Chapter Text
Scott woke up at three in the morning in sudden pain when a sharp sensation went through his bicep. He yelped and sat upright in his bed, clutching at his arm.
The sudden injuries were a recurring enough problem that he'd developed a system for telling whether they were worth worrying about. Step one was to tell what the injury was. He examined his bicep - it was dark in the room, but he could see the skin had turned a slightly glistening red. It was a burn, second-degree by the look of it. He didn't see any blisters, and he couldn't feel the heat of whatever had burnt him anymore, so it looked like the immediate danger was over.
He kicked the blankets off and got out of bed, heading for the bathroom. He turned on the cold water and held his arm under it, letting the shock hit his skin. He looked at himself in the mirror, and the same face as always stared back. The face of whoever Scott was. He didn't remember anything, at least not before he was introduced to X.
"S2077, X0750. Surgery was completed two hours ago with no signs of complications to this point. We believe a successful bond has been created. Please familiarize yourselves with your new partners." The sound of the loudspeaker clipping startled him to attention.
The other man in the room was dressed in the same jumpsuit as S2077 was. He had deep purple hair and eyes, and his features seemed familiar in a way S2077 couldn't place. He seemed as dazed and confused as S2077 felt.
"What's going on? Where am I?" S2077 asked.
The other man - X0750 - looked around. "I... I don't know."
"Subjects show signs of disorientation, uncertain whether due to brain damage as a result of surgery or lingering effects of anesthetic." Loud, how could that be so loud?
S2077 screwed his eyes shut, the light in the room too much combined with the sound of the loudspeaker too much to bear. "Jesus, my head hurts."
"Yeah," X0750 said, "same."
"Subjects confirmed to be sharing sensations."
Scott tore his eyes from the mirror, from the face that reminded him of X0750's. He knew the man was... something to him, even before their bond, but he didn't know what. Was the resemblance just his mind filling in blanks, playing tricks on him?
Scott pressed his fingers to his wrist, feeling for their pulse. It was only slightly above their resting rate, so she must not be running or fighting right now. Good.
After another minute or so, he pulled his arm out from under the water's flow, splashing some in his face to help him wake up before shutting off the tap. He trudged back into his bedroom and grabbed his phone off the bedside table, unlocking it and opening his messages.
She hadn't sent him anything. Of course she hadn't. She never let him know where she was going.
S: lmk when you see this if youre safe
He put the phone back into his pocket and headed downstairs, where they kept the emergency kit. You were supposed to wrap burns with clean gauze bandages. They didn't have clean gauze bandages. Nothing they owned was clean. Scott pulled the cleanest of the cloth strips out of the kit and started to wrap his arm, trying as hard as he could not to think about the infection it could give him.
He hated infections.
S2077 had been in terrible pain all night. He hadn't been able to sleep because of it, forced to lay on his side, clutching his chest. He didn't know what was happening, but it felt like his heart was being pulled in seven different directions.
He heard the sound of the door unlocking mere moments before the doctors burst into the room, the lights coming on as they entered. "Wake up," the doctor said sharply, as other members of the medical staff filed in behind him.
S2077 sat up, sluggishly, like he was moving through honey. "What's... going... on?" he gasped out around the tightness in his chest.
One of the doctors pushed on his chest, forcing him to lay back down. "X0750 is dead," someone said, as he felt a hand grabbing onto his wrist.
"Dead? What?" He tried again to sit up. "Am I-"
"Hold still," they said, and he felt a needle pierce the vein in his arm. The other staff flitted around him, frantically, setting up their machines. "Analysis of X0750's corpse shows no respiratory or nervous function but sustained heartbeat, likely due to its connection to you. You could, possibly, continue to live, were it not for your heart pumping his rotting blood into your veins."
"Pulse 175 BPM, blood pressure 80 over 55."
"Heartbeat highly arrhythmic. You were right, Cub, we need it out of him right now."
A new voice - the head researcher's voice, S2077 recognized it from the experiments of the last several weeks - spoke up, angrily. "We spent months on this-"
"And it didn't work, Doc," somebody snapped. "I'll let you give this one more shot, and then I'm going to do everything in my power to get the director to pull the plug on your project."
"What are... what are you going to... what's going to happen to me?" S2077 said. He was feeling dizzy.
"Someone put him under already. We can't work with him in the way."
A mask slipped over his face, and he lost consciousness as the gas it supplied hit his lungs.
Scott finished tying the bandages around his arm just as he heard his phone buzz in his pocket. He pulled the messages back up.
P: Im fine. You dont need to worry about me
S: not worried about you im worried about myself
S: what happened
P: None of your business
S: yes it is
S: where the hell are you that youre scalding our whole arm at 3 in the morning
S: why didnt you say you were going out
P: Youd have tried to stop me
S: RIGHTFULLY SO IF THIS IS ANY INDICATION
S: what happened
P: Looting an old NHO supply depot
S: youre an idiot
P: It hasnt been used in ~10 years
S: doesnt matter the NHO leaves the security on in those things for fucking ever
S: to protect against. yknow. RAIDERS
P: Security didnt get me
P: Im smarter than that
P: Just bumped my arm on a steam supply pipe
P: On my way home now
S: there is something wrong with you
S: if i dont die from you getting shot in the middle of the night i will die from a heart attack that you give me risking our life
P: Relax I found us food and batteries and medical supplies for C and M
P: And coffee
S: define coffee
P: Water-soluble caffeine pills
S: ughhhh
S: close enough
S: dont die dont get caught
P: Do I ever?
S: first time for everything
She didn't respond, and he slipped the phone back into his pocket. Of all the people who could hold his life in their hands, it had to be her.
Doc, the lead researcher was operating on him. He wasn't sure what he was doing, but he was sure of that.
S2077 was very, very groggy. He could see Doc's outline - was that a name or a title? It's all the other doctors ever called him - and he could vaguely hear the man's thick, accented voice - what was that accent? Old Earth Eurasian of some kind, but S2077 didn't know his anthropology well enough to pinpoint it - but what he was doing here, he struggled to remember.
Realization came to him in staggered steps. He realized his chest cavity was open, then that he couldn't hear a heart monitor. He turned his head sluggishly, looking around.
"Subject S2077 showing signs of alertness," someone said. "Recommending second dose of general anesthetic."
"I think he's building up a resistance," Doc said, "and I don't want to risk it. Give him the paralysis instead, 25ccs, so he doesn't move while we're operating."
"25ccs, nervoridne, understood."
S2077 tried to sit up, but one of the doctors placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down. He was still too sluggish to fight back properly, and then he realized he couldn't control his muscles anymore. The IV in his arm - they must have injected him with something. He could move his eyes, but nothing else.
His eyes darted around, wide with terror as he took in the scene. There were at least a dozen of the medical staff in the room. And-
There was another bed to the right of him, and somebody on it.
A young woman, probably about his age. She had long brown hair, and hard features. She was tall, and her eyes were closed. She would have looked peaceful, were it not for the opening in her chest that revealed her insides for all to see, for the machines and IVs hooked into her that matched his, for the doctors moving with purpose all around them both.
"Donor heart and relevant elements of autonomic nervous system fully connected in P3471," the surgeon with her hands inside the woman said. "Doc?"
"Just a second... and there," Doc said, pulling his hands free from S2077's chest cavity. His gloves were stained thick with blood. "Donor heart fully connected in S2077. Give them the startup shock."
He felt an icy cold electric shock run through him, and would have screamed, if he could control his own throat.
The heart monitor beeped to life.
"Heart rate synced, resting at 62 bpm. Blood pressure synced, showing 100 over 75. Link appears to be a success." The voice read off the numbers with obvious relief.
"Eeeeeexcellent," Doc said. "Let's close them up and see if it lasts this time."
Scott walked out into the main room of their living space and was met with sudden barking. The medium sized dog with her dirty, matted grey fur leapt up from the spot on the couch where she'd been resting and bounded over to scare him off, growling and barking. Way too loud for this early in the morning.
"It's just me, Tilly," Scott said, holding out his hand. The dog sniffed it, then started licking his hand, wagging her tail like she hadn't been chewing him out a moment ago. "Wish she'd train you not to bark. At least not at me. Shouldn't I smell like her or something at this point anyway?"
Tilly jumped up excitedly, placing her paws on Scott's hips. He snapped and pointed at the ground. "Off," he said forcefully. She didn't move, and he was forced to push her off, her tail still going wild. "You're just like your owner sometimes. Neither of you listens to me."
He knew he wasn't being fair, not to his bond and not to the street dog that she'd taken in right after they moved in with C and M, when the four of them could barely manage to feed themselves, but he was having a hard time being charitable. Pain and tiredness wore the edges off of his compassion.
"I believe we've managed to pinpoint the cause of your symptoms, S2077," the doctor said.
He sounded so casual about it, like the symptoms in question weren't life-ruining. S2077 couldn't eat. Everytime he ate the ration that the Institute gave him - a light brown brick with the texture of dirt and the flavor of mealworms - he ended up vomiting it all back up within hours. He'd kept eating his meals, hoping vainly that one time, just once, he'd manage to keep it down, but every single night he ended up hunched over the basin, retching and gagging as the bile burned his throat on its way back up. He'd felt so tired, but hadn't been able to sleep properly, and he was getting to be so, so thin.
He'd told the doctors about it over two weeks ago, and only now they had a cause? It would be enough to make him laugh, if he didn't feel so weak.
"Subject P3471 has coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition that renders her unable to digest gluten," the doctor carried on. "Our standard ration formulation is based on a glutinous gel made from wheat flour and gelatin. Though genetic testing shows you as lacking the gene that causes this condition, nevertheless you have been showing symptoms consistent with it. In the future, we'll be switching you to the same formulation we use for her, which is based in rice flour instead."
It was that simple? His miserable existence, what little life he had, had been ruined by something that simple?
Tilly followed him into the kitchen and whined at the fridge as he opened it. "I can't feed you," he said as he took out one of the water bottles, "because there isn't any food. Your owner's bringing some, supposedly."
The dog didn't get the message, keeping up her whining as Scott opened the bottle. They had running water, but C had warned them when they moved in that it probably wasn't drinkable.
He took a long drink. Cold, clean water was one of the few things he had that felt like a luxury. It was heavenly.
His moment was ruined when his hands started shaking. The bottle still at his lips, the tremor disrupted him enough that some of the water slipped into his airway, triggering a coughing fit which almost made him drop the bottle.
He forcibly cleared his throat, feeling a slight burning from the water. Setting the bottle down, he pressed his hands flat against the counter. They still jittered in place, as if he were shivering.
The shaking was an inconvenience at best. Of all the scars he'd been left with, it was far from the worst.
S2077 and P3471 sat across from each other, restrained in place, their hands affixed to the table by strong metal shackles that left no room for movement. Their palms were pressed flat against the surface in front of them, with S2077's centered over a black piece of metal and P3471's over a small covered basin.
"Beginning experiment on extreme temperature differential between analogous points on the body of a bonded pair," the doctor in the room with them said. "Subjects are prepared; initiate experiment on head researcher's mark."
"Mark," came Doc's voice from over the intercom.
There was a slight buzzing as electronics kicked into gear. The basin's cover slid open and the basin itself pushed upwards from the table, pressing the dry ice within against P3471's palms. S2077 could hear and feel the crunching as it shifted against her hands. At the same moment, the black metal plate on which his own hands sat began to glow a dull red, and he felt intense heat radiate from it.
P3471 screamed. S2077, on instinct, tried to pull his hands away, succeeding only in wrenching his wrist violently against the hard metal that encircled his arms.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck..." S2077 repeated to himself.
"Please describe sensation as thoroughly as possible," the doctor in the room said.
"It fucking burns is the sensation!" P3471 shouted.
She was right. Burning was the only way he could describe it, an intense pain across the palms of both hands, a sort of pain that made him feel like his nerves were dying. He strained, trying to pull any inch of skin that he could off the hotplate, desperate to ease even a fraction of the pain - but it didn't let up.
"Is the burning sensation you are experiencing tied to intense heat or intense cold?"
"It's-" S2077 broke off, a cry of pain erupting from his mouth. He couldn't answer that. It just burned, the way that things at both ends of the spectrum do. It was a feeling that surpassed his capacity to actually experience it.
"Fuck you!" P3471 shouted. S2077 winced - the staff would only be worse to them if they acted out. But he couldn't tell her that now, not when he had to grit his teeth just to bear the pain.
"Subjects either unable or unwilling to provide helpful responses," the doctor reported.
"Continue experiment for thirty, forty more seconds," Doc said. "We'll get our answers from examining their wounds."
S2077 already felt like he was going to collapse. He couldn't bear thirty more seconds. It might actually kill him.
He heard the door open and someone came in. Tilly left his side, bounding towards the door, her spirited bark returning.
"Hey, girl, hey!" said the entrant to the apartment. "Did you miss me? Good girl."
"Were you followed, Pearl?"
Pearl stood, rolling her eyes as she walked into the kitchen to join him. "Hello to you too, Scott."
"It's a yes or no question."
"Yup," she said. "Whole Federation's police force for this planet is after me. NHO security drones too. And the Institute found out we're alive, too. They're all going to be here in about thirty seconds. It was nice knowing you."
"Pearl," he said.
"Of course I wasn't followed, do you think I'm an idiot?"
"Sometimes. Most times, actually."
Pearl sighed as she sat up on the counter, pulling her backpack off and setting it next to her. "What was I choking on a second ago, Scott?"
"Water," he admitted.
"I rest my case," she said. "We're both idiots, in equal measure." Tilly jumped up, her back legs firmly planted on the ground while she scrabbled at the counter with her front paws. Pearl grabbed the dog's front paws and put them in her lap, vigorously petting Tilly's head and neck fur. "Hey, girl, hey! Yeah, good to see you too!"
"I wish you wouldn't let her put her dirty paws up on the counter."
"Wow, someone's in a bad mood today."
"Yeah, getting woken up by a random injury does that to you."
"Not the worst pain you've woken up to." She said it like it was a joke.
Scott winced.
Wet. His back was wet. Why was his back wet?
S2077 stirred from his groggy state. His eyelids and limbs were both unnaturally heavy, and it felt like all his senses were coming to him through a dense soup. Someone was talking. Someone was being very loud. He was lying facedown on a cold metal table. His back was wet.
It felt like there was a curtain between S2077 and his body. He couldn't understand anything about what was going on - he groaned out something, halfway between an indistinct noise and a mumbled question. He heard another voice say something, not to him, though it sounded like it was prompted by him talking.
His back wasn't just wet. It stung terribly. As he tried again to move, the muscles in his back screamed in agony at him.
He forced his eyes open, pushing through the murk that surrounded his senses. Lying facedown, he couldn't see anything that gave him any clues about what was going on.
His back was in red hot pain, and only getting worse. Something was tearing long, deep scratches into his back, uniformly spaced. There was nobody around him to be doing this to him, and yet he felt it nonetheless. Somewhere a few feet away off to the side, P3471 was screaming and cursing.
The pain drove into him like a thousand nails. His back was wet with his own blood.
S2077, newly awoken, screamed.
Pearl saw Scott's face darken. "Too soon?"
"I think it's always gonna be too soon," he said.
"Sorry. Here." Pearl flipped her back open and rifled around, eventually pulling free a small, colorful plastic bag. She set it down on the counter next to him. "For you."
He picked up the bag. "Oh my god," he said. "M&Ms? You found these?"
"I heard somewhere that they were originally invented as a military ration, since chocolate would melt in the heat. Dunno if that's true. But that's my best guess as to why the NHO depot had them."
He eyed her suspiciously. "Why are you giving these to me?"
Pearl sighed. "Because unlike some people, I'm trying to be nice to the person I'm forced to spend my life with."
"...thank you."
"Yeah. Whatever." She crossed her arms and stared off into space.
Scott couldn't look at her, so he looked at the bag instead. Real candy. He hadn't had any for as long as he could remember. He was pretty sure he'd tried it at some point, in his old life that the Institute had stolen from him - but he could barely remember what it tasted like.
"I didn't expect this from you, is all."
Pearl didn't respond immediately, scratching behind Tilly's ears idly. "Why do you hate me, Scott? And why do you assume I hate you?"
"I don't hate you," he answered.
"Bullshit," she snapped. "I don't know what it is, but you hate everything I do. You say I'm too reckless when I'm just doing what I have to to keep us alive. You never want me around, but you hate it when I'm gone even more."
"It's... I don't know."
"You don't know," she repeated flatly.
"I never think about it that way," he said. "It's... a reflex, I guess. Whenever I look at you, I see you playing with my life. I see you putting me in danger."
"I'm not," she said. "Not trying to at least. I play it as safe as I can manage, but nothing's ever going to be safe for us."
"It feels like you're trying to get me hurt."
"For god's sake, Scott," she said bitterly, "not everything is about you. I'm not hurting myself intentionally just to see you suffer. I really like you, actually! You're confident and resilient and smart and you're very compassionate to anyone other than me. But whenever you open your mouth, you make it clear you despise me. Like you don't want me in your life."
"I don't."
She turned to him, startled. "What?"
"I really, truly, wish we had never met. It would be a lot better for both of us. If I could get rid of our bond, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you?"
"I... don't know." She cast her eyes towards the floor.
"We're doing the best we can, with C and M's help, but the best we can is still pretty bad." He placed a hand on her shoulder. "Think about it logically. Wouldn't we be safer and happier apart?"
She shrugged his hand off and jumped down from the counter suddenly. "I'm going to bed," she said. "Goodnight, Scott."
She left before he could reply, walking briskly out of the room. Tilly followed at her heels, likely to sleep at her owner's side.
Scott stared at the bag of M&Ms for longer than he cared to admit. Eventually, he managed to push himself out of his memories and back into reality. Firmly shifting into "get things done" mode, he opened Pearl's backpack - which she'd left behind on the counter - and started to put away the supplies she'd brought home.