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Life had become very strange.
Well. Stranger.
Newt had gotten a little used to the fact that his headspace was full of ghosts and one extremely irritable fellow scientist, but there were instances when it just got to be a bit much. If it wasn’t the dreams, it was the hallucinations. And if it wasn’t the hallucinations, it was the nagging sense that no matter where he was, he wasn’t really alone. Earlier that morning, for example; brushing his teeth and making faces in the mirror, only to feel Gottlieb’s withering disapproval burning at the back of his mind.
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you don’t make faces in the mirror.”
“I tend not to act like a child and slather toothpaste all over myself. At least attempt to act your age, Newton.”
Newt had pulled a grotesque face and focused with all his might on sending an impression of Not Giving A Fuck through the Drift bond. Gottlieb’s startled splutter and the sound of coffee being spit everywhere had been extremely gratifying. It was kind of like having a superpower – bonded minds capable of inflicting annoying mental impressions in a single bound.
But sometimes it was less of a bond and more of a tide pulling him away from himself. If Newt let his mind wander, he could too easily slip into the strange half-reality of the lingering hivemind, the kaiju’s memories overwhelming him until something on the outside drew him back. Usually that something was Gottlieb, subtly shaking his shoulder or giving him a poke to wake him from the fugue that could leave him staring and silent for hours.
If Gottlieb had ever slipped into the same state, he never gave any indication; Newt privately thought he was just too damn sensible to allow himself to daydream, let alone lose all sense of self in the kaiju Drift. Newt was on the verge of slipping again now; Gottlieb had stepped out of the lab for a few minutes, leaving him to his own devices.
Normally that would have included hiding at least one scrap of kaiju carcass in Gottlieb’s side of the lab just for kicks, or maybe changing up a number or two on the chalkboards. But the day had been a long and wearying one with reports, paperwork and frustrating dead-ends with experiments, and Newt couldn’t help but zone out a little.
It was a sense of coldness that always came on first. A sensory hallucination, like feeling pain in an arm that had been amputated. Gottlieb had called Newt’s broken kaiju bonds a neural amputation more than once, and he had to agree. It still hurt, a wound constantly in a state of healing. And the ghosts remained.
Newt had laid down at his desk, pillowing his head on his arms and his eyes rolling slightly under flickering lids. He shivered at the cold prickling across his skin; it wasn’t frightening anymore, not really. It was part of him. And it took so little for it to get going.
coldcoldcold silencesilencecold
cold
c o l d
Newt opened his eyes and found himself in the strange, dark limbo of the hivemind once again. He turned on his heel and took in the scope of it; limitless dark stretching in all directions. Full of potential, maybe, or just the memory of potential. A last holdout for the dead.
alonealonealone silence alone
“No,” Newt said softly. “Not alone. You know that by now. Never alone.”
Lines of grey light shifted formlessly at first, and Newt watched it morph seamlessly into something he should have been mortally afraid of. The monsters in his head were terrible things. He supposed he was lucky he had learned to live with them.
“Hundun,” he said, vaguely amused. “Second-ever kaiju to come out of the Breach. Okay, not bad. I can appreciate a classic.”
The kaiju hissed and shook itself, prowling around Newt and staring down at him. Newt watched it silently for a second, then shook his head.
“You know that doesn’t scare me,” he said to it reasonably. “Come down here and let me see you.”
Hundun gnashed its teeth, and when it lowered its head down to look at him it had twisted and reformed like smoke into Karloff. It stared at him with too-wide eyes, mouth moving in disturbingly human patterns. Newt studied its rough-hewn face closely, taking in every wrinkle and flaw.
“So what are you?” he asked. Karloff’s mouth worked silently, speaking a language Newt couldn’t hope to understand. “Memory? Dream?”
Karloff settled onto elbows and knees and stared unblinking at him. The grey light made it even more unearthly than it already was; a true ghost, possessing a tiny corner of Newt’s mind, refusing to fade.
“Are you me?” he asked. Karloff’s mouth stilled, and its body shuddered into Hardship. “Look, just…blink or something. One for yes, two for no.”
Hardship raked at the absent ground with talons that could have rent metal apart like paper. Newt waved a hand in front of its face to catch its attention and its head jerked back like a startled animal. Bulging eyes focused sharply on him and Newt couldn’t tell if it was real intelligence or his own mind giving life to echoes. It was incredibly frustrating trying to figure it out.
“Okay, let’s try something,” he said. The kaiju made no reply. “Change. I want to see Slattern. Be Slattern.”
Hardship remained unchanged. Newt focused on the memory of Slattern, its heavy head like a misshapen crown of bone, its whiplike tails. He closed his eyes and willed the hivemind’s projection to change. If it was his own mind, he would be able to control it.
“Change,” he whispered. “Change.”
His body tensed with the effort. Change. Change.
The very air seemed to shudder, and something whispered distantly in a far corner of his mind.
He opened his eyes.
Hardship had vanished. The hivemind had settled into the formlessness of its natural state, insubstantial once more. Newt sagged slightly. Damn.
“Are you alive?” he asked. The smoke rippled and eyes stared out at him, vague faces shifting one into another. “It’s me, isn’t it. I’m keeping you alive.”
Newt sighed, sitting down cross-legged in the middle of the hive. It twisted around him and billowed upwards, trying to put distance between him and itself.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “We can’t get away from each other. We might as well learn to get along.”
--
Gottlieb found Newt sleeping at his desk, glasses askew and in danger of falling off completely. He sighed with reflexive disapproval at first, walking past him with the full intent of going back to work. A twinge in his mind gave him pause as he went past Newt’s desk; a fleeting sense of coldness, the barest hint of a whisper.
“Damn it, Newton,” he said softly, frustrated. “Not again.”
He shook Newt’s shoulder firmly, trying to rouse him. The sense of coldness was like a trickle of icy water crawling down his spine and he shivered at it. Newt didn’t respond, and Gottlieb shook him harder, trying to ignore a growing sense of panic. Usually he woke up at once.
“Newton,” he said. “That’s enough.”
--
Newt suddenly rocked to the side and caught himself before he was knocked over.
“Ah, shit,” he muttered. Gottlieb must have come back and caught him at it again. He sighed again in frustration, looking up at the shifting cloud of the hivemind. Here and there, an eye looked back.
“This is really about adjusting for everybody,” he said. Spinejackal’s face leered at him, lips pulled back from its teeth in a grimace. “It is. Don’t give me that attitude. You’re here because I let you in. The least you can do is try to be a better guest. Guests. Whatever, you know what I mean.”
A flash of panic that was neither his nor the hivemind’s shivered through him, and Newt felt his breath catch in his chest.
wakeupwakeup newton please what happened wake up
“Shit,” Newt said again, standing. The hivemind shivered and twisted into Hidoi, circling him like a predator. “Oh, now you want to cooperate. Cute.”
Hidoi coiled around him, tail looping around in a circle and its tip resting against its face, effectively penning Newt next to it, eyeing him intelligently. Well, shit. Now he really was stuck for a while. When he woke up, Gottlieb was going to kill him.
--
“I’m going to strangle you.”
Gottlieb had pulled Newt off the chair and laid him out flat on the floor, taking off his jacket and using it as a makeshift pillow. Newt had gone very pale, the barest trickle of a nosebleed painting a thin red stripe down his face. Gottlieb sat in his chair leaning forward on his cane, resting his chin atop his hands.
“You tiresome idiot,” he muttered angrily. “Can you develop at least a sliver of self-preservation? Is this just a game to you?”
--
“I know it’s not a game, you jerk,” Newt muttered to the empty sky. He blinked, and then shook his head. Hidoi gave a gurgling growl and he glared at it. “Shut up. You barely exist, you don’t get to judge me either.”
Hidoi’s head reared back and its jaw swung open, tongue curling and ropes of saliva swinging as it snarled at him.
“See? This is what I’m talking about. You live in my head. I have to deal with you the rest of my life,” Newt snapped. “You’re a shade. So stop acting like you can rip me apart, okay? Living with you is torture half the time.”
The kaiju quieted, drawing back like Newt was screaming at it.
“Thank you,” he said. “See? This is good progress already.”
Hidoi shook itself violently, undulating into Scissure. It snapped its teeth sullenly at him though he couldn’t feel any real belligerence from it. All of that was currently coming from Gottlieb. Newt focused on the living bond for a second. It got tangled up in the remnants of the dead kaiju bonds so often it was sometimes hard to find.
--
Gottlieb suddenly jolted, his cane clattering to the floor.
“You have my attention, you dolt,” he muttered at Newt, feeling like a string had been plucked somewhere in his head and would not stop vibrating. “You had better have an excellent excuse for this idiocy when you wake up.”
if you wake up.
--
I always come back.
Newt let the thought thrum in his mind for a second before letting go of the bond, shifting his focus back towards the hivemind. Scissure watched him hawkishly, and there was interest in it.
“You see that?” he asked it. “That’s what sharing headspace is. Not overwhelming a person ‘til they’re catatonic and drooling. I’m getting sick of that.”
Scissure hissed softly.
“Is that an agreement or an argument?” Newt asked dryly. Scissure hissed again, giving off no impression of its thoughts. “Alright. Let’s at least agree to be cordial, okay?”
Scissure twisted sinuously, features distorting until something Newt finally did feel genuinely, sickeningly afraid of stared down at him.
“Do we have an agreement or not?” he asked Scunner, voice very quiet. “We’re stuck with each other.”
Scunner leered down at him, lowering its head towards him until it rested its chin on the ground, its broad tusks flanking Newt on either side. Malice and calculating intelligence flashed in its eyes, and Newt refused to look away. His fear buzzed through him like a sickness and he knew the sense of it was bleeding through to Gottlieb, but he couldn’t help it.
“I didn’t want you here, but you are,” he said softly. “Play nice or I’ll learn how to forget you. You’ll be alone. So. Truce?”
A growl rattled out of Scunner’s throat and shook through Newt to the bone, but there was fear all its own in the sound. It drew away from him, losing its shape until the hivemind had become cloudlike and formless once more.
truce
--
Newt woke up stiff and sore on the lab floor, eyes streaming tears for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom. A dull headache pounded in his temples and he was soaked with sweat.
“You idiot!”
Newt bit back a yelp as Gottlieb swooped down on him, seizing him by the collar and yanking him upright.
“What the hell were you even thinking?” he said, infuriated. He looked exhausted, eyes gone rather red and glassy. “What did you do?”
“Nothing, nothing!” Newt said, trying to twist free. Gottlieb simply held on tighter, visibly resisting the urge to shake him. “Well. Kind of nothing. Kind of…something. Okay. Okay, I did something.”
“You almost gave me a panic attack,” Gottlieb hissed. “What happened? You’ve been unconscious for hours.”
“And you left me on the floor this whole time?”
“That is entirely besides the point!”
Newt twisted again, and Gottlieb finally let go, looking disgusted.
“I just…” Newt said, trailing off vaguely. He shook his head, a hand unconsciously reaching for his temple above his left eye. “I had to…talk to the tenants.”
“Te…the hivemind?”
“If that’s what it really is. Yeah. I…”
He rubbed at his nose, studying the thin streak of blood that came off, staining his knuckles. There was something calmer about his mind, a sense of quietness that had been absent for so long he’d forgotten what it even felt like. When he focused, it was Gottlieb’s presence he felt, not the constantly twisting knot of the kaiju.
“It was getting a little too noisy,” he said eventually, looking up at Gottlieb. “Just had to….lay down some ground rules. It’s quieter. Don’t you feel it?”
Gottlieb looked away, torn between anger and something Newt couldn’t quite understand.
“There is certainly less of a weight on my mind,” he said. “Whatever it was you did to placate it, you did it rather well.”
“Yeah, I guess I kind of…yeah,” Newt said, trailing off again. Gottlieb regarded him silently for a moment, then sighed and grabbed his hand, pulling him up.
“You imbecile,” he said without heat. If anything, he almost sounded impressed – though Newt was sure he’d deny it even under torture. “I leave you alone for one minute.”
“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.”
“One would have to have the self-preservation of a lemming to come up with such an idiotic idea. Don’t be proud of yourself.”
Standing proved to be taxing, and Newt swayed a little. Gottlieb caught him, throwing an arm around his shoulders to steady him.
“Are you alright?”
Newt was silent for a long moment, considering the question.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “I am.”