Chapter Text
The instant he sensed an anomaly stepping inside the factory, his instincts were screaming at him to keep his attention on the teenager sitting in a chair next to him, engrossed in one of the screens that— like the rest— were connected to his system, but which he mainly used to play games when he was bored.
“Hey! I was using it!” the young man exclaimed as the pixelated screen switched from the game to one of the thousands of cameras scattered throughout the place. “You have thousands of screens, why the one I was using—?”
His words trailed off as he turned his head toward the giant mechanical monstrosity with a television for a head. He had seen that worried look in its eye many times since he had been there with it.
Mainly because the Prototype was nearby, and he had warned him countless times about what would happen if that spider-jester found him or discovered he was out there, living next door to Sawyer. Many times the temptation to see for himself what would happen had driven him to want to go out, to roam the factory as he pleased, but the psychological fear that the warnings would come true and he would end up dying in the Prototype's rusty, yet razor-sharp claws, always made him back down at the last moment. However, that didn't seem to be the case this time. Because the shadow moving in the camera wasn't the monstrous clown that had often threatened to end his father's life. And that more than once had forced him out of his hiding place— which his father had set up for him precisely for such situations, so he wouldn't be found or discovered— to confront him and demand that he not speak to him like that.
"Dad?"
Sawyer had often complained and resisted being called that, but regardless of his complaints, he had continued to do it and after ten years, the habit was firmly established.
“Do you remember what I told you about Pianosaurus?” he asked suddenly, to which he immediately nodded.
“Observe from afar, stay in a high and safe place, and don’t let him see us…”
“The same applies in this case…”
"But—"
“The same protocol,” he repeated, more insistently, that time almost with an intimidating firmness.
"Who is it?"
Even Harley Sawyer didn't have an answer for that, but after learning what he'd done to Huggy, to Mommy, to Catnap… The fact that he'd come to that area only increased the risk of him finding him, or finding Quinn. And under no circumstances could he allow him to find either of them.
“A threat… Every living thing in this place is, you know that.” The dryness made him feel a hint of guilt. His eye was fixed on the shadow that moved distortedly between the cameras, crossing corridors, walking without stopping, without anyone being able to confront it.
For a moment, he was even tempted to send an anonymous message to the Prototype and have it stop that invading intruder. That repugnant germ surrounded by an aura of mystery and death.
The screen returned to the video game, paused, but his father's unease did not subside; rather, he remained staring at the shadow of the camera without blinking.
The threat was clear. And it was slowly getting closer; he couldn't lose sight of it. Monitoring it was going to be his best option, and blocking its shortcuts to his lair would only be an extreme measure to stay safe. He stopped listening to the game's music again; it was paused, and Quinn's eyes were on him, uncertain for a moment.
“Will we be okay?”
Harley Sawyer nodded, wanting to appear as confident as possible, but the restlessness of his movements and his focus on the cameras didn't make it so clear.
He stood up from his chair, stepping back from the desk, taking in all the cameras surrounding the room. The urn containing his father's brain seemed almost small compared to the vast array of cameras and black-and-white lights broadcasting the live feed. He searched for the stranger, the human.
He was no longer the only human alive down there. But that didn't feel the least bit of a relief. Rather, it only bred a growing sense of horror in his body, because the empty gaze of that man who strode fearlessly through the factory was like looking death in the face, like staring the imposing Prototype into its single yellowish eye.
But deep down, it also planted a seed of curiosity.
He still remembered the chaos that engulfed the factory the day the revolution— or rather, massacre, though his father hadn't wanted to use that word; only later did he discover that what had truly happened was a blatant and indiscriminate genocide in which anyone who wasn't quick enough perished in the most tragic and painful way imaginable— took place. He remembered the screams muffled by the thick walls, the closed doors, the vast array of cameras recording atrocious events that his father had kept turned off at all times. The recordings were silent, but he could hear through the closed doors that kept his father trapped inside— seemingly safe— as people ran, screamed, cried for help, begged for mercy, and above all, prayed for their safety.
He remembered feeling no disgust, fear, or repulsion at what was happening; he simply didn't understand it, nor did he care, because his attention was solely focused on the wide, indestructible glass that separated him from his father. He searched for a way to get him out of there, but he didn't know which buttons to press— because he knew what some of them did.
Many times he'd had the chilling thought that many of them deserved to die for making his father suffer. So, hearing those screams and feeling the tense atmosphere felt disturbingly mildly comforting.
“Quinn, my boy…” Harley Sawyer called over the loudspeaker, making him turn his head from the tightly closed metal door, after it had shut when a man handed him the most powerful tool in the factory— or so he liked to think— to the thick glass separating him from his father. “Come now, my boy… I need your help. Will you be able to?”
A spark of determination flashed across his face, immediately nodding his head and moving towards the control panel in front of him— never touching anything out of impulsiveness. He had occasionally seen through the cameras how the men who watched, studied and tortured his father used that panel to force him to do what they wanted. To break his spirit, to torture him with the idea he was dead…
“Next to the hand lever there’s a button, that will open the door on your right, come… help me get out of this hellish place…”
The button in question had a glass cover over it, protecting it from accidental touch. He immediately pressed the button. A sharp metallic click opened the door to the observation room.
“Dad!” The young boy didn’t take half a second to run inside the room.
“What did I tell you about that?”
“Sorry,” the child apologised immediately. “It just slipped out…” He pouted cutely, removing the leather straps that had his father practically chained to the pathetically padded wall. He had to stretch himself up onto his tiptoes, barely able to reach and see what he was doing because the lights above his head were infuriating: vibrant, intense red colours that blinked intermittently. “Where did you send the man who gave you the red tool with the little lights?” he asked once the straps were removed.
He heard only a sigh of relief from the other. There was never an answer to that question— much later he learned that he had sent him to Pianosaurus's cell without his knowledge— he was simply carried in his arms, as any father would with his child to move faster or to protect him, pressed against his hard, metallic chest, leaving that place with an agility he didn't know when he had acquired. Avoiding him to see the dead, even if he couldn't avoid him to smell the blood…
“I’m going to get you to safety, it’s my only priority right now…” Quinn accepted those words as the only explanation for any of the questions that might arise and that had arisen in his head from the moment he began to hear the screams from eleven in the morning.
His father's metallic footsteps sounded clumsy and somewhat hesitant, but he understood that he still hadn't fully adjusted to being in that body. Every time he looked at him, he felt that everything they had done was cruel. Every time he heard the scientists talking to him, he thought that they all should be in his father’s place. Every time he saw the other experiments, he assumed that his fate would eventually be like that.
But realising that it was his father who had ended up that way, suffering daily humiliation, insults and torture, so that no one would lay a hand on him, surprised him, but it also increased his admiration and affection for him.
Only with the passage of time— and by reading documents his father had neglected and which he had stumbled upon while searching for a game on the computer— did he realise that he hadn't traded his fate for his own in a heroic sacrifice, but rather that his father's presence in that body wasn't solely due to him. It was due to all the accumulated mistakes he had carried on his shoulders, mistakes that were becoming increasingly worrisome. Until they became unbearable.
And that at one point he, too, was almost subjected to further experimentation, in the same way Harley Sawyer had naively done to him— because he found the documentation, and for a moment refused to believe his father would ever do something like that— but all the documentation ended up fragmented, lost, or sabotaged. Again, through his father's indirect intervention, even though he was trapped in a cell, unable to move and able to do nothing but observe and listen. But his strategies were endless, and the possibilities boundless.
“What is this place…?” Quinn asked, still in the robot’s arms, when they arrived at a huge room filled with monitors everywhere and on a large structure, a brain in formaldehyde floated subtly, illuminated by a reddish hue that gave the room a chilling touch.
“For now, this is our home… And I’ll make sure no one ever hurts you, or ever finds you…”
“Why not?” he asked when he put it down.
For a moment there was silence. His father had approached the control panel, establishing a connection between himself and all the cameras, until the entire system submitted to his will and was under his control. Now that he had administrative permission, nothing could stop him. The entire camera network was now in his hands…
“Because adults would hurt you, and toys would try to—” he trailed off. “They would hurt you too.” He turned his head away, back to the panel.
“Where are the other children?”
“I don’t know. But you are my priority.”
“And what about the shouting from outside?”
“Quinn, please…” that tone gave him clues that he needed silence and concentration.
He remembered then that the first time Harley Sawyer had said that to him, in that tone, he was still human. They were in his office. He couldn't recall what his father had been working on, but he was typing documents while muttering in dissatisfaction. He had been reading something earlier— documents that had been delivered to him that morning— and it didn't seem to be anything pleasant, judging by the tired and frustrated expression on his face as he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily. He, on the other side of the desk, was playing with a couple of stuffed animals, especially the lion plushie with the colourful wool mane that his father had given him before becoming his dad, the one he never let go of.
And that reminded him of something:
“Where is my Yarnaby plushie?”
He couldn't sleep without him.
He should be asleep.
Lying on the two mattresses stacked one on top of the other on the floor, his eyes were lost in the vastness of the room. He could hear in the distance the faint sounds of the machines and the red light shining on the brain in formaldehyde. He could also hear the clatter of his father's keyboard; he, too, was awake.
Neither of them could apparently sleep.
His fingers traced the rough, worn fabric of Yarnaby's plush toy. He felt the strands of its mane, slowly savouring its texture, and then pulled it out from under the sheets, placing it on his chest, sitting, staring at it intently.
“Does the human never sleep?” he asked, moving his head towards his father.
“You should be asleep, Quinn…” evasive as usual, but then he heard him sigh. “Apparently not… He hasn’t stopped moving, he keeps advancing, and none of the tests I throw at him are good enough to slow him down long enough… He’s getting closer…”
That caused him some unease. But he trusted completely that his father would do whatever it took to stop him from getting there. He was sure of it.
"And the Prototype?"
“He’s not doing anything. But he’s got his eye on him… It seems he’s lost interest in me for a while…”
He was aware of it; after all, he had collected Mommy and Catnap's remains, and he knew that he had contacted him using one of his many voices. One he had never heard before, but it sounded so innocent and vulnerable that the insignificant germ had surely fallen into the trap and trusted him completely. Grave mistake, boy…
This was going to cost him dearly, as well as his allies: Poppy, at that moment. Along with others he was pathetically trying to save. But he wasn't going to accomplish anything. That pathetic parasite was an infection, a plague, a virus that wasn't going to save anyone; rather, it had only infected that place with the painful memory of the past, reborn and bringing back feelings that had long lain dormant.
“Luckily, he’s in Safe Haven… But it’s only a matter of time before he tries to get here…”
Quinn didn't feel particularly comforted, but hearing him approach and sit beside him on the edge of those two stacked mattresses, without losing sight of the cameras, did give him a lot more warmth and made it easier for him to fall asleep.
“Don’t worry about that, my child…”
“I’m not a child anymore”
“You still are…” he shook his head, gently pushing his strands of hair into place so they weren’t completely messed up from lying down.
What he regretted most about being in that metal body was losing the ability to feel the softness of Quinn's hair, or the warmth of his hands when he held his hand or wrist, or when Quinn had that impulsive, uncontrolled— bad— habit of hugging him. Ten years had passed, and he still hugged him when he came back from wandering around the factory to pick up or find food for him. Ten years, and he still hugged him when he was scared. Ten years, and Quinn still hugged him in gratitude every time he did something, however insignificant, for him.
He was never going to break that habit. And he had come to the conclusion that he probably did it even after understanding, over time, the aversion he had always felt toward physical contact. As if it could cure him or eventually make him get used to it.
Frankly, it worked, but he wasn't going to let him know that so easily…
“And you always will be a child for me…”
"Even if I turn thirty?"
For a moment Harley Sawyer sinned by thinking about it, imagining a future not very different from the reality they were living in at that time, but with a boy of almost thirty years with a relatively similar appearance to Quinn, but still a mere stranger, a prisoner of that horrible place.
No. Quinn couldn't stay there another ten years… He couldn't stay trapped there that long… He couldn't stay there at the mercy of the Prototype's clutches. He couldn't live his whole life there with it, he couldn't—
“Yes… You still will be…” Quinn chuckled.
But Sawyer's thoughts were racing too fast for him to find any comfort in hearing Quinn laugh. Hearing him laugh in that place was nearly impossible. A desolate, dark, and abandoned place—certainly not one that would bring a smile to many faces. Someone like him as a father, a place like that being his home…
“Rest, my little one…” he murmured softly.
Quinn slowly relaxed on the mattress and after curling up to one side— still using his stuffed animal as a companion, because otherwise he couldn't sleep, ironically— he was slowly able to fall asleep.
But with that silence alone, Harley Sawyer's thoughts could only spiral into a myriad of problems. The possibility that Quinn was still there at thirty years old would clearly be a defeat for him as a father. It would prove that he was awful, that he hadn't given his son a good life, that he hadn't done anything to improve his situation. He had kept him alive for ten years, he was about to turn eighteen, and he was still in the same— or worse— conditions as when he was in the orphanage.
Because even though there were no experiments that were going to trap him, nor was there any danger of him becoming an experiment, nor was anyone going to lay a hand on him… What did he have? What had he done for him?
Quinn barely knew the blue sky. Only a vague sense of freedom woven into illusions created with LEDs and crystals that gave the false impression of daytime. A perpetual day that would never be real. Quinn didn't know freedom, didn't know life, didn't know the outside world… Ten years… More than ten years… He had spent all that time underground, failing to develop properly, without knowing anyone, without having anyone, without interacting with anyone beyond himself.
What kind of life could he say he had given him if all he had done was condemn him? What was the difference between that and being experienced? What was the difference between that and being dead?
Should he perhaps approach that human parasite and help him and Quinn escape that hellish metal place, and let his little one know what lies beyond… even if it's not with him?
A disquieting sensation coursed through his metallic body. A sharp prick, his body froze as if he'd been punched in the gut, and yet nothing had happened. A psychological pain right in the hollow space where his heart had been, an uncontrollable fear. The mere thought of losing Quinn made him sick… The mere thought of being taken away from him made him sick…
No. He couldn't allow that germ to get near Quinn.
It was a quiet morning. Young Quinn Navidson was usually alone— well, accompanied only by his stuffed animal, Yarnaby— for all the day's activities. He impatiently checked the time, because he knew that at any moment his favorite doctor would arrive at the Playcare and, with any luck, take him to his office. Often, he would ask him many questions, and afterward, he would let him sit at the other end of the desk and draw. He didn't have any coloured pencils, but he didn't mind.
Being in his company was more than enough.
“Quinn…” a voice he knew perfectly called to him, and that made him immediately lift his head from his drawing, excited, as well as drawing a radiant smile on his lips.
“Dr. Sawyer!” he exclaimed, running up to him, not letting go of the stuffed animal that was sitting comfortably at one end of the drawing.
He had arrived earlier.
Oblivious to him, and to their concerns which essentially revolved around anything Dr. Sawyer might say, there were always puzzled glances upon them. At first, there was a certain strangeness that someone so cruel, uninterested in children, and distant could have any interest in one of the children… Later, it turned to pity for the boy… The cruel doctor, whom everyone feared and hated in equal measure, had taken an interest in turning this young boy into his latest experiment and personal whim: useless to the factory's operations, but interesting to himself.
Finally… Strangeness.
Simply strange.
Because what began with a manipulative, cunning, cruel, and selfless bramble bush— which was quite poorly acted, but which a child would completely miss due to their innocence and naiveté, knowing nothing more— gradually became… Genuine…
Nobody offered an explanation for that, but nobody cared enough to want to.
Until the day came when Dr. Sawyer suddenly decided to discard the Yarnaby experiment after the large financial investment that had been made to prepare everything and condition the boy for the treatment and for his future adaptation.
Erased from the map as if it had never happened. Discarded as if such an idea had never even been conceived. Forgotten at the bottom of a drawer. A mere whim that became insignificant. Although in reality it became much more than that. It ceased to be a personal whim born of Sawyer's growing paranoia… It became a need and a feeling of protection that no one would expect to exist in the body of that infamous and monstrous being.
However, no one dared to say a single word when he left the place with the boy in his arms around his waist, as he had been accustomed to carrying him for several months— if memory served.
"Still haven't made any new friends?"
“Uhm…” He nodded. "You always ask me the same question."
“Oh… That's because I care about you. And I’m worried”
And that's why he was his favorite scientist in the area.
Because at least he cared, unlike many there who only approached him because they had to or were forced to. He had learned to distinguish between those who genuinely wanted to talk to him and those who didn't.
And only Dr. Sawyer had approached him because he genuinely believed in him, because he genuinely cared about him.
“Do you like being here?”
“I prefer to be with you”
It was not something the Doctor was unaware of.
“Would you rather be with me?”
“Can I?” he asked in amazement. “Could I be with you forever?”
"Would you like that?"
“Yes!” he exclaimed with a huge grin. “I wish I could always be with you. I wish you were my father.”
“Really?” his tone sounded with exaggerated curiosity, making the boy nod enthusiastically.
They had arrived at Dr. Sawyer's office, the quietest, most peaceful, and best place in the world. A place where he could do practically anything he wanted, and on top of that, he was with his favorite doctor. It was the best place in the world!
“I think you’ll like reading this then…” As he put it on the floor, he approached his desk, where he handed him a piece of paper.
Quinn initially hesitated, unsure of the meaning of many of the words in the document, as many were complex, strange, and unfamiliar. His reading speed was somewhat slow, and not understanding many of the words only added to his confusion.
Until it reached the end.
"Are you going to be my dad!?"
A small smile touched his lips as he sat down in his desk chair. He nodded.
"So can I call you Dad?"
“Harley, better,” he denied.
It seemed as if he had never heard those words.
Because even after countless corrections, he still hadn't heard him call him by his name.