his chest. The ice pack over his torso had long since melted and gone lukewarm, and he tried his best to wriggle it off of himself without moving too hard, risking cracking another rib for maybe the stupidest reason on Earth.
It really hurt to do anything with his arm, clenching his teeth and sucking in a sharp inhale as the hand clutching his wound began to tremble. Stupid, stupid, how could he have been so fucking stupid - Medical watched over that cut like a bunch of goddamn hawks, worried as they were about it branching off into another -1, and here he was, picking at it like he’d scraped his knee in first grade. (…well, at least he wasn’t eating the scabs like he did back then.)
He allowed his ears to ring for a moment, trying to sit still - maybe let his hand staunch the bleeding like a tourniquet. The sheets would probably be better for that, but he didn’t feel like ruining them, nor explaining to Maintenance that oh, yeah, that big important scalpel cut they had to clean and preserve like a goddamn microscope slide in a science museum, he’d scratched it open again because he was having a bad dream, that’d go over great.
Ten seconds passed, then he forced himself to let them pass again into twenty - it’d help ground him, maybe, but when there was little to look at but his filthy hands and the pallet they rested upon, not much grounding was to be had. No naming five things he could feel, five things he could see, whatever the fuck, and who was the one who taught him that technique anyway - aaauuughhhh.
No bandages were around his office - at least not that he could remember. Maybe there was a first aid kit in that stupid filing cabinet, huh? He knew the protocol behind taking care of his wound loud and clear, don’t cover it up, check on it every few minutes, but he had a feeling that was less important than bandaging a currently-bleeding wound for a few seconds. And if it wasn’t - well, he knew Klein would give Gravett an earful about it. She could be quite brave when the time called for it…
Pulling his hand away, the blood had started to congeal against his palm, now leaving a murky handprint around the old cut - it stung against the open air, but he had to fumble around for something first, ignore the terror in the back of his mind at the idea of looking back at the cut and seeing it glowing…
Where was his walkie again? He must have patted down the blankets and overturned his pillow about fifty times before remembering he’d left it about two inches from his head before drifting off.
Wiping his hand down his shirt in an impulse decision to not soak his walkie-talkie in blood, he turned the power switch, took a few deeper breaths when the air started to sting his arm again, and thanked the void that he had what channels to bug each of his friends on committed to muscle memory.
“Hey, Klein, are you busy? I, uh, I need bandages up in my office, if you can. Over.”
“It’s fucking freezing in here, Jesus, I am so sorry.” Klein huffed - after weeks of trying to adjust to sideways doors, she found there was no dignified way to enter them. She always looked kind of like a lizard, scrambling over the doorway before coming toppling down, her arms awkwardly splayed out to catch her balance as she hit the floor with a graceless squat.
Crossing her arms over her chest, rubbing at the goosebumps forming on her shoulders, she regretted not bringing her lab coat - for familiarity’s sake, even if it was about 2:30 in the morning and she was only dropping by at Lancaster’s request. She squinted in the darkness, holding herself a little closer, realizing she had dropped into SCP-6320-3B’s containment chamber at that horrible time of night, and the anomaly itself was simply sitting on its mattress, blank, waiting.
If he’d wanted to do something to her, he would’ve by now, she reckoned. He didn’t have the foresight to premeditate his… ‘attacks’, lest she forget his stabbing Love with a pencil after their Outer Kingdoms venture. Something Klein got pissed at herself to remember - an accident, he said, and they all believed him, because… what, he was their friend? They didn’t want to think about him wanting to hurt someone?
That didn’t mean anything here. Their friend’s brain had been flipped inside-out by an anomaly, and they’d just have to live with it, as much as it hurt, because that was preferable to acting like he was just one of them again - he’d become a hollowed out empty shell, hands moving of their own accord to carry out 6320’s odd, arcane purpose.
(-2s preferred to restrain humans rather than outright killing them, and… Klein couldn’t deny that fact accompanying every time she replayed that night in her head, saw Harley wheezing out under that filing cabinet. The human equivalent of drowning someone in wet cement, or trying to cram them into a wall…)
Silence was not usually something she was greeted with from Lancaster. He’d laugh at her jokes, even when they weren’t funny, make little quips back, start asking her about her work or start babbling unprompted about his own - he was a sociable guy, silly and affectionate, thought more about others’ problems than his own, always fidgeting or scribbling something down with that stupid squinty face he always made when he was focused… They were nowhere near the closest pair out of the 14Bs, but Klein knew her Lanc well, and came to expect what she’d find whenever she came to visit the guy.
Now, he was still as a statue, sitting squarely in the middle of his hard, uncomfortable mattress placed squarely in the middle of his hard, uncomfortable room - hair greasy and tangled, falling down his face like it had during the flood, but there were no laughs and water-filled buckets to be had here, only shadows framing a blank, sunken-in expression that looked foreign on his face.
Had he… even noticed her coming in? Klein scrunched up her face, knocking on his wall (wall? it was still technically a wall, right?) like a parent warning a teenager on the computer they were about to step into their room.
…
She cleared her throat, and made a potentially bad decision, but Containment wasn’t around to chide her for it.
“Earth to Lancaster!” She called, just those familiar words bringing something resembling a smile to her face - silly guy, always spacing out, too focused on his dumb little projects she only really pretended to be smart enough to understand, sometimes he only ever heard his name after the third time she’d called it.
A switch flipped, and the statue on the mattress raised his head. “Huh?” A small, dead voice murmured, one she could hardly recognize as her neurotic, bubbly friend, and his eyelids dropped a little when he saw her. “O-oh, uh, Klein.”
The dark circles hanging from his eyes were only worsened by the shadows, and he briefly glanced her way - she’d never seen him cry before, not even now, but his face was flushed and red in patches, with his lips dry and voice low. He shifted vaguely, crossing one bandaged leg over the other, stretching his back a little - sitting in one place for so long couldn’t have been good for it.
…
He still didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like he was challenging her, staring her down and daring her to justify her presence - following his gaze, Klein found him simply watching what looked like a dust bunny in the corner of the room. Or… watching was an overstatement, probably. She didn’t even think he noticed it, honestly.
“So, uh,” she adjusted her headband, knowing she should’ve been colder, more professional, but truth be told she was just too goddamn tired to pull out the Cold But Never Cruel Acting Site Director schtick tonight - her work day had ended hours ago. “what didja wanna see me for?”
“Visitors.”
The sharp bluntness fit his hollow expression, but that didn’t make it any easier for Klein to hear.
No stutters, no fumbling, no uh, it’s, it’s okay if you don’t want to, don’t let me take up your time, sorry - Lancaster was not someone who was blunt, at least never notably. Maybe in old arguments with Harley she had to come in to mediate on occasion, but that was so far away she could hardly picture it now.
His empty stare hardened into a frown when she didn’t respond.
Klein was someone who was known to fuck up. She knew it was all 107 was thinking - our Director’s such a trainwreck, so much for getting out of here, right? - and surrounded herself with people who would… give her chances. Understand she was only human. Forgive her.
And there was nothing forgiving about the look Lancaster was giving her.
Was it… wrong of her, to deny him? Who was she kidding - no shit it was wrong, taking someone who’d become a therapist under the Foundation because he wanted better rights for the poor anomalous people treated like nothing more than numbers and objects for study, knew what it was like to be treated like a subhuman for something he couldn’t control, and doing just that - locking him away into a cold room with nothing but a shitty mattress and denying him even the right to see the faces of the people he had to answer to.
It was downright inhumane. His hands were bound in restraint mittens, making it damn near impossible to move about or pick anything up, the comfortable green sweater she’d never seen him go a day without replaced by a dull gray jumpsuit with an item number stamped across the breast and one pants leg sheared off at the knee to keep the angry red third-degree-burns on his ankle and calf visible beneath a roll of bandages.
It was sickening. If it was anyone else, in any other Foundation Site, she would’ve thrown a fit - grabbed the other 14Bs to stage a prison break, Raddagher on the cameras, Dumptruck doing… something. That was the kind of funny nonsense she could see them doing, in a better world.
But in this one… Containment was breathing down her neck. What kind of Site Director would she be to keep an attempted murderer alive like nothing was the matter? What kind of Site Director would she be if she gave him pencils, pens, scalpels, and access to the very people he was locked in here for hurting?
She couldn’t risk it.
“We’ve talked about this, Lanc.” Her voice came out in a weary sigh, her fists uncomfortably clenched - her shoulders were freezing, it was so damn cold in here… “I’ll see about it, but I can’t make any promises. You… get why, right?”
“Mmhm.” Lancaster droned, idly scratching at his throat - or, nudging at it, rather. His stubble went unshaven, messy and curly along his lower chin and neck, and in any other circumstance Klein would laugh at him and tell him to go wash up before Love started making fun of him for the rest of the day. His unfocused eyes spotted her up and down, sunken in cheeks and hollowed sockets an uncanny contrast with the rest of his freckled, pudgy face. Venom entered his voice, his eyebrows furrowing harshly - “Oh, yeah, totally, loud and clear. I can’t, y-you - you can’t have me trying to cut open the first person I see with these, these mitts on, right? Ooohh, scaaary.”
Her lips pursed as he rolled his eyes like an impudent teenager. Part of her wished her friend was still that selfless pushover, who didn’t call for help over a hairline fracture in his wrist because he didn’t want to waste anybody’s time - not because she didn’t appreciate him growing a spine, Lord knew he needed it, but because his empty defiance hurt to hear. Baring his fangs wouldn’t fix anything - neither of them had that power.
“Don’t get smart with me.” She didn’t want to snap at him, but there were only so many of his desperate pursuits she could take. Her face softened, feeling half as tired as his. “…please. I don’t want this for you, either, but it’s all we can do.” She studied his expression for any signs of relief, anything as proof she was doing anything more than driving a knife further into his back. “Everything is… really fucked right now. It’s hard to even get around - only so many of us are even physically capable of climbing the ladders, there’s dealing with 6320, with Harley, with the corpse, with trying to fix the elevators and arrange furniture around safely, there’s Containment breathing down my neck, there’s…” she started counting on her fingers, trailing off at a point and shaking her head. “Keeping you enriched just isn’t a great priority until we’re all safe, on… right-side-up land.”
Giving her a skeptical look, before faltering into a low and broken sigh, Lancaster’s shoulders relaxed. “Okay.” His dismissive gaze seemed to go right through Klein, staring at the door behind her, draping his restrained hands over his thighs, one of them idly rubbing at the bandages over his ankle - not out of stress or anxiety, looking closer to Klein like another urge he may not have even realized he had. “…Okay, sure, fine.”
Clenching her jaw in frustration and heartbreak at his empty little voice, Klein faltered - “Lanc, you know I’m trying, please, I know you don’t deserve this either. I swear the second I’m free I’ll be fighting for you, man—”
A dry wheeze cut her off - there was no amusement in it. Lancaster just tipped his head back like he was holding back a nosebleed, glassy eyes staring up at the ‘ceiling’. “I get it, Klein. You, you’re, you’re suuuch a humanitarian.” His voice simultaneously cracked and hollow, and sharp as glass, Klein was momentarily stunned as he leaned forward again, for his hands to freely attempt scratching at his cheeks, then frantically running through his hair, but there was little sensation the gloves could offer him - no stimulation but a vague facsimile of it, he hadn’t felt human touch - not even his own - in weeks. “All you want is your people to be safe. Far away from, from a crazy brainwashed lunatic. Lock him up and let him, let him rot with the prisoners, huh. I get it, no, I, I get it.”
You and Harley really are perfect for eachother, Klein swallowed back the bitter thought, stress makes you both into mopey, selfish assholes.
Shaking her head, twisting the rubber of her bracelet through and through her fingers, trying to rid herself of the kneejerk instinct to bitch back at him - she was the authority here. She couldn’t give in to Lancaster’s false hopes by humoring his complaints, even for a moment, because she had no more power here than he did. Acting Site Director was a proud position on paper, but she knew more than anyone how shaky the foundation she stood on was - the other Level 4s in this facility waiting to throw her to the wolves the moment she fucked up again, and before her sat one of her biggest fuckups yet.
Posture stiffened, eyes narrowed, Beatrix Klein put a familiar mask on - once again the captain of this ship, for as long as they would have her. Not Lancaster’s friend pleading with him to hold on a little longer, but a human anomaly’s handler, and she couldn’t tell if he knew her patience was beginning to run out or not.
“We’re done here, 3B.” She seethed, with all the tiredness of someone who hadn’t slept a wink and spent the past several minutes being passive-aggressively demeaned by someone she’d never thought capable of such venom until now, taking a step backwards, draping a hand across the containment chamber’s entrance, turning to properly leave - again, there was no graceful way to do it, but she doubted the other in the room cared.
It was too early for this shit. 2 in the morning - she had a meeting with Engineering in six hours, desperate to cover their asses after the remote detonation failed, and though it was more the fault of 6320 itself than anything, she still had to be drilled for being the one to come up with that godawful plan. It was her fault somehow, she knew they were thinking it - and she didn’t need someone else flinging shit her way, too.
And now her walkie was acting up. Jesus. She couldn’t handle that right now.
Turning back for a moment, she’d found Lancaster finally laying back on his mattress, scorched ankle awkwardly hanging off of it - eyes empty as ever, mouth warped into an uncomfortable oblong crescent, silent as his shoulders quivered and quaked - whether he was laughing or sobbing, Klein couldn’t tell.
No response.
It wasn’t something Harley was necessarily surprised by - Klein was the busiest out of any of them, even if it hadn’t been so late. Odds were she was sleeping, preparing for some big meeting, or starting on the paperwork crunch of being the one easiest to pin the most recent disaster on - whatever it was, she, predictably, had little space to play room service for him.
Wrapping up his arm, which was almost done bleeding, he decided, fine. A big spot of blood would show up on his sheets, and that’d just be Maintenance’s problem… as soon as they were able to actually use washing machines again, anyway. Just another part of life that didn’t work as intended when gravity was flipped sideways.
There were painkillers in his office… somewhere, especially with the newfound injuries and Medical hovering over his shoulder because of them, but fuck if he knew where they were. They always turned up in his desk drawers while looking for pencils, but never when he actually needed them, huh.
Well… shit. Maybe he could just try to fall back asleep and let this be Morning Harley’s problem - something he told himself a lot, and always regretted when the resulting hangovers hit him like trucks full of cement, but it sounded awfully tempting right now. He was just… tired, sleep trying to claim him again in favor of being awake long enough to process his horrible nightmares any more than he had to.
— carving, carving, digging the blade under his skin, tearing his arm open, breaking, dismantling, twisting, chewing, and he’d look up to see his friend’s fingers slithering through the open wounds like snakes, muttering in a language Harley could never hope to understand, grabbing a fistful of exposed flesh, shoving it into his mouth by the hand, and the bleeding never stopped and Klein never heard his screaming and Lancaster just smiled at him with reddened teeth, a smile that he used to see in drunken stupors as his ever-diligent friend let him take his shoulder to bring him to bed, murmuring amused comforts in response to his incoherent ramblings they’d make fun of the morning after, a smile that used to make him feel safer in the void than anything else in the world —
Head dropping limply into a bloody hand, Harley groaned into his palm - the smell of copper didn’t help his racing thoughts, the unfortunate memories it felt these days like the only purpose of his existence was to try to distract himself from. In the bare bones survival objective Site-107 found itself in, nobody was clambering for more speeches about the Body Code, nobody needing tests transcribed or reports read on air - Edmund Harley’s only reason for being, at this point, was to rot in the ground and wonder where his life went wrong.
The hallways were long. At the end of his rope, Harley couldn’t deny the night he stepped out into his doorway and looked down into the abyss, compelled by an insanity-inducing numbness, the book he was trying to read only frustrating him with the words he’d seen so many times he could damn well predict at this point, and Love and Raddagher too busy working the cameras and Klein too busy being Klein, his old shattered shin and new cracked ribs and eternal slashed arm forming into a fully broken Harley, dead to the world the moment Site-107 vanished off of the map - they were all dead here, in the real world, they simply needed to catch up, follow Overwatch Command’s orders and become the box in the ground Site-19 believed they were, and Harley nearly stepped past the rope ladder and let himself fall and break his neck on the tile, where maybe the hum of the A/C units would feel like wind in his ears, and he’d see the glare of the fluorescent hallway lights and let it be the sun, and that would be his escape from Site-107 for good, maybe they all would have suffocated to death when a power outage took out their oxygen machines a month from then anyway, and suddenly the Body Code and the notes on Anamorphic -1s and the revised containment procedures for 6320 wouldn’t matter anymore, because nobody would ever know what became of 107 or what they ever amounted to, and maybe being a coward and dying in the dark was preferable to living to see that horrible future.
But then he remembered someone else who fell down that exact hallway, couldn’t bear to do that to Love, and stepped back inside - dialed the girl herself when he did, now that she was on his mind. She didn’t know what he was apologizing for, but rattled off with him for the next hour, sounding close to tears herself, keeping her voice down for Raddagher’s poor ears, but begging again nonetheless to hear stories about the Research-Records feud, about what did that little freak in Botany say to you again?
The horrible thoughts coming one after another were making him sick. His immediate thought, I need a drink, he was very thankful to find impossible to carry out with the state the Site was in - he didn’t know if booze would fix his situation or just make it exponentially worse, and wasn’t about to try and find out. All he could do was hold his head, close his eyes, and… try to get his thoughts together, try and hope it’d be better in the morning, because even if he still ached everywhere it wouldn’t be dark anymore, there would be signs of life, a reminder that there were other people around, people who worried sick about him and wanted him safe as much as everyone else…
“— shit, this fucking - oh my GAWD, how do you open this freaking DOOR?! UUUGGHHHHHH!”
What.
Speak of the devil - Agent Love? Screaming outside his door, at this time of night - actually, no, that checked out for her, he couldn’t be too surprised. Straightening in his seat a little, somewhat startled by the sudden realization that no, he wasn’t the only person alive in Site-107 tonight, Harley blinked in astonishment.
The familiar sound of someone fumbling with a key card, then violently jostling the sideways door handle, then going back to fumbling. Harley could just picture Love on the other side of the door, hanging onto the ladder with one hand and awkwardly trying to cram her card into the reader with the other - the mental image almost made him smile. She was a funny girl.
He could have called over to her, but… honestly just wanted to see how long it would take her to get the door open on her own. And here we see, listeners, Agent Nari Love in her natural habitat… not knowing how a key card works. It’s a miracle she has Raddagher to babysit her.
By the time she managed to push her way into his office and narrowly avoid faceplanting directly into the tiles below her, it finally occurred to Harley to wonder what on Earth she was doing here at this hour. He dimly raised his head, hardly able to make out her silhouette in the darkness as she swung about to try and catch her balance, and… wait, what was that on her head? Dumptruck?
Taking a second to adjust the critter clinging to her hair, she finally looked Harley’s way, nudging the door shut behind her with her boot. “Oh - shit, I didn’t think you’d be up!” Fishing through her baggy cargo pants and grabbing her phone, she turned on its flashlight without hesitation and shone it in Harley’s direction - he winced when it caught his eyes, ow, ow, owww, he’d just woken up…! “You okay in here?”
“Are you trying to blind me, Agent?” Shielding his face, he instinctively pulled his blankets up over his chest - after hovering over him for a few seconds, Love redirected the flashlight’s beam to sweep around his office. Things were still tipped over to the floor, looking like a tornado had run through the place - pencils scattered about in the dark, old contents of desk drawers Love had to carefully step over, his desk still on its side.
He’d put an effort into cleaning up around here - really, he had. The general consensus among Site-107 had been “don’t worry about it now, just in case we tip over again”, but Harley would go mad if he couldn’t do something with his hands, something to feel the least bit useful, and had resigned himself to… putting chairs back in their proper places and rearranging his bookshelf. Picking up off the floor some of the miscellaneous shit he’d kept in his office for some reason.
He didn’t have the strength to try and move his desk, or… anything larger than that. Raddagher had taken care of the filing cabinet.
“Yakno, it looks like a horror movie in here. You ever see the, the,” Love snapped her fingers a few times, a habit Harley recognized in Klein - they really had all become close lately, despite what the newfound distance in the wake of the, uh, incident, would make one think. “The Bear Witch Project? It looks kinda like the house at the end of the Bear Witch Project.”
“The,”
“Wait, no, scratch that, Lancaster’s office looks like the house at the end of the Bear Witch Project. We finally got, like, cameras in there working again, it’s sooo fucked up.”
Okay, Harley couldn’t tell her, as much as he wanted to ask more than anything why and how she apparently watched that whole movie and came out of it thinking the characters were being chased by… ‘The Bear Witch’. He’d just have to let her keep living like this.
“I’ve been… trying to clean.” He muttered, taking the time to look around… it really didn’t look much different than it did after the Site first tipped sideways. Books were in their proper places, yeah, but that was overshadowed by everything else getting haphazardly thrown to the floor and proving hazards for people just walking around. The desk still tipped over - God, it really was a disaster zone. “I’ve clearly been doing a great job.”
“Well, you got all your little nerd books in order, that’s something.” Love pointed out, gesturing towards the bookshelf with her phone, and for a fleeting moment, for maybe the stupidest reason possible, Harley felt a rush of pride and had to hold back a smile.
Pushing around rubble with the toe of her boot, Love plopped herself down on the floor - before dropping her phone into her lap and scooting on her hands closer to Harley’s pallet. Dumptruck was… still on her head, something she hadn’t explained and Harley was kind of afraid to ask about.
“Wanted to come in here and deliver you somethin’ special while you slept. It woulda been really funny, but you’re awake anyway, sooo…”
After a moment of struggle - damn, he was really in there, wasn’t he - Love managed to peel Dumptruck off the top of her head, leaving strands of hair jutting out in every direction like she’d just rubbed a balloon on her head. His little stub legs waved weakly about at suddenly being jostled around, a sight that made Harley wheeze out a laugh despite himself.
“Emotional support potato!” Love declared, holding Dumptruck the way one might have held a massive hamburger, wearing a large grin on her face - dark circles had long since formed under her eyes, constantly a little bloodshot and droopy with old tears, but the smile reached them well enough, Harley’s heartstrings tugging a little to feel sorry for someone other than himself lately. “Thought you could need ‘im. …and ‘cause Raddagher doesn’t like him making noise while she works.”
Harley was about to ask, she works at 2 AM? before remembering the everything about Raddagher. He hesitantly reached a hand out for Dumptruck the way he reached out to hold a snake in fourth grade science class - not because he was afraid of him, no, but because he didn’t want to shift a thumb and disrupt his… weird starchy insides.
“Well, thanks. I’ve always wanted an exotic pet.”
“You’re not keeping ‘im, he’s mine!” Love snapped. “I am providing you a service out of the goodness of my heart!”
Letting out a weak chuckle, Harley accepted the… gift. It smelled. Like, really, really strongly, of dirt and mulch, but he was too congested to bring too much attention to it. He idly turned Dumptruck over in his hands -
“Hi, buddy, it’s your uncle Ed-”
“You’re not his uncle, Lancaster’s already his uncle! Klein’s his granny. You’re his babysitter.”
“I - alright?”
- letting the weird little -2 writhe about in his arms, unsure which part of him was the front, or if the wriggling was a sign of enrichment or stress, or… whether or not Dumptruck could even feel stress. Maybe he was closer to a single-celled organism than an animal, Harley didn’t know.
It started as just a way to humor Love and play along, but getting to handle Dumptruck was making him smile a bit. The potato creature squished around in his arms, and he looked up to see Love leaning forward, squinting his way with her hands on her knees - what, was he being too rough?
“Hey, your arm.” She began, and Harley flushed with embarrassment - her voice grew in astonishment as she continued, before shooting straight up as her eyes blew open. “And, and your hands - wait, Harley, what the fuck?”
Plucking her phone off of the floor, she shone its light towards Harley. Dumptruck didn’t react in the slightest to the flash, allowing Harley to drop him and look at himself - he knew he’d been scratching at the cut in his sleep, but didn’t think it had gotten that bad… apparently, now that it was in the light, it had. The sleeve of his shirt looked like a copper shit-smear, the scalpel cut reopened with scabs smothered in blood in some places and still kept relatively whole in others - his fingertips had been stained pink, the red under his nails making his skin crawl…
“Oh, shit,” he wheezed, instinctively going to wrap a sheet around it again - it didn’t soak the fabric, which made his heart stop its frantic hammering for a moment. “Okay, it’s not like it’s bleeding or anything still, I just… slept on it strange, I think.”
Technically not wrong.
The flashlight of Love’s phone jostled about as she patted down her pockets with her free hand. “Yeah, no shit! Are you okay?!”
“Yeah! Yeah, I just…” Harley let himself trail off - he couldn’t tell her. The idea made him go red with embarrassment - he didn’t want more people hovering over him, thinking him incapable just because he was injured and frail. That’d only make him more miserable - his fretting over the shit with Lancaster and everyone else’s fretting over him did not need to be mixed together. “…yeah. I’m fine.”
“Geeeeze.” Love snorted, shaking her head as her shoulders slumped. “You really sound like ‘im sometimes, yakno.”
Shifting uncomfortably, Harley let out half of a laugh - joking on the outside, if only to keep from ruining the first pleasant conversation he’d had with someone in a while. “…don’t say that.”
While he was staring into the dark, Love faltered - better at picking up on these things than Harley, or anyone else, gave her credit for - wrinkling her nose and scratching her neck apologetically, glancing aside. “Sorry.” Stepping over his pallet, she started to pull out drawers from the filing cabinet, then aimlessly peering behind the upturned desk. “Seriously though, you keep wipes in here or anythin’?”
Harley could only make an odd, noncommittal noise in response.
“Geeeeeeze!!!” Love threw her hands up, kicking the desk in frustration. “What, did you just wanna bleed out?”
“I’m not gonna bleed out, just gotta get it cleaned up.” Harley huffed, as the smaller girl finally located a dented, slightly dirty box of tissues and stuck it into his face.
Pouting, Love’s eyebrows furrowed as she crossed her arms in irritation. “Well, go ahead ‘n’ clean it up, nerd! You’re gonna make Dumptruck all gross!”
…the first thing he thought to wet the tissue with was his glasses’ lens cleaner, which probably wasn’t the best idea in retrospect, but he’d rather that than just licking his wounds, or something. The two fell into a silence as he wiped the wound clean… a silence he expected to feel uncomfortable and cramped, but it wasn’t. Love just tapped her foot impatiently, occasionally glancing over as Dumptruck idly papped around the office, but Harley knew the girl well enough at this point to understand how much of her angry demeanor was just a farce.
Still, though, it was in his nature to not let that silence stretch on. “So, you brought Dumptruck to come say hi, huh?” Thinking about it too hard made Harley’s heart tingle in an… odd way. He knew they were friends, yeah - Love brought some of the funnest times Harley had ever had in the void, talking about stupid Department drama together, the powerful camaraderie between Glorendal and Skunkass in Outer Kingdoms (that would’ve ended in a tearjerking death scene if Lancaster hadn’t… uh, well,), Love being one of the most down-to-earth people here despite her appearance - but… to think she actually thought about him enough to reach out unprompted like this…
“Don’t get a big head about it!” She hissed. “I just - well, uh…” Scratching her temple, her confidence wavered, and she went a little red. “…Heard you were goin’ through it. And Dumpy usually helps Raddagher when they have their mukbangs.”
Light jeers, first towards her embarrassment, then towards the nickname for Dumptruck, all died in Harley’s throat as he actually processed his friend’s words.
“When Raddagher has their… I’m sorry?”
First, he was just trying to decipher what Love had said, before his brain could even begin to start attempting to piece together what she was trying to say instead.
“What?” She asked, tipping her head and waving her hands about. “What, what’s the matter?”
No - no, she couldn’t have been that dumb, right? Meltdowns? Did she mean meltdowns?! “Can you repeat that?” He asked, through shaking laughter, wishing he’d been broadcasting this one. “What is Raddagher doing?”
“No, I don’t get what the matter is!” Love grinned, her eyes lighting up in the dark as he laughed, and here Harley realized what she was doing. “I said what I said!”
Remembering hearing from Klein about how bad a liar Love was, Harley laughed even harder to see her struggle to keep a straight face, and she pointed at him with a wide smile as he did - an unspoken see, see, you’re doing it now!
As she jabbed her finger at him, Harley knew that was what Love meant to do tonight - a flicker of light in the darkness he wasn’t even sure how to process, it came so unexpected, the nightmare about Lancaster and the ache in his arm being faintly pushed to the back of his mind in favor of the two’s giggling echoing across the walls of his destroyed office. Two miserable, shattered Site-107 employees, still finding it in them to laugh a little.
That had to mean good things were coming, right?
Right…?
“Welcome once more, everyone-” Taking a moment to crank up the tinny fantasy music coming from her phone speaker, a playlist collectively arranged by the 14Bs, Klein sat back in her chair with a grin, the lights of her lovingly decorated office warm and welcoming as she sprawled out her arms in excitement. “-to Outer Kingdoms! Act two, baby!”
Cheers came from every end of the round table - Harley and Love shouting proudly as the latter kicked her feet, Lancaster drumming his hands on the table in anticipation, Raddagher silently pumping a fist into the air before stuffing her hand back into the pockets of her hoodie.
“I hope you guys actually read the rulebook this time.” Klein teased, bouncing the dice back and forth in her hands and eying the others - Lancaster in particular, who they were all glad to see in better spirits.
“I, I - I did, I did.” He waved, chuckling gingerly as he leaned against the table - hands empty, unless one counted the too-warm soda next to him and the guitar propped against his chair. “Harley, uh, Harley gave me a quiz on it to be sure.”
“That I did!” Harley beamed, straightening his back to roll his sleeves up to the elbows and adjust his glasses by the bridge. “If I trained him right, he’ll be able to name every instance of weird period-typical sexism in these rules!”
Klein smirked, pointing a finger gun the two’s way from behind the GM screen as Raddagher exhaled in amusement behind their mask. “That’s the spirit.”
“Skunkass the Second is a proud holder of her family name!” Love bragged, clapping her hands with a wide grin. “She’s going to avenge her mom and slay the Stone King’s army and EAT THEIR ORGANS!”
Tipping her head with an evil, mischievous glint in her eye the others knew well, Klein mockingly bore her teeth - out of Love’s view. “Eehh, you sure can try. I’ve gotten better at combat myself.” Shifting in her chair, she cleared her throat, nudging open a composition notebook that looked like it was pulled from a middle school lost-and-found bin.
“We’ll see about that.” Raddagher deadpanned, to which Love drummed her hands on the table and nodded enthusiastically.
Lots to discuss tonight - lots to play, the sparks of excitement palpable in the air. Klein knew Alves and some of the more hardass staff at 107 would’ve rolled their eyes to see this gaggle of grown-ass scientists gathered around a GM screen like kids outside a toy store, but hey, humans had a natural predisposition for goofing off, so Harley said once. It was good for them - they’d all prefer getting to play around every once in a while to just sitting alone in their offices poring over paperwork and wallowing in their hopeless situation forever.
“Alright, y’all!” Klein called, the GM screen’s foil catching the warm fluorescent lights, distorted reflections of her friends leaning forward to intently listen as if she were guiding a classroom - sequels weren’t always better, but this one certainly would be! “Let’s go clockwise from me, yeah? Harley, the floor’s yours! Introduce your character…”