Chapter Text
The last thing Xiao wants to do after a day that already feels far too long is go to his parents’ lab.
“We only need to check a few things, it won’t be a long stop at all,” his mother tries reassuring him as they pull into the long road leading to the lab, but Xiao knows better by now. They never bring him along unless something important comes up that can’t wait for later, and those trips never end quickly.
His father meets his eyes through the rearview mirror, a hard look in the golden eyes so similar to Xiao’s own. “Don’t make that face. You have homework to do, it shouldn’t matter where you do it.”
Xiao breaks eye contact, silently glaring out the window as they pass the security booth, finally reaching the large laboratory. There’s a familiar, long-suffering sigh from his father before he parks the car. His mother gives him a disappointed look, but otherwise, no words are shared as they enter the building.
Xiao makes his way to his usual spot in his mother’s office silently, slinging his bag onto the ground as he settles in his favorite chair.
His father is already walking away, but his mother stands in the doorway for a moment. “Remember to do your work. And don’t-“
“Go exploring, I know,” Xiao cuts her off, a cold bitterness in his voice.
She purses her lips. “We‘ll be back soon enough. Try not to pick a fight with your father on the way home.”
Xiao doesn’t answer, instead reaching to pull a notebook from his backpack. There’s a final sigh from the door, and then it clicks shut and he’s left alone.
He runs a frustrated hand down his face, opening the notebook to the page he’d left off on. The worst part about these visits is always the boredom. Xiao’s parents insist on a rigorous study schedule that often leaves him weeks ahead of his peers. Without his textbooks, which remain on his shelf at home, there often isn’t much he can actually work on in the lab. He can’t even use his phone, since his parents refuse to let him on the lab’s internet and cell service is horrible in the building. So, after spending an hour finishing the homework he could, Xiao resigns himself to yet another evening of suffocating nothingness.
It’s about two hours since his parents left him when his stomach lets out a telltale grumble. Xiao sighs, pushing himself out of his chair to look in his mother’s desk drawer. She’d started leaving snacks there years ago after Xiao’s complaints of hunger during long lab days finally registered.
He lets out an exasperated sigh when he opens the drawer to see it completely void of food. Xiao had told his mother the drawer was empty the last time he was here, but she must have forgotten. Swearing under his breath, Xiao returns to his seat. Hopefully, his mother didn’t lie and this will be a short trip.
Another three hours pass, the sun long having retreated back over the horizon. Xiao’s stomach almost hurts now, and he regrets giving away his lunch at school. The classmates he’d been tutoring wouldn’t stop complaining about hunger, though, so it seemed like a good trade at the time. His lunch to actually progress in the tutoring session.
That seems so long ago in the wake of his increasingly frequent stomach pangs.
There is a break room further in the lab, Xiao knows. His parents have spoken about it before, about how the lab assistants’ food stinks up the fridge. He’s not allowed to go deeper into the building than his mother’s office. When he’d asked why, his father had listed a number of safety concerns, culminating with the fact that he was six at the time. In the decade since then, this rule remained constant.
…but Xiao is getting really hungry, and his parents don’t let him eat after 9 pm. Even another thirty minutes at the lab would make it so he goes to bed hungry. He has a test tomorrow.
And so, taking a breath to steel himself, Xiao creeps his way out of his mother’s office to the big security doors that lead into the main research spaces. He had swiped his mother’s extra ID from where she hides it on a shelf and holds his breath as he scans it. A moment passes with no change until a quiet beep sounds from the door and the light above it flashes green. Xiao breathes out a sigh of relief.
He’s thankful the doors are quiet despite their weight as he enters the main section of the laboratory. Except now he’s faced with another challenge: actually finding the break room.
Immediately past the security doors, the building changes from stereotypical corporate-style decor to sterile white hallways with multiple corridors. As Xiao begins walking down the large hallway, he can’t help but worry about getting lost should he have to turn down too many passageways.
There’s a sudden burst of laughter, and Xiao barely turns into a smaller hall before he sees vague shadows in the main corridor. “-really putting up a fight today, huh?” a masculine voice says, and to Xiao’s alarm, it sounds like it is getting closer to him. He looks around frantically, spotting a nearby door that seems to have been left slightly ajar. He spares only a whisper of a second trying to see if the room is already occupied when the voices sound again, close enough to pass by the hallway he’s hiding in. So he pushes the door open, making sure to catch it so it doesn’t shut him alone in the thankfully darkened room.
He doesn’t even get a second to breathe when he realizes the footsteps are still getting closer. There’s a brief moment of pure terror- Fuck, if my parents find out I’m here they’re going to kill me, he can’t help but think- and then the adrenaline kicks Xiao into gear. From what little light is streaming in from the cracked door, he spots a table in the center of the room covered by some sort of sheet. Rushing around the myriad of medical machinery in the room, he ducks under the table and pulls the sheet slightly to ensure it covers any opening where someone could see him.
Not half a second later, light floods the room and Xiao hears footsteps roaming around. To his horror, one of the researchers steps even closer to his hiding spot, close enough for a shadowy figure to show against the translucent plastic sheet around him.
“Alright, let's get this over with,” the same voice Xiao heard in the hallway says. There’s a sudden rustling around him, and Xiao panics as he realizes the sheet is being pulled away, completely uncovering one of the sides of the table so he can see the researchers’ legs.
He’s about to say fuck it and make a run for the door when the sheet stops moving and the researchers begin moving again. If the researchers were to come back, they could see him if they looked under the table. But he doesn’t dare move, lest he accidentally alerts them to his presence.
A feminine voice lets out a disgruntled noise. “I really wish they’d let us shave ‘em. It’s so hard to work around all this hair.” Xiao hears rustling above him, and suddenly long locks of blue hair fall over the side of the table, creating a curtain between his hiding space and the rest of the lab.
“Yeah, but they’re real particular about it. Someone brought that up a few months ago and the docs said no.”
“Seriously?” There’s more rustling around Xiao, and he hears the sound of glass placed on a hard surface. Some of the machines whirr to life, a low-pitched mechanical hum underlying all noise in the room.
“Makes sense though, look at how it changes color. We still don’t know what causes that.”
The other researcher huffs. “I guess. Just wish we could manage it better. Hell, I’d even offer to braid it to keep it out of the way.”
There’s a responding laugh, and Xiao sees two pairs of feet wander around the table. The hair is pulled back onto the table, and his heart beats wildly in his ears until the plastic sheet returns to cover the opening. “Okay, let's get back before we get yelled at for dillydallying.”
As the lights turn off around him, Xiao almost collapses in relief. He feels dizzy, breaths shaking as he creeps out from under the table. His first instinct is to run back to his mother’s office, hunger forgotten amidst the adrenaline rush, and yet…
He turns back to the table, a curiosity practically bred into him sparking to life as he looks at the shape under the sheet. His parents never talk about their research, fiercely protective of anything not officially published under their names. All he knows is that they study consciousness, and their work is the reason he hasn’t dreamed since he was a child. This could be his chance to actually learn something about it.
He’s tense, always listening for incoming footsteps, only using the faint light streaming in around the door to guide his hand. Xiao pulls back the sheet.
A delicate face rests motionless on the metal table, framed by long dark hair that gradually fades to the blue Xiao saw earlier. Tubes and wires surround the person, trailing down further under the sheet. Now that he’s taking the time to look around the room, he sees an IV drip alongside many different scans.
Xiao bites his lip, concern replacing the curiosity in his mind. This is obviously a coma patient, but they look to be around his age. He reaches out a hand through the long locks of hair.
Hair this long does not grow overnight.
“How long have you been asleep?” he murmurs, his fingers brushing against the patient’s shoulder.
As soon as he does so, the room lights up in a brilliant blue. Xiao yanks his hand back, and for a moment he swears he sees the person’s hair as the source of light, the lighter-colored strands suddenly illuminating.
But the moment is broken when the machines surrounding him start singing in discordant alarms. Xiao flinches, looking around with wide eyes as the displays flash with new warnings and readings, and he knows he won’t be lucky enough to stay hidden this time around. Without sparing a second glance, he turns and sprints out of the room, not caring about making noise as he realizes the entire laboratory is letting out an unfamiliar alarm.
Xiao’s never been more thankful for his speed as he runs back the way he came, slipping back through the heavy doors separating the main laboratory from the corporate side of the building. Without taking even a second to catch his breath, Xiao makes his way back to his mother’s office. It’s only when he’s finally returned, the door firmly shut behind him, that Xiao sinks to his knees. He’s breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through his veins refusing to dissipate so quickly this time.
“What the fuck was that?” he murmurs to himself between pants. His mind flashes to the blue glow, but he shakes his head violently at the thought. Hair doesn’t just- glow like that. At least, not outside of children’s movies. The reflections of the monitors must have caused an optical illusion, that’s all.
The rationalization helps calm him down, the familiar dull satisfaction of solving a problem helping to ease his brain back to a neutral state. Returning to his chair, he resolves to put his adventure far from his mind. After all, the promise of food is not enough to justify whatever punishment he’d endure had he been caught in the lab. He plans to take this excursion with him to the grave. No one else will know about it.
Another two hours pass before Xiao’s parents return, looking slightly more frazzled than normal. But as per usual, they tell him nothing about their time in the lab, his father silently gesturing for Xiao to follow them to the car. The first and only words spoken on the ride home are by his mother, asking if he finished his schoolwork.
Immediately upon arriving home, Xiao makes his way sluggishly to his room. He feels significantly more worn out now than he did at the lab, and he barely makes it through his nightly routines before collapsing in bed.
His stomach grumbles quietly, but Xiao ignores it. Even if his parents allowed eating at this time of night, the exhaustion dragging on every limb makes him loathe to even think about getting up. It’d been a long day, and all he looks forward to now is the easy rest brought on by sleep. He closes his eyes and slips off to oblivion…
…only to wake up to a living nightmare.
He’s laying in the middle of a forest, back sore as if he’d been laying in the open for hours. Xiao scrambles to his feet, looking for any sign of how he got here. He knows he fell asleep in his bed, there’s no way he could have been transported to a forest in bumfuck nowhere in his sleep.
Faint light streams through the tree branches, illuminating the otherwise dark forest with dappled spots. What time is it? He’s definitely going to be late for school if the sun is out already.
As Xiao attempts to gain his bearings, he becomes acutely aware of the eerie silence around him. The birds are silent, and he can’t even hear the hum of various insects.
Suddenly, there’s a distinct rustling behind him, and Xiao sees a shadowy figure obscured by the trees around him. For a moment, it seems like even the sun has dimmed, the forest growing darker as Xiao gets an overwhelming feeling that he needs to run.
Without sparing a second glance, he turns and sprints away from the figure. As soon as he does, he hears snapping branches as whatever was hidden in the trees gives chase.
Heart pounding, Xiao can do nothing but push himself faster through pained breaths. The air around him is cold, and he feels an icy grip in his lungs, but the creature never seems to fall back so neither can Xiao.
He feels a creeping tendril of hopelessness as his speed begins to waver, but the second he considers fighting his way out of this situation, he spots a cabin in the distance with warm light tucked behind translucent windows. Please, please let someone be home to help.
With that thought renewing his energy, Xiao begins shouting for help, hoping to be heard by any occupants. He pushes faster again, one last sprint before he can reach the cabin-
Searing pain tears through his leg as a metallic clang reverberates in his ears. Xiao falls to the ground, and he’s barely cognizant enough through the pain to register the bear trap now trapping him in an iron grip.
He can barely think through the pain, ears ringing as tears sting his eyes. He looks around frantically for something, anything that could help him when he spots a shadow in the window. His voice is guttural as he shouts, “Help! Please, help me!”
The figure disappears from the window, and for a moment relief floods Xiao’s brain until the light in the cabin turns off and the door remains shut.
“No!” he cries, tears starting to fall as he tries to crawl forward. The movement causes the bear trap to clamp down harder, to the point Xiao can hardly breathe around the pain.
The ringing in his ears dissipates just enough for him to hear the sound of snapping twigs, abruptly bringing Xiao back to the reason he’d been running in the first place. His head whips around to the direction he came just in time to see a great lumbering beast unlike anything he’s ever seen approaching.
“No…” he cries again, quieter this time. Tears are flowing freely now, as the confusion and fear break any resolve in his mind. Why was he brought here? Why him?
The beast is finally upon him, and Xiao murmurs one last fearful, “Please,” before the creature opens its jaws and the world falls away to nothing.
Xiao awakens with a gasp, sweat-drenched and instinctively sitting up. He looks around wildly, breaths coming in short, panicked bursts. It takes a second before he registers the familiar bookshelves that mark his room. The clock on his nightstand flashes with a bright red 2:30 AM. He brings a shaking hand up to his face, unsure if he’s wiping away sweat or tears
Quietly, as if any noise might bring him back to that horrible place, Xiao murmurs, “Was that… a dream?”