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Gemini hated this place. Every step P took deeper into the laboratory, every foul and diseased human-turned-monster they encountered, only served to make Gemini exceedingly glad that he was just a little cricket puppet with no sense of smell. Too bad his ergo sight still worked, because the look of some of those things. Phew. Horrifying. How his pal didn't vomit from the smell alone was a minor miracle; or maybe the minor miracle was simply not having a stomach to upheave, but well, small mercies. He'd be glad when they saw the last of this place, hopefully for the last time, but the memories of it would haunt him for years to come. He just knew it. It was hard being a lamp in Krat these days, but someone had to shine light to humanity and keep the dark at bay. Still, it would've been nice to have a less frightening duty, because this close to the ocean, most of his "vision" was a blank void, cold and dark and endless. He chirped uneasily.
"Uh.. Pal? You ever feel like you're stepping on someone's grave? 'Cause this whole lab gives me the heebie jeebies."
P didn't answer though he nodded and gave Gemini a reassuring pat. They followed a path into an abandoned lab, drawn by the warm pulse of ergo concentrate. He stepped slow and careful —creepy monsters liked to jump out of them from shadows, but thankfully he had Gemini around to light the way. Not that either of them needed light to know something was up ahead, around the corner. It was bright, or as bright as something that wasn't fully visual could be, but to Gemini's senses it was like a beacon pulling him closer. P must feel it also, because he walked unerringly to the tall tank of liquid on the far side of the room, and in it was the glowing outline of…a brain? Spindly nerves and their brain stem greedily slurped up ergo from the solution it hung suspended within, and it shimmered gently from this exchange, brighter than the ergo solution around it. Its glow fluctuated in whirling patterns almost-pretty to Gemini's sight if it weren't so horrifying.
"Oh, that's sick."
"W-Who's there? Oh! My beautiful, handsome friend. You're here, and just in time. Well, c'mon then. Help me out this coffin. I can't feel my legs anymore."
Gemini felt P's shock like skipping a stone in a placid lake, heard the way his boots scuffed the ground as he stopped short.
"Should…uh…should we tell him, bud?"
"Excuse me! I may be trapped in a box, but I ask that you not speak around me as if I'm not here. Thank you very much. Really, what is all the delay?"
Gemini trilled. "Well. About that, Alexander. You're Alexander, right? Uh. You see–"
"You're a brain in a jar."
"A brain in a… No, are you sure? I'm in a box, everyone knows that, so that's nonsense!" Alexander, the brain in the vat, stopped and his ergo danced in time with the rhythm of P's breathing. It grew faster, more anxious every second. "No, except it does make an awful lot of… Ha! Of course it's true." Hysterical laughter transmitted through ergo waves, inconsistent in amplitude and frequency, and a stirring of fear tightened Gemini's gears. "To clarify: am I brain in a tall, glass vat pumping ergo solution packed with nutrients and other…things?"
"You're taking this surprisingly well," said Gemini.
"Ha! You have no idea how I'm feeling, now answer the question, please. It's of the utmost importance to all science!"
P stepped closer. His nose almost grazed the glass. "Yes. You're in a vat. Do you know this technology?"
Again, Alexander let out that unsettling laugh. "Do I know it? But of course I do. I made it! I slaved away months of my time and my blood, sweat, and tears into the success of this project. Only it never did work, the subjects kept dying. Or if they survived the process, many went mad until… me. This should have been the discovery of the decade, or even the century, but no. My triumph was stolen from my very hands. My body is gone. And to think I could have been enjoying a nice bottle of red with Valentinus' daughter, could have held her hand one last time; could have impressed her with my progress…maybe she would have passed along a few good words to her father. I could have had it all!"
"Are you okay?" P asked.
"Am I okay? What a funny joke. You're funny, pretty boy, I'll give you that, 'brain in a jar.' Ha! I'm doomed. My life's work in the garbage chute just like that. I'll never feel anyone's touch again. I bet my body's long gone, too, in the pit like any other doomed soul. To think I would ever end up like them."
Pity. Disgust. Horror. Gemini didn't know what to feel. This man caused so much pain while he lived. The gall of this man to speak so casually, so indifferently, of the piles of bodies like heaps of trash in the lab's belly —bodies he may have even helped to put there, but did anyone really deserve this half-life? "Wow. You…You sure are somethin'."
"Now what's that supposed to mean? Have you no compassion? My brain is in a vat! My life is ruined because of some envious egomaniac."
Gemini's lamp flickered, indignant. A guy in a vat and a guy in a lamp; it could've been something out of some raunchy jape sung at the Red Lobster Inn, but if anyone knew what he was going through it'd be him. Neither of them asked for this, but well, neither did Alexander's test subjects. Angel save them all from arrogant inventors with egos the size of Krat itself.
"Right back at ya, mister!" A puppeteer playing at God led Gemini to where he was at.
P fidgeted, ergo stuttered out of his heart's pumps in uneven, and anxious rhythms. It was an ice bath of his feelings that crashed into Gemini wave after wave, and Gemini sighed, chastened. P didn't like it when his friend's argued. And another inventor's similar hubris led to P existing, too, and his heart blazed with pure Goodness: love and brightness, and everything kind and righteous.
Alexander sputtered. A pipe behind his tank groaned and creaked until it burst with a stinging pop of searingly cold gas. P flinched away with a hiss. In the time between one of P's frantic heartbeats and the next, the room filled with chilly fog —temperature, one of the few remaining senses available to puppet Gemini, but he was small and cold killed. Thankfully, his best friend was practically a furnace burning so hot he could melt snow on contact.
"What. What just happened? It sounded bad. It's bad isn't it? Just tell it to me straight, I can handle it."
"The gas exploded. It's leaking."
"Hoo boy! That's bad, alright. That's ergo gas whistling through the air, and taking with it whatever bit remains of my life— if anyone can even call this living. Please. You've gotta help me. Turn it off, so I can die in peace."
P's fingers trembled over Gemini's lamp before clenching into a fist. His thoughts churned inside him, turbulent and indecipherable. Chaotic. A kite buffeted in a tempest, and Gemini was tied to its string along for the tumultuous ride.
"Okay."
Alexander's sigh washed over them like a winter wind. "Thank you."
P's heart hammered in his chest. His ergo rippled and swooshed through his system so fast Gemini could feel the disturbance and displacement of it against his own senses —as it did any of the other times his friend did something crazy, like fighting killer crocs or jumping into carcass-infested labs that stank of feces and decay. But none of that could've prepared Gemini for the crack of P's legion arm against Alexander's tank. Made of reinforced glass, it didn't shatter inward, but cracks spider webbed out from the impact like fine threads, visible to Gemini by the way ergo leaked out of it in rivulets, until the weak point collapsed outward. The liquid and the brain swept out so fast only P's augmented reflexes allowed him to catch the brain before it —he — plopped on the ground.
"My word! I asked you to put me out of my misery not —Oh…" Alexander's nerves snaked around P like some kind of abyssal jellyfish —who knows when he learned about those things, the memory slipped away like smoke before Gemini could grasp it. Though he doubted any jellyfish could do…whatever was happening here. P cradled Alexander's brain against his chest, allowing his cheek to graze against the brain's many folds and grooves, in a proper hug, but that wasn't the oddest thing about this tableau. Alexander's nerves clung to P like a plant's roots in soil, seeking purchase against his exposed skin and burrowing under his clothing to find more. He shimmered in time with P's heart, absorbing trace amounts of his passive ergo. It reminded Gemini of a bastardized version of the feedback communication that he shared with P, and the urge to grumble about it nearly overwhelmed him, but P's heart was now so peaceful. The sun's warm embrace after a long winter. It was something Gemini's spotty memory barely recalled from his human past, something he'd never feel again, not the same way, but its soothing kiss was life itself. And he couldn't and wouldn't deny this peace to anyone.
Alexander spoke to P not with a puppet proxy, but in borrowed ergo waves, minds and souls connected. "My god… So warm. So beautiful, more lovely than even— You really are the best of men, no, no you're far too good to be human. What are you?"
Gemini could relate. P's love for the world radiated through to him all the time; and the purity of it could shame even a devil to repent. "He's better than most anyone, yeah. The best of us all. No contest."
Alexander hummed in agreement, shuddery and near-rapturous —a starved and parched man finding salvation at last. P's touch was gentle as he eased Alexander soul to its end. His bright ergo glow dimmed with every passing second.
P gently swayed in place, humming, and his gears whirred in harmony. "I'm a puppet. I'm me."
"I always thought, hoped that the angel would walk among us again… Thank you for this parting gift… my beautiful… metal angel." Alexander's last words croaked, thick with emotions, too many to parse, and in a blink the ergo feedback ceased. And Alexander died. His nerves slipped and fell away from where they held onto P, and the brain P still held in his embrace no longer glowed to Gemini's special sight, but was a dull void. Empty and dead.
Gemini wanted to muster up a bit of sadness for his passing, but he was just a cricket puppet, and that kind of herculean effort was beyond his little springs. Alexander was a horrible, terrible, no-good Alchemists, and he got what he deserved after what he did to all those good, honest denizens of Krat. Really. Except, it did hurt to see his friend so down.
"You alright, bud?"
P closed his eyes and stopped breathing, thinking deeply. His ergo feedback stilled into a placid lake surface whose depths churned with hidden thoughts and feelings. Eventually he nodded and gently laid Alexander's brain on a nearby table, taking care not to tread on nor tear any of his delicate nerve tendrils. He rummaged for something to cover Alexander's remains, grimacing when the best candidate was a plastic sheet stained with blood and other questionable substances, but something was better than nothing. And it was so like P to want to give Alexander more dignity than he allowed his former victims.
"I'm okay, Gemini. But Alexander isn't, and no one deserves this happening to them. No matter their former trespasses."
"You're a better man than me, my friend. I'm sorry, but I just can't stop imagining the screams and the pain and the fear all those poor people felt as he carved them up and stuffed them into those horrible tanks. Not knowing what's happening, or who or where, or why someone would want to do this terrible thing to them. Wondering where God–" Gemini's lamp flared, and he trilled quick, distressed chirps. "It's a horrible thing to do to someone, and he did that to people!"
P unclipped him, and swept him up so fast everything blurred around him. P's blue eyes peered into him, a clear blue sky in the lab's gloom. He hugged Gemini's lamp to his face. "You must have been so scared."
This wasn't about what happened to him! But…maybe. "I was."
P's soothing aura curled around him automatically, pure love and instinct —Gemini doubted P even knew how he was doing this, but it revealed and soothed a constant ache Gemini hadn't even known he harbored.
"I thought about if it was you in the tank," P whispered, voice small and mournful. "If you were all alone and dying, and if I wasn't there to help you. I'd wish for someone to comfort you, too. If they can't be saved, no one should have to die alone."
"You're gonna make me cry. We're aboutta find out how puppet's cry, because I'm gonna cry!"
P rubbed his cheek against Gemini's lamp, and he trembled within it.
"For what it's worth, pal, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here with you 'til the very end, okay?"
"Thank you."