Chapter Text
If you would have told Karen Feldstein, the Cornell zoology undergrad, that in 15 years she’d be working in a secret underground compound for the Department of Homeland Security, she probably would have called you a fascist pig and told you to talk to the hand. She used to be totally street like that. But shit happens. Shit like unplanned pregnancies, rejected grant applications, douche-bag boyfriends who don’t pay their rent, and twins. Fucking twins. Oh, and let’s not forget the ubiquitous student loan debt collectors.
Who knows, maybe the DHS was waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Or maybe it was just fate. But it was 11pm on a Tuesday, Amber and Sage were crying their brains out, the electricity had just been cut off, and Karen was trying to finish the fourth draft of her doctoral dissertation on the genetic ancestry of the Southeastern Red Wolf. By candlelight. With a migraine. How was she supposed to say no to the Assistant to the Secretary of Defence when he knocked on her door offering her a six figure salary? When he made a phone call and the power came back five minutes later? She wasn’t Gandhi for pete’s sake.
Not that she didn’t have regrets. But here she found herself, in her boss’s generously appointed subterranean lab facility, performing yet another set of tests on their very first living specimen: DH006. And just as she had for the past 8 days previous, she kept telling herself that this thing lying clamped down to the exam table, electrodes taped to its remarkably human—remarkably handsome—chest and forehead, was a monster, a mutant, and most definitely not an innocent being. And when she couldn’t bring herself to buy that line of bullshit, she simply stopped thinking about it at all, and left it for her subconscious mind to work out in the inevitable stream of nightmares she’d have that night.
Supposedly, the goal was to figure out what exactly happened in the creature’s brain as it transformed, and what DNA sequence allowed for such a thing to happen in the first place. She and the other assistants to Dr. Fleming had been placated with the notion of finding a “cure” of some sort, that might allow them to block the signals that cause the transformation, and essentially render it harmless and—for all intents and purposes—human. But Karen couldn’t imagine why they thought she’d actually continue to believe that, after everything she’d been a party to.
It had started with simple observations; heart rate, pulse, brain activity. They provoked it into transforming with simple psychological stimuli and recorded the results, which seemed reasonable. But that wasn’t enough for Fleming and the DHS guys. Oh, no. They wanted to stimulate the transformation themselves. And soon, any bozo could parse out that they were more interested in how to control these things than how to cure them. For all Karen knew, they were having wet dreams about creating massive shapeshifter armies to send to the Middle East. Or, you know, Missouri. Anyways, they were definitely interested in testing its limits. They wanted reports on its capacity for rapid healing that involved inflicting progressively serious injuries. A small laceration on its left arm turned into a shattered tibia, turned into a punctured lung, turned into a room pumped full of tear gas.
It was while watching—hell, participating—in this process that Karen realized she was praying for the creature’s survival. Every time. And every time it recovered, she breathed a silent sigh of relief that was partly for DH006, but also for her own slowly corroding soul. As if its ability to heal itself might somehow absolve her.
Yeah, right.
On day nine, she was assigned the envious task of removing the creature’s feeding tube and IV so they could test its resilience to dehydration and starvation. Which she could totally handle. She didn’t have anything to be afraid of. At this point, the thing was so resigned to its fate that it had given up struggling against the titanium clamps around its ankles, wrists and neck. It didn’t snap or growl at them whenever they came near it anymore, it sort of just stared off into space like someone with a bad case of insomnia. A great sense of unease descended upon her as she approached him regardless. Like she could feel a storm coming in, though she couldn’t say from where.
When they’d first brought him in, his complexion had been a ruddy olive, but now it seemed milky and translucent under the harsh neon lights, only a shade darker than the white sheet folded over his waist. The wounds they’d inflicted had left no trace of scars on his body, but Karen’s memory had no difficulty conjuring them as she glanced over his limbs and torso.
For a moment, she flashed back to her childhood, to an ICU in Greenville, Alabama where her grandmother had died. She’d been 13 years old, and had insisted on visiting her even though her Dad had intended to go alone. It was the first time Karen had seen someone hooked up to so many machines like that. She’d been terrified, but determined. Somewhere under all those tubes and wires was Grandma Jean—who made the best banana cream pie and swore like a sailor—and Karen was going to find her.
36-year-old Karen shook her head. Tubes and wires aside, this was completely different. Like it or not, she had mouths to feed and a job to do. She decided to remove the IV first. She started by pinching it off about half way between the creature’s arm and the bag of fluid, and for a millisecond, he broke his catatonic gaze and made eye contact. Karen pretended not to notice. She focused on the task, wrapping her fingers around his wrist with one hand, pulling the tape off where it held the IV in position with the other. His skin was soft and surprisingly warm and she could feel his pulse against her thumb.
She pulled the IV catheter out in one quick motion and watched as the small puncture wound disappeared. DH006’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, but he kept his gaze on the ceiling. She wondered what he was thinking about, if he was conserving a secret volcano of rage and violence, or if he actually felt as defeated as he looked. Considering how close her hands were about to be to his teeth, she guiltily hoped for the latter.
The NG tube went up the nostril, down through the nasal cavity and the esophagus, and into the stomach. It was a long-ass bastard. Of course, the only time Karen had ever dealt with one was on a sick Coyote, but even then, she’d needed two other people to hold the animal down as she’d pulled the thing out. The only way this was going to go smoothly was if she got some cooperation. That meant talking. And eye contact. Yep. That storm was feeling closer by the second.
“I’m going to remove this feeding tube,” she said, as if for a hard-of hearing foreign exchange student. “Do you understand?”
DH006 blinked slowly, and for a second Karen was scared that his eyes might be that terrifying incandescent blue when they opened again. But they remained the odd shade of greyish-green that reminded her of the Scottish Highlands, and his brow furrowed a little as if he were confused for some reason.
Wait. She was referring to him as a… him? How long had that been going on?
She had to get this over with. She had to get out of here. Go have lunch in the break room with Marshfield and Stanislovski and talk about last night’s episode of The Walking Dead.
God. How the hell had she ended up here?
“I’m gonna count to three and then I need you to hold your breath, okay?”
He looked at her. He looked right at her. And he nodded. Christ, he looked terrified. Which made no goddamn sense at all considering he hadn’t looked even remotely scared when Fleming had sliced his abdomen open without any anaesthetic. She nodded back and gently eased her fingers under the tube, brushing against his upper lip. She counted to three. He closed his eyes. She pulled.
There was a lot of coughing and a lot of gross, slimy fluid that came out along with the tubing. But it was over. Karen tossed the tube in the trash, grabbed a couple of clean towels from over the sink and wiped off her hands. DH006 was relaxing a little, clearing his throat more than coughing now, and Karen wiped the strands of fluid off his face and chest.
“You okay?” she asked, clearly not thinking.
DH shivered. “Is it over?” he asked, with a voice as ragged as an old dollar bill. And she knew he wasn’t talking about the NG tube. In his eyes, she saw hope.
Karen suddenly felt sick. The dirty towels fell from her hands and she backed away from the exam table slowly. Of course. Of course he saw what was happening here and thought that they were done with him, closing up shop. Whatever. He might not have even expected to get out alive. Maybe all he was hoping for was an end to his suffering. But the truth was, it was only the beginning of a new form of suffering. And Karen was letting it happen. No, she was making it happen.
“I’m sorry…” she said, barely a whisper.
DH’s fingers flexed outward, in a completely futile attempt to reach for her as she distanced herself from him. “Please…” he begged—for the very first time.
There had never been, and there never would be, a moment in Karen’s life where she despised herself more than she did in this moment right here.
She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her face with her hands, trying to get a handle on the panic she felt rising in her chest. “I… I don’t know what to do,” she said, feeling as though it was the most honest thing she’d said in days.
“Pen,” DH grunted, and the word was so small, the notion so simple, that it took Karen a minute to comprehend it.
“A pen? Yeah. Yes. Of course.” She stumbled to the counter by the sink, where a cheap bic pen sat strung to the side of a clipboard no one was using. She cut the string viciously with her teeth, brought it over to DH and helped position it in his right hand. And she offered up her own hand to write on.