Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Being closeted was hard, that was just a fact of life. Being closeted in rural Georgia was really hard. Being closeted in rural Georgia and getting abducted by aliens was a level of unfairness and cruelty that left Eric Bittle going over the span of his entire 19 years of existence to try to figure out exactly where he went wrong.

“It wasn’t an abduction.”

Eric didn’t remember reiterating the fact out loud, but maybe the government agent seated on his mother’s favorite floral upholstered settee could read minds. For a fleeting moment the thought passed through his head ‘that’s not possible’ before he remembered with a panicked sort of hilarity that things like ‘not possible’ didn’t exist anymore. Twenty-seven hours and sixteen minutes ago the world had made sense. The world had rules and guidelines and things were hard but things progressed along at a normal linear pace. Twenty-seven hours and fifteen minutes ago, Eric had been in an alien spacecraft.

There were two real life Men in Black, -except only one of them was a man but that was beside the point- sitting in his living room, drinking his mother’s sun tea and calmly discussing that fact like they did this every day of their lives. Which they probably did.

“We are not the Men in Black,” the same man seated on the settee said in that same tone of voice that hinted at both eternal patience and annoyance at the same time. At least that time Eric was fairly certain he hadn’t read his mind, as his almost equally frazzled mother had just asked if they were going to wipe their memories.

The agent at the door, a tiny wisp of a woman who couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, smiled for just a split second. Her black blazer looked a little too big on her, like they couldn’t find something small enough, but she still looked deadlier than anyone Eric had ever seen.

The man who spoke gave a quiet sigh, gently setting down his sunflower encrusted teacup on its matching saucer. This was the part that had Eric more unsettled than anything. Okay that wasn’t true, the most unsettling part by a long shot was still the trip he had taken in an extra terrestrial craft, but the calmness with which the federal agents were dealing with the situation wasn’t helping.

He felt like his skin was buzzing, like he couldn’t hold it all together and he might fall apart molecule by molecule if he continued to sit there too long. Twenty-seven hours and he hadn’t slept, felt like he hadn’t even blinked as his hands wouldn’t stop shaking and his ears wouldn’t stop ringing. It took him a minute to register that everyone had stopped talking and was staring at him.

“Has he been doing that long?” The man asked, obviously still watching Eric even as he addressed Suzanne Bittle.

“Y-yes,” his mother stammered, swallowing hard and folding her hands together in her best display of southern hospitality in the face of the absolutely unimaginable and horrific. “Ever since he…got back.”

“That can happen,” the agent said sagely, like they were discussing the side effects of a new medication.

“How long will that last?” Asked Coach, his voice wavering only slightly at the start of his sentence. Eric had never seen his father so rattled, his usually stoic expression of indifference shaken into something that came almost close to concern.

“I was abducted,” Eric interrupted before the agent could answer that asinine question, because it seemed they had gotten off topic. His voice was too loud in the following silence. “I…was scooped up into the sky, by… by aliens,” he exclaimed, raising his arms into the air to punctuate his story.

“Mr. Bittle I understand this is a confusing and uncertain time for you,” the agent politely ignored the sputtering noise Eric made, “but we need you to remain calm. You were not abducted.”

“Yes I was!” His feet had been lifted off the ground. There had been flashing lights and mechanical whirring and he had been lifted off the ground and ended up in a world of blinking lights and ominous clicking noises and some creature with green skin and too many eyes and…actually beyond that he couldn’t really remember anything. The sheer weight of the opening realization of his adventure was too much as it was.

“You,” Agent Eric-Probably-Should-Have-Been-Listening-To-His-Name continued, “were an unfortunate casualty in a class-C Extra Terrestrial Terra Home World dispute that took place twenty-seven hours ago, a half a mile from this location,” he continued in that tone that insisted all of this made sense and Eric was the irrational one here. “When the aforementioned extra terrestrial beings,” he punctuated that and followed it with a pause like it meant something, “realized that they had acquired sapient organic cargo as a result of their damaged depolarized rash-“

“You were picked up by accident,” the tiny woman at the door interjected, her tone and her expression never shifting. “It was a stolen ship and they were trying to throw the authorities off their tail with damaged equipment and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she explained in a far less patronizing tone than her superior. Eric wondered why she hadn’t been the one talking all along. “We were alerted and you were returned.”

Eric ran his hands through his hair, holding onto a few strands to ground himself. “I was abducted by alien bank robbers?”

“More like…extra terrestrial extortionists, but you’re on the right track. Abducting a human is a pretty serious offence and they thought they would get off lighter if they returned you.”

“I…was a bargaining chip?”

Both agents in black paused. “In a sense,” the man finally asserted.

“None of that matters,” his mother insisted, her voice a little too high. Eric wanted to interject that it absolutely did matter, thank you very much, but she continued before he could get the words in. “Is he going to be okay?”

When she looked at him, Eric felt his anger drain out. She looked more tired than he had ever seen her, her eyes were too wet and her hands were shaking in her lap. Coach reached over when Eric found he couldn’t move, placing a hand on her shoulder. Eric couldn’t remember ever seeing him do that before.

It took a moment for Eric to realize the agents had paused. Sharply he looked back at them, a new panic he hadn’t realized he had left was rising up in him at their blank expressions.

“What is it?”

“While we don’t believe there is anything that could have caused any life threatening damage, we are still going to need to run some tests.”

Eric felt his mouth go dry.'Tests?' He had meant to ask the question out loud, but he wasn’t sure the words actually made it past his tongue. Images from science fiction movies flashed through his head, pictures of white walled labs and large needles and a naked test subject screaming in pain.

“Yes, tests. All for your benefit Mr. Bittle, we want to ensure your safety and well being after this unfortunate incident.”

Eric’s outrage at his horrifying ordeal being referred to as ‘an unfortunate incident’ couldn’t even properly overshadow the fear pulsing through his veins.

“I feel fine,” he lied quickly, ignoring the way everything seemed to be constantly humming and the strange feeling in his limbs like they weren’t on correctly.

“It’s really not that bad,” the woman tried to reassure him. Though maybe she was really more of a girl. She held herself with the same straight back as her partner, but she couldn’t have been much older than Eric. Her expression was soft and the twitch of her mouth wasn’t forced or patronizing. “It’s basically just blood work and X-rays. They’re not gonna pull your organs out or anything.”

“Yes, it really is not a very dangerous or strenuous matter,” her companion continued, seeming much more awkward and mechanical in his attempts to console. “You will just have to spend about two weeks in our holding base, and then-“

“Two weeks!” Eric and his mother were instantly on their feet, panic rising between the two of them as what the agents were proposing began to sink in. “You want to take me to your secret government base for two weeks for alien tests?”

The first agent sighed in a manner that insinuated he was not compensated enough for what he was forced to deal with, and quietly rose to his feet as well. He pulled his pair of dark sunglasses out of his pocket and slid them into place. Behind him, the woman did the same. “Yes. The sort of tests that are necessary in this instance cannot be accomplished at just any lab. We are going to need to hold you in observation for the two weeks, until they can determine that you are safe to leave or if other measures need to be taken-”

“Other measures?!”

“-So you are going to need to pack a bag and we need to leave as soon as possible, our flight is in,” the agent checked a complicated watch that Eric didn’t even fully believe could tell time, “an hour and a half.”

“We can’t make a flight out of Hartsfield in an hour and a half,” Eric said, feeling rather stupid and numb as his mother voiced her opinions beside him, loudly.

“The plane will wait, but I do not like being late Mr. Bittle. I have other appointments today.” The agent crossed his hands behind his back, standing tall and imposing in the Bittle family sunroom. His sunglasses reflected the sparkle off of the sea glass lamp Eric had bought for his mother at the county fair last year.

Eric felt sick.

Behind him, his parents were still protesting. Someone said something about calling the governor, but Eric knew it was over.

“Okay.” His throat was scratchy, like he had been crying although his eyes felt too dry. The agent whose name he still didn’t know continued to stare down at him from behind those reflective glasses.

“You have fifteen minutes.”

Saying goodbye to his parents might have been the most difficult part of this ridiculous process thus far. After calming down they had tried to put on their bravest faces, helping Eric pack things that he knew he probably would never need but didn’t have the heart to leave behind. One suitcase and a stuffed duffle bag later and Eric was headed out with door, his mother’s tears still wet on his shoulder, and onto what was most likely going to be the most bizarre and terrible adventure of his life.

For being a secret government organization, he found the two agents accompanying him to be incredibly human. They had to stop on the way to the airport so the female agent, Agent Duan, as Eric had learned, could use the bathroom. Her older partner, Agent Hall, had picked up a People magazine and Milky Way.

Eric had found it ironic.

The flight hadn’t been much more interesting, a quiet and small plane with only a few other passengers scattered about. They had been three minutes late, and Agent Hall had an annoyed set of his jaw that hadn’t relaxed until they were an hour into the flight. Eric sat beside the window, Agent Duan beside him and Agent Hall in the seat in front. Since they had left his house, neither agent seemed to have tried to look directly at him, or at each other for that matter. If it wasn’t for their identical black suits and the sunglasses they now had both tucked into their pockets, Eric thought they might have mistaken them for strangers to one another.

Eric tapped his fingers nervously against the rim of his empty ginger-ale cup, trying to focus on the music pumping out of his earbuds, but even Beyonce wasn’t quite enough to drown out his own thoughts. When Agent Hall stood to visit the lavatory, Eric pulled out an earbud.

“So where are we going?” He finally braved to ask, glancing at Agent Duan out of the corner of his eye. Up close, she was even smaller than he had originally thought, but there was still something lethal about her. She had a tablet in her hands and though the screen looked completely black to Eric, she seemed highly interested in something on it, occasionally tapping at nothing.

“Samwell,” she told him absently. Her finger moved across the blank pad like she was scrolling.

“Samwell?” Eric repeated, hoping for further clarification. The pressure change in the plane wasn’t doing anything to help the buzzing in his ears. Maybe it was all in his head, but it seemed like the cabin lights were flickering in the corners of his vision.

“Yep.” For a government agent she didn’t seem quite as hung up on professionalism as Agent Hall, popping the P at the end of the word. “Samwell Institute.”

“So do-” Eric hesitated. His throat felt a little fuzzy. Swallowing around the newfound lump with a confused tilt to his brow, he tried to focus. “Do we, uh…” Agent Duan didn’t look up from her tablet, still poking the blank screen and seemed unconcerned with Eric’s sudden lack of articulation.

Eric blinked quickly, feeling suddenly rather dizzy. With a low breath pushed out between his lips he leaned back in his seat. Were they hitting turbulence, or was he imagining how bumpy the flight had just gotten? Breathing was rapidly becoming an arduous task and panic was setting in as he gripped at the armrests, his knuckles turning white with the effort.

“Something’s…” Wrong. The word wouldn’t come out, no words wanted to come out, it felt like his tongue was trying to move through molasses. He tried to form a question, tried to keep himself above water as it felt like every part of him was beginning to shut down. With an incredible feat of strength he managed to lift one sweating hand, slapping it down on Agent Duan’s arm in what was supposed to be a light tap.

Agent Duan finally looked up at him, finally looking him in the eye over the top of her sunglasses. She had very pretty eyes, Eric decided, and her close-cropped hair was a good look for her.

“When you wake up, we’ll be there.”

Eric tried to ask her what she meant, but found himself very suddenly and very decidedly, asleep.

The first thing Eric realized when he awoke was that he was very thirsty.

In a lazy attempt to reach for his water glass he cast one arm off of the bed, but found himself meeting hard wall instead of the smooth top of his nightstand. The room was dark and warm, and everything about his current situation invited him to go back to sleep, but something was pressing at the back of his mind. Confusion worked its way through the haze of sleep and he tried to blink back the remaining tendrils of weariness.

His second realization was that he was not in his bedroom. It took another moment for the events of the past few days to catch up to him. It was another few seconds before he remembered he had drank spiked ginger ale on a secret plane heading to a secret government base.

After running his palms over his eyes to try to get some sense of himself back, he tried to take inventory of his surroundings. He was in a small room with plain walls, sitting on a cot. The lights above were dimmed low and there were no windows.

Or doors.

There wasn’t a door.

Eric was very suddenly fully awake and standing on his feet. A quick look down at himself told him he was still in the same clothes as before, and there didn’t seem to be anything else-

Wrong. There was a bandage wrapped around his left elbow, a few wraps thick and pulled tight. In the light it was hard to see, but the bandages appeared white, with only a small pinprick of something darker, right in the crook. He wasn’t sure if the rising nausea he felt along with the ache in his arm were in his head or if something terrible had been done to him.

He had only been given a minute to begin truly panicking before a section of the wall slid open revealing a figure in the doorway. Eric stumbled back quickly, heart still going far too fast in his chest as he stared wide-eyed at the dark form looming in the only exit.

For a moment, neither moved. When she finally did speak, Eric found himself wholly unprepared.

“Hello!” The figure greeted, coming to life all at once as they waved excitedly at him. It was a woman, a young woman from the sound of her voice, but Eric couldn’t help his continued anxiety.

“He-hello,” he tried to return, raising one hand weakly.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Bittle?” She asked, and shifted something around in her hands. Eric thought it might have been a clipboard.

“Uhh…”

“Did you sleep enough? Would you like something to eat or drink?”

“Some water would be nice.” Nothing about anything was ever going to be normal again, Eric decided. He had taken a ride aboard a spacecraft, been kidnapped by government agents, and now he was speaking to a girl he didn’t know in a dark room like she was a concierge at a hotel.

“Oh, of course, of course!” It looked like she might have nodded. “Would you like to me to bring it to you? You can sleep a little more if you would like before we get started. People tend to find these rooms comforting. I nap in here myself sometimes!” She paused. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.” Then she was gone, moved from the doorway and out into what may have been another room.

Eric hesitated only a second before moving to the now open door and glancing out. The next room, or maybe it was a hallway, he found to be completely pitch black. The only light source was the soft light coming from the room he had woken up in. Still, he could hear her moving around, the sound of a faucet running for a few seconds before cutting off and her footsteps returning.

“Here you are, Mr. Bittle.”

Up close Eric could make out some of her features as she emerged from the darkness. She was taller than him, with long straight hair that was swept back into a ponytail. In the arm not handing him a cup, she did in fact have a clipboard. Eric didn’t know what he had been expecting, but this girl was not it. He drank the water she gave him in almost two gulps, realizing as soon as it was in his hand how thirsty he was.

“How old are you?” He asked before he could stop himself, discreetly wiping the excess water off of his mouth. He had expected her to have a lab coat and something to poke him with, but instead she appeared to be wearing a sun dress and a pair of sneakers.

“18!” She told him with a wide grin, her teeth almost glowing in darkness. “And your chart said you are 19, is that correct?”

“Yes-“

“I’m Farmer.”

Eric paused, “Nice…to meet you Farmer.”

“Nice to meet you too, Mr. Bittle. Now, would you like to sleep some more, or would you like to get going?”

“Get going?” Eric had meant it as a question, but Farmer instantly accepted it as an answer.

“Alrighty then, let’s get to it!” She flashed that blinding grin again before turning and marching back into the darkness. For a sickening moment, Eric was left alone in the dark, the shadows cast by the quietly humming lights making everything seem bigger than it was. The darkness swallowed Farmer up easily, her footsteps still padding down the way into what seemed like a very long hall.

Eric let out a very quiet breath. He had survived an alien abduction, or as Agent Hall had put it, an accidental extra terrestrial acquirement of organic…okay, Eric couldn’t remember how Agent Hall had put it. The point was, he could handle a dark spooky hallway.

“Mr. Bittle?”

“Eric.” He corrected as he took his first few steps into the darkness. Behind him the wall slid closed, completely immersing him in the blackness that surrounded them. “Eric is fine.” He smiled in the darkness, hoping the facial expression would ease his quiet panic beginning to build as the darkness pressed in from all sides. There was no light, no relief from the dizzying feeling of not being able to tell if his eyes were open or closed.

“Oh!” Farmer gasped from somewhere ahead of him, and he jumped as a hand wrapped around his arm. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you, but you’re about to run right into the fridge…Eric,” she added after a pause. Her hands were freezing, sending chills through Eric straight down to his feet. While he would never been rude enough to make a comment, Eric wondered if she would be insulted if he bought her a bottle of hand lotion under the guise of a thank you gift. The poor girl needed it like no one Eric had ever met before.

“Thank you.” He accepted her help, feeling rather like he had suddenly gone blind as she maneuvered him farther down the way. “Wait, the fridge?”

“Yeah. It’s, uh, short for refrigerator? It’s like, a big metal box that’s used to keep food cold-“

“No, sorry, I know what a fridge is,” Eric interrupted, face burning hot. Despite the ridiculousness of her response, Eric had a feeling she was being completely genuine in her explanation, not mocking him. “I just, um, didn’t expect one to be in here?”

“Why not?” She was so honest in her curiosity, nothing malicious or unkind behind her words. “I need somewhere to keep my lunch!” She laughed like she had told some great joke, and Eric smiled weakly, realizing a bit belatedly that she could most likely see the expression.

“Do you work here? Like, in the dark I mean.”

“Yes I do! It’s easier on my eyes than the florescent lights, and the Institute likes to keep people like me over here so they don’t have to run full power to it. Win win.” Eric was pulled to a sudden halt when she stopped, surprised at the unyielding strength he found himself met with as she tightened her rough grip on his arm. “Speaking of which, you might want to brace yourself, it’s gonna get bright.”

Eric only had time to register her words, squinting his eyes just in time as another panel of wall slid out and the two of them were directly transported directly to the sun.

“Agh!” Eric managed to yelp, dropping Farmer’s grip as he covered his burning eyes with both hands.

“Yeah, it’s always a little rough, just gotta go for it. Like a Band-Aid. Or, I guess that’s how you’re supposed to use Band-Aids, I don’t know.”

“You could have given me a little more warning!” Eric hissed, not caring about his manners for the moment as the world spun.

“Sorry,” Farmer winced, managing to sound truly ashamed, quelling Eric’s anger quickly.

“It’s okay, just…I think I might actually be blind now.” One hand still perched over his eyes like a visor, Eric squinted in his new surroundings. His other hand patted the wall as he made his way back into the light. Maybe this was how Farmer worked -and presumably lived- in the dark. Maybe she just got so accustomed to the darkness that the lights burned her eyes. Maybe-

Eric’s consideration of Farmer’s unique position was immediately halted as he finally adjusted to the light enough to look at the girl next him. He had been right, Farmer was young and pretty with long brown hair, but for a moment he thought something had been permanently damaged in his eyes, because she couldn’t possibly be green.

Except she was. As the world around them came into focus, Eric was one hundred percent sure that Farmer was green. Multiple shades of green actually, all moving together in swirling patterns across her skin. Skin that, in the light, now looked suspiciously like scales. Probably because it was scales.

Maybe she could see in the dark because she was a Lizard Person.

Lizard person. Farmer was a Lizard Person.

She didn’t seem put off by Eric’s sudden staring, a sympathetic tilt to her head that said maybe she just thought he was still having trouble adjusting to the light. She blinked slowly at him, and Eric was struck by the strangeness of her eyes of all things, almost completely black with a thin stripe of bright yellow running around the edges. Her eyelids moved horizontal instead of vertical.

“I know, I know,” she sympathized with another bright smile. Eric didn’t know how he could have missed, even in the darkness, how each sparkling white tooth came to a sharp point. “I hate coming out here too, but once you get used to it, it’s not too bad down here. But the first step is always the worst.”

She was still staring at him, because he was still staring at her. There was a lump in his throat that he felt might suffocate him if he didn’t so something fast. It was hard to think clearly, when all of his thoughts were some variant of ‘LIZARD PERSON!’

Lizard or not, Farmer seemed to be a nice person and she didn’t deserve his rudeness. Clearing his throat, Eric forced himself to look away, glancing down both ends of the bright but dreary hallway the two found themselves in. “Right. Yeah. Yes.” With a chorus of ‘Lizard Person! Lizard Person! Lizard Person!’ running through his head, Eric tried to focus. Tried to breathe.

The hallway was bare, completely grey with tubes of bright florescent lights running the length of the ceiling. There were no doors, but both ends of the hallway seemed to break up into more hallways. It felt more like tunnels than halls, Eric thought, before what Farmer had said finally clicked into place.

’Down Here.’

“Are we-“ he cut himself off immediately as his stomach dropped when he looked back at her. Nothing had changed in the 20 seconds since he had last looked. What he had assumed to be nails she was too busy to cut had turned out to be sharp claws, currently curled around that clipboard as she squinted at a few pages. He swallowed when she looked up at him. “Are we underground?”

She smiled wide, an expression that was much more chilling now that Eric could make out the fangs and watch the scales around her lips shift to accommodate the awkward movement. It didn’t seem like it was an expression her species was built to make. “We sure are. About 50 stories actually.”

“50 stories?” The ground moved beneath Eric’s feet and he grabbed the wall for support. Above him he could feel 50 stories worth of rock and limestone and whatever else was in the ground shifting over him, ready to collapse.

“Whoa, are you okay there?” Farmer almost dropped her clipboard as she moved forward to support him, one clawed hand wrapped around his bicep to hold him steady. It only made him feel sicker as he felt her rough scales grate against his skin.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. I’ll be okay. Just…” Eric let himself trail off as he leaned back against the wall. He was 50 stories underground, in an undisclosed location, awaiting testing for alien infections or whatever they thought he had, and being comforted by a Lizard Girl. He just needed a moment.

“Do you need some water?” Farmer really was a very sweet girl, Lizard Person or no. He felt his heart ache with guilt, but couldn’t shake the horrible unease that crept through him with her scaly hand still wrapped around his arm.

“No, thank you.” Eric finally managed, straightening himself up and patting the back of her hand gently, encouraging her to release her grip. Once she stepped back, Eric brushed off the nonexistent dirt from his clothes, trying to wipe his anxiety away just as easily. “No, I’m fine. I’m good. How…where do we go? What are we doing?” He was rambling just a bit, the ground beneath him still unsteady as he did his best to pretend it wasn’t.

“Well,” Farmer paused, her large black eyes suddenly focused back on her clipboard as she flipped a few pages. “We should probably get you to your dorm. Since you’re going to be staying here a while you should probably get adjusted, get a look around and everything.” He nodded quickly, trying to follow along when her eyes flickered back up to him. “Agent Duan and Mr. Knight are going to help show you around tomorrow, but for now let’s just get you settled, all right?” With another just this side of horrifying smile and a flick of her claws, Farmer began to lead the way down the hallway.

“Two weeks.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Two weeks,” Eric repeated. “That’s how long they told me I would be here.”

Up ahead, where the hallway broke, Eric could see the occasional person passing through the gap. Everyone looked somber and determined, like they all had somewhere very important to be at least five minutes ago. Eric blinked as someone who was definitely at least nine feet tall and appeared to have more limbs than necessary brushed through the gap, and missed the sympathetic frown Farmer gave him before she re-composed her features.

“Two weeks is the minimum, yes.”

Eric nodded. “And who is Mr. Knight?”

“Oh, he’s one of your roommates.”

Farmer made it a few more steps down the hall before she realized Eric had stopped behind her. Eric, for his part, felt for at least the tenth time that day that the wind had been knocked out of him. How he was still breathing, he had no idea. How many surprises could a heart take before it finally gave out on a person? Would they mail his body back to his parents or just incinerate him somewhere deep down in these halls? Maybe he was being dramatic. Under the circumstances he felt entitled to it.

“Eric?”

“My roommates?” His voice came out higher pitched than he had intended.

“Yes!” Farmer was the first person Eric had ever wished would smile less. “We have a lot of people who live down here, and since the most amount of space has to be reserved for testing and research, living space can get limited so most occupants have to share.” She flipped back through her clipboard, the unlimited contents of which Eric was beginning to get suspicious about. “You are going to be with Misters Knight, Zimmermann, Oluransi, Birkholtz and…Johnson.” Her face scales were stretching and shifting as she looked back up at him. “You’re going to love it. It’s like…it’s like a big sleepover, or like college.” Satisfied with herself, she set off again. “I mean, not that I’ve ever really done either, but I assume, from movies and stuff you know?”

“I was supposed to go to college,” Eric told her, feeling slightly distanced from his body as he spoke. Five roommates. Five roommates, who, for all Eric knew, could all also be Lizard People.

“Wait,” Eric said for what might have been the hundredth time since this ordeal had started. “Wait, I’m supposed to leave for Richmond in a month, am I even going to make it?”

Farmer looked over her shoulder at him with that same sympathetic-yet-still-menacing smile. “I’m sure you will,” she assured him in a tone he was fairly certain he had once used to tell his younger cousin that ‘Of course Santa Claus existed, what a silly thing to ask.’

Eric frowned as they continued. Once they turned the corner, Eric wasn’t sure what he expected, but it was vastly underwhelming really. A few people brushed by much closer now, but no one seemed as out of place as Farmer, all looking quite human and very busy as they moved past them to various destinations, though Eric still didn’t see a single door other than the one they had first emerged from. Though thinking back on it, that hadn’t been much of a door either, so much as a panel that had slid aside when Farmer had approached it.

“Where are my things?” Eric finally thought to ask as they turned down another hallway. This one was wider than the others, more people moving about. It was beginning to look more like what he had expected. The walls were high and a few people brushing past were clad in lab coats with goggles and masks hanging around their necks. In their arms they carried stacks of papers and important looking containers. One man almost walked into another, so engrossed in his reading. When he passed close enough for Eric to look, he realized it was a copy of Percy Jackson.

“Hm? Oh, your things have been put in your room. We’re almost there, promise.”

“Okay, good. That’s good-” Eric was cut off as a sudden commotion broke out behind them. It seemed more serious than the Percy Jackson incident. Farmer turned her head sharply, grabbing Eric without looking before pulling them to the side. All around them people were scattering, clearing the way as the shouting down the hall grew louder.

“What’s going on?”

“Not sure.”

Eric saw the lights before the scientists or the container, flashing along the walls announcing their arrival. The container – or at least that was what he assumed it was – was on wheels, at least four people in front and behind, pulling it through the hall and keeping it steady. It wasn’t a siren that blared through the halls, more like an alarm, constant and low, ringing out every couple of seconds but the scientists, while urgent, didn’t seem overly concerned. Though it was hard to tell with the heavy masks covering their faces.

Eric leaned back against the wall as it passed, despite being fairly out of the way all ready. The container wasn’t very big, at least not for the amount of people that were escorting it. Eric guessed it would come up to his chest if he were close enough, and it was longer than it was tall.

It looked like a metal coffin, decorating with two flashing red warning lights. The escort team was moving fast, obviously on a mission with their bizarre cargo, but Eric caught sight of the tag stuck in big block letters on the side.

01824WJP

Eric watched as it disappeared down the hall, the activity around them returning to what he assumed to be normal. “What was that?”

Eric glanced at Farmer quickly and caught a strange expression on her face for just a second. Her entire face seemed to be pulled down, it was an unsettling look, one that Eric immediately acquainted with an snake about to strike, but it was gone as quickly as it had come, replaced with a much more human look of disinterest.

Finally she shrugged, looking only mildly concerned with the interruption, a new crinkle to the scales above her eyes the only indicator that anything unusual had happened. “They must be moving something in D-Con.” She shifted her gaze to him. “I’m sure it’s fine.” As she turned away, continuing on their trek down the hall, Eric had a brief and uncertain thought that the dangerous expression she had worn might not have been dangerous at all. He thought it might have been sad.

Eric jumped only slightly when a panel of wall suddenly slid away up ahead and Farmer disappeared into it. Much to his shock, the room they entered was only a few feet across, barely enough room for both of them to fit. His panic began to set in once more as the wall slid back into place and he found himself trapped with the reptilian Farmer, who gave him a quick smile before the room began to move.

Not a room. Elevator. Eric took a shaky breath, realizing he hadn’t done that in a while, and clasped his hands together in front of him. Standing next to Farmer like this, side by side as the walls moved around them, he was struck again by just how tall she was. She towered a few inches over him, or maybe it was just the fangs and claws making her seem even bigger than she was.

Eric did his best to put those thoughts aside as the room stopped moving and they were once again continuing on their journey. This new place was another hallway, although this one was a little darker and cooler, less uniform and sterile than the halls above them. It seemed more alive somehow. Behind the sloping walls, Eric could now hear people talking, voices rising above the hum of the lights overhead in a sign of humanity that made Eric begin to consider relaxing for the first time since he had arrived.

“Here we are!” Farmer suddenly announced, stopping short and almost causing Eric to slam into her from behind as she grinned at him.

“Uh, where?” Eric scrutinized the piece of wall she was staring at, trying to distinguish what made it different from the rest of the wall, or maybe all of the wall was just hundreds of doors, all lined up beside each other. Maybe there was some inter dimensional rift, where time and space didn’t line up right and each door led to somewhere different despite being lined beside one another. Maybe some LSD would make this all make sense.

“Your room!” Farmer clutched her clipboard in front of her, watching him with wide eyes. She reached out with one hand and before he could stop her she tapped one claw against the bandage on his elbow. “Your DNA is in the system,” she informed him, and he wasn’t sure if that knowledge made him feel better or worse, “so you just hold up your hand and it’ll let you in. Your name will be on your bedroom door so you’ll know which one is yours.”

“Wha-“

Before Eric could begin to ask the myriad of questions that were all queuing in his head, he was cut short by a sort of crackle, coming from somewhere on Farmer’s person.

Farmer gave him an expression that may have been exasperation or may have been panic, he couldn’t quite tell with her scales, and raised one claw to her ear and shifted something into place. “This is Farmer.”

For a minute everything was silent. Down the hall and behind a wall someone laughed, and in front of him Farmer focused very hard on the floor, one claw still pressed to her ear.

“Yes. Yes. Very well. Okay. Over.”

Farmer dropped her hand and rolled her eyes, flashing a lot of bright yellow. Eric felt his stomach turn. “Sorry, I’m needed back up top. You’re good, right? Everything you need is going to be in there and your roommates will be able to help you with any questions. Mr. Knight can inform you more about your tour with him and Agent Duan tomorrow. If you need anything, just let one of them know.”

Eric opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Suddenly, despite how frightening Farmer was, he realized that she was the closest thing he had to a friend down here in the underground and he wasn’t ready to give her up just yet.

“Oh, it was nice meeting you, Eric. I’ll see you soon, okay?” She smiled for a moment, seemingly warring with something in her head before she surged forward and wrapped Eric in a quick but brutal hug.

“It’s all gonna be fine, you’ll see.” She promised before she was pulling away and moving down the hall at a speed that told Eric she had been taking it slow for his benefit. Blinking at her retreating form, Eric clenched his fingers together. Pulling his gaze away he focused on the blank wall before him.

Eric wasn't sure how things could get any stranger, but he had a horrible feeling the might. From the other side of the panel he heard a crash, followed by an angry shout. Eric winced, his hands clenched into fists instinctively.

With a steady breath, Eric raised his hand and the wall slid open.