Chapter Text
Rocket hit the cage floor and cried out, his friends scared as he shook. Behind him, Sire was yelling at the workers for him to be prepped for dissection and the rest incinerated. He needed to act. He needed to do something. Something that only he could! Rocket threw himself, brain locking on details too fast and his arm outstretched. “It's not just me!”
Sire didn't pause, but Rocket knew he had heard his voice. He always listened to him, it was why he was obsessed with hearing what his inner thoughts were. Rocket decided to tempt him with those thoughts, to tease him with the secrets in his head that he so wanted to get out. It was all he could think to do.
“Sire, it's not just me who can do these things, it's all four of us!”
“Do what things?” Teefs whispered, but the raccoon shook his other hand, his nose between the bars, his eyes watching. He silenced them into hushed whispers, their panic palatable but they were doing their best for him. Quiet like when they'd learned to not cry in front of Sire.
Sire was gone, but then he was back. His eyes were hard, he leaned down to stare at Rocket. “Go on, 89P13, I'm listening.” He looked ready to perform skull surgery right then and there.
In the morning, in the morning. It gives us hours. Rocket gritted his teeth. “Th-those things I said, I learned them, we learned them. They- they are the same as I am.” He waves a paw over the three.
Sire looked over them, and Rocket's brain ran through every path it could imagine. Sire didn't need four brains. His expression showed him thinking that. But then... He realized just Rocket's brain could leave room for someone else to make a mistake. One wrong move and the brain was ruined, and his needed data lost. Rocket was but one brain. Sire was flawless, Sire didn't make mistakes. But other people would be doing the procedure beside Sire as well, or even doing it solo. Especially if he was busy. Would the threat of death be enough to steady imperfect hands?
He followed Sire's eyes as the man thought. Four brains, four chances. Sire looked them over. He was clearly focusing on Teefs. A big brain. Easier to handle. Nobody would drop a walrus brain. A rabbit brain, Rocket knew Sire was thinking, they would make mistakes. But four chances. Four chances to extract the perfect information.
More brains meant more of the whatever in his brain that made Rocket so special. He could have more to inject into Batch 90, or maybe even Batch 100! But then Sire's face grew dark. Rocket cowered but stayed, eyes locked upon him. This meant Sire had made a mistake and overlooked a glorious breakthrough. He was as he had been when Rocket fixed his error, angry and his face was full of darkness, rage. He could kill them all. He had made a mistake and Sire hated to ever see get holes poked into his hubris.
But the anger was dismissed with a deep inhale. He seemed to stare at them in a new light. All three behind him and beside him cowered at the look upon their Sire's face. It was like looking into the darkness and not seeing anything. It shook them, especially Rocket.
“How foolish, of course, they would be like you, 89P13, I couldn't have just made one of you. I have many failures, but I misjudged you.” He looked over them as if they were trash cans holding treasure, a bottle to be popped open and poured empty before it was thrown away. “In such haste, I overlooked the talent my own hands have. I have four brains here to harvest.”
Rocket flinched, his eyes lowered. Behind him, they whispered. They had heard his earlier order and said "incinerated?" over and over. Behind them, they were even more panicked and scared in realization. Denial was seeping in. Floor was quivering. Sire bade them farewell and Rocket threw himself away from the back of the retreating monster who meant to kill them when the sun they could not see had raised.
He grabbed at all the shiny metal Floor had been collecting, metal scraps that Rocket ran his hands over. He just needed enough pieces. He just- he tried to ignore their questions. “We're not going- we-” he said it all as his head swam and he fished out metal from litter and worked it into a singular object. He spoke as fast as he could, as quietly. Floor was bouncing, his chest felt tight, and he had trouble breathing. He made the key through the tears blocking his vision.
A night, a set of hours. It was nothing in the grand scheme of the world, all the batches before them were dead. 88 batches that likely were just like him.
Rocket felt it needed to stop.
“What's that?” Floor asked as he turned and looked at them. His ears focused, listened closely.
“A key.”
He had to get them out of there.