Chapter Text
>SUBJECT FILE [R 025] DOCUMENT [#0001]
>SUBJECT INTAKE
As a show of conviction and commitment to our cause, Mr ███████ has put forth his own progeny as a viable candidate for Project ███████. The child, by name of ███████ ███████ ██, is an eight-year old male in perfect health, and displays all the characteristics sought after in a potential candidate.
His acceptance into Project ███████ has been approved by all necessary parties, and has been assigned the Subject designation of R 025 and shall henceforth be referred to as such, for sake of cohesion and proper documentation.
The standard trial regiment has been scheduled, consisting of regular injections of █████████ and subsequent periods of monitoring on-site at Program Facility ███.
Due to the unique situational terms outlined in the contract with Mr ███████, Subject R 025 will not be permanently housed at Facility ███. Upon passing post-injection examination for signs of immediate danger or other complications, the Subject will be returned into the care of his guardian.
Outpatient reports will instead be submitted by Mr ███████ for documentation and analysis. This will be done under the hypothesis that effects of outside variables on the Subject may provide more realistic results and unique data unable to be found in facility-controlled clinical trials.
>[Personally, I do not agree with the future release of Subject R 025, and argued on behalf of on-site monitoring around the clock, the same as any other trial Subject. As we are both well aware, effects of the injection often manifest in a highly volatile manner. Should any signs be missed before release, outside containment of the Subject would be nigh impossible. The results could be catastrophic, both to the Project’s integrity and to the public.
I can see only problems arising from this deviation from standard procedure, and no amount of money being thrown around is worth making exceptions in such a delicate matter. Regretfully, the Program Board does not agree. It’s all a power game to them, wanting to both appease our newest benefactor and to tighten the leash.]
— — —
The first thought that passes through Mike’s head is, Fuuuuuck. I’m never drinking again. Or maybe just not drinking and smoking and doing a hit of some unknown substance after a beautiful person offered it to him under the strobing lights of a club basement all in the same night again.
He squeezes his eyes shut again. His head feels like it was being split open, agony racketing around like crazy between his temples. Fuck, had he gotten roped into doing tequila shots again? Mike couldn’t remember. Hopefully not, that shit made him throw up like crazy.
Did he make it home to his apartment suite at least? It’s so dark. He can’t see anything, save for a couple streaks of light above him.
Maybe— maybe there’s a lightswitch around here. Mike goes to sit up, to look.
Pain lances through his body like a live wire. It’s like being electrocuted.
A tortured shriek-gasp escapes him before he can stop it.
Oh.
Mike pants. There’s grated metal under his back. Not a mattress, or someone’s couch, or even the sticky, nasty surface of a frat house floor.
He’s not in his apartment. He’s not even at Capital U.
Everything is coming back to him in pieces.
Paradise City. Crashing his dad’s car. Nearly dying to the decayed. Meagon. Grayleigh. Orphan b-
Rotation.
Everything’s spinning now, and it’s not just whatever is wrong with his head.
He had been with Rotation. He and Mike had eavesdropped on that other group. Then they’d gone back to the place under the big church, in case they’d missed something.
They were on the walkways, and Mike had pointed out a lower path, and they’d— and then he’d—
He knows where he is now. The oppressive heat weighing the air down. The fact that it’s so dark. The bits of light high above him, those must be the walkways they’d been on.
Where Mike had fallen from.
“Rotation!” he screams into the dark. “Help! Rotation! I’m down here!”
There’s no answer. Maybe Mike is just too far to hear.
He tries moving again. It’s an instant regret. The nausea is enough to make his vision white out.
“Rotation? Help! Please! It’s Mike!” Yelling makes his head hurt more, but he keeps going until the sound snaps in his throat.
“ROTATION?! ROTATION, PLEASE!”
The only response his begging receives is his own voice echoing back. And even that fades into metallic silence.
Rotation is gone. Mike is alone.
Oh no, no, no.
His heart is beating faster, Mike can feel it. Panicked, like a caged bird in his chest in time with his breathing.
No— no. Wait. He— He has to—
He has to stay calm. He— Mike’s alone, but he’s not dead yet. He can’t panic.
He can’t panic.
Though this pain is making it really fucking hard to stay calm. If the fall didn’t kill him, this headache just might.
Mike closes his eyes, trying to exhale around the throbbing in his skull. Okay. If he can’t sit up, what else can he move, at least?
He tries his arms, first. One of them, his right, works. He can pick it up off the ground without screaming in agony. The other, not as good, his hand is unresponsive. His fingers won’t do much more than twitch. He doesn’t want to lift it up to see why.
His legs are next.
Mike wishes he hadn’t tried at all. It’s excruciating. They’re— they’re at the wrong angles. It’s bad, it’s really bad.
No, he— He has to focus on the good. He has— he has one arm, kind of two, and he’s alive. That’s not a lot.
A nervous, uncontrollable giggle bubbles up in his throat. When it comes out, it sounds more like a sob.
Why is he acting like this? Maybe it’s his head. Maybe Mike has a concussion. He’s never had a concussion before. Which has always been a little shocking, considering his favorite sport involved a whole lot of getting brutally knocked to the ground.
They used to joke about it, on the team. Good ol’ Mike, he’s got a head like a solid brick. He can take any hit and pop right back up again.
It’s not as funny now, being on the other side of things. He lifts his good hand up, feeling across his head to explore the source of his worst pain.
Mike expects to find a lump maybe, the great big kind rising out of his forehead like he was some sort of cartoon character.
He didn’t find one.
The heat down here was unrelenting, like it could cook you alive, but all Mike felt at that second was ice.
Ice, and what his fingertips were touching.
Something soft, his skin and hair matted with drying blood. Something hard, jagged edges in a sharp crack across his forehead.
Something soft again. Squishy.
Y’know, he thinks hysterically, that makes sense why my head hurts so bad.
Mike pulls his hand away from his head. His bloody fingers are shaking. He can’t touch it again. He can’t.
Dropping his right arm to the side, Mike stares up at the path to freedom, so far away from where he is.
He shouldn’t be alive. He should have died on impact. Even if by some miracle someone found him down here, Mike’s too broken to be fixed.
Blood from the open gash in his skull drips down through the metal grate, as he lies there like a doll, shattered and unsalvageable.
Mike— Mike hopes Rotation is okay. He wonders how long it took him to realize Mike was gone. If he looked for him.
Tears start to well up in his eyes.
Mike doesn’t want to die like this. He should have died on impact. Mike didn’t want to die at all.
There’s a tiny sound on his left, a faint snap.
He wants to go home, not to his stupid father who never cared for him, but to the first people in his life who actually gave a shit about him.
It didn’t matter that they were in a city at the center of the apocalypse, overrun with zombies or decayed or whatever they were called. He had found people who said his name like they didn’t need him to be anyone other than himself to earn their love.
They didn’t want him to be the perfect model son, a football superstar, or even the wild party boy with his daddy’s black card. He could just be Mike. And then he went and fumbled that too.
Tears are running down his face now, cutting tracks through the sweat and the blood. It doesn’t matter that he’s crying, there’s no one here to yell at him, or wipe the tears away.
There’s another snap. The fingers on his left hand twitch.
Mike’s breath hitches. He. He must have imagined it. You probably start hallucinating stuff when you’re about to die, right?
Just in case, he lifts the hand up, just within his limited frame of vision. Nothing happens.
Yeah, he’s fucking losing it.
Mike sniffles again.
He’s just about to drop his hand, when right before his eyes, one of his mangled fingers straightens out with a snap. Like a reverse glowstick.
Oh, what the fuck.
When he tries, he can bend the finger again, just like it’s supposed to.
A long, agonizing minute passes. Then, another snap, and he can pinch his first finger and thumb together.
Huh.
Mike stares at his hand in cold horror. His lungs are rising in his throat again.
There’s something wrong with him.
There’s something really, really wrong with him.
He should have died on impact. Yet Mike is still alive. He’s alive and he just touched his literal actual brain a couple minutes ago and he could do it again if he wanted to and now his broken bones are fixing themselves fast enough he can watch it happen in real time.
His breathing’s gone past fast and is teetering on hyperventilating. Each gulp for air comes shaky and wet— he can’t stop crying.
There’s nothing to stop him from panicking now.
There’s something wrong with him, and Mike doesn’t know what to do.
Mike is trapped at the bottom of hell, with nowhere to go and no one to help.
Mike is so very alone, and he is so very, very scared.
— — —
SUBJECT FILE [R 025] DOCUMENT [#0933]
>SUBJECT TERMINATION
Subject R 025 has been deemed wholly unresponsive to █████████ and has been subsequently removed from Project ███████ and any further Program trials.
The Subject was submitted for 20 bi-yearly injections of █████████, during which time no major effects were observed, aside from short loss of memory before and after the procedure. Data suggests the incompatibility of Subject R 025 as cause for lack of more extensive memory loss as observed in other trial Subjects.
Incident Reports 009 and 016B displayed evidence of an elevated healing factor manifested in the Subject, slightly above baseline human. Standard trial protocol dictates further examination and physical evidence obtained via case-specified testing are required to prove any claims of manifestation. Due to Subject R 025’s unique standing, clearance for further testing was denied in both instances.
Without physical testing, the verbal incident reports alone were found as inconclusive evidence, and the final verdict was dismissal of both incidents’ claim of manifestation.
Subject R 025 will continue to be monitored post-termination from the Program and Project ███████ for any latent effects or complications, in accordance with protocol and the conditions outlined in the original agreement with Mr ███████.
— — —
Mike is awake again.
It’s hard to keep track of time, in a place like this. When the only other noise besides his own ragged breathing is the occasional groan of heavy machinery, and his bones snapping together like demented legos.
He thinks he might have blacked out, somewhere between his caved in ribs cracking back out into their proper places and the first bone moving in his legs.
Once again, it’s hard for him to keep track.
Whatever is making his body do— this, had slowed down once it started on the big stuff. It makes sense, a leg bone was much bigger than just a tiny finger bone, so it would probably take more time.
Right, yeah. ‘Makes sense.’ Like any of this made fucking sense at all.
Stop it Mike, he mentally smacks himself, you’ll work yourself up and start crying. Again.
He’d been doing a lot of that. Crying, that is. On and off. Well, the tears had mostly stopped, there probably wasn’t any spare water left in his body for them. So it was more of just dry sobbing, loud and gulping, since there was no one to hide from.
Uncaring to how he feels about it, his bones had decided to take the marathon route. And Mike hates it. He hates it a lot. The changing pace made it impossible to predict the next snap, and brace himself for the accompanying pain.
It’s like some sort of twisted equivalent exchange. For his body to be fixed, he has to live through the suffering of each break in reverse. If Mike thought too hard about what was happening under his flesh each time, he’d probably just throw up more bile.
At least he can’t touch his brain anymore.
He’d tried again, when he’d woken up the last time. Morbid curiosity had gotten the better of him. A shaky hand of fixed fingers was brought up to his brow, but only found a bumpy ridge where the chasm had been.
So now Mike is here, with nothing left to do but wait on knife’s edge for the next reverse-break and stew in his own head.
He still didn’t have a clue why or how any of this was happening to him. At first, Mike was terrified he might be turning into one of those— monsters, like the ones running loose through the streets far above him.
It was the only thing he could think of, the way the creatures in this city kept getting up, over and over, no matter what happened to them. Like he did.
But his eyeballs haven’t fallen out of his skull yet, and none of his skin is rotting off his body, so maybe he’s something different. Or that part just happens later, once Mike’s gone fully crazy from the loneliness.
Not for the first time, Mike wishes he’d actually died, like he was supposed to. The thought kept coming up, stronger and stronger each time, the longer he was down here.
Even if he hadn’t fallen, he probably would have found a way to fuck things up. Maybe he would’ve started shit with some other group, one of those people here who looked like they wouldn’t hesitate to kill another human being. Or maybe he’d get bit, like he almost had at the start, and turn into one of those decayed for real.
That, more than anything, is the fate he fears the most. Turning into a monster, something that would try to hurt his friends and haunt them while wearing his face. Better to just be a splat of blood and gore at the bottom of a pit.
Huh. Maybe that was too morbid.
Not that it matters.
Mike knows his chances of getting out of here are basically nonexistent. Even if his body puzzle pieced itself all the way back together, the elevator down this far was locked, or broken, and there’s no way he could climb the cables holding this walkway up.
His backpack’s gone. It has been, this whole time. Fell down even further, most likely. So he doesn’t have anything in the way of supplies that could help.
And no one’s coming to look for him.
Rotation probably thinks Mike is dead. He should think Mike is dead. It wasn’t like he knew Mike was secretly a freak of nature who would survive that fall.
Fuck, Mike hadn’t even known.
He squeezes his eyes shut, wrapping his arms around himself as best as he can, in a sad attempt at self-soothing.
He hopes Rotation is okay, at least. Hopefully he’s found Grayleigh and Meagon again. Rotation will have to tell them Mike is gone.
He feels bad, thinking about that. The poor guy already seemed pretty troubled, and then Mike just had to go and take a swan dive right next to him.
Fucking goddamnit, why had Mike even come here in the first place? He was never going to find his stupid dad’s stupid shit.
What had he been thinking? Even if he had found it, without getting himself killed first, it wouldn’t have changed anything. He’d still be the same failure, fuck-up son that he’d always b—
SNAP.
That one was his thigh.
Mike screams.
His entire leg jerks with it, twisting all the way around in one grating second until his knee faces the right way up again.
Mike convulses with the pain.
It’s like a firecracker inside his flesh and marrow. Every one of his nerves sings with him in the same tortured screaming.
The aftershocks radiate out, his body shuddering with the effort. He weeps quietly, as the agony slowly starts to ebb away.
It hurts. It really, really hurts.
And— And what’s funny, is that was only his good leg!
The left side is broken in at least two more places, maybe more! Mike thinks the splintering bone might have speared all the way out through his skin, where his jeans are too much of a bloody mess to tell in the dark.
He’s too scared to touch and find out.
It’s funny, how absolutely fucked he is. It’s funny, because if Mike doesn’t laugh at the absurdity of it all, he’s gonna lose his mind. If he hasn’t already. Maybe he’s in hell for real, and this is just his eternal torture. He is under a church, right?
The noise he makes is less laugh and more sob. Mike wants to go home. Something in his newly fixed thigh twitches.
He’s so tired, it feels like he’s been frayed down to threads.
Mike, he— He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t want to think about anything, anymore.
But that’s all he can do.
Think, and wait.
— — —
A noisy, crowded room never fails to get on this old man’s nerves.
Thankfully, most of the group clears out after it becomes obvious poking at the outsides of the great, hulking machines does nothing. And none of them have the guts to poke inside, so with their investigation at a dead end, most people are quick to disperse up the elevator back to the surface.
So now it’s just the three of them left. That scientist guy, the blonde woman, and the man known to some as Snow and to others as Bird.
He’s told them the other secrets he knows, that Magic may have switched the chambers in the book, and that her group attempted to keep this place a secret. Some might call that sowing dissent, but Snow just calls it leveling the playing field.
Privately, Snowbird makes a note to keep a careful eye on the scientist guy. Saparata— that was his name.
It’s easy to tell by the way the other man keeps sneaking glances back at the machine he doesn’t want to be done here. Not to mention, he’s answering all of Snowbird’s questions exactly like he expected.
His goal of a cure is a noble one, but Snowbird has to wonder what will happen, what he’ll do, when his feet inevitably get put to fire.
Snow’s met too many of his type before. They all think that when it comes down to it, their call will be the right call. The justified call, on who gets to live and who gets to die.
See? This is why he likes to work alone. Then, the only person he has to worry about cracking under pressure is himself.
The blonde woman is explaining something about the priest, how she didn’t make it, while Snowbird takes one final lap around the chamber. He’s not expecting anything different, so what he hears at the entrance catches him completely off guard.
“Hold on— hold that thought!” he calls. “Does anyone else hear that?”
The other two stop completely, looking over at him like he’s gone fully senile.
Snowbird listens in their silence, and Yep, there it is again.
“It sounds like crying,” he observes.
“Crying…?” Saparata asks, hesitant, but the woman joins Snow at his side.
He sees it on her face when she hears what Snowbird had picked up on. Echoing up from the depths of the pit is the faint sound of weeping. It’s barely audible— either the noise just began or they missed it earlier with the way everyone was clanging around here.
“Is that— Is someone down there?”
The worry in her voice is evident.
“I don’t know,” Snow replies, before yelling out, “Hello?!”
“Wait!” comes the hiss from Saparata as he hurries over. “We don’t know what that could be. It could be one of those mutated decayed, just imitating human noises to lure us in!”
The woman looks frightened as she says, “They can do that?”
“I— I don’t know. Maybe!”
Well, some mockingbird monster’s not gonna be the one to deter Snow. It might be interesting to fight, if that’s real.
“Hello?!” he shouts again, louder. “Is anyone down there?”
And to Snowbird’s surprise, the weeping halts, and he actually gets a reply.
“Hello?” a distant, shaky voice parrots back. “Are— Are you real?”
Snowbird looks down at himself, then tells the echo, “I’m pretty sure! What about you, are you real?”
The voice starts crying again. “I’m real! I’m— it’s Mike, please— please help!”
Next to him, the woman claps one hand over her mouth, whispering, “Oh my god, Mike. MIKE!”
She grabs the railing, leaning over and shouting, “Mike! Mike, where are you?!”
Another sob. “I’m down here! I fell— Please!”
Snow joins the woman at the railing, peering down into the darkness. Sure enough, down below this module the machine is housed in is another walkway. And on it, just barely visible, is a reddish shape moving slightly.
Goddamn, that was some fall. The fact this kid is still alive enough to speak to them is nothing short of miraculous.
The woman frantically turns to Snow. “Please, we have to do something. We can’t just leave him down there.”
Well, they very well could, but he doesn’t have to tell that to her, because Saparata cuts in, “How? The elevator is locked. There’s no other way down.”
She says something else in response, but Snow is only half-listening. Instead, he’s looking down, considering.
The walkway the kid is trapped on isn’t that far down from where they are. Five stories, at most. And it’s jutting straight out from the giant metal pillar this module is perched on, likely the casing containing the elevator.
It’d be a tricky job, but Snowbird has pulled off worse.
“Any of you got any rope?” he asks, interrupting their arguing. He’s got some coiled at the bottom of his bag, but it alone won’t be enough.
Both of them snap to look at him. The scientist blinks at him through his thick glasses, as he processes what Snow just asked. Heh, he kind of looks like an owl like that. Dweeb.
After a second, he shakes his head as if he’s clearing it.
“I have some—” he says, at the same time the woman adds, “There was a big coil of it, in one of the crates in the church.”
Hm. Funny, how neither of them said anything when the big group was throwing around potential ways to descend earlier. No matter, it’s not like Snowbird can talk.
“It’s probably best you go up and get it,” he tells the woman. “And hurry, too. A man’s life might depend on it.”
She nods, before racing to the elevator and disappearing up to the surface.
Once she’s gone, Saparata has returned to sizing him up, eyes unreadable behind the glare of his lenses.
“Are you really going to go down there?” he asks Snow.
“I have to try, at the very least. Don’t you agree? ‘Do no harm,’ saving everyone you can, isn’t that your whole thing?” Snowbird says, before he chuckles. “Hm. Or maybe that’s a different kind of doctor. I wouldn’t know!”
Before the scientist can say anything, he turns back over the railing, and shouts, “Hey, uh— Mike! Sit tight for just a minute, we’re gonna try to get you outta there!”
And he’s not lying, Snow will try. And if that fails, he’s got a rifle and a damn good aim. Let it be known, he’s never been one to prolong unnecessary suffering.
The woman returns not long after that, the sound of the metal walkways clanging a herald to her hurried arrival. There’s a huge coil of rope slung over her shoulder.
She quickly hands it over at his prompting, and then Snow sets about securely knotting each of their three lengths of rope together.
The rope is sound, and looks like it just might be enough. Not for the first time, he laments not bringing more of his own gear. It might have been too suspicious for his contract’s cover, but it’s times like this when a grappling hook or even proper rappelling gear wouldn’t be amiss.
Oh well! He’s done more with less. Well, with less and a younger body, but that’s besides the point. Snow’s knees haven’t failed him yet!
One end of the rope he ties around a heavy metal beam, wielded firmly to the floor. The other end, he turns into a makeshift harness for himself.
The other two watch him work, quietly enraptured. Snow wonders if he might be giving too much away, revealing too much of his true capabilities. Hm. At any rate, he’s a little past the point of simply playing the infirm, elderly man.
All set, he goes over to the edge of the module, preparing to climb over the railing.
“Alright,” he tells the others, “you’ll have to help release the rope slowly. I’ll probably need help on the return too, pulling the kid back up. I have no clue what shape he’ll be in.”
They nod dutifully. This can be a fun little trust exercise for them all. See if either of them cut the rope, leaving Snow stranded as well.
“Well!” he joyfully exclaims, hanging onto the outside of the railing, “You know what they say— YOLO!”
Without waiting for a response, and with nothing else to say, he drops over the edge, and begins the rappel down.
Climbing down the pillar is made easier by all the pipes and grates along the outside of the shaft, but it’s still slow going— if he loses his grip, Snow can say goodbye to both his paycheck and his life.
As he descends, he doublechecks that his gun is still slung over his back, and his sword strapped at his side. If Dweeby Glasses was right about this being a trick, and it actually is some monster mimicking a human voicebox, he’ll be ready.
Though after several tense minutes, his boots find solid ground on another walkway, and the scientist’s fears are proved unfounded when nothing immediately lunges out of the dark to maul Snowbird to death.
Snow untethers himself from the rope, leaving it dangling, and turns around to face the rest of the walkway. The lights are out down here, and it’s near pitch black. He retrieves his lit lantern, holding it up to finally see. And there, curled up into a sad little heap, is the kid.
He must have started crying again, sometime after Snowbird started climbing. The sound of hiccuping breaths is more muffled now, like the boy is making an effort to silence himself.
But as Snow’s approaching bootsteps clank loudly on the metal, he lifts his head up from the tangle of his arms.
And Yeesh, it does not look like he’s had an easy time of it.
His face, body and clothes are all drenched in dried blood, like he took a bath in the stuff and then got hung out to dry.
In the light of Snow’s lantern, the whites of his wide eyes pop out against the rest of his red stained face. Most of it seems to have originated from his hairline, his scalp is practically caked with the stuff.
“You’re— You’re actually real?” he asks again, voice wobbling in disbelief.
“I sure hope so, for both your sake and mine!” Snowbird says with a laugh, “It’d be a shame to find out I’ve been living a lie for 67 years! Now— you been down here for long, kid?”
The boy— Mike, pauses, like he's struggling to think. Finally, he answers, “I… I don’t know. A day? Days? I don’t—”
Mike cuts himself off, wrapping his arms even tighter around himself, and his entire body starts to shudder. Shit, Snowbird’s no good at this. Providing comfort after a traumatic incident is outside of his wheelhouse. More often, he’s the one responsible for the traumatic incident. But since he’s trying here, he closes the distance between them.
Strangely, now that Snowbird is close enough for a proper look, he can see that aside from the haunted house-reject appearance, the kid seems to be mostly all in one piece.
Huh, he thinks, Well that’s sure as shit weird.
Especially if what Mike said was true, and he did fall down here.
The walkway around him definitely lines up with that story. It’s a veritable crime scene, impossible to tell how much of the discolored metal is due to rust or blood. And the railing beside where he’s sitting has a great big dent in it, like something large and heavy was dropped onto it.
But that’s a mystery for Snowbird to unravel later, not when there’s a boy, barely a man, on the verge of shaking out of his blood-crusted skin.
Putting on his most disarming voice, he reassures Mike, “Hey, it’s okay if you don’t know. We’ll get you out of here soon enough, then you can find out how long it’s been. You’ve probably got friends who’ve been missing you, yeah?”
Maybe that wasn’t the right thing for Snow to say. The boy makes an abrupt choking noise, slapping a grimy palm over his mouth. It almost sounds like he said a name.
Snow sighs, “Alright, none of that. You’ve gotta work with me here a little, kid. Help an old, decrepit man out.”
He crouches down next to where Mike is huddled, placing a hand on his shoulder, asking him, “Can you stand?”
The other stops, before looking down at his legs like it’s the first time he’s seen them. “I don’t— I don’t know. I haven’t tried.”
Again, strangely interesting.
Snowbird can’t see anything wrong with the limbs. If it were him stuck down here, potentially for days, attempting to escape would have been his first action. But looks can be deceiving, and perhaps Mike is more injured than he appears. Better not to risk it.
“That’s fine,” he tells Mike, taking one of his arms and looping it over his own shoulder, “just hold on tight, then.”
The kid’s far from the smallest person around, one of those muscley, sporty types. But besides that, he looks a bit starved for real meat on his bones, so Snow reckons this won’t be any trouble.
With one arm under his back, and the other beneath his knees, he picks Mike up from the ground, rising from his crouch.
There’s a loud crack of bone as he goes.
Oops! Well shit, maybe Snow’s knees aren’t as young as he’d like to think.
But for some reason, the noise of his knees popping makes the boy in his arms freeze stiff, letting out a pained cry. The dry gasping starts again, but no tears come as he curls into Snowbird like a frightened child would to a parent.
Not for the first time, Snow wonders just what exactly happened here to leave him in such a state.
“Please,” the kid sobs, fisting one hand into the lapel of Snow’s coat, “I just want to go home.”
And even though that’s not the job Snowbird was contracted here to do— even though it’s not really a job at all, it’s now the one he’s decided to take.
And he always sees a job through to the end.