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Chapter Text

It’s not possible for them to be keeping an entity of this magnitude contained.

That was your first thought as you entered the isolation chamber housing ALTR 114209. Of course, IRIS had certainly tried, and, to all appearances, succeeded in containing the being. The chamber was a giant Faraday cage; no cameras, no speakers, nothing electrical for it to latch onto. 

It. Him. ALTR 114209 resembled a man, somewhere beneath the rubber straightjacket and muzzle.

He didn’t move, but his lurid, inhuman eyes followed you from beneath a mop of dishevelled hair, piercingly neon green irises set against black sclera. Languid, unconcerned.

Cold dread slid down your spine. You had no reason to believe, from the evidence presented and IRIS’s extensive preparations, that ALTR 114209 wasn’t truly contained. It wasn’t logical. But gut intuition gnawed at you; he was not nearly so subdued as he was pretending to be.

And you were completely alone with him. Anything electronic was too much of a risk, which meant no phone, no pager, no digital watches, no panic button of any kind. There was an old fashioned bell and pulley system that you could ring for emergency assistance, but you would have to get back to the door first. Other than that, someone would come and check on you if you hadn’t returned within your allocated five minutes.

If something went wrong, five minutes would be far too late.

You weren’t even allowed company, after the last time ALTR 114209 had managed to get inside a researcher’s head and turn him against his colleague, laughing maniacally whilst the two brutalised each other.

Or so you had heard.

The sooner you did your job and got out, the better.

"Hello," you greeted the entity gently, and immediately felt foolish for it.

The dossier read that ALTR 114209 was an anomaly, a glitch, electric darkness and cruelty wearing the shell of a human form like a poorly fitting mask. It had no emotions and no empathy. It should not be engaged with.

But those eyes were sentient and intelligent. Dangerously intelligent.

It didn't feel right treating him as something subhuman.

"I just need to take a few blood samples," you explained, setting your bag of equipment down next to the metal recliner ALTR 114209 was shackled in. "I'll make sure it's as quick and painless as possible, alright?"

His gaze never left your face. Cold. Calculating.

Fucking hell. This thing killed people for fun; it had slaughtered half the interview floor staff and a good handful more of the containment team before they'd been able to restrain it. It shrugged off bullets. And you were reassuring it that you weren't going to cause any undue pain from one little needle?

You let out a shaky breath. Allowing muscle memory to take over, you pulled on your gloves and began laying out the collection tubes, ignoring the slight tremble to your hands.

This wasn't going to be the easiest blood draw, what with ALTR 114209 being in a straightjacket and all. The back of his hand would be most accessible, but even that would require uncuffing his arm and freeing his hand from the confines of the fabric. You wouldn't be able to get a tourniquet on him, and with his hand raised, you were already going to be fighting against gravity instead of working with it.

The conditions were far from optimum. But you'd just have to make do. Stop overthinking, do your job, and get out.

The straightjacket was specially designed by IRIS, made of rubber so as to be functionally nonconductive. It locked around the elbows and the chest in addition to strapping the hands over the shoulders; that was reassuring. Unbuckling even one arm seemed dangerous, but at least only a single forearm would gain the potential for movement.

Bracing yourself, you undid the strap over ALTR 114209's left shoulder and rolled back the rubber sleeve to expose his hand.

His flesh felt like static; touching him made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end, as though you were holding a plasma globe. It left a hollow ache in your bones, weighed down by the same sort of pressure drop that accompanied an oncoming thunderstorm. His skin was distinctly darker towards his fingertips, as though he had been dipping them in ink, until they turned into black nails that were more akin to claws.

You prepped the needle, then prepped the best vein site you could find with your limited options. "Sharp scratch," you muttered out of habit.

ALTR 114209 didn't flinch, didn't even seem to notice as the needle pierced into his flesh. The blood flow was extremely sluggish – which you had expected, given the awkwardness of the venipuncture position – and a far darker crimson than standard human blood.

That sparked your interest. Scientific curiosity demanded to know what exactly made it that way. What was it composed of? What sort of cells and proteins would you find in the blood of an anomalous, inhuman entity?

Curiosity killed the cat , you reminded yourself. Curiosity got you into this situation in the first place, locked into a contract with IRIS.

Well, that, and a good helping of desperation. You didn't know anyone who joined IRIS who wasn't either morally bankrupt – fewer in number, but invariably involved in management – or simply in a dire enough situation that the danger pay and healthcare benefits made working for them seem worth the risk.

Until it wasn't, but by then it was too late.

You switched out collection tubes. "Just a couple more," you promised.

Shit. They were filling with agonising slowness, and ALTR 114209 was just staring . With the lower half of his face covered by the muzzle, you couldn't decipher what expression he was wearing, couldn't fathom what he might be thinking.

"Do you have a name?" 

Stop trying to make small talk with the entity , you cursed yourself, then immediately proceeded to continue doing exactly that .  

"They've given you the designation ALTR 114209, but you must have something you're actually called, right?"

You weren't certain he could speak through the muzzle. There was no response to your question, regardless.

With the final tube filled at last, you withdrew the needle and held a cotton pad to the wound. A laughable gesture, really – ALTR 114209 could heal near instantaneously from grievous injuries, a pin prick wouldn't bother him in the slightest. It was more for your own sake. Going through the routine procedure, treating him like any other patient, ignoring the static pressure in the air that squeezed your lungs too tightly.

You rolled the sleeve back up and buckled the straightjacket into place, almost apologetically. He hadn't fought you at all, despite the nightmare stories you'd heard about him.

That didn't mean you were safe. Not until you were out of the room.

ALTR 114209 may not have fought you, but something about his poise – body language lethargic but eyes piercingly alert and icy – reminded you of a predator patiently awaiting the perfect moment to strike.

Equipment away and blood samples sealed in a biohazard container, you scurried back to the heavy metal door before you became the prey.

"Anti," a voice rasped.

You turned back to him in shock. The sound was the shrieking crackle of a mistuned radio made with human vocal chords, it was fingernails dragged down a chalkboard. It unsettled you to your very core, primal instinct setting alarm bells ringing in your head. Whatever he was, it wasn't natural.

"Anti," you repeated, struck dumb and unable to utter a single intelligent response beyond echoing his name.

The door slid open, and you hastily left the chamber. You were already halfway down the corridor before you heard the guard slam the metal shut again, its violent, ringing clang following on your heels.

Chapter Text

Curiosity killed the cat indeed.

The further you got from ALTR 114209 – from Anti – the more your trepidation waned and a buzz of excitement blossomed in its place.

It was an honour to be picked for the frontline research team for such a significant anomaly. A dubious honour, in fairness; it was calculated on a balance of being good enough to do the work, but still disposable enough not to be missed should something go wrong. Being the one sent to collect the bloods put you on the very bottom rung of that ladder.

Your supervisor, the head researcher for the project, was at the top. You handed the biohazard container over, and she accepted it with nothing more than a curt nod. Her hair was slicked back into a severe bun, speckled with greying strands. Deepening wrinkles spoke of a lifetime of tight frowns, and today was no exception.

It was difficult to stand still whilst she inspected the blood-filled collection tubes. Eventually, she seemed satisfied.

"Slides," she instructed shortly, handing you a single tube.

The rest of the samples would be divided up between the team, other researchers doing more complex analysis on the blood composition and whatever compounds they may find therein. Preparing blood smear slides was the simplest task, but, depending on what cellular differences may be visible with a microscope alone, could easily be the most interesting. So you weren't going to complain about being fobbed off with the 'easy' assignment.

Slides, coverslips, stains; Leishman's was standard for staining human blood, but you had no idea what you might find in Anti's, or what stain would be most effective for potentially unknown components. You took several different ones. With your meagre equipment gathered, you settled at your lab bench and got to work.

A drop of blood on each slide, smear it, leave it to dry. You'd try the usual stains first. 

Waiting the ten minutes for the Leishman's stain to fix was going to be the longest ten minutes of your life.

You kept thinking about Anti, equal parts fear and fascination. About what you'd read in his dossier, still too much redacted for you to get a clear picture even when you were directly involved in the research on him. Merely describing him as an anomaly didn't tell you shit, after all. He clearly had a humanoid form, but how much of his biology was actually human?

How much of his mind was human.

He was sentient, intelligent, yes. But he was something far more incomprehensible than human, and you would be a fool to imagine he thought or functioned the same way.

Even so, it gave you a pang of guilt to think of how he was trussed up and locked away in complete isolation. Of course, he had to be, what with the whole extensive murders thing. But which came first; was he locked away because he was murderous by very nature, or was he lashing out because he was locked away? You could hardly blame some of the 'test subjects' for murdering their handlers after the way they were treated and the experiments IRIS subjected them to.

It didn't matter. Whatever the case, IRIS involvement or no, Anti was dangerous.

You were glad the only involvement you had in any experiments amounted to taking a few blood samples.

Speaking of. The slides should've had long enough to stain. You gently rinsed and dried them, eased the coverslips into place, then mounted the first slide onto the microscope.

Your breath caught in the back of your throat immediately.

Oh, that was not what you had expected.

First clear difference; the red blood cells were nucleated. Of course, that was the case for many animal species, from reptiles, to amphibians, to birds – almost every type of vertebrate, with the very notable exception of mammals. 

Human blood cells were enucleated. Anti's were not.

You'd already had the inkling that Anti wasn't human, despite his humanoid form, but you hadn't anticipated finding such direct evidence of it so soon. 

Incredible…

And it only got weirder from there.

In lieu of any white blood cells, there were, apparently, black ones. A white blood cell would normally stain a moderate blue-purple with Leishman's; were these stained particularly dark. Perhaps a greater permeability leading to excess stain uptake, or were they something else entirely? The colouration made it too dark to determine anything about the cells. There may have been a nucleus and organelles in there somewhere, but those weren't going to be visible when the whole cell was a black mass.

You searched the slide further, and quickly realised the black cells were something else entirely. The ones that bore any resemblance to a human cell were only immature, or perhaps dormant. The fully developed ones were fewer and further between, but were characterised by a long tail like nothing you'd ever seen in a blood sample before.

Baffled, you traced the length of one with the viewfinder. For a moment, the thought had crossed your mind that the tail was an axon, but it was far too long and too rigid for that, not to mention completely the wrong place to find a neuron. No. It was more like the hyphae on a fungal cell.

Frowning, you pulled out another microscope and retrieved the lab's supply of premade slides. They were dusty from disuse, a relic of when IRIS had bothered trying to train people fully. But they contained a wide range of cell types and histological examples for comparative purposes.

With a fungal slide set on your second microscope, you looked between the two.

It was impossible to be certain, but the structure appeared at least superficially identical. What you had thought to be a cell body could equally be the sporangium. The long tails, unlike anything in an animal cell, were indistinguishable from hyphae. And the other black cells, without developed hyphae; spore cells?

The fully developed fungal cells were spread distantly to tell how they would interact. Would the hyphae knit together to form a mycelium mat too?

And then there was the matter of their origin. Were they invasive cells, as a fungal infection would be to a human, or were they a native part of Anti's biology?

So many questions, and you had so few answers.

Maybe if you could get the cells to lyse, you could see what lay inside them. 

You started preparing a new set of slides. Different stains, different treatments. Some with saline, some with ethanol, trying to break open the cell walls.

None of the stains made a difference to the colouration of the black cells; even a fresh smear, entirely unstained, was the same, so it wasn't down to excessive stain uptake. They really were just black. Was that a function of the cellular membrane then, containing the pigmentation, or did it run as deep as the cytoplasm itself?

The red blood cells lysed readily, spilling out their uncharacteristic nuclei. Those strange black ones didn't – that suggested the cell walls consisted of something different, something sturdier than a normal lipid membrane. A chitinous membrane, then, like a true fungal cell?

It was absolutely captivating.

You didn't notice the hours slipping past, too enrapt in the slides, scouring every nanometre of them at every magnification. You filled an entire page with scribbled notes and queries, then flipped it over and filled it again.

By the time you looked up properly, rubbing a hand over your weary eyes, the rest of the lab was empty.

Ah.

There was a crick in your neck from bending over looking through the microscopes for too long. Your supply of Anti's blood sample was almost spent. You needed to type up all of your observations into a cohesive report to present to your supervisor by tomorrow, and it was already far later than you had realised.

There were still so many questions you wanted answers for, but there was only so much you could determine based on observations alone. If you could isolate those black cells and run some further tests… well, that would probably be handed over to the rest of the team anyway.

The scant remnants of the blood sample went in the fridge; the other collection tubes were already in there, all of them equally low, if not entirely empty. The other researchers had gotten through theirs too.

Your stomach flipped.

You needed answers. The team needed answers, the project needed answers. There was so much to uncover.

Which meant you were going to need more blood.

Which meant you were going to need to go back and perform another blood draw.

Shit.

But that was tomorrow's problem, at the absolute earliest. Your mind was still buzzing with the excitement and possibility of what you had discovered, and how much more there was to discover still. Despite the weirdness of the situation, despite IRIS, you were still a scientist at heart, and the thirst for knowledge and discovery drove you forward.

What was Anti?

You intended to figure it out. But first, you had a report to write.

Chapter Text

In the end, it was a further three days before you were sent to collect more samples from Anti.

The time between was spent predominantly on paperwork and meetings, as was the inescapable reality of working in any large institution. For once, though, you didn't mind.

Of course, you were eager to make new discoveries and get some answers to your questions. But it was still satisfying, and indeed extremely necessary, to consolidate all your findings thus far into a cohesive report. It helped organise your thoughts.

A whole day was spent on that. Although you'd tried to make a start on your report the first evening, you'd been forced to concede defeat and get some sleep before too long. The bulk of the work took place the following morning, armed with coffee and the slightly manic, sleep-deprived thrill of a mystery to unravel.

You'd sorted through all your slides again, using the camera mount on the microscope to take the photographs required to illustrate your report. There was no lunch break, only aggressive typing.

The report had been placed on your supervisor's desk five minutes before the afternoon deadline.

After that came the meetings. The first spate you didn't mind at all; quite the opposite. All of the results were brought together, reports from each method of inquiry consolidated.

The standard blood panel results were all over the place. Of course they were, Anti's blood wasn't human. The red blood cells still registered on the complete blood count, though as immature nucleated cells. They weren't immature; they were just like that. The hemoglobin levels were also deemed critically low, and not a white blood cell to be found. Just the black fungal-structured ones instead, you supposed.

It was the commonly accepted scientific theory that mammals had evolved enucleated red blood cells to make more space for hemoglobin, allowing them to meet the demands of increased oxygen metabolism. That Anti had both nucleated blood cells and low hemoglobin capacity suggested he – his species, or whatever the circumstances of his origin – didn't require the same level of metabolic respiration. Perhaps indicative of evolution in a low oxygen environment; space was the first possibility that sprung to mind, or certainly somewhere with a distinctly different atmospheric composition to this planet in this dimension. Non-native to Earth.

That was a whole Pandora's box of questions, but one that was shelved for the being. Your team was there to unravel his biochemical functioning and physiology, not probe into where he came from.

Gene sequencing and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging of the cell proteins had been the next group to report back, with no luck. They had hit a dead end.

It was well established, even within the most heavily redacted dossiers, that ALTR 114209 possessed a powerful affinity for and control over electricity. Apparently, that extended as far as inert blood samples. The more complex and sensitive the technology required to carry out the testing, the more it suffered from electrical interference, and Anti's very cells produced such. The results were a garbled mess, when any results had been gleaned at all and the machines hadn't just shut down.

Of course, no tests had been run specifically investigating the fungal-like cells you had found. No one had anticipated the presence of anything like that.

Which led to the final round of meetings on the third day–bureaucracy. What avenues of inquiry were going to be prioritised, how the investigations were to be allocated and to collaborate. Budget issues were also discussed at length; NMR spectrometers did not come cheap, and continued use with Anti's cells risked breaking it entirely.

You'd slightly tuned out at that point.

Instead – uninterested in lab politics or researchers vying for the most illustrious-seeming tests, but immensely curious about the fungal nature of the black blood cells – you'd wandered away and, unauthorised, used the last meagre scrapings from your allocated sample tube to inoculate an agar plate. You wanted to see if the fungal cells would spread, if they actually behaved as a fungus or if the similarities were in appearance alone.

Eventually, however, you were summoned back to face the inevitable. Regardless of the minutiae of investigation allocations, there was one inescapable truth; the lab was going to need more blood samples. A lot more.

And so you found yourself at the familiar, foreboding door that led to Anti's containment chamber, knuckled white around the handle of your collection bag.

There was a new guard on duty today. The previous guard had been bored and untalkative, but this man looked nervous. That worried you far more.

You nodded to him and he nodded in return, stiffly, a forced stoicism. His eye twitched.

It was enough to get you to hesitate, instead of immediately gesturing for him to open the door. "How is ALTR 114209 behaving today?" you asked cautiously. "Are there any adverse conditions I should be aware of before I go in?"

"Nothing to report," the guard stated.

He was a big man, broad-shouldered and well built. Tough. Militant. The exact type IRIS prized for the difficult work of keeping their more powerful anomalies contained.

Yet something had him unsettled.

A beat passed. He looked at you without blinking for a little too long. "Be careful in there," he eventually said. "Don't let the bugger touch you."

Odd. You'd not seen anything like that in the dossier.

"I have to take blood samples, so I'll need to access his skin. It's not toxic or anything, is it?"

A hollow laugh. "No. But he scratches and bites like some feral thing, and I swear it does something to people."

Interesting, but also concerning. You filed that information away. "He's still restrained though, right?"

"Right. Sure."

This was doing absolutely nothing for your trepidation at going back in there. But it went fine last time; it would just be the exact same process again. You could handle it. You had to. There wasn't a choice.

So you gestured to the door. The guard waited a moment longer before moving, muscles momentarily frozen.

"I had to drag those last two researchers out," he said lowly. "The ones that went crazy. Make sure I don't have to drag you out too."

Ah. So that was the source of his apprehensiveness. Whatever he had seen then was clearly enough to shake him, badly. It felt inconsiderate to press about it, but your interest was piqued. You'd only heard whispers of past incidents, but here was a firsthand account, and it had you immensely curious.

Your specialisation was in biochemistry, but the entity's behaviours and the purpose behind them comprised an equally fascinating area of study. The guard seemed to correlate contact with ALTR 114209 inducing changed behaviours. How and why? The gears in your brain were already starting to turn.

But there wasn't time for that. You had a job to do, and the guard was sliding the door open for you.

His fingers twitched. "Remember, you can ring the bell if you need any assistance."

"I remember."

You entered the chamber. The door clanged shut, and then you were alone with ALTR 114209 once more. You took a deep, steadying breath.

"Hello again, Anti," you greeted him, almost apologetically. You weren't certain he would remember you, or care. "Just a few more blood samples today. I'll be out of your hair before you know it."

"Why rush?" Anti's voice grated and glitched. The words were languorous, drawn out as if to torture each syllable. He grinned wolfishly, cruel amusement alight in his eyes. The smile showed off his too-sharp teeth.

"No muzzle today?" you commented, keeping your voice steady and conversational despite the way your stomach sank, twisting into knots.

That horrifying grin only widened. "Didn't feel like wearing it."

Oh, you hated that. Was he just messing with you? 'Didn't feel like wearing it' implied that the choice was his, that he only played along with his containment for as long as it suited his purposes. What if he decided he 'didn't feel like' wearing his straightjacket anymore whilst you were in the middle of doing the blood draw?

"I see. That's nice."

You were certain Anti must be able to hear your heart pounding rapidly in your chest. He seemed viciously entertained by the whole situation.

Just get the samples, then get out , you reminded yourself.

You set your equipment down and began preparing the blood draw, exactly the same as before.

"Did you know you have nucleated blood cells?" You were making small talk again, as if your life weren't potentially at risk every second you spent around the entity. If Anti wasn't truly contained… "And some other cells like I've never seen before."

Release his hand from the bindings and straightjacket sleeve, ready it for venipuncture.

"They have a similar structure to fungal cells, at least at first glance. Sharp scratch. But they're not invasive, I don't think. There's no indication of inflammation or other infection markers. Are they native to your biology, do you think, or are they something symbiotic, parasitic…?"

He was staring. He wouldn't stop staring , with such a cold light in his eyes.

There were more collection tubes than last time. Every second waiting for them to fill lasted a lifetime.

"Where are you from? You know, before IRIS. How did you end up here?"

No response. You hadn't expected one. You were only filling the dead space.

"Okay. Nearly done…"

Once the last collection tube was filled and placed safely in the biohazard container, you eased the needle out from the back of Anti's hand. This time, though, you didn't cover it up. You watched.

The wound, barely more than a pin prick, filled in immediately. It stitched together beneath the surface first, a black mass closing up the hole before the skin regenerated over the top of it.

A black mass. Black like the fungal cells. Was that a mycelium mat, its growth triggered in response to an injury? There had been no platelets found in Anti's blood either, but he wouldn't need them if the fungal cells could knit a wound closed infinitely more efficiently. 

You were staring too long. Leaving Anti free for too long.

His hand twisted and grabbed hold of your wrist.

"Fuck!" you gasped.

"Do you think you're fuckin' clever? " Anti hissed. It was an absurd thing to notice in the moment, but he had a hint of an Irish accent. It came out much more heavily when he was angry.

Those claw-like nails of his were pressing into the fragile skin of your inner wrist, his grip making your bones creak.

"Not really." Your voice came out breathy and desperate. "Just too curious. Can you let go?"

Anti laughed. It was a low chuckle, warped and crackling and devoid of humanity.

You tried to pull away, but his grip only tightened. The pain sprung tears into the corner of your eyes. The sharp, pointed tips of his claws pierced your skin, blood welling until it ran down your wrist in rivulets.

Fuck. He was toying with you. He could do far worse in an instant, if he so chose, but it was more fun to watch you whimper and squirm as you futilely tried to break out of his hold.

That was never going to work. So you did the only thing you could think of; you picked up the biohazard container – essentially a souped up cooler box, certainly sturdy enough – with your other hand and smashed it into the side of Anti's head.

Anti snarled, and your blood turned to ice at the sound.

It hadn't hurt him, of course. Just royally pissed him off.

But the element of surprise served its purpose. Attention diverted, his grip loosened just enough for you to wrench yourself free. His claws dragged across your skin as you pulled away, trailing angry scarlet scratches in their wake.

You stumbled back, clutching your wrist to your chest. It was seeping blood all over your lab coat.

Didn't matter. You sprinted for the door, yanking on the bell cord. Could Anti get free and come after you? You really didn't trust that he was truly contained. And you didn't want to find out.

The door slid open, heavy and slow, and the fear of death saturated every second. Pulse racing, wounds stinging, you shoved your way out the instant the gap was wide enough.

And that was it. You were safe. You were fine.

The surge of adrenaline left you shaking, but on the right side of the thick metal walls, your panic started to feel overblown.

Those scratches, though… you peeled back the sleeve of your lab coat and grimaced. Anti scratched like a feral thing indeed.

An IRIS containment team appeared within seconds, brutally efficient as ever. Two entered the room to deal with Anti's unsecured arm – and thank goodness one arm was all it was – whilst the other two remained behind. 

You tried to move into the guard station, only wanting a second to sit down and steady yourself, but they stood like a wall blocking your way. A very stone-faced, almost accusatory wall.

One spoke, with a tone that was equally as stony. "We're going to need you to come to the holding bays with us."

Chapter Text

The cell was sparse and unwelcoming. 

It was a small space, devoid of windows or natural light. The walls had been painted blue and cream to try to give them some warmth, but the colours were clinical and dull and did nothing to hide the fact they were slapped on top of bare, impersonal concrete. What furniture there was was all made of metal; an interview desk, chair, and a single spartan cot. A thin mattress and equally thin blanket comprised the bedding.

The interview wing. A holding bay for subjects.

You were a subject now.

It was just a precaution, you had been informed, although you knew better than to trust a single word out of an IRIS employee's mouth. You were one of them, after all.

Truth be told, though, you understood. The rationale was perfectly reasonable. Contact, especially such direct contact, with an anomaly could have unpredictable results, and it made complete sense to quarantine whomever had made such contact until their wellbeing could be confirmed. Or to observe as resultant symptoms manifested.

It was the prospect of the latter that worried you.

That guard at the door, before you'd entered ALTR 114209's containment chamber. His warning. He seemed to have, from his own observations as a direct witness to breach incidents, correlated close contact with… well, whatever Anti did to seemingly mess with peoples' heads. Correlation did not necessarily equate causation, but the possibility alone was chilling.

Those black nails, his very skin pigmented black at the fingers. His blood, far thicker and darker than human. If the colouration of the blood was the result of presence of the black fungal cells, was it the same for his claws? Perhaps their hardness and claw-like form was the result of an incredibly dense mycelium network there.

Wistfully, you wished you could take a clipping of his nails to analyse.

Although there were various ways that fungal cells could produce spores, being formed from the fragmentation of the mycelium was common. The mycelium – assuming that it was indeed mycelium – which had been in direct contact with your broken skin.

It wasn't enough information to draw any conclusions. There were too many assumptions. You had the observations of a single guard, and a speculative theory on a feasible mode of transmission.

But you didn't even know for certain that the fungal cells were transmissible, or spored the same way. Anti was, most likely, not entirely of this Earth, and you hadn't even had the chance to confirm if the cells shared fungal characteristics beyond structural appearance.

You had so much more research to do, and you couldn't do it stuck in here.

Yet as much as you tried to temper your racing mind, to rein your thoughts in and avoid jumping to conclusions, there was a sense of dread settled deep in the pit of your stomach.

You cradled your injured wrist. It had been cleaned and bandaged by a medic upon your arrival at the holding cell – you hadn't seen any traces of black fragments lodged in the torn flesh then. But spores were more likely to be microscopic anyhow, so not seeing their presence meant little. Your best hope was the blood flow from the wounds had washed out any contaminants with it. Or that you were simply wrong and Anti's cells didn't work like that at all.

Regardless, you needed more evidence. What if you tested your own blood for signs of infection? Or perhaps the others… the other researchers, anyone else who had been contained for showing symptoms after contact with ALTR 114209. 

If you could prove the theory of transmission, you could figure out a way to counter it. Before you lost your mind too.

A heavy, annoyed breath slipped past your parted lips. Worrying yourself into a state over some kind of potential infection wouldn't help anything. Either you were wrong, in which case there was nothing to worry about anyway, or you were right, in which case you already had enough preliminary knowledge to start engineering a counteragent.

Though, of course, you couldn't do that from a holding cell.

The more pressing question was, how much did IRIS know? Had they put two and two together the same way? If they suspected there was a directly transmissible infection that you had been exposed to, you weren't getting out of here any time soon.

But, for once, the tight-lipped division of departments and heavy redaction of information was a boon. The biological research team hadn't been told the outcomes of contact incidents; the containment and behavioural teams wouldn't know about any of the blood research findings. All streams of research were fed to higher management for analysis and to pull together a full picture, of course, but they were slow to mobilise.

If you could convince the lower level observation team that you were completely fine, maybe you could get yourself released and get back to your work. You needed to get back to your work. 

IRIS wasn't going to save your ass, after all.

It was a shame about the risk of what could happen to you if things went badly. Otherwise, as horrifying as the situation may be, it was also a fascinating opportunity. The scientist in you was thrilled to have access to direct observations of the manifestation of whatever symptoms may arise.

The dossiers had been heavily redacted, of course. But you tried to recall what had been present on the list of symptoms noted in those who had been deemed as influenced by ALTR 114209. Behavioural changes: paranoia, confusion, irrationality, aggression. Hallucinations, both auditory and visual. Dizziness, headaches. Muscle spasms, seizures.

Predominantly neurological symptoms, you noted. Interesting.

That worked in your favour. You couldn't hide obvious physical symptoms such as sickness or fever. But neurological issues, behavioural changes… you could cover that up.

All it meant was that, no matter what happened, you had to maintain your composure.

There was no indication of time in the cells. You didn't know how long it was until a member of staff came to sit down and talk to you. Probably hours.

You gave a small, disarming smile as your interviewer entered the room. Sheepish, as though embarrassed to have gotten into this situation at all, but open and cooperative. Any impatience or irritation at how long you had been waiting – even if it was completely justified – was carefully compartmentalised and hidden away.

You recognised the man, but did not know him. Chin-length brown hair with a blonde streak at the front and an inclination to flip up at the sides. Perhaps you had seen him in passing, your paths crossing briefly in the busy break room canteen.

A perfunctory greeting was offered as he sat, which you returned. He didn't give his name. For the recording, however, he stated yours, along with the date, time, and your position of employment with IRIS. Then, with no further preamble, the questioning began.

"When did you first encounter ALTR 114209?"

That required a moment of quick mental maths. "Four days ago, when I entered the containment chamber to perform a blood draw on behalf of the biochemical research department."

"Have you had any other encounters with ALTR 114209?"

"Only this morning, when a second blood draw was attempted."

"Did ALTR 114209 communicate with you during these encounters?"

This was where the balancing act began. You couldn't risk lying outright – if they suspected you were, they would start using Dr. Hodgkin's test, and then you had no hope of fooling them. Humans were easier, even if anyone carrying out the interviews was trained to be particularly perceptive.

"During the first encounter, ALTR 114209 was wearing a muzzle. During the second, he was no longer wearing the muzzle, and he spoke."

"What did he say?"

"He replied "why rush" when I informed him the process would be quick."

It was difficult to tell when the interviewer seemed to be nothing but hard stares, but his stare seemed to grow even harder. "Why did you deem it appropriate to communicate with ALTR 114209 in the first instance?"

Because you refused to let IRIS turn you into a completely heartless, dehumanising piece of shit like the higher ups wanted. "Standard protocol from my training. I was taught to inform the patient of what procedure was about to take place, how long it would take, and what discomfort they may experience."

"ALTR 114209 is not a patient."

"I followed standard protocol," you said. You let the firmness of your expression complete the sentence with an untruth you couldn't state out loud, letting the implication hang as though that was the end of it and you had not communicated any further.

"Did ALTR 114209 say anything else?"

"He asked if I thought I was clever, when he grabbed my wrist."

Hopefully, the interviewer wouldn't press and ask the question another time. You couldn't risk lying. But, even more than that, you couldn't admit to having asked ALTR 114209 for his name, nor that he had answered. That you thought of him as Anti more often than ALTR 114209, unless it was in a specifically clinical context.

Did IRIS know he called himself Anti?

In any case, it would do you no good whatsoever to be seen as being friendly with the anomaly. Or too close, in whatever capacity; friendly was not a term that applied to either Anti or your interactions.

"Have you experienced any unusual symptoms since your contact with ALTR 114209?"

A different line of questioning. Bullet dodged.

And this one you could answer truthfully and wholeheartedly. "No."

"Have you experienced any visual disturbances, seen things that are not really there, heard voices?"

"No."

"On a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, how would you rate your mental state?"

You paused for a moment, pretending to ponder. Trying to discern what the most acceptable answer would be.

"It did give me a bit of a scare when ALTR 114209 lunged at me," you admitted. "But I feel a lot better now that I've had time to calm down and know I'm safe in here. Maybe an eight."

"Have you experienced any anxiety, paranoia, or other worries?"

Your lips twisted up into a wry smile. "Only worrying about how far behind I'm going to be on my work."

Was joking good? Maybe you shouldn't joke, in case it was taken too seriously.

"Do you have any other concerns?"

"No, not really. I'm just eager to get back to helping out with the research."

There was no fabrication in that regard. With or without the pressing need to avoid consequences for yourself, you wanted to continue your work. You wanted to understand Anti.

The interviewer scrutinised you a moment longer, but seemed satisfied. Internally, you let out a sigh of relief, even though it was tinged with guilt. You didn't want to have to obfuscate the truth, and that it came so easily now to do so was not a skill you took pride in. But IRIS had taught you how to play their game, how to survive. They only had themselves to blame.

He stood, but left his clipboard on the table. Were you not finished?

Knuckles rapped against the door, then it opened to reveal another IRIS employee. Same lab coat uniform, but with the addition of a face mask and gloves. One of the medical team.

"We will need to take a look at your injuries, and then that will conclude our session."

Your stomach sank. "Of course," you said cheerily, laying your arm on the table.

This was the part you had no control over, that no amount of sweet talking could get you out of. Any sign of infection – even if it were an ordinary infection entirely unrelated to ALTR 114209 – and you were fucked.

The medic unwound the bandages. It hardly looked worth all the fuss, only a set of five vaguely crescent-shaped divots and a few faded pink scratches beneath. The wounds, to be fair, pierced deeper into your flesh than any that would have been left by normal human nails, and the edges of them were torn and jagged. But, unobscured by blood and panic, they really weren't so bad at all. Anti could have done a lot worse.

You'd half been expected to see a black taint poisoning your veins, radiating from the site of infection. But the wounds were clean and unassuming.

Disinfectant was reapplied and your wrist wrapped with a fresh bandage. Both the medic and interviewer seemed satisfied, a subtle tension bleeding from the air.

"We will be keeping you overnight for observation. However, everything seems to be in order. Barring any further developments, you should be able to return to work tomorrow."

"Heaven knows we're too low on staff to be losing more," the medic muttered, an unnecessary addition that earned a sharp look from the interviewer.

You laughed lightly. "Yeah, I feel that." 

Camaraderie. You were one of them. Not a threat; not a subject.

As perfunctory as his arrival and questioning, the interviewer ushered his colleague out and left you alone in the cell once more.

Finally, you could breathe. Except that you couldn't. Just because no one was in the room didn't mean you weren't being continually watched via the cameras. Your mask had to stay on at all times.

One moment to close your eyes and sigh, then you settled back into a carefully constructed equipoise of bored serenity.

The interview hadn't revealed any information you weren't already aware of. They were looking for symptoms of auditory and visual hallucinations, or paranoia, delusions, in the first instance. All neurological. That corroborated with what you'd already concluded about the symptoms at onset.

But, despite everything, you hadn't experienced anything out of the ordinary, and as afternoon wore into evening, you suspected all the worry and the quarantine was for nothing.

Could it really just be nothing? After the way Anti had grabbed you, after the savage, vengeful look in his eyes that said he knew exactly what he was doing? He had barely injured you, compared to what he was capable of. So what other purpose was there at play?

Your mind replayed the incident over and over, in full analytical mode. What clues could you clean, just from your interactions with him?

None, apparently.

There was little else you could do, and the excitement of the day had sapped your energy. Eventually, you simply lay down on the cot and tried to make yourself as comfortable as possible. 

The distant echo of Anti's callous, glitching laughter followed you down into sleep.

Chapter Text

There was a shadowed figure standing over your bed when you woke.

Your brain froze completely. Your breath caught, heart stuttering. It was exactly that freeze response that saved you.

The cameras were behind you; they wouldn't have captured your expression of momentary horror. And you hadn't screamed, or reacted in any discernible way. Your plausible deniability remained intact; no, no, you hadn't experienced or seen anything strange, of course not.

With a slow, deep breath, you rolled over and stretched, as if you were just waking.

The shadowy figure wavered. You watched it from the corner of your eye, trying to discern what detail you could without looking directly or acknowledging its presence. Although vaguely humanoid in shape, it seemed comprised of nebulous dark spots, as if you had simply rubbed your eyes too firmly. They danced in your vision for a few moments longer, before gradually dissipating.

Okay, then .

There was no doubt about it now. Whatever exposure or infection it was that arose from contact with Anti, you were subject to it.

But no matter what happened, you had to keep your composure. It was more imperative than ever that you got out and got back to work.

No matter what happened, you had to remember nothing you saw could harm you. Anti was contained. The rest were all neurological symptoms, just in your head. Hallucinations couldn't cause physical harm.

A merciful redirection for your attention was the breakfast that was delivered in short order. After that, another medic came to check on your arm again. No change from yesterday. 

Nothing was said of your release, and another morning of containment stretched before you.

Frustration and impatience gnawed you down to the bone, but you made what you could of the time; you planned your next move.

You didn't have the luxury of taking your time and carrying out a thorough investigation. Whatever you did from here on out needed to be targeted, needed to be clever .

"Do you think you're fuckin' clever?" Anti had asked.

Yes, actually.

So, why neurological symptoms?

Why this influence over organic beings, when so much of the prior activity surrounding ALTR 114209 had been characterised by glitches and electrical interference, perpetuated through technology? Most of that, as much as you could gather from the heavily redacted reports you'd been privy to, had ceased upon Anti's containment. Inside the Faraday cage, devoid of technology and isolated from any electrical fields, his influence was severely limited.

Yet what was the human nervous system if not its own form of bioelectric circuitry? If Anti could manipulate one, why not the other? The mechanism may well be one and the same; a form of exquisitely sensitive electrical interference, both biological and not.

That was where you wanted to start. So far, the cells you had been looking at were inert, but what would happen if you exposed them to electricity? Perhaps nothing at all, isolated away from ALTR 114209. But they had retained sufficient properties of electrical interference to prevent the use of sensitive testing machinery, so perhaps they would still react in a way that mirrored ALTR 114209's actual biological mechanisms.

Your fingers tapped against the metal furnishings. The wait was killing you. You sincerely hoped not literally.

In the meantime, you kept a careful watch over your own mind, guarded. But no other symptoms made themselves evident. It had only been first thing in the morning, on the cusp of sleeping and waking – when your mind was most suggestible, you would guess. It didn't have a solid foothold just yet.

How quickly did the symptoms progress, though? Slowly, you hoped, without Anti's direct influence.

It was only actually inside the containment chamber that the previous researchers had escalated to lethal violence – that Anti "got inside their heads," as the guard had phrased it.

Which meant that, under no circumstance, could you risk further exposure to Anti. You weren't going back in there. And, you most fervently fucking hoped, he wasn't getting out.

The Faraday cage might buy you a little time, but you still had to deal with what was already inside you.

By the time lunch had come and gone, you had a plan.

One, analyse a sample of your own blood for signs of infection, or the presence of Anti's cells.

Two, investigate how the cells reacted under the influence of an electrical field.

Three, investigate how the cells reacted under the influence of a bio electrical field.

Four, figure out what could prevent the cells from functioning and proliferating.

The first two were straightforward enough. The latter two posed far greater difficulty. It wasn't a simple matter of inoculating an agar dish with an antifungal and seeing if it prevented the cells growing; that was no guarantee it would work in vivo for topical antifungals, or work at all without oral antifungals being metabolised into their active form. 

Ideally, you needed a living subject, but the labs weren't equipped for that. Even if it were doable, it would take days, if not weeks, of applications, justifications, and ethics reports. And you weren't sure that was a route you wanted to go down regardless. The idea of infecting other living creatures with Anti's cells, when you had no idea what harm it may cause, didn't sit well. If it was the key to a scientific breakthrough, was it justified? 

Cell lines and tissue cultures could offer some insight for the time being, at least, and would be easier to get the approval for. But they would never provide the results a full systemic model could.

You already had a full systemic model. Yourself.

The problem was making sure no one else knew that; whatever you did had to be discreet, and carried out by yourself alone, which was a whole new set of limitations.

Speaking of making sure no one else knew that.

The interviewer returned at last, of course only after you had already wasted a whole day you could have been working. It was exactly the same process as before. He sat and started the recording, taking down dates, times, names.

"How are you doing today," was the opening question.

"Bored, but otherwise fine," you offered.

"When was your last encounter with ALTR 114209?"

Straight to the point, then. "Yesterday morning, to draw blood samples."

"Have you had any contact with ALTR 114209 since."

"No." The shadowy figure from first thing in the morning was only a hallucination, after all. Not Anti.

"Have you experienced any unusual symptoms, such as hearing voices, visual disturbances, seeing things that aren't really there?"

It definitely constituted that, though. 

"No," you said anyway. The first outright lie you had told. You used the exact same cadence and the exact same body language as the previous truthful 'no' - how kind of them to provide you the practice and opportunity to set a baseline standard.

"Any anxiety, paranoia, or other mental disturbances?"

"No."

"On a scale of one to ten, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest, how would you rate your mental state?"

"Still eight, I'd say." You gave a small, wry laugh. "I'm a little bored to death in here, but otherwise fine."

"Exposure levels to ALTR 114209 remain stable," the interviewer noted, for the recordings sake rather than yours.

They could tell? What technology did they have for that? Though, given your suspicions about Anti's primary method of influence being through the manipulation of electricity and electrical fields, something as simple as an EMF meter may well be sufficient to serve such a purpose. 

Noted.

Whatever you had seen upon waking hadn't caused a discernible change, it seemed. Which supported your theory that it had not truly been Anti himself, just a symptom within your own body. It certainly helped your case, your lie going undetected. 

The interviewer maintained his hard stare and skeptical expression, but that seemed to be his standard demeanour. Nonetheless, your heart was in your throat as the medic entered for a final inspection of the wounds. You were so close to getting out of this accursed confinement, you couldn't afford to mess up now.

No change. If either of the two IRIS employees were suspicious, they didn't have enough evidence to follow through on. Between the resultant paperwork and short staffing in general, it was in their favour to let you leave.

"If you experience any changes or unusual symptoms, you must report them immediately. Failure to do so is in violation of policy and will result in immediate termination of your contract and indefinite detainment until the full safety of yourself and our staff has been determined," the interviewer reeled off sternly. 

You nodded, not trusting yourself to speak in case anything in your voice gave the game away.

"Very well. You are free to go."

The relief you felt was palpable. You hoped the interviewer wrote it off as merely being glad to be out of quarantine, as anyone reasonably would be, and not because your continued sanity depended upon it.

With a carefully restrained smile, you gathered yourself and followed the interviewer out through the door. The escort lasted as far as the elevator at the end of the corridor.

"Being that you are an employee here yourself, I trust you can find your own way back to wherever you need to be?"

"I can, thank you."

And with that, you were finally, blissfully, alone and free from scrutiny.

In the safety of the elevator, you braced your hands on the railings and let your forehead thunk against the mirror. "Fuck!"

It was a relief just to be able to curse, to release some of the tension and emotional pressure built up from faking being perfect for twenty four hours straight. Of course, the elevator would have cameras too, so you couldn't have a full breakdown. Although they wouldn't be continually monitored the same way, leaving incriminating evidence anywhere was unwise.

Besides, there simply wasn't time for that. You had to get back to the labs.

You took a few moments to breathe and regather yourself, shoving back down the horror and trepidation at your situation. Fear didn't help you fix things. Getting back to work did.

The timing was, at least, in your favour. Only an hour or two left before everyone packed up for the day. That gave you time to catch your supervisor and put in an appearance, demonstrating how absolutely and completely fine you were, and express your willingness to stay late to make up for lost time.

"Where have you been?" The stern reprimand came before you'd even finished getting in the door and shrugging your lab coat on.

Annoyance flared through you. It was a power play, an assertion of dominance – of course your supervisor already knew what had happened. Protocol said she was second in line to be informed of incidents involving her research group, immediately after the emergency response and containment teams.

But you plastered on a mollifying, chagrined expression. "I was quarantined after direct contact with ALTR 114209, but they cleared me for release. I've come straight from the interview rooms. I'm sorry I couldn't make it any earlier." Pandering apologetics concluded, you had a genuine question to follow up with. "Did the blood samples I was collecting survive?"

You had, after all, rather forcibly smashed the container holding them into the side of Anti's head.

"Yes. Luckily for you, your carelessness has not set back everyone else's research."

Good. Not that you were worried either way about research deadlines and what other people were up to at this point, but you very much needed those samples for yourself.

A wince, as if the thought had only just occurred to you at the supervisor's mention of setbacks. "I realise I must be incredibly behind now – I can stay late tonight, I'll catch up," you offered eagerly.

The supervisor gave you a critical look, but the nod that followed was one of approval. That was what good little IRIS workers were supposed to do, after all, sacrifice their own time and wellbeing for the job.

"Make sure the lab is tidied and closed down properly once you are done. Your next report is still due by the end of tomorrow."

"I'll have it ready," you promised, then scooted away to your bench.

A few curious glances were cast your way, but you ignored them in favour of looking as busy as possible. Although it was far from your priority, you did want to get your report done. In case things went wrong. Putting your life in the hands of IRIS was not what you wanted to do, but if it came to it, better they knew as much as you did.

Besides which, there were far too many eyes around to begin the experiments you really needed to carry out.

There were the petri dishes you'd prepared before the incident had interrupted your plans. Those were safe enough to review in plain sight. They showed no signs of fungal growth, though that was hardly a surprise. The nutrients in the agar weren't what Anti's cells needed.

For the remainder of the time, you cracked open your lab laptop and started drafting what you could of the report. There were a lot of blank spaces for results you had yet to obtain, but you were able to jot down a hypothesis and introduction based on previous results and the theories you intended to explore.

Gradually, the other researchers drifted away. You fended off a few stray questions as people packed up and the end-of-work-day chattering and gossip started. Of course, they wanted to know what happened. A half-truth was better, to sate them and their appetite for rumour, so you simply said ALTR 114209 had scratched you and you'd been under observation, but everything was fine and it wasn't that exciting at all. You deflected and minimised with humour - "Was it scary?" "The guy in the interview department was scarier than a tiny little scratch!" - until dinner became a more interesting prospect for them.

The few colleagues trickled out, and at last you were left in the dimness of the half-lit lab with only the hum of machinery for company. It harmonised with the faint, dull buzz in the back of your brain.

Finally. It was time to get to work.

Chapter Text

The freedom allowed you to breathe a sigh of relief. You were unsupervised, with the whole lab at your disposal.

Your plan was to get the worst out of the way first, the simplest investigation but also least appealing – your own blood sample.

Taking blood from patients was routine, mostly muscle memory by this point, but having to draw your own blood was a new and uncomfortable experience. You may have been desensitised to using needles, but that didn't mean you liked it, least of all on yourself. 

The angle of it was awkward, and you could only perform the venipuncture one handed, given the other arm needed to stay still to be drawn from. It took a couple of attempts, and each time you pierced the flesh and dug around for a vein only to get nothing, your face puckered like you'd sucked on a lemon. It was so much easier doing it on someone else.

Eventually, mercifully, you got a decent blood flow. You filled three sample tubes to be safe – you were not stabbing yourself again if you could help it.

One tube you centrifuged. Anti's unique black fungal cells were dense and impenetrable, and the lab team as a whole had quickly discovered centrifuging would separate them out right to the bottom of the sample tube. The thick black layer was very distinctive.

You held your breath as you removed your own sample. Not even a hint of black.

Of course, you hadn't expected the same amount of cells as in Anti's blood, even if the spores had entered your bloodstream and begun to proliferate. But not even a hint was worrying in its own right.

The blood smear you made next showed the same results; nothing. You scoured every millimetre, repeated the smear in triplicate, but saw a grand total of zero of the cells that had been so immediately prevalent in Anti's blood smears.

You were definitely infected. You knew it, you'd started to experience the symptoms. But if the infection wasn't in the blood, where was it? 

Blood was easy to test. If the infecting cells were nesting and proliferating within another organ or system, though, there would be no way to check except through invasive biopsies. And from your hypotheses thus far, you had a sneaking, sinking suspicion you knew which system the cells would latch onto. But no way to confirm it.

Unless.

People had died whilst infected; the previous researchers. Were there autopsy results? Even if they were, would they have known what to look for, noticed anything amiss? Would IRIS have preserved the cadavers for further research? Their interdepartmental communication was poor, but they did tend to be thorough like that, at least.

That was an avenue of investigation to explore later, assuming you could apply for and even get the permission yourself to look at the cadavers. You had other experiments to be getting on with.

You restarted a few of the testing machines. It was wasteful to run them just for a single blood sample, but you wanted to get a standard panel of results – primarily looking for markers of infection, elevated C-reactive protein and the like, or any other abnormalities that could be used for diagnosis in the absence of the fungal cells themselves.

That was all you could do with your own blood samples. A little disappointing, if you were honest.

Next up, though, was returning to the cells themselves.

You'd already looked at the petri dishes you'd inoculated with cells, before your encounter with Anti and subsequent quarantine, and seen nothing. But what you hadn't risked doing whilst others were present was applying an electrical field to them.

It was a risk. You were breaking several guidelines that had been laid out regarding the research into ALTR 114209; first and foremost, never, under any circumstances, allow him access to electricity. That was regarding the entity himself, but you were quite sure the same would apply to his cells.

It was very necessary research, but the sort that IRIS would have handled by the higher level supervisors, and under strict controls. A closed circuit inside another Faraday cage, ideally. 

You didn't have that luxury, but at least you could use a closed circuit with a small battery for your initial testing.

There wasn't much call for electrical circuitry in the biochemical labs, but you managed to fish out a 9V battery and some crocodile clip leads, disused in the back of a cupboard.

Before applying a current directly to the cells, it seemed more prudent to see how they reacted in the presence of an electromagnetic field alone. Like something out of a schoolkid's science project, you wrapped a piece of wire around an iron nail and connected it up to the battery. Incredibly basic, but care was required. Baby steps.

You held the petri dish directly above the makeshift electromagnetic field generator and held your breath.

For a tense moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then small black patches of growth began to appear on the agar.

As sluggish and directionless as it seemed, the growth barely perceptible moment to moment, the fact it was visible to the naked eye at all was infinitely faster than normal cellular reproduction.

When Anti was wounded, his flesh knitted back together within seconds. It was the same method, you were certain; a rapidly multiplying mycelium network, millions of hyphae matting together near instantaneously. And it utilised electricity to do so, to source its energy.

The cells reacted to the field, but growth was patchy and hindered. Agar was not its preferred medium, it seemed. That, or the field was too weak to have much effect. Two parameters to examine, then; application of a direct current, and changing the medium. You wanted to try a saline solution, to mimic blood serum as per the cells being suspended in Anti's blood, and, out of curiosity, circuitry itself.

After all, Anti interfered with technology. Interfaced with it, hijacked it when given the opportunity. That was why the Faraday cage - completely cut off, no cameras, no communication devices, nothing - was so essential. 

But by what method did Anti exert his control? Was it purely through the manipulation of electromagnetic fields - the lackluster response to the one you had applied did not lend itself to that suggestion - or was there a more direct mechanism at play?

The lab housed a couple of old laptops, laying dusty and forgotten in the back of a cupboard after newer models had rendered them obsolete. Hopefully no one would notice if one vanished.

You cracked it open, separating out the motherboard. There was not much finesse to your work, but it hardly mattered; you weren't planning to put the laptop back together.

The petri dish experiment, underwhelming though it may have been, had at least yielded a decent colony for you to carry forward. You scraped off a small amount of the gooey black mass with an inoculating loop and smeared it onto the motherboard, then hooked it up into a circuit.

This time, the results were much more distinctive. Though the growth rate remained moderate - certainly compared to how quickly Anti himself was able to regenerate - it was the pattern that captivated you. The fungal cells followed the lines of the circuitry, moulding onto it. Becoming the circuitry, latching onto the original metal. 

What would that allow it to do? Could the cells send Anti's own electrical signals directly into the circuit, overriding it? The theoretical mechanism aligned with the previously observed results.

Biologically speaking… what if it did the exact same thing? Only instead of circuitry, it moulded itself to the human version of an electrical signalling network, the nervous system. A human's bioelectric field was not terribly strong in and of itself, which was perhaps why - at least whilst separated from Anti - the progression of the infection was relatively slow. But it was still enough for the cells to gradually spread and proliferate. 

Once enmeshed with the nervous system, with the brain , what could Anti feed it? Signals telling the brain it was seeing or hearing certain things, signals to make victims think or feel a certain way, signals to the muscles that forced the body to move against a person's will.

Fuck.

That was only a hypothesis, of course. You had no conclusive proof yet, only circumstantial evidence and extrapolation from your initial, simplistic observations. Such temperance was little reassurance, and failed to ease the dread gnawing in your stomach.

Theoretically, he could do all of that to you.

Your hands were shaking as you disconnected the motherboard. You stared at it for too long, realising you had created a further problem for yourself.

How did you kill the cells? You couldn't just leave the thing lying around; it was a biohazard at best, not to mention a hazard for getting you caught.

Besides. There was more you could do with it yet. The fusion of fungal cell and circuitry warranted a closer examination. 

Returning to the simplest of methods, yet one that had served you well thus far, you slid the infected motherboard beneath a microscope. It took some adjustment and the acquisition of some extra LED ring lamps, but you managed to get the lighting decent enough to see clearly. And when you did, the level of cellular organisation was breathtaking.

The very first time you had looked at Anti's blood slides, a thought had jumped out at you. You'd seen the shape of those black cells and been confused, wondering what a neural cell was doing in the blood. Since the discovery of their fungal properties, you'd not thought of it again. Now, though, you began to rethink your entire hypothesis.

The cells in the blood were immature. The ones on the circuit, grown into a mature and active form with the application of electricity, much more closely resembled a fully fledged neuron; the cell body was replete with dendrites, and what you had thought to be a fungal hyphae had developed into something more akin to an axon with mature synaptic terminals. Yet they were far denser than human neural tissue, and you certainly could not entirely discount their fungal properties and the way they interlinked, matting as mycelium would, either.

It was both. Neural cells and fungal, hybridised like nothing you'd ever seen before. As though neural tissue had evolved to be exquisitely resilient and multifunctional, or what had started as fungus had evolved powerful signalling functions that simply happened to resemble neurons through convergent evolution. You couldn't possibly guess which way round it was, nor did it particularly matter.

But the possibilities. No wonder IRIS wanted Anti studied.

What signals would the cells send? Presumably, when they were not isolated, Anti could exert control over all of them, using the manipulation of electromagnetic fields to jump the signal even between cells that weren't physically connected. A gigantic fungal neural network. A hybridisation of cell types that allowed them to interface between biological matter and technology both.

Whilst they were isolated, though, what became of them? They clearly retained some functionality, given they grew following the flow of the electric current through the circuit. If you were to hook the motherboard back up to the laptop, what would you see? You almost wished you had planned to reconnect it from the start and prepared accordingly.

It would probably only give rise to meaningless remnants, like muscles twitching even after the animal they belong to has deceased. Just senseless static.

Just a buzzing in your head, just echoes, just formless shadows in the corners of your eyes.

But it wasn’t control . Anti couldn’t seep his control into you from such a thing.

Right?

Even so, to reconnect the motherboard was a potentially monumentally dangerous idea. And a moot point, since you didn’t know how; you'd studied biochemistry, not computer engineering.

One last test, then. You were thrumming from the discoveries you’d already made and their potential applications - imagine, organic circuitry consisting of neural-fungal hybrid cells - and emboldened to push the boundaries of science further.

More.

Just a little more power this time. The cells wanted more.

A saline solution, imbued with another scraping of the cell culture from the petri dish. You mixed them thoroughly into the solution in a beaker until they were separated, individual cells microscopic and invisible to the naked eye. For this experiment, you wanted to see what would happen when a current was applied through them as a liquid, mimicking the cells in serum. 

The setup was no different from any other electrolysis. And for the power source, a car battery, the largest thing you could possibly dig out short of connecting it to the mains.

Why don't you connect it to the mains?

You frowned. Well, no. Because electrolysis required a direct current and the mains were alternating. 

Dismissing the irrational impulse, you proceeded to set up the electrodes in the solution, connecting up the circuit. Breath held tight in your chest and eyes fixated on the beaker, you flipped on the power.

There was a sharp crackle through the air. The liquid quivered, ripples forming on the surface. The cells must have replicated rapidly, black solid precipitating out of the solution at a remarkable rate. 

It did not remain a mere precipitate. The cells organised, aligning between cathode and anode in thin strings. Until they weren't thin anymore at all, but wound together into a new cohesive structure; the fibres of a muscle, or so they resembled. 

That was what it was. Incredible… out of nothing, out of a miniscule amount of cells in a liquid suspension, an entire isolated muscle system had formed within seconds. 

You were staring at it too long. The sight was captivating, how could you not? Yet there was something more to it than that; something that wanted to draw you closer to it, something magnetic. 

The fungal cords, mycelium fibres in a muscle-like arrangement, were in constant motion. Growing, rippling, changing again. A thick knot grew in the middle and you couldn't work out its purpose, disrupting an otherwise exquisitely organised and functional arrangement. It whorled, smoothed, then cracked open.

A lurid, neon green eye stared directly at you, and you couldn't move.

The cells practically exploded with growth, the would-be muscle flexing enough to shatter the glass of the beaker and spill across the bench. The black mass completely encased the electrodes and then started reaching out like tendrils towards the nearest mains outlet. 

Shock and horror were enough to break the spell. You lunged for the battery, yanking the crocodile clips off it. You banged your elbow and knee violently against the bench, but there was no time to give a shit about that.

They were only cells, fungal formations, they couldn't express anything, but you could swear they radiated malice and fury and you ripped the battery out of their reach, throwing it bodily across the lab in your panic. Like a silent shriek, an electromagnetic pulse ripped through the lab - you could feel it in your bones, a stabbing, static pressure.

The lights flickered violently, LED tubes burst, and the lab plunged into darkness.

Chapter Text

The silence was deafening.

After the shattering and sparking, the sudden deathly quiet was jarring. All of the machines in the lab had gone dead; no more computers, no more fridges, no more incubators. You hadn't realised how comforting the steady background hum was until it was gone.

Instead, there was only your ragged breaths and the thunderous, racing pound of your heartbeat.

Shit.

What the hell had you been expecting? What the hell had possessed you to think that connecting the electricity-consuming glitch entity's cells up to that much power had been a good idea? Even if it was just a battery, you'd gone for one large enough to power a car. In hindsight, it was so glaringly obvious.

Your blood ran cold. What had possessed you indeed… was that Anti? Even locked away as he was, could he have that level of subtle influence? Just a tiny nudge here, a little encouragement there, pushing your curiosity and the high of discovery to take you further than was safe.

Legs shaking and hands trembling from the shock and rush of panic, you sank to your knees on the lab floor. Emergency lights had come on, bathing the lab in a faint, sickly green glow that only reminded you all the more of Anti, of that eye that had grown from the cells to stare at you. Had he seen you himself in that moment?

There was a faint buzzing in your head, fraying down your nerves.

Get it together . You had to fix this mess.

What was the damage? The battery first – you tracked it down to where you'd tossed it. It had skidded across the floor and thunked to a stop beneath one of the benches. With bated breath, you turned it over in your hands, carefully inspecting every millimetre beneath the torch of your mobile phone. No trace of black fungal cells. They hadn't made it far enough to latch onto the battery, thank fuck.

Spatters of black tracked across the floor, dribbling down the edge of the bench you'd been using. All of them were inert. There was no resemblance to the functional system you'd seen before, nor the horrifying sense of sentience that had pervaded around it.

The wiring and crocodile clips were coated in the cellular gunk, but disconnected from the power, they were not a threat.

More by luck than foresight, you'd performed the experiment far enough away from the power outlets at the wall that the cells hadn't reached the mains. They had certainly tried–the EMF burst had catapulted black cellular mass in all directions, presumably with the intent to launch itself violently into an unlimited source of power. Draw in all the energy from the battery, then expend it with that one aim.

And what would have happened if the cells had reached the mains? 

The fungal growth could have continued exponentially – in theory. In practice, was it self-limiting? Would it have created a whole new body for Anti? Could he escape his confinement by building a new form out of the cells and transferring his consciousness to it?

Fucking hell. Just like that, you could have unleashed him.

Well, maybe. You didn't know for certain, after all. Perhaps it was an extrapolation too far to assume that much was within his capacity. Anti's influence was isolated, direct electrical signalling wasn't – shouldn't be, couldn't be – possible. The cells themselves might have residual signalling capacity, but without full consciousness. Like a chicken continuing to run around after its head was cut off. 

Yet the way that eye had looked at you…

It was chilling. All of this. You were in too deep. As burning as your curiosity was, as fascinating as Anti might be as an entity, it was so blatantly dangerous, and you were in the direct line of fire.

So, back to the more pressing concern, and one you had to deal with immediately–how did you destroy these goddamn cells. They were a biohazard.

Well. Logically, what did one do with the biohazards? What would you have done with the petri dish after you were finished with it, had the cells not undergone such extreme growth? 

Autoclave, obviously.

The lab was still dim, and you cursed as you knocked your knee against the shadow of a desk that you misjudged. You'd already bruised it whilst throwing yourself at the battery. 

There was an old autoclave in the same dusty old cupboard of disused equipment where you'd dug out the laptop you'd taken apart, a manual one that closer resembled a pressure cooker than the fancy machines the main lab was decked out with now. 

The power was an issue. Were the lights and machines all broken, or had the surge simply tripped a fuse? Had no one noticed? You were certain IRIS had all sorts of cameras and controls to keep an eye on that sort of thing, if anything tripped the system, it should sound an alarm.

Maybe no one would check. Maybe they'd just think it was a breaker issue and reset the power. But you couldn't be certain of it.

Which didn't give you much time.

Gloves on, blue roll, biohazard bag, disinfectant. It didn't feel anywhere near sufficient, but at least you were making an attempt. By the faint green glow of the emergency lighting and the torch on your phone, you scraped up all you could and sprayed down the surfaces that had been affected. Without electricity, the cells were powerless and inert, right? So even if you missed some microscopic sections, they shouldn't pose a threat.

You hoped you weren't just kidding yourself to absolve the guilt of potentially exposing others to infection.

The hairs on the back of your neck stood on end; the longer you worked, the more the sensation of being watched grew. With the power out, any cameras in the lab should be down. And whatever vague sense of sentience you had felt from the cells had died along with their connection to the battery. Yet you couldn't shake the feeling.

Maybe it was just another neurological symptom. You couldn't trust your own mind anymore.

Every single second you expected the containment team to burst in and drag you back to the holding cells. If you went back, you were certain you wouldn't be getting out again.

The fact there was nothing , no security, no alarms, no power returning, was almost more disconcerting. As if the facility was holding its breath, waiting for you.

You tidied up as best as you could. Plastic shards from the shattered light casings went in the bin; everything else was biohazard, stuffed in bags in the autoclave. The old autoclave was still a little large and unwieldy, but it was one that you could carry, squirrel away to somewhere the power still worked. Hopefully. As long as the power for the entire facility hadn't gone down…

It hadn't. The second you snuck out of the lab, that much was obvious. Everything else was fine.

A weight lifted off your chest. You'd barely been aware of it, narrowing your focus to just cleaning up as quickly as possible and hyperaware of the threat of detection, but the possibility of having truly unleashed Anti, taking out the power to the whole centre and getting who knew how many people killed, had hung like a guillotine over your conscience.

The corridors were brightly lit, clinically pristine, and free of any alarms sounding. As late as it was – or early, by this point, having past three in the morning some time ago – they were also blessedly free of any signs of life.

There was no escaping the fact that you would be on the cameras. There was no escaping the fact that, even if you'd cleaned up everything you could, it would be extremely obvious something had happened in the lab, and you were the last person there. It would take divine intervention for there to not be blatant evidence pointing back to you.

The walk back to your room felt like a death march. Instinct wanted you to lapse into a furtive scurry, but you forced your head high, letting your hurried steps become the irate self-assurance of someone who owned the place and had a great deal of important work to be getting on with, the sort that kept them up past 3am with its urgency. Walk around with enough confidence and a lab coat on and people would simply assume you were on official business.

With your laptop tucked beneath your arm and the autoclave clutched between both hands, you made it back to your room without incident. At the single security checkpoint you passed the guard took stock of your ID badge and harried expression and waved you through without question.

You slammed the door to your room harder than you'd meant too, then slumped against it. 

Come morning, you fully expected for your door to be kicked in and for the containment team to drag you away. Because you'd been careless, because you'd been stupid . Because you'd followed that little voice in your head without question.

Well, at least you could autoclave the fungal mass. There was a vicious satisfaction in that. It didn't have quite the same dramatic flair as setting them on fire, but knowing they would be destroyed in a pressurised can of unsurvivable heat was good enough.

You prepped the autoclave and left it to steam and hiss in the corner of your room whilst you settled at the desk with your laptop. It still turned on, thank fuck. It had shut down with the EMF blast back in the lab, but didn't seem to have sustained any damage, unlike the lights.

The report was going to have to be your last gift to IRIS and the world. It was exactly the situation you had dreaded, being thrown into quarantine, becoming a test subject, at the mercy of IRIS to figure out how to fix this and not just poke and prod at you whilst you became host for some violent, malicious, sentient alien fungus taking over your brain.

A choked laugh forced its way up your throat. It sounded so fucking ridiculous. It was stupid and awful and you were already tired out of your mind, but you had to finish writing up everything you knew in case one tiny little detail directed the researchers who would take up the work after you to a breakthrough.

Focus.

God, but it was difficult to focus. You were physically and emotionally exhausted, and your mind felt like static. Was it just because of how tired you were, or were there fungal cells infesting your body and sending junk electrical signalling through your nerves? Probably both, one feeding into the latter.

You hesitated. You didn't want to admit to the infection; that route was like handing yourself over on a silver platter to become a test subject. But the firsthand experience and direct observations you had already made were invaluable.

Maybe two reports. The first you would submit to your supervisor as usual, leaving out the most incriminating components, and the second would be the complete version with no detail omitted. You could upload it, locked behind a password, and if it came to the worst and you were quarantined indefinitely, you could provide the details on how to find it then.

What a fucking mess, though.

You rubbed your eyes. The hours of typing had bled night into morning, and you didn't dare leave your room to even get a coffee. It was suffocating. The room, the exhaustion, the threat hanging over your head. Despite it all – or perhaps because of – you kept dozing then jolting awake.

The screen started to glitch. You thought it was your eyes at first, blurry with sleep, but no. The display crackled into static and glitched lines.

No. Goddamnit!

You'd almost finished with the second version of the report. Fuck being scared of Anti, if he lost you all the work you'd spent so much effort on, you were just going to be pissed . And you'd have to type up this incident to add on too, which was even more work.

Your lips pressed into a thin, determined line. Anti laughed.

The echo of it seemed so real, as if he was standing right behind you, all around you. But he wasn't. He couldn't be.

There was something , though. A dark form in the corner, crackling as though it too were glitching. Similar to the shadowy being you'd seen waking up in the interview room before, but this had greater form, and only solidified further.

Anti himself stepped into your room, bare feet slowly descending to the carpet. He had a viciously sharp knife in his hand and an equally sharp grin.

Fear crushed your heart like a vice. No. No.

You'd sensed him coming, all the signs had pointed towards it. It was no surprise. Nor was it the first time you'd seen him in the flesh. But to have him here , so easily, so convincingly, made you feel as though your whole body had been dunked in ice cold water.

You weren't giving in so easily.

"You're not actually here," you informed him, even though your voice quivered on the words.

Neurological symptoms. Hallucinations. Anti was contained; all of this, whatever may happen, it was just in your head. False signalling.

His smile widened as he slowly stalked towards you, step by step. "Yeah? You gonna stake your life on that?" he drawled.

Frankly, you were too frozen to run anyway, and where would you have gone? "Yes."

He was close enough to touch. You could smell him, mould and the metallic tang of blood. Every detail, from the unwashed strands of hair that fell around his face, the frayed hemline of his shirt, the viscera crusted into tight black jeans that almost but didn't quite hide the stains. 

There was no rush. He had you cornered, why not take his time to savour messing with you?

His tongue flicked across his teeth, lurid green eyes narrowing. The knife raised, and you tensed as the cool metal stroked your cheek.

It's not real, he's not real, this is a hallucination. Hold your ground.

Anti's heartless chuckle raised the hair on the back of your neck. Cold turned to burning as the knife lanced a thin trail through your skin. Blood welled up, you could feel the wet sensation of it dripping down your jaw.

Instinct screamed. Your heart was racing, breaths shallow and terrified. You could tell yourself it wasn't real all you liked, but convincing your body was another matter entirely.

You clenched your jaw and your eyes shut.

"Oh, aren't you a fun one . Go on, then. Resist. It'll make it so much more satisfying when I fuckin' break your pretty mind."

It was a hallucination, you'd only be flailing against thin air if you tried, but by god you wanted to knee him in the nuts so bad.

And then, just like that, the spell was broken. You jolted awake, just as you had several times before, heart racing a million miles an hour.

Shit.

A dream. Not even a hallucination, not quite. You'd just dozed off, straddling the border of sleep and wakefulness. Of course that was it. The same state as when you'd glimpsed the shadowy figure before.

With trembling hands, you touched your cheek. No split skin, no blood. 

It wasn't real. 

Okay. So. Being exhausted was a terrible idea. As long as you were fully rested and fully alert, it seemed the infecting cells had a hard time overriding your normal brain function. But the more tired you were, the more susceptible you were.

There was one clear and immediate solution. You were done for the night. 

Fuck adding more detail to the report, fuck Anti, fuck his stupid cells. You uploaded what you had, and then slammed the laptop lid closed with more force than you had intended.

You were still shaking.

You crawled into bed and pulled the covers over your head, as if you could possibly escape from it all, laying there and waiting for your heart to stop racing enough for you to fall asleep properly. You desperately needed to get what rest you could. 

Despite the twin threats of both Anti and IRIS, either capable of subjecting you to unspeakable torments, you were exhausted and completely burnt out from the crash that came after so many adrenaline surges in a single night. Sleep – true sleep, deep enough to be unburdened by Anti’s malicious smile and glitching laugh – came mercifully swift.

Chapter Text

You woke up to a quiet afternoon.

Not an unsettling quiet, not in the sense that anything was wrong. In fact, it seemed downright ordinary. The facility hummed with all the usual lights, electronics, showers, snack machines and other bits and pieces that filled the residential quarters. No one had come knocking on or broken down your door. Even your phone was free of any messages demanding to know where you were.

You checked the date, mentally doing a double take. It definitely wasn't your day off. Normally your supervisor would have been all over your case for being even five minutes late, never mind over five hours. And after the state the lab had been left in…

Having been so ready for things to blow up in your face, the fact they hadn't was almost worrying in itself.

Nothing was out of place. Except–

It was almost a relief to spot the envelope on the floor. It had been slid under your door, sealed and official looking.

Good. You would rather know what level of shit you were in than be left floundering in uncertainty. And the letter was a far more gentle reception than you could have hoped for.

Maybe it was a notice of termination of your contract. Summons to return to the holding cells for more interviews and to be quarantined for good. 

Those things you had anticipated. A direct request to see the Director of the entirety of IRIS hadn't even crossed your mind.

What?

The letter was short and to the point.

“Your presence is expected in the Director's office at 15:45 sharp ,” it read. “ All other obligations for the day have been cancelled and the relevant staff informed.”

Well, that explained why your phone hadn't been blowing up over your absence.

There followed a short paragraph of directions of how to get to the office in question – which was just as well, because it was tucked away in a high security managerial wing of the facility that you barely knew existed, and had certainly never been to. Your keycard had been granted the required clearance to allow you access, the letter informed you.

And you had just under two hours to get ready.

Ready for what , exactly. What did the Director want with you? If you were just to be disposed of, or locked away to become a test subject, the containment teams would have been best to deal with that. You doubted the Director himself would get his hands dirty.

The low level knot of dread in your stomach was becoming a constant companion. Anti was already enough for you to deal with, you didn't need this as well.

What kind of man was the director of IRIS? Or woman, you supposed, you didn't even know that much. There was no name attached to the position, just the ominously capitalised moniker and the signature on the letter, "–D". An initial, or did it just stand for Director again? Probably the latter, you dismissed. It hardly made a difference either way.

IRIS was, you'd learnt too late after signing your soul away to work for them, not exactly the most morally upstanding company. Secretive, and serving self-interest over the good of its employees or the public. To what ends that self-interest leant, you couldn't fathom. Money? Power? Those were the usual culprits. 

Not that it was anything unusual . It wouldn't have mattered where you found employment, you'd probably be dealing with that. The only difference was the scale of the risks involved – working back to back closing and opening shifts at a fast food joint sucked, but being tossed carelessly at dangerous entities would get you killed. 

You rubbed your hand across your face and left the letter on your desk. Whatever. There was no way of fathoming what the Director wanted with you, and you'd only drive yourself insane trying to guess.

The more pressing concern was showering, getting dressed, and finding enough time to drag yourself to the cafeteria for some food and the thick, dirty brown swill that passed for coffee. At the very least, you ought to be awake and on time for your own execution.

You'd been so distracted by the new development of your summons that you'd barely thought about Anti. The thought didn't occur to you until you looked in the mirror, checking your cheek once more. Although it had felt so real at the time, there wasn't a mark on you, and after a good night's sleep the entire encounter seemed hazy and dream-like. Because that was all it had ever been, you supposed.

Anti's presence felt weak again. Perhaps your theory of the fungal cells only being able to interfere meaningfully when your own brain function was struggling held water. Had you not known and analysed yourself with the honed precision of a researcher who knew exactly what they were looking for, you may never have noticed anything amiss at all.

There was the slightest, slightest sensation, a faint itch down your spine and at the base of your skull. No more than as if a single strand of hair was brushing against your skin; under any other circumstances, you probably would have dismissed it as merely that.

Under the actual circumstances, it made you imagine black threads of fungal cells weaving through your nervous system, binding to it the same way they had bound to the circuit board. Chewing through your spine and into your brain like a parasite.

Fuck. How much time did you have?

You checked the scratches on your wrist as well whilst you showered – you had to change the bandage anyway, simply to stop it getting sopping wet. There was still no sign of anything wrong there. A little red and raw, but nothing out of the ordinary. You could have simply been scratched by a cat, for all anyone else knew.

How insidious. There were no outward signs of infection at all. To an outside observer, it would appear you simply started losing your mind.

Is that what happened to the others? The researchers? And who knew how many others before them; the redacted reports had not been terribly forthcoming in that regard.

You needed more data. As morbid as it was, you needed access to the corpses, if they had been kept and preserved. The autopsy report, at least, though whether whoever carried it out would have known what to look for or noted any anomalies was uncertain. And even if you did get it, you needed a version that wasn't redacted. 

If such a thing as a non-redacted report even existed within IRIS , you thought with a twist of bitter irony.

It was better to keep focused on that side of things. Reports, data, investigations, experiments. Discovery, mystery, a puzzle to piece together. Facts. Hard science. You could keep yourself grounded with those.

Emotions served only as a hindrance, nothing but fear and panic that would cloud your judgement. So you buried it all, years of practice easing the way.

You finished your shower, dried off, and dressed. There was time enough for coffee. Maybe some food, if you could manage it. You were simultaneously hungry yet not, your stomach too knotted up with anxiety to feel like eating. The coffee you hardly felt like having either, but it was more about the habit, the force of familiarity. Something so mundane that it made it feel less like your world was about to implode in on you.

Was it safe to go to the cafeteria? You didn't think you were going to get jumped by the containment team. You had your summons, and the letter had stated all the relevant staff had been informed. What about the non-relevant staff? The other researchers from the lab? 

Oh well. If they made any sort of comment, you could just say it was confidential, act like you were working on something top secret. That was adjacent to the truth.

You frowned. If they asked about the state of the lab, though…

It was confidential. You weren't at liberty to talk about it.

Besides, you wanted to know. What had become of it all? You'd tried to clean up, but the lights had shattered and there was nothing you could do about that. Surely that would have raised a few eyebrows. What were they thinking? What was the damage?

Call it a reconnaissance mission.

It should be quiet in the cafeteria; you'd missed even the tail end of lunch rush. Maybe there would be a few people around getting another coffee (their fifth of the day, knowing the usual employee habits) trying to prop themselves up during the mid-afternoon slump. There was always someone around getting a coffee.

The residential hallways were quiet in the middle of the workday. Once you got into the domain of labs and offices, however, the activity picked up.

Nothing out of the ordinary, at least on the surface. God, you were so on edge.

Coffee. Save me, coffee.

In the cafeteria, employees drifted in and out, coalescing into small groups before dispersing again. You overheard the usual disparaging complaints about workload, hours, deadlines, things not getting done on time, lack of communication between departments. Nothing in anyone's tone indicated anything out of the ordinary had occurred.

They were all from different areas, though. The cafeteria was the one melting pot of all IRIS's departments; the lab staff, physicists, engineers, R&D, security, containment, archival, admin, even the appearance of various strands management was not unheard of. You needed to locate someone from your labs specifically.

There. 

One thing you had learned very quickly at IRIS was to keep your head down and mouth closed, and avoid forming associations that could be used against you or get you in trouble. The flip side was that you had no one to call on when you could use the help.

Still. You recognised someone; same lab, you'd chatted on occasion. Shallow, generalised work talk, but that was all you needed. 

You sidled up to them and started making your coffee, offering a nod of recognition and small, hopefully inviting smile.

"How's everything going?"

A lighthearted groan and laugh. "Same as ever. You're lucky you've got the day off."

In another scenario, another lifetime, maybe you could have been friends. You couldn't even remember their name, but they had always seemed chill. Especially for someone at IRIS. They had piercings and tattoos and cropped hair, in defiance of various professional appearance clauses ("who the fuck is going to see when we're in the labs anyway"), and a warmth that hadn't been exhausted out of them yet.

But the response confounded you. Same as ever? Last night had most certainly not been the same as ever. Surely they would have mentioned something so notable such as the lights being broken.

You mirrored their laugh. "Tell me about it. I'm glad I didn't have to go in and face the dragon today… I was working late last night, it was 3am before I got away. I was so tired I can't even remember if I closed up the lab properly, and you know how she gets. Was anything out of place…?"

"Nah, you're all good. We would have heard her huffing and puffing about it otherwise!"

What the fuck. You weren't all good at all, actually. How the hell was nothing out of place? That didn't make any sense, that wasn't possible. Unless the entire thing had been a hallucination—

No. It couldn't have been. Could it?

Was everything you'd seen and experienced been a lie?

Your colleague gave a small tilt of their head. "Everything okay? I thought that would have been a relief if you were worrying about it."

"Oh." Shit. You were being careless. "Yeah, well, that's one worry down! The next worry is my meeting – I'm only off from the labs to do other work, I have to go see some management people next."

They gave a sympathetic wince. "Oof. Good luck with that." 

They lifted their coffee and gave a jaunty mock salute with it, leaving you with a friendly grin as they headed off back to work. You stared down into your coffee.

What the fuck.

The new information had you more disturbed than Anti's appearance last night. At least you knew that was just a hallucination, a nightmare in your half-waking state. But if the entire incident in the lab had been a hallucination, just how deep and subtle was Anti's influence?

It didn't make sense, though. The autoclave was in your room, and in it, the melted amalgamation of petri dish, blue roll, and – hopefully thoroughly dead – black fungal mass. That was real. 

Unless even that was part of the hallucination, deeply persistent and alarmingly coherent…

Could Anti do that? His influence hadn't been that pervasive. And it was too subtle, too clever. Nudging you to get the cells close to the mains, sure. But convincing you the cells were there when they never were? What purpose would that serve?

It just didn't feel right. You were starting to notice when that little buzz in the back of your head was present, a strange, static pressure that would have been imperceptible if you didn't know. 

But you did know. As long as you were paying attention, you knew – or at least could tell after the fact – when Anti's cellular signalling was starting to interfere. And that hadn't been the case throughout most of the time in the lab, or when you had woken earlier.

If it wasn't Anti, what the hell was going on?

The coffee was sludgy and settled like tar in your stomach. Even the familiarity of the ritual didn't assuage your nerves.

There was no time to figure it out. You had to get to your meeting with the Director, which was a whole can of worms in itself.

You clutched your cheap paper coffee cup like a lifeline in one hand, and the letter with its directions in the other. Although you had dressed your best, you still felt out of place as you wound your way into the warren of offices. 

Amongst powersuits and pressed shirts, your "I found this in a thrift store and have been wearing it for ten years since because I can't afford anything better" felt like it stood out like a sore thumb. You got a few curious glances, some disdainful, but not outright hostile. 

The amount of times you had to swipe your ID card was excessive, but every time it let you through without so much as a second beep of hesitation.

The elevator in this area was a world away from the one around the holding and containment areas and the labs. Instead of burnished grey steel, cold and efficient and stark in its minimalism, this elevator felt like stepping back in time. Rich wood panelling lined the walls, the railings were gold-plated and decoratively wrought, the carpet was a deep plum and plush. The final floor you stepped out onto carried a similar atmosphere.

It actually had character , which was a surprise. The managerial area you had passed through before had been well-designed, a lot of thought and money put into it, but still commercial in that inoffensively bland, corporate way. The Director's office – or, rather, the whole suite, that appeared to consist of its own small reception and sitting room as well as whatever other rooms lay beyond the doors further down the corridor – could have been lifted from the previous century. 

There was an understated elegance to it. Not showing off, not ostentatious, not playing pretend as a show of wealth. It felt authentic; perhaps it was original from when IRIS was established, though exceptionally well-maintained for it. 

You were paying too much attention to the decor, distracting yourself from the matter at hand. Procrastinating on having to go up to the Director's office and knock. (Despite the reception desk, no one was manning it, which was unfortunate. Having someone else to disturb the Director in your stead and offer an introduction would have been at least slightly less nervewracking.)

The clock on your phone counted down to the minute. 15:45 exactly. You knocked.

"Come in," a smooth male voice cued.

With a deep breath held tight in your chest, you pushed the door open. Inside, the room was dingy, curtains pulled shut and a low, warm lamp the only source of illumination. The light fell mostly on your side of the room, with the Director sitting shadowed on the other side of a grand desk.

He seemed too young and handsome to be the Director of a company like IRIS, was your first thought. Early thirties, you would have guessed. A well-tailored suit, facial hair neatly cropped, high cheekbones and a strong jaw, dark hair slicked back. His expression was inscrutable, eyes deep and too vast for his face.

Something was off about him. You couldn't place it; all you could see appeared ordinary. But your spine crawled. 

Was it your own intuition? Or, the thought occurred to you, Anti's cells. It was quite a leap in logic, you couldn't be certain of that at all. How unscientific. Not even a shred of evidence. Yet somehow it felt like that little thread of static hissed and spit in the Director's presence.

And then it stopped.

The room seemed to hold its breath, calm but eerily so, a chill in the air. The Director tilted his head.

"Please, take a seat."

Chapter Text

You sat. Hidden beneath the desk, your fingertips rapped nervously against your knee.

"How are you faring," the man asked. Bland pleasantries, offered in a tone that cared little for the answer.

"Well enough," you said.

There was the slightest hint of an ironic twist to his lips, a primordial sardonic smile. "Quite a remarkable feat, given you have earned yourself Anti's attentions."

Your blood ran cold. Oh, he knew. He knew everything . 

That was your first thought. After the initial flood of horror, a second realisation hit; he had called ALTR 114209 Anti. That information had never seemed pertinent to share, so in all the reports you had written, you had continued to refer to the anomaly as ALTR 114029, as per protocol.

"How do you know that name?"

Stupid question. You'd just confirmed that you knew the name. But the Director probably already knew that much. Were there somehow cameras in the Faraday cage after all? Did IRIS have some kind of technology that could read your mind? Or, you supposed, the other option was simply…

"I have the misfortune of being familiar with that particular entity."

Right. Of course. That made more sense. Though, as far as you knew, this was the first time IRIS had ever managed to contain Anti, or had much in the way of direct contact. Nothing in the reports had indicated previous documentation or cases surrounding him. But it could simply have been restricted information; that would hardly surprise you.

"That's what this is about, right? Anti?"

The Director stood, turning away from you to retreat into a corner where there was a French press and a pair of mugs set out. "Can I get you a coffee?"

You didn't like the idea of taking anything consumable from the man. It could be poisoned. Or laced with a truth serum, or something to knock you out and then you'd wake up on an operating table. 

No. That was a foolish thought. You were being dramatic, letting paranoia leech too deep into your bones. Under the circumstances, it was an understandable response, but not a particularly helpful one.

"No, thank you. I had one just on the way here." That was true enough.

He nodded an acquiesce, perfectly reasonable. A long moment of silence hung between you, in which every drip of the French press and every clink of teaspoon against mug was clearly audible.

"What about you?" you eventually asked, daring to break the tension. "What's your name?"

It felt vulnerable, somehow, not even knowing that much. Just calling him 'The Director' was too anonymous and foreboding.

He didn't answer until he returned to his desk, carefully placing a freshly made coffee beside him. He proceeded to not touch it at all.

"If you must, you may call me Damien."

There was too much of a pause before he said the name, like it was rusty on his tongue, ill-fitting. That wasn't his name at all, you were quite certain.

You hated how superficially polite and amiable he was being. What did he want? With you, with IRIS. 

"Why am I here?" you asked bluntly, sliding the letter onto the desk. "You summoned me specifically, and you obviously know I've had contact with Anti. Why am I in your office and not back in quarantine or containment?"

Damien folded his hands on the desk, watching you impassively. "Because you have made more progress in a handful of days than the entire department would in months. By unorthodox and unauthorised means, of course, which cannot be publicly condoned. We have established protocols for a reason, and to allow them so flagrantly disregarded sets a dangerous precedent that I will not allow." He paused for a beat. "That is why you will work directly for me."

You stared at him, trying to pick just one thought out of the tumult in your brain. "How would you even know what progress I've made?"

He gave a small huff of a laugh, and pulled out a slim folder of papers from amongst the much larger stacks that arrayed his desk. It was immediately familiar to you; Damien placed the papers in front of you, and you saw every single report you had written amongst them. Including the encrypted one, printed out and plain as day.

Shit. So much for that.

"I have been monitoring you very closely since your encounter with Anti. I could not be certain of his level of influence, and it would not do to have him let loose in the facility for a second time. He is growing quite impatient with his confinement."

 "You've been watching me. This whole time."

His gaze grew stern, and you felt the temperature in the room drop a few degrees. "You are lucky I have use of you. Your utterly careless indiscretions in the lab last night were grounds for termination thrice over."

You winced. But if you pushed past the harshness of his tone, there was an implication that caught your curiosity. Everything that had been failing to add up might finally make sense; this was the puzzle piece you had been missing. 

"You were involved in that?"

"In cleaning up your mess? Yes. I diverted the cameras and prevented the alarms sounding, and arranged discrete clean up of the damage. I suppressed the potency of the cells' activity to prevent matters escalating."

So that was it. And when you had felt that you were being watched last night… 

Everything was falling into place, and you didn't like it at all.

"What the hell do you mean you suppressed the potency of the cells? You have the technology available to do that already?"

Annoyance flashed across the man's face. "It is not a 'technology', nor something that can be replicated. It is no concern of yours."

You took a deep breath. You did not like the situation you were in one bit, but if you wanted to figure out how Anti's cells functioned and cure yourself, you had to take advantage of whatever leverage you had. 

"It is my concern. If you want me to personally spearhead your research, I need access to everything you know," you said pointedly.

"You will be granted full access to the unredacted files on ALTR 114209. Is there anything further you require regarding experimentation?"

Did he think you were stupid, that you wouldn't notice him blatantly not answering your actual question? Knowing that the cells could be suppressed was crucial. 

If it were not a technology, and not something that could be replicated, that inferred it was something only 'Damien' had the capacity to do. You couldn't imagine such an ability would be within the means of an ordinary human. 

Which implied he was… what, exactly?

IRIS, the organisation established with the intention of studying and containing anomalous entities, for the supposed protection and betterment of humankind, being run by a man who may well have been some kind of anomalous entity himself. 

You couldn't pretend you were entirely shocked if that were the case. It was obvious something was sketchy about the whole setup. But the question remained, what exactly were you dealing with here?

When you'd first entered the room, there had been that deep sense of discomfort. Perhaps intuitive, but perhaps also a reaction of Anti's cells. They really hadn't liked Damien. And then, like a chill wave washing through you, the feeling had been silenced. Anti's cells, suppressed.

If that were the case, Damien could help you immensely. He could completely stop Anti's influence, just like that. He could buy you the time you needed. If he cared to. 

"You are lucky I have use of you," he'd said. Stop being useful, and… well. You'd just have to figure out how to take care of matters yourself before that happened. For the time being, there was no option but to play along.

And, since he was offering you anything and everything you desired for your research, you might as well make the most of it.

"Since you have access to all the reports I have collated, you already know my theories. So I'll keep it brief. For a start, I suspect the transmitted fungal-neural hybrid cells adhere to the nervous system of the victim. If you have any known advanced cases, I want a lumbar puncture performed to see if there is any evidence of the cells in the cerebrospinal fluid. A full autopsy on the deceased, if possible, in particular the provision of spinal cord sections and brain tissue." 

Your directness seemed to amuse him, at least. Rather than taking any offense to your bluntness, there was a subtle nod of appreciation for you getting to the point.

"It can be arranged."

"And…" You paused, taking a beat to figure out how to continue. You did not like the idea of having to work with anyone else, you didn't know who could be trusted. But your field of expertise was just too narrow. "Do you know anyone from electrical engineering who could work on the project, maybe some kind of expert on EMFs in particular? I can do biomechanics, but Anti interfaces with technology too."

He tilted his head ever so slightly. You didn't like the calculating edge to his tight smile. "I do. Anything else?"

Yes, actually.

You steeled yourself, sitting up straighter and squaring your shoulders. If you were uncomfortable and intimidated, you weren't going to let it show.

"I want to negotiate a deal."

One eyebrow carefully raised, hovering on the cusp of amused and annoyed. Damien said not a word, but his silent expression goaded you to continue.

"Once this is done with, I don't want to work for IRIS anymore. I complete this research for you as a single discrete project, I figure out how to get rid of Anti's cells and influence, and then I'm out. You let me leave and live an ordinary life, not being stalked or having to look over my shoulder constantly. I have nothing to do with IRIS, you have nothing to do with me." A beat passed. "And a good reference letter for my next job, for the trouble."

He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound; there was a constant hollowness to his voice and emotions that left you unsettled.

Some of his hair fell forward over his face, revealing its natural state as a long, tousled fringe. Damien smoothed the stray strands back into place. "I think you overestimate the amount of leverage you have here. Your assistance serves as an increase in efficiency, true, but it is a minor matter and far from necessary. You do recall there is an entire team of researchers at the disposal of IRIS?"

"I recall," you said tersely.

"It is no loss to me if you choose not to assist." 

He spoke with his hands a lot, you noticed. They tugged at his tie and smoothed the lapels of his suit jacket in absent, habituated motions. 

"However," he continued, "it is equally no loss to me if you wish to end your employment. Under the conditions you have stipulated, if you can successfully remove yourself from Anti's influence, there is no value in holding you against your will. I agree to your deal."

It would have been nice if he had simply agreed without the derision, but you would take what victories you could.

"Agreed, then."

You leaned back in your chair and briefly closed your eyes. There was so much new information to process, so many more opportunities opened up for how to proceed. Where did you even start?

"You mentioned it was possible to get the tissue samples. Will that be from the deceased, or are there more cases of people still living that I am currently unaware of?"

"All of the information will be available in the unredacted files."

"If there are other cases alive, I want to talk to them."

Damien hesitated for a long moment. That was enough to confirm for you that there were others; he would not have needed to stop and think if the answer was simply that they were all dead.

"Very well," he eventually ceded. "I do not see the harm. You will have to allow some time for the interview to be arranged, as the man has been placed in a medically induced coma for his own safety. In the meantime, the full details of his case will be in the reports. Why don't I show you to the archives?"

It was a dismissal, too pointed to be otherwise. He was telling you to get out of his hair and get on with your work now, the patience required to humour you wearing thin.

Fine by you.

Damien stood and gestured for you to follow. 

The route to the archives was convoluted, a winding maze of corridors. The first were wood-panelled and carpeted, within the realm of the Director's suite. Then you exited into what appeared to be a service area, a claustrophobic warren of narrow, barren concrete tunnels. A tiny elevator took you back down, barely room for both yourself and Damien.

Standing next to him was a strange experience. In very close proximity, the air grew chill around him, with a strange, staticky sort of pressure to it. As much as his appearance remained that of an ordinary gentleman in a suit, his presence was not quite right. Not quite human.

What did he actually look like? There were anomalies that mimicked the appearance of other objects or beings, or could otherwise disguise themselves in some way. It was not so common, but far from unheard of either. Damien was certainly more than he appeared, though in what exact way you could not yet fathom.

If he knows Anti, the thought struck you, does that mean Anti knows him?

Trying to purposefully communicate with Anti was a terrible idea, and, given Anti's contrary nature, not likely to yield any useful information whatsoever. Even so, you couldn't help but wonder. Could Anti tell you something about Damien? Who he really was, what he was?

Because you weren't sure you could trust Damien any more than you could trust Anti. 

Of course, Damien hadn't blatantly and brutally murdered a mass amount of people. (That you knew of, at least. How would you know?) But his motivations, his methods, all of it was dubious.

"You will use the main entrance from here on out."

Your thoughts were interrupted by your arrival into the main archives. It was set up like a huge library, steel shelves spread across several floors. You had emerged on the top level, from a discreet service door tucked away in the deepest recesses. It clicked locked behind you.

From the mezzanine balcony, you could see the ground floor with its much wider glass and steel sliding doors, and a computer terminal nearby to serve as the catalog search.

The whole of IRIS' documentation since its inception. 

Your curiosity flared. You had a very specific purpose, one that your life may well depend on, but you wished you had the time to investigate anything and everything you could. The secrets, the discoveries this room held.

"Do remember that I will be continuing to monitor you closely," Damien said, a dark flash glinting in his eyes. Though the tone was amiable, it was invariably a threat. A warning to not go digging into things that were not relevant to your objective.

"Right. Sure." It was just a reminder that any digging you may wish to do would have to be extremely discreet.

Though, to be fair, it wouldn't do to get too distracted. Anti was a very pressing concern.

But if there was anything you could find out about Damien, about IRIS itself…

"I will have Chase Brody prepared for you to speak to tomorrow. The lumbar puncture procedure will be performed prior to rousing him, to minimise his discomfort. After the interview, you may have access to the tissue samples and a personal lab. I will arrange for your new colleague to meet you then," he reeled off. "For the remainder of today, I would suggest you collate all the data that you require from the full reports."

You nodded.

Chase Brody—the surviving case of infection by ALTR 114209, you presumed. That gave you a name to work with whilst scouring the archives, at least. You'd probably seen his reports already, just without that piece of personal information.

As for your new colleague…

You turned to ask for details, only to find Damien already gone. You hadn't seen him depart; there was no way he could have returned to the service door you had entered from and been out of sight in that fraction of a second. 

Instead, there was nothing but a pool of shadow, rapidly dissipating. Then you were alone, with the whole of the archives at your disposal. 

There was most certainly something  deeply disquieting about the Director. But, equally, there was nothing to be done about that now.

You might as well get to researching.

Chapter Text

It took over two hours to gather all the files you needed. Figuring out how the catalogue terminal's search function worked was the first trick; though it seemed obvious on the surface, there were so many more parameters you could adjust and so many files that were flagged as being adjacently related to ALTR 114209. 

Maybe it was just rubbish and your search was too broad. But you learned how to search specifically by the types of activity demonstrated by an anomaly, by the symptoms and circumstances; unclassified instances, reports that had never been followed up on or tied to a named ALTR.

This couldn't have been the first time IRIS had dealt with Anti. Especially since Damien knew of him, and, judging by his tone when he had spoken of it, had quite some history. There must be other traces of him in the archives.

It ended up sending you down a bit of a rabbit hole. You only stopped after realising you'd filled an entire page (you'd stolen a pen and paper from the small, obsolete front desk) with references and files to follow up on. Way too many.

So you gathered what you could of them, which was another Herculean effort in interpreting the archive's unique filing system, and how the designated numbers correlated to the actual layout. 

The archive had seemed large from the outset. It felt even larger and more confusing when you had to try and make your way through it, a cold metal forest of looming shelves. The lighting was barely sufficient, impersonal LEDs spaced too far apart, leaving shadowed patches between where you struggled to make out the lettering on the spines of the files.

But you gathered your stacks, and brought them to the safety of the central ground floor. Though not particularly inviting, there was at least a minimal set of tables and chairs. It didn't seem anyone who came here to research stayed very long.

Did anyone come here at all? It wasn't dusty; it seemed someone came to clean often enough, at least. But how many people had access, you wondered. How often were these old archives delved into? Some of the files were yellowing with age, and didn't seem to have been touched in a significant number of decades.

Curiosity burned. What was the oldest file here? 

You had heard the usual IRIS propaganda of the company's inception. When a seemingly supernatural anomaly threatened a suburb of Los Angeles, the founder of IRIS had stepped in to contain the threat and stop any more harm coming to the local people. From there, other anomalies had been found and contained, until the scope of the project was such that a whole organisation was founded to support it.

They protected the people. They strove to understand the causes, and then use what they learned to give back to the public in the form of new technological innovations. What was magic, after all, but science that had yet to be understood. Or so the tagline went.

If there truly was every file on record here… you could find out the truth. Had there really been some kind of threat contained? By who —that was always an essential little piece of information that was left out. And what did any of it have to do with the fact that the current Director was an entity himself.

But it wasn't relevant. It wouldn't help you deal with Anti.

It might help you to know more about Damien, but it was a long shot, and he wasn't the biggest problem you had here.

Unless he is , your brain helpfully piped up.

There was obviously more to him than met the eye. That wasn't even in doubt. And whilst you did want to know what his story was, what you were dealing with, there was only one question that really mattered; were you safe with him?

The deep, unwavering pull of intuition in your gut didn't think so.

You were, however, even less safe with Anti, you reminded yourself. Time to focus.

The first files were obvious. You'd seen them before. The only difference was the unredacted information—you had names, now. ALTR 114209-0, a.k.a. patient zero; Chase Brody. 

IRIS had been stalking that man, you realised. You’d already searched his name, after Damien had dropped it, and those were by far the largest swathe of new files you had. There were records stretching years back. Every doctor's visit, down to each and every blood pressure taken. Police reports detailing domestic disputes. Transcripts of therapist visits. The file on him was huge.

It all ended in a series of newspaper clippings, a police report, and two autopsies. The murder of one Stacey Brody and child. The rest of the paperwork from thereon out consisted of IRIS records; interview transcripts and medical monitoring. They’d taken him into custody then—only after two innocents were dead.

All this information before. Had they known? Were they watching Chase, knowing he was infected with Anti's cells? Or was all of this information sourced after the fact, trying to scour his history and see if there had been signs?

Could they have stopped it, if they had intervened earlier?

You put those particular files down. There was nothing more to be gleaned about Anti himself from that route of inquiry. 

You'd wasted the entire afternoon and learned nothing of use. A small kitchenette lived one door down from the archives, on an unassuming offshoot corridor tucked away on the other side of the sturdy glass front doors. It was as minimal and vaguely uninviting as the desks that served as a research area, but it contained a jar of instant coffee and a kettle. That was all you needed.

With a coffee in hand and ancient protein bar you'd discovered deep in the recesses of the cupboard, you returned to your desk.

Despondency was starting to set in. Was there really no information about Anti? Anecdotes, stories that left you unsettled, sure. But you knew the symptoms already. You had an idea about his abilities when it came to interfering with technology, characterised by static and glitching.

Of course, it made sense there was no hard evidence. If they'd not been able to contain Anti in the past, they couldn't have run controlled tests. But even little details, like if there had been a spike in EMF readings at the time of the glitches and interference, that would have been useful information.

The more time you spent looking at the records, the more you wondered if you'd just been thrown a red herring. "Sure, we'll let you look through the archives, because there's nothing there for you to find anyway and it'll keep you out of trouble in the meantime."

Maybe that was silly. It was merely frustration talking. More likely, your lack of progress was simply the nature of archives, the nature of that much information. You were looking for a needle in a haystack, and didn't even know what the needle looked like or if there was one at all.

You downed the last of your coffee. Tomorrow, you would get samples, you would get to interview Chase, you could get back to a lab. Until then, you might as well keep going.

The page of your relevant notes was far smaller than the list of files you had started with. Aside from Chase Brody, there was one more name you had seen pop up a number of times, listed consistently on the medical reports. 

Henrik von Schneeplestein.

You circled and underlined it. For a long time, he had been involved heavily. Every file that seemed like it definitely did or might have something to do with Anti, he was there. Until he wasn't.

That wasn't an indication of anything untoward in and of itself. He could have just moved departments, or left IRIS. (As if anyone was allowed to quit.) But if you could track him down, maybe he was someone who would be able to give you more information, and be a bit more forthcoming about it than the Director.

Was it worth asking about Henrik? You had been granted an interview with Chase perfectly readily, after all. 

What you really wanted to know was what Damien knew, what his history was with Anti. There was clearly something at play there, but in that regard, you didn't think you'd be getting any answers.

The thought had crossed your mind before, but as evening wore into night it became a preoccupation. Could you ask Anti himself? 

It was a terrible idea to purposefully reach out to him. You didn't even know how, other than if you stayed up to the point of exhaustion, you could put yourself in a state where his presence was more likely to bleed through.

You might end up putting yourself in such a state anyway; though not quite so physically exhausted, your brain certainly felt it after hours on end trawling dense paperwork. Your sleep schedule was a mess after the late night and equally late awakening.

Maybe it was time to pack up for the night regardless. If you did want to start messing around with trying to communicate with Anti, that was better done from the safety of your own room.

It was late again. The hours had slipped past faster than you realised. And there was one other problem; you had no idea of the route back to your room. Logically, you had taken an elevator up to the Director's suite. Then you'd made your way through the suite, round the back corridors, and down again. Which, if your sense of direction steered you at least moderately well, should put you back down on the same level of the management offices, just further to the side.

Taking your best guess of which corridor would lead you back to the offices, you set off. It was much darker here than the labs had been. Though most activity died down during the night, the work of containment and security and research never stopped, and the lights never dimmed. The same was not true of the management sector.

It was uncanny in the dark. It made it far more difficult to get your bearings, for a start. Doorways and openings to other corridors became gaping maws, potted plants skulked like shadowy figures. With no other signs of life anywhere, you could almost believe that the entire world had stopped, and it was just you, trapped in the endless maze of the IRIS building.

All of this bullshit had you paranoid.

Yet you couldn't shake the feeling. Surely you ought to have been getting somewhere . Unless you were managing to walk yourself in circles, you supposed.

There was only corridor after corridor, empty office after empty office.

How ridiculous, getting lost .

A faint dripping noise caught your attention. That was something new, at least. A bathroom, or a kitchen where the taps hadn't been turned off completely? Hardly anything to get excited over, but you must be somewhere new, rather than just wandering in a circle, if you were encountering things you had not previously.

It wasn't a tap.

You turned down a corridor, following the sound, and stopped dead.

There was a body. It was hanging from the ceiling, polystyrene squares torn away so the wire noose could be anchored to the ducting and metal guts above. It dug into the flesh of the man's throat far more violently than rope, leaving his neck a gaping maw and head threatening to loll off entirely. 

He must have been there a while. There was an ocean of blood beneath him, and his corpse had drained to the last few drops, the source of the drip, drip, drip that you'd been following.

Well. Shit.

The blood was still seeping down the corridor. You backed away, step by horrified step.

What the hell was going on? This was Anti's work. It had to be. But how? Had he managed to escape containment and you'd been so busy tucked away in the depths of the archives that you hadn't even noticed?

No. You firmly cut off that panicked line of thinking. More likely it was another of his hallucinations, that was all. Though that raised its own concerns; you hadn't been that tired. You'd been walking back to your room, not dozing off at your desk. The cell's influence was getting stronger, if it could overlay your reality whilst you were awake.

There was nothing you could do for the man. He wasn't real, and even if he was, the point of being able to help passed a long time ago. You turned on your heel—

—and nearly jumped out of your skin.

Anti.

He was right there, a few mere meters away. He was lounging, leering, stretched across the corridor with his back pressed against one wall and feet against the other to hold himself suspended. Not that he even needed to, you'd seen him float before. He was just being a poser.

But a poser who had still managed to startle the life out of you.

Cheap jumpscare.

You took a few deep breaths before speaking, your heart still pounding. Cheap jumpscare it may have been, but damn, he got you.

"You know you're creating a boy who cried wolf situation here, right?" you said, trying to sound as dispassionate and unaffected as possible. It didn't work very well. "One day, you're actually going to escape or kill someone, and I'll just assume it's a hallucination again and not give a shit."

Anti laughed, that horrid, glitching cackle that grated against your brain like nails on a chalkboard. "That just makes you fuckin' stupid."

He was really, really annoying. 

Better to focus on the annoyance than let fear take hold. Fuck him. You wouldn't give him the satisfaction of being scared. No matter what he forced your brain to conjure.

"I have a question for you."

Anti tilted his head, with a bemused derision as though you were a dog who had suddenly learned to speak. "Really."

"What do you know about the Director, the one calling himself Damien?"

That got his attention. 

"Damien," Anti repeated, as though the name were a wasp in his mouth. " Damien. Wow, he really doesn't even give enough of a shit about you to tell you his real name. It's Darkiplier, by the way. Dark, if he's not being a pretentious git about it. An' I'm only telling you that 'cause I know it'll piss him off." He grinned, delighted at any opportunity to exacerbate animosity. 

Darkiplier. Great. The name wasn't exactly reassuring.

Anti dropped down from his midair seat, landing on the balls of his feet like a big cat. He stalked like one too, deceptively graceful for his otherwise utterly careless demeanour. A predator, a killer, through and through.

There was nowhere for you to go other than backing towards the hanging corpse and pool of blood.

Just a hallucination, you reminded yourself. There was no point getting squeamish about stepping in blood that wasn't truly there.

"So, you've met ol' Darkipoo. And, what, he's got you working on his whole research schtick?" He barked a laugh. "He's even stupider than you are. He knows you're mine, right? Might as well just hand me IRIS on a silver platter, fuckin' Jesus."

"I'm not yours ," you replied coldly.

Anti stepped closer, close enough to reach out and touch once more. Though you could push past the corpse and try to run, it felt futile and cowardly. If you ran, it gave Anti the excuse to chase. Better to stand your ground.

You still flinched violently as Anti reached out and tapped one of his claws against your forehead.

"I'm already in here, doll. I know everything you know. You're gonna go see Chase tomorrow, right? How fuckin' cute . Get him to tell you how I pulled on his nerves like strings, how I made his body dance like a little fuckin' puppet so all he could do was watch whilst I made him kill his shitty "family" with his own blood-stained hands. Better off without 'em anyway." 

The only thing you could focus on were Anti's eyes, that sickening, toxic green against black sclera, pinning you in place as firmly as a pin through a butterfly. His claw traced down the side of your face. You couldn't move .

Every word was slow and purposeful, as sharp as the blade of his knife. "You really think I can't do the same to you?"

Your fist clenched, trembles running through the muscles that both strained to break free and strained to stay still, unintimidated, at the same time.

You raised your chin. "No. You can't."

Not yet. The infection wasn't deep enough. Anti's influence was still hampered by being held in containment. Damien—Darkiplier—had the ability to completely mitigate the effects of the cells. There was still hope, still a chance to stop it getting to that point.

A terrifyingly slim chance.

Anti stepped back. His smile split his face, baring teeth. The air crackled with static, and glitches wracked through his body and the space surrounding him. He flickered from existence, but his voice persisted, and when he spoke it sounded like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere, so close as to be inside your mind itself.

"Let me show you what I can do."

Oh, and it was a threat.

Abruptly released from Anti's hold, you stumbled forward. You threw out your hand to brace against the wall, leaning your weight onto whilst you regained your balance, both physical and mental. For as much defiance as you mustered to face Anti directly, it was all bravado and you both knew it.

Maybe Anti couldn't fully control you yet, but it was only a matter of time. So little time. And that terrified you. 

A cold, damp feeling started to creep along your hand, and you yanked it back from the wall. 

Eugh. Black mould. Anti's black fungal cells. They were leeching right out of the plasterboard.

The corridor had taken on a red tint. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed.

You pressed your lips into a thin line, squared your shoulders, and walked. All of this was a hallucination. Whatever Anti showed you, you couldn't react. 

How far did Dark's protection extend, in terms of IRIS protocol? He had seemed reluctant to openly flaunt the rules and make exceptions – he'd covered for you before, but if you ran screaming through the corridors in full view of everyone and got yourself locked in containment, you doubted he'd stick his neck out for you. After all, he'd made it abundantly clear you weren't so important as to be untouchable.

So you had to keep it together. The lateness of the hour and the emptiness of the corridors was a blessing, but you could run into someone and never know. Maybe the corpse had been a real person. Maybe the next dead body you saw, you should casually nod to it as if you were two employees just passing each other by.

It was so absurd you could almost laugh. You didn't, though. You were quite certain if you did, the sound would come out hysterical.

Black mould oozed from every crack and crevice, bubbling out of the flooring. It dripped from the ceiling in thick strings and bulbous clusters formed in the corners, ready to burst and spread Anti's neural infection. You weren't certain if airborne transmission was possible, and the whole thing wasn't real anyway , but you instinctively covered your mouth and held your breath.

It was a fucking horror movie. The walls heaved with it, like a living, malicious entity. The structure of the building was starting to crack under its weight, sections of the ceiling caved in, glass office windows shattering. Nothing was recognisable.

And the drip, drip, drip. Too liquid, too wet to be the mould. Blood, just like the hanging corpse before. You passed a meeting room full of bodies, slumped in their chairs and over the desk, carved apart in a variety of violent and horrifying ways. A slit throat was a mercy, ear to ear and gaping like a wide, cruel smile. Others had been stabbed, slashed, limbs served, abdomens rent open and guts and viscera spilled out on the floor. Worst of all, you could smell it.

Shit, you were going to retch at this rate.

The blood was seeping everywhere, far outside the room itself. Too much to make sense; it was rising like a tide, pooling around your ankles.

"What the fuck is this!" you finally snapped, fists trembling. A stupid question, but being angry was better than being afraid. You couldn't be afraid. Oh god, you wanted to be afraid.

And Anti was there. Silhouetted by the dull red light, just standing at the end of the corridor and smiling . "A vision of your future."

"You're not fucking funny."

He slowly tilted his head. His eyes glowed with an all-consuming hatred, turning that smile into something twisted and terrifying. "Oh, I'm not joking," he said, slow and inexorable and icy as a glacier.

"Fuck you!" It was a move of pure stupidity, but what could you do? What recourse did you have? You ripped off your shoe and flung it at Anti's head.

Anti just cackled hysterically, and, as you lunged for him, glitched out of existence again.

The dripping became a roar, a rush. Blood, thick and sticky, swept around you, rising up your calves, ever-faster as it rose above your knees and showed no signs of stopping. 

You were wading through it, but where could you even go? Was he going to try to fucking drown you?

If you died in a hallucination, did you die in real life?

That hysterical laugh that had been threatening finally burst past your lips, only to turn into a shriek. Something had grabbed your ankle.

Several somethings. There were hands , clawing all the way up your legs. You smacked into the wall for balance as you tried to kick them off, blood and black mould splattering all over you as you did so.

Corpses. They were corpses, skin peeling, organs dragging through the lake of blood, that same black mould dripping from their noses, drooling from their mouths, leaking out of the corner of their eyes like tears. Dead, but animated by the mould itself.

The blood was still rising and more and more hands were pulling at you; you couldn't even see where they were coming from, they were just tearing at you from all directions like they were desperate to pull you down with them.

Hallucination or no, the horror was too great. You screamed. You tried to shove them off, stumbled, smacked into another wall, slipped. Fuck . Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Blood covered your face. It was in your eyes, in your mouth. The mould felt like it was wrapping around your hand where you scrabbled for purchase to push yourself back up; instead of a firm wall, there was only a living slime that mired your fingers and refused to let go. The weight of the corpses dragged you down.

You couldn't breathe , your head was about to burst.

You'd tried to keep your mouth clenched tightly shut against any more of the blood, but eventually you couldn't hold your breath any longer. Your lungs screamed at you until you were forced to gasp in anyway, and the vile mix of blood and mould and viscera flooded your mouth and nose and lungs.

Choking. Screams of rage and horror turned to impotent sputtering.

Tears stung your eyes – or maybe that was just the blood. There was nothing you could do but curl into a ball so there was less purchase for the clammy, mould-ridden corpse hands clawing at you whilst you suffocated on gore.

Your stomach turned and heaved, violently rejecting it at the same time your lungs heaved it in. Your stomach won out. You rolled onto your hands and knees and retched.

Bile spattered onto the floor.

Just bile, no blood or anything else you had imbibed. Onto a plain, corporate, laminate floor.

All of it was gone. You could breathe. 

You threw up twice more.

Fuck Anti. Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him .

Your entire body was shaking violently, and you couldn't imagine it would stop any time soon. You'd emptied the whole contents of your stomach, though there was barely anything in there to begin with with how little you'd eaten the whole day. Exhausted and shaken, you didn't even bother trying to stop the tears that leaked from your eyes unbidden.

The only small mercy was that you were still in a small side corridor, god knows where, and there wasn't a soul in sight to have witnessed your breakdown.

Until you heard footsteps approaching.

You didn't have it in you to move, simply slumping back against the wall and allowing your eyes to roll to the side to glimpse a pair of polished black shoes stepping into view.

Dark. Of course it was Dark.

And he couldn't have fucking bothered to help earlier?

He didn't care. His voice was laced only with disapproval and disgust, the sneer of his lips audible enough even if you didn't look up to see his expression. "I see your condition has deteriorated faster than anticipated. You had best come with me."

Chapter Text

The journey back was a blur of feeling absolutely vile.

You were not , under any circumstances, going to force Dark to carry you. But you were barely able to stay on your feet, head pounding fit to burst and your whole body drained and trembling. All of your concentration was focused single-pointedly on remaining upright; you couldn't pay attention to where you were going on top of that.

Although the specifics of the directions swam sickeningly out of your grasp if you tried to focus too hard, it was impossible not to recognise the Director's suite. The moment you saw wooden-panelled walls and deep crimson carpets, as if the building had suddenly been transported a century back in time, you knew you were in Dark's domain.

You passed by the waiting room and office, winding deeper all over again. What did he even need this much space for?

The area he led you to seemed to be his personal quarters. Aesthetically, there was little difference, but there were subtle signs in the increase of decoration and items that could have served no purpose other than sentimental value, in the portraits on the walls. Of the latter, there was one that looked a lot like Dark, younger and less harried, with hair slicked back and an optimism in his eyes that had long since been snuffed out. Next to him was a beautiful woman in a starry dress and a shawl, sharing similar, if softer, facial features and the same dark hair. Another oval frame had been turned around so the image within faced the wall.

Dark whisked you past them, giving you a hard and unforgiving stare when you looked at the portraits a little too long.

Finally, he unlocked a room and escorted you in. It smelled musty, like the room hadn't been used or even aired out in a long while, and the thin layer of dust on the furniture and bedding corroborated the assumption. But a bedroom was a bedroom, and you were just glad to have somewhere private and comfortable to lie down and internally die.

Not that you wanted to behave so pathetically vulnerably as to collapse in a heap in front of Dark. But with the promise of relief right there , your legs refused to hold you up any longer.

You stumbled as your feet dragged across the carpet, hit your knees on the edge of the bed, and twisted ungainly as you tried to turn the manoeuvre into a more elegant sitting down. Remaining perched upright lasted all of five seconds before you toppled backwards.

The ceiling had elegant stucco swirls dancing across it. You stared at them rather than have to think about anything, and especially not think about how foolish you must have just looked in front of Dark. Then again, it wasn't like his opinion of you could get any lower. You'd been on your hands and knees, shaking and vomiting, when he'd found you.

Removed from the direct influence of Anti's hallucinations, the whole thing seemed a ridiculous overreaction. That you'd been so taken in by it, unable to bear the horror even knowing full well it wasn't real, left you utterly chagrined.

Your body still felt the strain; the crash of adrenaline, the weariness of muscles that had spent too long tensed, your stomach emptied and unimpressed about it, your throat scoured raw from the bile. But that was all it was. The fuzziness of your brain was born of an exhaustion all your own, rather than Anti's static interference.

Was Dark suppressing the cells again?

You hadn't even realised you had asked the question out loud until Dark replied.

"Yes. As a temporary measure only—I am not intending to babysit you for the rest of the foreseeable future. I would suggest your research focuses on finding your own method to counter Anti's influence, first and foremost," he said. His tone made it clear enough the prospect was inconvenient and deeply unappealing.

Fair. You certainly didn't want to have to rely on him being nearby for you to function either.

"Is that why I'm here, in your guest room or whatever this is? Close enough to babysit?" You remained quiet for a few moments longer, the gears in your head turning again. "How close do you need to be? Is there a specific range on your ability to suppress the cells, does it weaken the further you are away? Does it happen naturally, or do you actively have to engage in… whatever it is you do?"

You propped yourself up on your elbows, turning your head to face Dark. At some point during your inelegant crumpling onto the bed, Dark had seated himself on a chair pulled out from its accompanying desk. His legs were crossed, one over the other at the knee, and his elbow rested on the wooden desktop, propping his jaw on his fist. It was a much more unguarded position than when he had been in his office, playing the niceties of being the Director. Unfortunately, all his body language conveyed now was that you were a nuisance, and he really didn't care to be anywhere near you.

Dark closed his eyes briefly, an exasperated breath slowly and heavily sighing from his nostrils. "I see you have recovered enough to return to your incessant inquiries."

"Are you sure you can't tell me anything about what it is you do? You said it couldn't be replicated, but what is magic if not science that we have yet to understand, right? That's IRIS's whole schtick."

"There is nothing you need to understand."

"What if I looked at your cells alongside Anti's to see how they interact?"

There was a long, icy silence. Although Dark did not move, the world around him seemed to shift, like the focus on a camera lens changing in real time. There was a new weight, a new darkness to his presence. His skin grew ashen, greyish, like the very colour had drained away to leave him in monochrome. All that remained was a flicker of red and cyan, somewhere between anaglyph and aura, that pulled tightly around his form.

When he spoke, his voice seemed to have new layers to it, reverberating, echoing.

"My cells ," he spat, "are dead, fueled only by the infernal energies of pure void. Do not think to play with powers beyond your grasp, little scientist."

If he thought that would do anything other than intrigue you infinitely further, he was sorely mistaken. But you weren't so foolish as to keep pushing when the subject was so clearly closed, and any further attempts would incite a wrath you didn't dare fathom.

Dark made no move to replace his more human appearance; a glamour of some sort, you could only presume. There was no point pretending anymore, you were in too deep to bother with the act. He rose from his seat and made for the door without any preamble, only pausing as his hand was hovering above the handle to relegate you with your final instructions.

"Your necessary belongings will be brought from your room. There will be no delay to your interview with Chase Brody; he is being brought out of a medically induced coma solely to speak with you, so you will be there on time. Ensure you are prepared."

"Darkiplier," you said. "I have one more question."

He turned back to you, spine visibly straightening like a cat raising its hackles. "I did not give you permission to use that name."

"Anti told me it."

"Of course he did." Dark’s expression looked as though he had tried to eat a lemon whole.

"How is that possible, though? That's what I wanted to ask. I thought Anti was in containment. His chamber is a Faraday cage, there shouldn't be any form of transmission getting through. How is he still able to communicate with me at all?"

The question earned you an inscrutable stare, Dark's piercing eyes boring into you. "Is that not what I employ you to find out?"

"Once again, it would make my job a hell of a lot easier if you'd tell me what you know. You're obviously not human, and you obviously know more about Anti than you want to let on, so why are we still pussyfooting around?"

The thin press of Dark's lips bit back his irritation. "Is this what you consider professional decorum?"

"Professional decorum went out the window when the fucking sentient mould infecting my brain starting forcing me to live in a horror show."

There was a small huff and click of Dark's tongue; perhaps he yet found some amusement in your suffering. Yet he ceded the point. He sighed, smoothed his suit, and resettled himself on his chair. "I do not know nearly as much as you seem to be assuming. Knowing an individual does not in any way necessitate knowing the specifics of their biological functionality, you understand this, yes?"

Annoyingly, he made a good point. That did not mean you felt any better about it.

"That said, between my own observations and reviewing your research thus far, I have my suspicions. Though I believe you have already answered your own question."

Your brain immediately began to scan through the things you had said during the conversation already. A task easier said than done, when it was still so shaken and you weren't exactly thinking through what came out of your mouth. 

Sentient mould, you'd called it.

Anti, as an entity, the being himself, was indubitably sentient, but that wasn't what you had said. You'd called the mould—the cells, separate from him—sentient. When you had been experimenting with the cells, when you'd carelessly decided to see what would happen if they were to undergo electrolysis, they had formed a brand new organised system resembling musculature, and then that eye . It had felt like it had been looking at you. It had felt too purposeful and too intelligent to be nothing more than a produced organ, a slab of meat.

Mere feelings were not scientific evidence. But it was certainly a hypothesis.

"Are all of his cells part of some kind of fungal neural network, like a hivemind?"

"Something of the sort, I would imagine."

The concept was incredible. Terrifying, but incredible. It would be like taking a blood sample or clipping your nails and still having those cells be able to think and perpetuate for themselves. Ordinary beings just didn't do that. But, of course, Anti was far from ordinary.

"Does that mean he could essentially clone himself, given enough power for the cells to multiply and differentiate sufficiently? He could create a whole new body, and it would have his exact same sentience, knowledge, and personality." You paused, letting the thought hang heavily in the air. "Why hasn't he?"

The only restriction you could foresee was the energy required to do so; it would have to be an incredibly intensive process. Yet it could equally be as simple as a few cells too close to a power outlet—as you'd come dreadfully close to in the lab. Perhaps he was simply biding his time, or you were somewhat more aware and able to counter the subliminal messaging now, but it had not felt as though he were pushing you towards anything of the sort since then. Surely he could have just tricked your brain into sticking your finger into a power socket and hypercharged the cells infecting you, if he had truly wanted to.

"Perhaps a matter of vanity; I have come to believe he enjoys the particular form he has settled on. Or perhaps, like a true hive, not all elements are equal."

Apiarian knowledge was not something you had ever studied, nor had any comprehension of beyond the absolute basics. But you understood that a hive had a single queen, and then thousands of workers and drones.

It was a loose analogy, but sufficient. As a whole, it functioned as a superorganism. The queen commanded the hive, but the workers would remain capable of following its directive even when separated from communication for a little while.

"So, what, Anti himself is the queen bee?"

Dark snorted, a surprisingly genuine almost-laugh. "Why don't you ask him that yourself."

He was making fun of you. But even if the way of phrasing it was not entirely serious, you still wanted to try to get your head around this new theory. "And what, all the other cells, they're essentially primordial could-be clones, part of a hivemind but still capable of functioning independently?"

"And every single one sharing the same wretched personality."

You thought about it, about the things that had been said when you'd seen Anti in your hallucination. Did you want to admit that little tidbit of information to Dark? How Anti had said he was already in your head, that anything you knew, he knew? Dark might decide you were too much of a liability and curtail the freedoms you were lucky to have at all. 

But, on the other hand, as long as the cells within you remained isolated, and Anti himself remained in the Faraday cage, that information never had to reach him. Right? Kill the drones before they could get the message back to the queen. 

All under the assumption that their hivemind communication between non-contact cells was a matter of electrical signalling, EMFs, or even some form of biological wifi, and the Faraday cage was preventing it, of course. Which was still an assumption in and of itself.

That was why you'd asked for an electronics expert to assist. If you could pin down the mechanism of communication, you could figure out how to disrupt it. Both between Anti's neural-fungal hybrid cells, and between his cells and your own.

You would figure it out. You had to figure it out.

Dark didn't need to know. 

There was too much running through your head, too many avenues of enquiry. You had to figure out how to stop the cells communicating—with each other, with you, with the technology Anti could hijack. You had the interview with Chase. You had the samples Dark had promised, neural tissue infected with Anti's hybrid cells.

It had already been a rough night. The sheer enormity of the questions that faced you, and what was at stake if you were not able to figure out the answers, felt like the weight of the world on your shoulders. Physically crushing, until your chest tightened and your throat felt like it was closing up. 

You slumped back down onto the bed and covered your eyes with the heels of your hands.

"Okay," you said. "I'm done with questions. Go away now."

"Done with questions? I did not think such a thing was possible."

You shot Dark a dirty look. You couldn't say you preferred when he was angry, but it was no less vexing when he settled into such a mocking schadenfreude at your expense.

Nevertheless, Dark had no desire to linger. As he had said, he had no intention to babysit you, nor did you want him to.

"Get some rest, then," he instructed. The statement was firm, a command more than a pleasantry, but the closest he had come to giving a shit about your wellbeing.

As he left and the door clicked shut behind him, you heard the scrape of a lock accompanying it. You scowled. Of course he would lock you in. Not that it truly made much of a difference; you were in no state to be sneaking out in the middle of the night to snoop through Dark's private living quarters. The thought had not even occurred to you before then, truth be told. But now that it had…

Another time. What Dark was, what the hell he was playing at with IRIS as a whole, those mysteries were far from your priority.

With Anti's cells suppressed in Dark's vicinity, there was nothing to fear from sleeping. No more hallucinations. No more nightmares—well, maybe nightmares, after everything you'd experienced, but they would be all your brain's own making if so.

You were too exhausted to dream anyway. 

You barely managed to kick your shoe off—only one shoe; you stared at it blearily before remembering you had thrown the other one at the hallucination of Anti, leaving it lost in a labyrinth of corporate corridors—and peel yourself out of your outer layers of clothing. The second you pulled the covers over yourself, you were dead to the world.