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Alex was going to die on a dissection table.
Not for a while, of course. Freyer still had countless experiments to run while he had a live specimen. But eventually, he’d run out of ideas or find a shiny new person to mutilate and he’d stop tossing Alex protein shakes and start tossing him contrast medium. That’s how Freyer always was, dropping projects and lab partners the moment something better showed up. And Alex was going to die because of it.
A loud thump cut through Alex’s thoughts.
On the other side of the door, Freyer cursed and a series of softer thuds followed. Alex could visualize Freyer climbing down the ladder after witnessing it so many times. Then there was rustling fabric and another loud thump . More rustling. Claps, like Freyer was knocking dirt off his hands. Another series of soft steps up the ladder.
Then, silence. For what seemed like ages. Alex might’ve fallen asleep for a bit, or he didn’t, it was hard to tell when his reality chased him into his dreams.
But eventually, the drone of the air conditioning was interrupted and Alex was woken up by the sound of a chair scraping against the tile floor.
“Hello?” a male voice tentatively called out. “Is anyone there?”
The voice reached out and strangled Alex’s heart. Freyer’s new oblivious lab assistant, or worse, his new experiment . But Alex kept his mouth shut. It could be a trap, or Freyer could want his assistant to not know about Alex, or, or, or--
Alex waited.
And suddenly, the window flap started to move. Freyer never touched that thing. He always opened the entire door. Was this so Alex could helplessly watch as Freyer turned another human being into a monster? The flap opened all the way, and--
A scowling, unfamiliar man in a red hoodie stared at Alex through the grate. At the sight of the monstrous arm, the man recoiled, brow furrowing and mouth dropping open.
Shame washed over Alex. He knew he was disgusting and pathetic, but, pushing past that shame, he called out, “Please help! I need the antidote!” As he spoke, his voice slid between registers without his control, his throat tightening around the words.
The man nodded firmly. “Where can I find it?”
“You'll have to make it. Freyer kept notes,” Alex choked out. “Check the cabinets.”
“Everything is locked. Do you know any of the passcodes?”
Alex stared at a fly buzzing around the ceiling. His tongue itched to snatch the fly out of the air, but he shut that thought down immediately. No. He was just staring at a fly fluttering in lazy figure-eights above Alex’s head.
Freyer jabbed Alex’s right arm particularly hard but Alex stayed perfectly still, staring at the fly on the ceiling. Freyer could demand whatever he wanted from Alex’s body, but he had no control over his mind.
The fly descended in a spiral, landing on the open lid of a red box on the table. The combination read ‘circle, squiggle, square, triangle’. Circle, squiggle, square, triangle.
“Circle, squiggle, square, triangle”, Alex tried to say, but the background buzzing pain swelled and nothing came out and black dots danced in his vision and nothing came out. His left hand shot up to feel swollen tonsils, maxillary arteries, and sinuses; tender gums and lips; broken and reformed jawbone. Two splitting pains screamed from his forehead, scales popped up across his skin, and everything hurt .
Why now did his throat decide to shut down? It was every video game tutorial where the old man dies before saying his last words, the part where the player shouts to spit it out, stop explaining and give the most important information already!
Focus--the man was staring. Maintain eye contact and draw out the shapes.
Circle. The man’s brow furrowed. “What are you doing?”
Squiggle. The man’s eyes locked onto Alex’s hand as it moved and Alex could see the man’s shoulder shift, as though he were tracing the shape out with his own finger.
Square. At the first stroke, the man caught on. “Oh, sh--hold on.” He turned around and disappeared for a moment, audibly shoving things around. He appeared again holding the red box. “Okay, circle, wave, what’s next?”
Square, triangle. The man plugged them in too and his tense shoulders relaxed minutely when the lock popped open.
“Do you know any others?” he said, and Alex shook his head, and oh that didn’t feel good. His head was swimming and as heavy as a bowling ball--just like the fish bowl conveniently placed right in front of him, huh--and he leaned back against the wall so his neck didn’t have to maintain the weight. Everything was suddenly too much: the man clanging cupboards and materials in the other room, the pain under every square inch of Alex’s body, the idiotic posters, the fact that Freyer had destroyed Alex’s life --
The light turned on, and everything got worse.
“Shit, sorry,” the man called out, peering through the window at something above Alex. “I just needed something--I’ll turn it off.”
The light turned off and Alex could relax again, as much he could with the pain.
His mind would be racing with fears right now, if he could think. But all he could do was just sit there and let time slip by like drops from a burette.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Dr--
“I have the antidote, how do I give it to you?”
Alex raised his left arm and shakily pantomimed pumping a syringe. The man nodded and disappeared again.
Some time later, a capped syringe landed in Alex’s lap.
For a fraction of a second, Alex was afraid. What if the syringe weren’t sterile, what if the man had made the antidote wrong, what if he were working with Freyer? But Alex would rather die than live with this pain, and he’d especially prefer to be the one to pull his own trigger.
So he injected his arm with the antidote.
At first, nothing happened. The man watched anxiously from the window, eyes running laps over Alex’s form.
And then--
And then --
The relief was indescribable.
For a moment, Alex wondered if he died.
It was ears popping back into place on a flight. It was the answer to a tough equation appearing before you. It was two candy bars falling out of the vending machine it was coughing up enough phlegm to breath easily it was walking into an air-conditioned room in the summer and Alex melted as his arm’s monstrous form shrunk, melted as the scales recessed into his skin, melted as his bones snapped back into place.
“Did it work?” the man asked.
Alex felt like laughing and crying all at once so he just jerked his head up and down and pulled his right arm out of the giant shackle.
“So who are you? Why are you here?”
“I worked here”, Alex tried to say. But his throat burned and nothing but a hoarse rasp came out.
The man sighed. Alex looked up and saw the man disappear for a moment. There was a ripping noise and then a pen and a rolled-up paper poked through the grate.
Scrawling with his non-dominant hand, Alex wrote, [I’m Alex Lauren. I worked with Freyer, but when I protested his experiments on genetic mutations, he infected me and locked me in here. My handprint can open the exit.]
After reading the note, the man looked up, frown softening. “I’m Erik. I was searching the property for anything suspicious when the scientist caught me and tossed me down here.” His almost-smile turned self-deprecating and bitter.
So Freyer wasn’t aware that Alex was cured--oh god, he was cured he was cured he was cured--!
“What stuff do you have in there with you?” Erik passed the paper through the grate. “I’m all out of things to try on my side.”
Almost hysterically, Alex wrote down everything he saw. Window. Fish bowl. Bed. Cupboard. Dumb fish poster. He cataloged the room and handed the paper back to Erik, who scanned the list and started giving instructions.
“Here’s a CD, put it in the player?”
It turned out Freyer had recorded his “scientific” findings on the CD. Fortunately, Freyer mumbled one of the codes Erik needed under his breath near the beginning, so Alex made the executive decision to turn the CD off there and not listen to the whole thing. He didn’t need to relive everything until he was in therapy, thank you very much.
As Erik kept making progress, Alex sat on the bed and leaned against the wall. Everything felt fuzzy since he took the antidote. Whenever Alex had to get up and use something Erik poked through the grate, his vision swam and joints creaked. The glaring light of the room didn’t help, nor did the growling of his stomach. And he still couldn’t feel his right arm. It would’ve been concerning, if his emotions weren’t fuzzy and intangible as well.
“Hey, I found a cupboard full of protein shakes, you want one?” Erik called out. When he turned to Alex, shake in hand, Alex nodded desperately until Erik handed it through the grate.
He probably shouldn’t have drunk it so fast, but it soothed his aching throat and his growling stomach and oh god his vision was blurry and black was creeping in on the edges and his knees dug into the cement floor and--
Erik loudly cursed, slamming open the now-accessible cupboard doors and rummaging through everything to find out where a spare door key was. “I’m coming in there,” he called out.
The door shoved open and Alex whined at the light but then there stood Erik, lit from behind like a halo. He kneeled down in front of Alex. “Can I touch you?”
Alex nodded.
Erik placed his hands on either side of Alex’s ribcage and pulled him up until Alex could sit down on the edge of the bed. Despite himself, Alex tilted forward, settling his forehead on Erik’s chest. Alex’s right arm still flashed with pain anytime the raw skin brushed against anything, but other than that, Alex was tired, and Erik was soft and warm.
“Hey, hey, we have to get out of here, remember?” Erik’s voice was soft, now, and soothing as he perched on Alex’s left side, wrapping an arm around Alex’s waist. Alex nodded sluggishly into Erik’s shoulder.
Together, they walked over to the hand scanner and Alex punched in his number and pressed his hand against the sensor. To their relief, the sensor chimed a pleasant sound and the trapdoor above them clicked open.
“You’d think he’d’ve removed you from the system,” Erik mumbled. Alex snorted softly.
This was it.
Alex could finally escape Freyer’s clutches.
He took a deep, stabilizing breath before starting up the ladder.
Even with Erik supporting him from below, each rung was harder to climb, physically and mentally. He’d been in Freyer’s laboratory for months--what if he couldn’t reintegrate into society? Alex had been a monster, how did he know that he was completely cured? What if he transformed again, and there was no more antidote? He had half a mind to climb back down, to go back to protein shakes and tests and staring at a fishbowl. But Erik--an innocent civilian--was on the rungs below him and Alex had no way to communicate his thoughts, so he kept climbing.
Before he was ready, Alex pulled himself up the ledge and then he was outside.
He was outside .
The air wasn’t recycled. It smelt like pine trees and faint smoke and grass. And the dirt beneath his hands was lumpy but soft and damp, and all of the colors were so bright, the plants so green and the sky so blue that he couldn’t do more than just sit there as Erik emerged beside him.
And he didn’t see Freyer with the crowbar until it was too late.
Alex was back in the lab.
With the white walls, the scent of cleaning product and metal, the sound of a blasting air conditioner, heavy footsteps from a room over.
Alex was back in the lab and there were needles going into his right arm and he was going to die because how could he be so dumb? so, so, so, so dumb because it could never be that easy, he could never just walk out because Freyer had Alex right where he wanted him and he wouldn’t let go because there were always tests to run on Alex, and how could Alex be so dumb to think he could just reenter society when he was a monster and an idiot and at this point he might have even deserved what Freyer was putting him through.
Abruptly, Alex noticed that someone was holding onto his left hand. Freyer never touched that hand, it was the boring human one. Maybe for comparison tests, but that was only at the beginning, when Alex’s right hand was only starting to turn and Freyer wanted to compare the shades.
The other person squeezed Alex’s hand and he squeezed back. Maybe it was a dream, or maybe Freyer was testing his reflexes. Whatever it was, it was better to go along with it.
He let his hand go limp as the other person turned it over, incomprehensibly gently, and then his hand pressed against something soft and firm and red. The object expanded, and--oh. It was a chest. Exaggeratedly expanding and contracting. Alex subconsciously matched the breathing, the tension in his shoulders bleeding out as his heart rate plummeted.
Freyer probably wanted to sample his blood and needed his heart rate down so that Alex wouldn’t bleed out.
The person (Freyer? But Freyer always wore white, not red, unless that was blood--but it felt dry, so a stain?) shifted to perch on the bed next to Alex’s hips. But that couldn’t be right, there was only one bed in the lab and it was as hard as a rock, whereas Alex cautiously pressed down with a foot and felt the mattress bend under his heel. There was a soft but firm pillow wedged below his head; these sheets were new, not threadbare.
“Alex?” a soft, scratchy voice called out, and Alex turned to it.
The chest upon which Alex’s hand rested was connected to a man leaning over him. His hair was unkempt and brown and his warm eyes clashed with his resting scowl.
“Erik?” Alex asked. His voice was quiet and hoarse and scratchy, but it was there. The tension drained from Erik’s face, and he let go of Alex’ hand.
Alex let the limb flop by his side. “How long have I been here?”
“A couple days. Freyer knocked you out and then you were too malnourished to wake up.”
“Oh.”
Erik broke eye contact and studied the heart rate monitor off to the side. “How do you feel?”
Alex looked at his right arm. It was littered with cuts and scars but it was a human arm again. The ever-present migraine had vanished--although who knew what kinds of painkillers the hospital had him on. Although any amount of thinking about the future, entering normal society again, filled him with terror, he felt lighter, healthier, more hopeful than he could ever remember.
He smiled, vision blurred with tears. “I’m going to live.”