Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sebastian wasn’t exactly the most prone to company, one could say.

If you were putting it nicely, Sebastian could be somewhat forced into keeping polite company with someone. The Expendables, the Urbanshade scientists, the entities in the Blacksite - all company he had, but didn’t particularly enjoy.

However, there were a few people who he considered exceptions. Who he was alright with, even for long periods of time - p.AI.nter, obviously, and that one Urbanshade scientist who had always taken smoke breaks with him. 

The latter was gone. Sebastian had rather firmly told her to leave the Blacksite in the days before he put it into lockdown. Maybe it was weird that out of every person in the Blacksite he could have warned, it was one of the scientists, but that girl definitely had a life to get back to. The only reason Hurricane had worked so hard to get so high up in the job system in the first place was because someone was relying on her. And besides, she’d provided him with some decent company on smoke breaks.

And they were the only one who called him by his code name, his title, before calling him by his experiment designation. The only person in the entire Blacksite who actually treated him like a human being. It had been a nice change of pace.

Yeah, no. Dr. Hurricane had beyond earned his early warning.

Everyone else?

They could go down with the rest of this hellhole.

Therefore, Painter was the only one he had down in the Blacksite, and the only one who he enjoyed keeping company with.

At least, that was how it was initially. And how he’d planned it to stay.

The universe, who apparently thought it was the most hilarious thing to ever exist, had other plans for him.

He was just minding his own business in Heavy Containment, digging around an Expendable's corpse for loose items that he could resell to someone, when he heard a noise he’d never heard before.

A tiny, ragged clicking echoed throughout the open space, completely unfamiliar to him. The closest thing he could possibly link it to would be the ominous, annoying warning sign that Wall Dwellers gave when emerging from a wall.

Warily, Sebastian pulled his gun free from the holster, fingering the box of shotgun shells he kept in one pocket. Whatever it was, it was definitely too small to be a Wall Dweller.

Then the sound changed, to be a clicking version of an Angler’s shriek.

He didn’t even hesitate before levelling the sawed-off shotgun with the ground, the muzzle purposely aimed there. Sebastian wasn’t stupid enough to hold a gun with live rounds up unless he was one hundred percent sure that there was something there worth potentially wasting bullets on.

His third hand moved to the radio on one of his belts, and he slithered over to a new door in the area. He slipped into the side room, the kind that had multiple containment rooms in the same area, to make sure there was nothing that could see him.

Flicking it on, he called in to the only line he ever needed - or wanted - to call. 

“Hey, kid,” Sebastian said, wrapping his tail around a table leg. “Can you do me a favour?”

“What’s up?” Painter’s voice, the little AI he’d met, chirped from over the radio. 

“There’s something in the room where I’m at,” Sebastian explained. The clicking had gone mostly quiet, but the occasional weird cries echoed through the area. He hadn’t heard it long enough to pinpoint where it was coming from. “It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard down here before.”

“Can’t you just figure it out?”

“Would you rather I get out of here with my tail in pieces?”

“Alright, alright, fine, you big baby.”

Silence stretched as the radio hummed, a surefire way for him to get caught if he wasn’t careful. Sebastian was a patient guy, all things considered, but this kind of waiting was unnerving and definitely was freaking him out. Heavy Containment, while it still had some stuff in it that he hadn’t gotten the chance to free, was still pretty dangerous thanks to the stuff he did let out. He had no idea whether or not the creatures might still be lurking around.

“Um… Sebastian?”

“What’s up, kid?”

“You told me you’re the only person down here who had your experiments done on you, right?” The question made him flinch, and he resisted the urge to dig his claws into his jacket. Sebastian was instantly made aware of everything strange about his body, from the malformation of his tail to the gills running along his neck and sides that were hidden by clothes.

“Yes, I am, Painter,” he said, annoyed now. “I was the only one in the Human Gills trial. You know that.”

“I mean, I know that’s what you said, but… how do I explain what I’m seeing?”

A heavy silence settled over the two of them, as the realization of what Painter might be implying settled in with him.

“Seriously, Painter, what are you talking about?” Sebastian hissed the clicking growing louder now. “Just tell me what’s in the room!”

“Sebastian, are you sitting by the forklift in the hallway?”

His blood ran cold. He was in a side room - he was nowhere near that forklift right now. Meaning there was something else in here, and something that Painter was mistaking for him.

The mutant really, really hoped that Painter’s question about how many people were in the Human Gills trial wasn’t relevant to this. For both his sake and for whatever monster was lurking out there.

A nervous flick of his tail fluke, and it knocked a table over. Sebastian didn’t get the time to catch it before it and the potted plant on top of it crashed to the ground as loudly and dramatically as possible for a stupid plant.

“Shit!”

“Sebastian!” Painter shouted through the radio. “You idiot, why did you do that!?”

“It wasn’t on purpose!” Sebastian yelled back, no longer caring what might possibly be happening outside. “My stupid tail gets in the way all the time, you know it happens!”

“What happened to being stealthy, genius!?” Painter yelped. “I thought you were supposed to be trying to get through Heavy Containment without pissing anything off!”

“Oh please,” Sebastian hissed. “It’s a potted plant, and compared to everything else down here, I think I did this thing a favour by putting it out of its misery.”

“Sebastian-”

“And besides, you’re yelling at me instead of keeping an eye out for anything that might want to eat me,” Sebastian pointed out, lashing his tail through the porcelain shards - a surprise, given how cheap Urbanshade could be - and dirt. The feeling of dirt under his scales sent a pang of longing through him. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed the feeling of dirt.

“That’s what I was going to warn you about-!”

A confused, shrill chirp echoed through the air, and Sebastian whirled around in a panic. His grip on the shotgun tightened, ready to shoot whatever might be in the room with him if it proved to be a threat-

What?

No. 

No, no way.

That isn’t possible.

Sebastian’s eyes narrowed fully into blue pinpricks, horror seeping under his scales and into his mutilated bones as he stared in shock at the being before him.

Six dark eyes stared back at him, cross-shaped pupils glowing a surprising shade of cyan. The expression on their face was fearful, even terrified, and guilt immediately shot him in the heart.

Silence settled over the room briefly, loaded with tension thicker than galvanized wire. It was only broken when the radio crackled back to life.

“Sebastian? Is everything okay? Are you hurt?” Painter’s worried voice filled the air, just as Sebastian’s shaking hands lost their grip on the shotgun and it fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

Chapter Text

Sebastian felt like he couldn’t breathe. 

There was a very small, clearly child-sized creature in front of him, blinking between him and the source of the noise with that expression of fear still on its face. Two lures dangled from her head, thick black hair with a curious white streak at the front dropping over her face and neck. A ragged medical gown that was obviously too small for her was draped over her shoulders, and a long, greenish-gray tail stretched through the door. Stripes covered her scales in patterns Sebastian faintly recognized, almost similar to his own, much duller stripes.

“Sebastian!” Painter yelled, startling them both. “Answer me!”

“Kid, I’m on my way over in your room,” Sebastian hissed quickly, noticing how the smaller creature backed away from him. “I’m fine, just… give me a little bit, alright?”

“If… if you say so,” Painter replied hesitantly, before the AI switched the radio off on his end. Sebastian quickly followed suit, not taking his eyes off of the kid the entire time. More quiet filled the room, accompanying Sebastian’s horrified and furious thoughts.

They couldn’t have made another one like me, right? he thought, slowly lowering himself a bit closer to the ground to try and avoid scaring them further. They got what they wanted from me. Those bastards got everything they wanted out of me and my experiment. And look at this! It looks like a damn child!

The littler creature let out a worried chittering noise, one that made his ear fins perk up slightly. Sebastian had no idea why he responded that way - probably another side effect of all his mutations - but the child fish seemed to also perk up at the sight.

It tried again, a more complicated series of clicking noises, and something in Sebastian’s gut suddenly wrenched with a surge of highly unusual protectiveness and rage. 

Ugh, what am I doing? Sebastian blinked all of his eyes, trying to focus on what he was supposed to be doing, which was getting to Painter. But for the life of him, he couldn’t bring himself to shoo the kid off.

Which was very inconvenient for him, because this kid was a waste of time compared to getting to his escape route with Painter. And seriously, what was he supposed to do with a child fish mutant in a similar vein to him anyways? Why were the noises it was making making him react like that?

Ugh. The questions probably wouldn't stop bothering him unless he actually asked. May as well get it over with quickly.

“Can you speak?” Sebastian asked, his voice lower and quieter than he’d usually make it. As a matter of fact, it was more like the voice he used to comfort Painter whenever the little AI let the worry and depression hit him harder than necessary. 

That was kind of stupid. He picked up the gun, slowly, and put it back in the holster. The child didn’t seem like much of a threat.

The little creature blinked at him, before nodding. “Yes,” it answered, roughly and with clear distress. The closer he looked, actually, the more he could tell that the kid was dehydrated. From personal experience, it didn’t do him any favours.

“Do you have a name?” Sebastian asked, trying to keep himself as non-threatening as possible. As much as his usual indifference toward other experiments was meant to ward them away from him while he did his work, doing it to a kid - a kid like him, no less - was cruel, even by Sebastian’s botched standards. 

“Z… Z-395,” the child whispered, and rage immediately boiled through him. Of course Urbanshade wouldn’t have the decency to give this kid a proper name, if it had ever had one in the first place.

Whatever. That wasn't the point right now.

If he was actually pissed about it, he could be pissed later, when he wasn’t on a countdown timer.

“You know it’s dangerous out here, right kiddo?” Sebastian tried, inching a little bit closer to the kid. It blinked, drawing two of its four arms closer. “There are scarier things around here than me, you know.”

Four arms. Like his own third arm, except the kid’s was balanced.

“White clothes said stay in the room,” the child whispered. It coughed, raspy and dry, and a sharp pang of pity rang out through him. This kid needed water, and soon. “Too dry. No food. They left.”

Shit.

The child stopped talking, rubbing a claw on its neck, and Sebastian realized he had a choice to make. 

Either he could continue on to Painter and explain what he’d just found before going to the dock requested, or he could try to help the kid out at risk of putting himself in danger before the Innovation Inc. submarine could arrive.

And yet, when the mutant child let out another anxious chitter, Sebastian found himself responding to it completely by accident. He hadn’t even known he could make a chirp like that before now, but his choices were pretty objectively narrowed down to one upon seeing the surprised and almost excited look on the kid’s face.

As much of a monster as Sebastian knew he needed to be to survive down here, there was nothing in his conscience that could let him just leave a young child down here by itself, especially one who had been subjected to the same hells that he had.

“Can you show me where your room is?” Sebastian asked quietly. He hated how much some part of his brain wanted to wrap his tail around the kid and make sure it was safe. It was a weird urge, definitely from one of his own mutations, but he didn’t have time to acknowledge it. After that Expendable had escaped with the crystal, Sebastian was on the clock to get himself and Painter to the submarine dock where they needed to be.

The child nodded, turning to start leading him out of the room, but the clear lack of water was apparently getting to it. The kid swayed too hard, and Sebastian found himself lunging to catch her.

Hopefully it was a her. From what he could gather from the kid’s voice, it sounded like a young girl.

“Sorry,” the kid rasped out. “All spinning.”

What am I doing right now? Sebastian sighed, and carefully just picked the kid up. It was much smaller than he’d expected, thinner as well. Worryingly thin by most people’s definitions. If his own mother had ever caught him looking this thin as a child, he would have been fed until he couldn’t eat anymore.

Mami. I’ll be home soon, Sebastian swore, trying to suppress his tears so the kid wouldn’t see him cry. And from what it looks like, I might be bringing another mouth to feed.

“You don’t have to keep moving,” Sebastian said quickly as the little mutant chirped again, her tail dragging uselessly along behind them. The kid was small enough to be held in his third arm, and light enough to not put much strain on it. “Just point where we need to go.”

“Sure?”

“Quit talking, kid. You’re dehydrated. It’s not good for you, okay?”

The child settled into his arm, and used one of her own to point in the same direction he’d just come from. A mildly irritated sigh escaped him, but Sebastian just gathered his composure as much as possible and followed the little kid’s lead.

Chapter Text

His concern for the kid, which had already been rather high considering the fact that this was a kid by herself in the Blacksite who had mutations like his, only rose upon seeing the dried trails of reddish-brown sliding out from one of the containment rooms. The one that the girl was pointing at.

Only half understanding why, his grip on the child tightened. The little thing’s tail was dangling, but it tapped against his own somewhat weakly.

“Is this one your room?” he asked, trying to keep as calm as possible. The little mutant nodded, apparently having understood his earlier instructions to stop talking. She seemed exhausted, so Sebastian decided that exploring was up to him now.

He was going to have to be fast about it. He definitely was going to start running short on time if he wasn’t careful, and wasting time here might cause more harm than good to the kid. Dehydration messed with him badly, especially if he wasn’t able to go into open water to rehydrate his scales. 

“Just rest, kiddo,” Sebastian said quietly. “It might be a stupid idea, but at this point… I may as well try to get you out of here, too.”

It was a stupid promise, one Sebastian wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep. Promises in the Blacksite were hard to make and harder to keep. The guilt that wormed its way into his stomach only wrenched further as he turned the corner into the containment room. 

Blood stained across the entire room, with shattered glass covering the floor and pieces of a scientist scattered around everywhere else. A drained, dry pool of water sat inside the actual containment room, with more blood painting the walls.

The scientist on the floor almost looked like he’d been chewed on, and it wasn’t too hard to put two and two together to figure out what had happened to him. The scent of more rotting meat caught his attention, but he pushed away the small twist of hunger in his stomach.

Sitting on the desk nearby was a large manilla folder, labelled ‘Z-395.’  It wasn’t any file that he’d been able to find before, and a sharp moment of debate pulled back and forth in his mind. If he took the file, it would outline whatever the fuck Urbanshade had been thinking, trying to create another one of him on purpose. Plus, it could provide his benefactors with more information on how to reverse both of their mutations, if what they were promising him was true.

On the other hand, taking it would mean reading it to make sure it actually contained that kind of data. Sebastian had read and reread his own file with every grisly detail and procedure enough times that he’d become numb to the sensation of wanting to throw up whenever he remembered it.

Somehow, he got the feeling that reading this kid’s files might undo all that repression he’d been working on. Not healthy, sure, but not everyone could afford to flaunt their problems everywhere, unlike some people up on the surface liked to do. Especially not when there was a hit out on you with explicit instructions to “shred your mags until your trigger finger bleeds,” just to make sure you were dead.

But on the third hand, leaving the file here might mean leaving behind something valuable to Urbanshade, so that they could try doing this to more people. They’d done it to him, and clearly had no issue with doing the same thing to a kid.

With a heavy sigh, he grabbed the folder and took it. He didn’t exactly have anywhere to store the thing, but it was better than leaving it for the jackasses up top to find later.

And knowing what was probably in there, Sebastian could definitely wait to read this thing. He’d promised Painter that he was getting him out of here, and at this point, it unfortunately seemed like he was lumping an extra passenger into the mix, too.

Maybe his benefactors wouldn’t be happy about an additional problem to deal with, but for fuck’s sake, Sebastian was - or used to be - human. He still had some morals, thank you very much. If the corporation taking him in didn’t, they’d have to deal with it.

Sounds like I’m planning on taking her with us, he realized. A disgruntled growl clawed its way out of his throat, disturbing the little mutant in the sleep she’d been very quickly falling into.

To his irritation, the little thing blinked open one eye and glared at him, before petulantly smacking his side with her tail.

Yep, he was definitely going to regret doing this.

-=-

“So, what, you just… picked her up and started dragging her along with you?”

Painter’s voice echoed from the scanner in his hand, where Sebastian had carefully placed the curious AI’s program chip. He’d modified the scanner to click onto his wrist, so Painter wouldn’t just be stuck in his pocket the whole time, or trapped deactivated on the computer that Painter had insisted on bringing.

“Pretty much, yeah,”  Sebastian muttered. He readjusted his grip on the little mutant slightly, having decided it would just be smarter to stick the little thing in a makeshift sling in his jacket. The belts securing the SCRAMBLER were able to keep the little creature tucked tightly away.

Painter’s little face blinked from the screen on his wrist as Sebastian started to navigate through the Ridge, getting closer to Dock #218. While the Ridge had become somewhat less inhabited by monsters since the Expendable had passed through here, as there was no longer really anything left to hunt. Sebastian could still hear the distant shrieks from Anglers somewhere further off. 

A moment passed as Sebastian wove his way through the next room, before Painter spoke up again. “So you adopted her?”

Sebastian paused completely as he processed what Painter had said, before spluttering like a madman trying to formulate some kind of response. Like, how was he supposed to answer that question!?

“Wha- no, I can’t just adopt her, Painter!” Sebastian snapped. “I met her an hour ago! I’m bringing the kid with us because I’m not heartless enough to leave one in the Blacksite. Besides, adoption up on the surface is a whole mess and a half of a process - there’s the paperwork, evaluations, everything that could possibly stand in the way for adoption.”

Painter made a curious “oh” noise, and Sebastian rolled his eyes. His claws tightened around the document that he’d taken from the kid’s containment room, 

The idea was absolutely ridiculous. Sebastian was absolutely nowhere even remotely close to the territory of a parent . Quite the opposite, actually - if there was a spectrum for this, Sebastian would one hundred percent be on a completely different diagram.

No, he was just helping this kid get out of here safely so that they could both get their mutations reversed. That was all he needed to do, and more than was probably safe to, at this point.

Somewhere in the dark distance of the Ridge, a faint sound echoed that made Sebastian’s ear fins perk up and his lure darken instinctively. The noise was long and grating, probably something Sebastian had heard somewhere, before, but definitely not one that was recognizable yet. 

Still, it was better to be on guard. Especially now that Painter couldn’t connect to the Blacksite’s camera or turret systems to keep them all safe if they needed to.

“How much further?” Painter whined, annoyance obvious in how the AI’s scribbled face turned up in a pout. “It feels like we’ve been moving for ages! ”

“Why do you wanna know?” Sebastian asked, offering a short eye roll that he knew the AI couldn’t see right now. 

“Because I’m bored,” the AI complained, their voice pitching much too high for his liking. “There’s nothing to do in this scanner! I want to paint!”

“How about we get you hooked up to the wall once we’re at the dock?” Sebastian offered, straining his ears to try and figure out what the approaching sound was. It was starting to sound familiar, but in that way that made his skin crawl and jaw tense as if ready to snap. “Then you can draw for a little bit before the submarine gets here.”

“Mmm… okay!” Painter’s pout turned to an excited smile, and Sebastian’s eye roll was not of annoyance, but of reluctant affection this time. The kid - who he had almost completely forgotten was here - shifted in the makeshift jacket sling she was sitting in. He had to resist the urge to drag whatever was in his jacket out and get it off him, because it felt like a deep sea parasite.

“Alright, now be quiet,” Sebastian scolded. “You too, kid. We’re almost at the dock, I promise.” He poked at the vaguely squirming lump of thing in his coat that was the kid. She let out a series of annoyed, tired clicks before falling asleep again halfway through trying to yell at him.

Painter’s on screen image blinked, before the scanner screen went dark. They were in rest mode now, thank God.

He paused for a moment, looking around the darkened room to try getting his bearings. It was one of the longer rooms in the Ridge, with a support pillar firmly holding up a stone roof with large, flickering floodlights attached to the top. Bright as they sometimes could be, Sebastian didn’t really need their help to see in here. Lockers and stray desks lined the room haphazardly, some pressed against the base of the support pillar, others crammed along the edge of the walls. A couple of stray indents in the wall by the upcoming door set him on edge - the walls down here were smooth with the exception of Wall Dwellers.

And the noise from earlier had gotten closer too. It sounded like a grating, screeching cry of metal being dragged against metal. It was not a sound native to any Nodefish he knew of - their screams were much more present and ear-piercing, even from a distance.

His tail twisted as the sound kept approaching. Something slow for sure, meaning that if they were maybe two rooms away, Sebastian might be able to at least cover a little more ground before whatever it was caught up to them. 

The mutant was about to keep moving when the distant monster let out a sound almost like a distant train horn, mixed with that grating metal.

SHIT.

Shit, shit, shit, it’s time to go.

To anyone who’d been living down in the Blacksite for long enough, those sounds always, always , meant that Z-367 was in the area. 

And if you were unfortunate enough to not know which creature carried that designation by heart, then perhaps the name Pandemonium might ring a better bell for the uneducated.

Sebastian had been jumped enough times at random by Pandemonium to not particularly enjoy that creature’s presence. A monster made of rusting metal, corpses fused and melted into a sickly flesh, and eyes that could catch movement through even the safest of lockers, Pandemonium was a threat to most who encountered it. The thing was voracious in its hunger, sometimes fine with scavenging materials while sometimes rushing through the Blacksite on the hunt for Expendable flesh. Over the past little while, Sebastian was pretty sure at least some of the thing’s mass was made up of shredded suits and broken diving gear.

And on the rare occasions where Pandemonium hadn’t immediately tried to rip his tail off upon initial encounter, it spoke with so many voices and in such a loud, glass-scraping-chalkboard pitch that Sebastian found it difficult to maintain conversation with it at all. As far as he could tell, only the Nodefish and the Eyefestation could speak to it without needing to slam down a mental wall every twenty seconds to make sure they weren’t going insane.

He was through the next door in record time, considering how weird it was to move right now. Pandemonium, at minimum, was a threat to their escape, and if it caught them and actually managed to hurt him, then Painter and the kid were in much more trouble than he would be.

The room he’d opened up to was windowed, the black depths of the ocean outside lit brightly by the Trenchbleeder wandering nearby and the lights for the External Defense System. The cannon was lit up like a beacon, and while the gun wasn’t active at the moment, it would be the second Urbanshade got their greedy hands on the Blacksite’s operating systems. The moment they noticed Painter was out, they’d find their way back in.

The noise was getting closer, and Sebastian also heard the crackling, ripping noise of a plaster-like skin being torn out of a wall behind them. Another familiar signature to anyone who had gotten unlucky enough to hear it.

Great. Now they had a Wall Dweller to deal with, too.

Sebastian sighed, and drew his gun. If a fight with something was inevitable, he’d rather take down the Dweller than Pandemonium. As much of a trash compactor as the thing was, it didn’t seem to do much to the parasites living rent free in the literal walls.

Sebastian took a quick, deep breath, and prepared himself for a fight.

Chapter Text

The moment the Wall Dweller crossed the threshold of the door, three things happened all at once.

Firstly, Eyefestation appeared in the window, glaring at the Wall Dweller with the same sound it made when it was trying to melt something’s brain.

Secondly, Pandemonium rushed into the room, screeching loudly and jumping directly at the same Wall Dweller with what was most likely murderous intent.

And thirdly, Sebastian decided at that moment that the Wall Dweller was a threat, and fired his shotgun.

Said Wall Dweller, who had just been hungry and looking for something easy to eat, managed to die in three separate ways all at the same time. Half of the creature was torn away into Pandemonium’s mouth, the monster’s head popped from Eyefestation’s radioactive gaze, and its left leg was blown to pieces by the bullet from Sebastian’s shotgun.

The room went silent after that, leaving a mostly decimated Wall Dweller to flop over pathetically and die on the floor.

All three of the still living entities stared at it blankly for a moment, before a mental prod from Eyefestation snapped Sebastian out of his staring.

Eyefestation’s weird hypnosis ability meant that she also had an uncanny ability to mentally communicate with anyone or anything she so chose to.  And thankfully for Sebastian, it made Pandemonium’s many voices a lot more tolerable to listen to.

“Hello, you two,” Eyefestation greeted politely. “I see you leaving?”

“Yep,” Sebastian said, trying to keep himself a little further away from the creature who was actually inside the room with him. “Finally, thank God.”

“Why DO you LEaVE?” Pandemonium asked, blinking at least twelve of its sixty plus eyes at him. In a way, to someone out there, the way it blinked at him could have been like a sad puppy. Well, if your average sad puppy was made of metal and rotting flesh and hundreds of eyeballs. 

“I’ve told you this,” Sebastian said, trying to keep his voice mostly steady as he shifted. “I have to go up to the surface.”

He shifted again, and the feeling of the kid sleeping in his jacket suddenly spiked up his wariness by another two whole levels. He’d completely forgotten about the kid again, and with two potential threats sitting in the area, Sebastian was probably three fish-socialization missteps away from revealing the kid by accident.

It would get rid of the problem, but Sebastian immediately pulled away from this idea in revulsion and more of that stupid protectiveness for the kid. He wasn’t going to just let a kid get eaten or irradiated to death.

“The submarine will be arriving soon, so… y’know, I gotta go,” Sebastian said quickly, suddenly feeling the need to get out of this conversation as fast as humanly possible. “Do you guys have any plans?”

“Hunt them down,” Eyefestation hissed, the pulse of fury in the shark’s words giving Sebastian a rather annoyingly painful headache. “Or find new hunting grounds. Safer ones than these.”

“FrEE D oM FoR  US,” Pandemonium shrieked, which was not helping his headache. The many eyes of the thing blinked at him, before a significant sound of grinding metal and old flesh tearing apart filled the room. Without another word, Pandemonium turned around and rushed back out of the room.

Apparently, Pandemonium has better things to do than sit around and hold conversations, Sebastian thought, with a tiny sigh of relief. Which was fair, considering he also didn’t really have the time to sit here holding somewhat friendly conversation with Eyefestation.

Plus, it meant that Pandemonium wouldn’t have the chance to sniff out the kid. 

Speaking of, the mutant shark in question had turned the full force of her many gazes on him now. Not all of the eyes, of course - all of them would pop Sebastian’s head open like a watermelon shot through with a bullet.

“Can I ask you for a favour?” Eyefestation asked, their mental voice quieter than usual. “You don’t have much time, I’m aware, but you say you are leaving these oceans?”

“I am,” Sebastian shot back, a tiny prickle of unease starting up to life in the back of his mind. “And I’m not sure what you want from me, but you’re also right - I don’t have a lot of time.”

“If it is possible,” Eyefestation said, the voice quieting even further, “could you figure out a way to take me with you?”

That caught him even further off guard. Eyefestation had never expressed any unique desire to return to the surface, considering the fact that he was pretty sure she’d never seen it before. The shark was apparently fine with using Urbanshade as their hunting grounds, especially considering the once abundant number of Expendables coming through here.

“Why would you want to come to the surface?” he demanded, absently curling his hand closer to the kid sleeping in his jacket. Probably more of that weird, stupid protective urge to keep the kid safe for reasons he had yet to understand.

“I have overheard them,” the shark hissed, her distress ringing out clearly. “They wish to hunt me. I do not wish to become their prey.”

Sebastian’s ear fins flinched, just barely, before he let out a deeply irritated sigh. God, he didn’t have time to carry out every other task from every couple of desperate and scared entities down in the Blacksite. His escape plan had already been compromised once by the kid - Eyefestation was a whole other problem.

“I’ll… tell you what.” Scales scraped against the floor as Sebastian started moving again, readjusting the hidden kid in his jacket. She was starting to feel rather cold, which Sebastian knew from experience was definitely, probably not good. Sebastian turned back to the mutant shark, staring just beyond her eyes for safety reasons. “I’ll pass along your request to the people helping me escape. I’ll do my best to see if they can come back for you, but I can’t guarantee that I have any way to fully persuade them to do it.”

“It is acceptable,” Eyefestation said. “If you succeed, I owe you the finest prey.”

And without a goodbye or anything like that, Eyefestation broke the mental connection and swam off into the dark depths of the Let-Vand zone. The green glow of her eyes disappeared quickly, leaving Sebastian and the kid alone in the Ridge once more.

Speaking of the kid-

She squirmed in the folds of his jacket, clicking rather furiously before squirming around to poke her head out. The little thing sleepily glared at him, trying to communicate something to him that Sebastian wasn’t fluent enough in clicking to understand fully.

“Kid, what are you asking for?” Sebastian demanded, a flare of irritation awakening in his mind. “I don’t speak-”

The loud growling of the kid’s stomach answered that question, and the two kind of just looked at each other for a second before the child grumpily tucked herself back into the jacket with an annoyed click.

Right. Food.

The kid had mentioned that she didn’t have food in her room, which upon reflection set off an incredible amount of alarm bells in Sebastian’s head. Meaning that there was a chance this kid hadn’t eaten anything for a lot of time loops. Even if she was getting reset, the lockdown persistently lasted about three days.

Sebastian groaned in anger, faced with even more problems. He didn’t have time for this - they were so close to the submarine dock, and now the kid was going to side-track him again !? He had no time to try finding the kid something to eat-

A scent reached his nose, one that he didn’t like but made his own stomach growl in reminder that he also hadn’t really eaten anything in a while.

Sebastian looked back toward the floor by the entry door of the room, his snout twisting up in disgust as his fluke smacked the wall in annoyance. 

Well… this was worth a shot, wasn’t it?

Chapter Text

“What are you eating!?”

Sebastian wrinkled his snout in disgust. He swallowed the chunk in his mouth, baring his teeth slightly at the porous texture, before turning to Painter. “Food is food, Paints. Besides, the kid was apparently hungry, and it was right there.”

The scribbled face on the little computer monitor looked absolutely repulsed by what they were eating, and for good reason. “I thought you said Wall Dweller flesh is gross! Plus, that’s not even a chunk - you dragged half a corpse to the dock with us!”

Dock #218 was mostly quiet, minus the loudly distressed voice of Painter echoing through the dark open area. Twelve crates, full of data, files, and machinery that Sebastian had spent so long scavenging from around the Blacksite, were stacked up in the loading zone. The only light here came from a small floodlamp, his own lure, and Painter.

The aforementioned AI was sitting on top of one of crates, his monitor and PC plugged into a heavy-duty electrical port in the wall so that he could draw if he wanted to. Sebastian was sitting closer to the railing of the moon-pool, his long tail draped around to fall in the water below, while he tried his best to prompt the kid out of his jacket to eat something.

Which said kid was not doing, much to Sebastian's irritation.

The Wall Dweller corpse, while half destroyed and disgusting looking, was still mostly edible. Cut away the parts Eyefestation had irradiated and the massive bite on the right side that had still been burning with leftovers of Pandemonium’s acidic saliva, and it was pretty much free food if you weren't a coward. And generally for anyone who didn’t mind the chalky, insulation-scent taste that they were apparently known to have.

The Expendables apparently hadn't minded - he'd watched one of them, a peach-furred maybe-cat-thing of some kind, eat a whole chunk right in front of him without doing so much as gagging.

“And it’ll hopefully be gone before we leave!” Sebastian answered quickly. “And- oh come on, kid, you just made a noise that sounded like you were hungry, give me a break!”

Said kid let out a series of annoyed clicking noises, glaring at him while she struggled to stay pressed in his jacket. She seemed tired - the way she had been squirming around before was way more energetic compared to the offhanded, uncoordinated swipes she was trying to take at him now.

“Seriously, what is up with you?” Sebastian hissed, giving up on trying to coax the kid out and just grabbing the little shit to pull her out instead. She let out a very indignant cry, crossing all four of her arms and giving him a very grumpy face.

If it had been anyone else in this situation, maybe the little fish mutant thing making a hilariously grumpy face would have been funny, or even cute. Sebastian did not find it either. He just made a face right back, which the kid returned again.

Although, actually… closer inspection proved the kid was still fairly dehydrated. He'd assumed so before, but her scales felt very dry. Not only that, but in the floodlight, there was little reflection on her scales. Even the colours looked dull, the stripes on her scales a little too faded for anyone's comfort.

I’m an idiot, Sebastian realized. She hasn’t been moving so much because she’s sluggish from dehydration. The same thing happens to me, why should she be any different?

“You need water, don’t you,” he muttered out loud, and the kid visibly perked up at the mention. He looked around briefly, but in all of his foresight, Sebastian had somehow managed to forget to bring drinking water of some kind.

Just fantastic. All in all, this was shaping up to be a great trip to get home. Which somehow now felt a million years farther away than it had an hour ago.

He swivelled around, to where his own tail was dropped into the moon-pool of the submarine dock. The water lay softly undisturbed, dark ripples moving serenely across the surface. With no indication of the rescue submarine’s arrival, it should be safe to put the kid in the pool for a little bit. 

“Alright, in you go,” Sebastian muttered aloud, although why he said it like that, he had no idea. It was definitely stupid. “Let me know when you want me to take you out of there, okay kid?”

The kid clicked and hummed a long series of noises at him, despite the fact that they could absolutely talk. He still kind of got the message - a 'thank you' - which was also kind of weird. Sebastian didn't make those noises, not anymore, so the idea he understood what any of it meant was beyond him.

Whatever. Just one more thing to fix once we get to the surface.

The kid clung to his claws even as she approached the water. It only made sense if she was intimidated - the moon-pool was otherwise pitch-black. The second her tail touched the water, though, she practically leaped out of his hands to get in.

Sebastian shocked even himself when he changed how his fluke was being held in the water to make a small platform for the little thing. Obviously, just so that the kid didn’t sink if she had no clue how to swim. Teaching a kid how to swim would be incredibly inconvenient for him right now, so it would just be easier to make sure that she didn’t drown herself in the first place.

“You’re being nice,” Painter said the moment Sebastian turned around, and he grimaced at the words. He had kind of forgotten Painter could see all of that through his web cam.

“The kid’s like, ten or something,” Sebastian shot back. “Scaring her would make doing literally anything way harder.”

“Have you looked at her file yet?” Painter asked, a curiosity in their voice that made Sebastian’s stomach turn at the thought. “It could be useful, y’know. Maybe you’ll learn her name, too!”

The name thing was a good point. He couldn’t just keep calling the little thing ‘kid.’ That wasn’t really fair to her. And Sebastian definitely wasn't going to call her by her designation of Z-395, either; that was just cruel.

But again, the details in his own documents were rather grisly. They were described in entirely too much detail in the actual reports later in the document that still made his stomach turn. Sebastian wasn't really all too excited to find out if they'd just kidnapped some random kid off the streets topside and performed the same experiments on her.

If they did, he thought, sneaking a side glance toward the mutant resting on his tail, then she's certainly a lot more at ease about it than I am.

“I haven’t yet,” Sebastian said, efficiently erasing anything from his face that wasn't boredom. “I’ve been a little too busy trying to get us here in one piece, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Whatever you say,” Painter said. “At least read the first page, it’ll probably have her name!”

Sebastian rolled his eyes, but reluctantly grabbed the document off of the crate he’d set it down on. The kid settled on the fluke of his tail in the water as he opened the document. Unease and a twisting sensation in his gut prepared him as he started reading quietly - feelings all too familiar, that popped up whenever he thought back to his own experiments.

After only a few minutes, by the time he was done reading the preliminary pages, the only thing Sebastian could feel was sheer, unadulterated fury. His third hand was gripping the edge of a crate like it had personally offended him, and at this rate, the contents inside definitely had.

“Sebastian?” Painter asked, the scribbled face now turning worried. “What does it say?”

“She doesn’t have one.”

“W-what?”

“The kid doesn’t have a name,” he snarled, closing the document and shoving it back onto the crate with enough force to crumple one corner of the folder. “The most she’s got is the code name she was given by the scientists. Those bastards kept her here and never gave her a name, and then they did this to her.” 

He gestured to himself violently, still doing his best to keep the fluke of his tail completely still. Despite how much he was trying to appear nonchalant, the realization that they had done this to her without even bothering to write down something so basic as her real name made him sick with rage.

Oh, those fuckers at Urbanshade were going to pay for this.

Painter’s expression turned terrified, and Sebastian realized pretty quickly how his reaction must have looked to the little AI. Out of everything in the Blacksite, Painter was one of the few things he actually didn't want to scare, so losing his shit over this definitely wasn’t helping.

“Well,” Painter said slowly, clearly testing the waters to see if Sebastian was really angry or not, “what’s her codename? That’s probably better than the designation, right?”

He sighed, turning his head to look over at the little mutant sitting calmly on his tail. Her head was completely below the water, leaving her hair to free float around. It shifted just enough for him to catch a glimpse of flared gills below the rippling water. The kid wasn’t moving, so his best guess was that she was either falling asleep or just letting the water soak in.

“The scientists code-named her ‘The Spectator,’” Sebastian said. “Apparently, she just sits and watches whatever's going on without really doing anything. Supposedly, the calmest subject they've ever had.” Even just saying those words made him want to find a rock and cut his tongue out.

The whole 'calmest subject' thing definitely wasn't true. If the rather violently dismembered corpse in the kid’s room meant anything, the mutant wasn’t exactly content to just sit there and be nice about shitty situations.

“Spectator?” Painter asked, and Sebastian nodded wordlessly. “Wow, that whole name is a mouthful. But it matches your codename, too! The Saboteur and the Spectator sounds like a cool art piece, or a superhero comic!”

At that, the mutant fish managed a laugh. Painter’s worried face turned to a smile, and that was enough for Sebastian’s frayed nerves to be mostly soothed. Even a moment of breakable peace was more than enough.

“How old is she?” The question caught him off guard, but it was actually probably a good idea to check. It would be better to see if the kid was actually around the age he thought she was - he still didn't believe that any child like her should be so small, let alone small enough to stuff in his jacket like a small cat.

“I dunno,” Sebastian answered. “I think she’s maybe seven, or twelve. Somewhere in that age range, probably.”

Unwillingly, he picked up the document to double check, putting a small chunk of Wall Dweller in his mouth to just chew on while he read.

A chunk that he almost choked on upon seeing how old Spectator actually was.

“Fifteen!?” he yelped, whirling around to stare at the kid in the water. This kid was tiny - how the hell was she fifteen years old!?

Now that he thought back, the kid - Spectator, he reminded himself - was incredibly fluid in the way she moved. To put it a little more bluntly for his own fried braincells, she moved as if she'd always been a mutant. Tail flicking with too much ease, slithering without too much need to brace for the next movement, miniature body language signals that hadn't seemed weird in the moment, but definitely were now that he was thinking too hard.

Wait a goddamn minute.

No. No, no no no no, absolutely not.

If the experiments had been performed when she was young, then there was a horrible, horrible chance that being a mutant was the only thing Spectator could possibly remember about her life. Chances were, the kid would know better how to move her tail than to move human limbs at all.

Despite himself, Sebastian started to read over the document again.

The preliminary pages confirmed his suspicion.

With every revelation that he was uncovering, Sebastian was getting closer to either being sick into the moon-pool or personally swimming up to Urbanshade’s docks across the ocean to tear their CEO’s corpse to shreds himself. And every time, that stupid, overprotective urge toward the kid swelled like a balloon before he could properly beat it back.

He kept his face calm. Sebastian was not about to overthink this.

“That’s older than I thought,” Painter said, his screen glitching slightly. “She’s so small! Are all fifteen year old humans that small?”

“Not even close,” Sebastian replied. Unless his sense of size had been skewed by however long he’d spent being as large as he was. Only interacting with adults had probably only worsened that fact for him. Or maybe teenagers really were just that small compared to him now.

It would certainly explain the attitude, a snide part of his brain remarked. Which he promptly told to shut the fuck up, because that wasn’t the point.

This kid had been raised all her life as a monster like him, and nobody at Urbanshade apparently thought this was a bad thing. Probably treated the same way, without any sense of remorse or decency for what they'd done, and the worst part?

If Spectator had been raised that way, she probably didn't understand that it was a bad thing.

If Sebastian could have torn someone apart, he absolutely would have. The stupid protective urge in the back of his brain was practically screaming with bloodlust now, and he couldn’t do anything about it. So, instead, he just had to sit there, letting the kid sleep on his tail, and settle for seething with aimless rage.

He hummed absently, trying to get it off his mind and instead focus on what was waiting for them when the submarine surfaced. A sound that he really wasn't familiar with anymore, hearing or making.

Once the submarine broke the surface of the water, carrying the promise of the sun and the sky that were waiting for all of them now, the nightmare would be over. And everything could go back to normal. Dammit, he could have his life back once that submarine got here.

The sunlight. Would it still be as warm as he remembered it?

The blue skies and clouds. How many names did they have for different kinds of clouds again? He couldn’t remember.

Dirt and grass and wind. Would it all be cold, or would it be warmer than the waters outside?

His mind absently returned to Eyefestation’s request. A bleak reminder that even if he was escaping, there were plenty down here that wouldn’t be. Most of them could surely survive without the help of outside sources, but the mutant bull shark’s tone had been so certain. So sure about the fact that she was going to get hunted down and killed, it made the still human parts of him writhe in pity.

That feeling was promptly forced down. He couldn’t afford to feel bad for everything down here, not right now. There were very few entities here who wouldn’t wreak absolute havoc on the surface above if they were brought there, and of the remaining monsters, none of them were meant to see the light beyond this place.

No. He couldn’t save them all.

But Sebastian could save some of them. Himself, Painter, and now the kid.

A loud trilling click echoed from behind him, and Sebastian felt movement on his tail fluke. He turned his head to see Spectator blinking at him, with an expression so passively indignant that he could have sworn he was looking in the mirror.

“What, you done soaking?” he asked, flicking an ear fin in her direction. Painter grinned, clearly much more amused by his plight of unwanted childcare than Sebastian was.

“Yes.” Spectator’s voice was rough and somewhat shapeless, but it was better than how rickety and dry it had sounded before. Her scales looked healthier, too, and a fin along her spine that he hadn’t seen before flared up. “For now. Maybe I’ll try again later.”

“Does that mean you want me to take you out of the water, yes or no?” Sebastian tried. Holding his fluke at this angle was proving to hurt, and certainly would make him sore later if he didn’t give it a rest.

Spectator nodded, blinking all six eyes at him like an innocent puppy, and he sighed before reaching down to pick the kid up. She didn’t even protest this time, just watching plaintively as he hauled her up out of the moon-pool and back onto the concrete dock. 

Sebastian roughly gestured to the half-eaten Wall Dweller on the floor, drawing his tail up out of the water. “Eat up, kid. There’s probably not gonna be food for a long while before we get where we’re going.”

Spectator wrinkled her snout at it, ear fins and lures folding flat. “It smells like rot.”

“It’s all we’ve got right now,” he snapped, a little harsher than necessary. “I don’t have time to go scrounging around for a vending machine or something like that. It’s gross, but it’s filling.”

The kid made a face at him, letting out a few clicks that were sounds of obvious displeasure, but grabbed the chunk he’d been trying to feed her earlier and cramming it into her mouth. The disgusted face only twisted up more, and Painter cackled from his spot by the crate as she viciously glared down at the corpse.

Finally, he thought, a hint of relief glimmering to life in his head as the kid properly started eating something. Slowly, but it was progress. Seriously, even mutants like me can’t go very long without food. Once we’re up on the surface, Innovation Inc. should make sure that she’ll be fed properly.

And if they don’t, I can always do it myself- hold on, what!?

The idea was cut off abruptly by Sebastian’s more logical brain. Where did that idea come from? He was just helping the kid get out of here; after that, it was up to Innovation Inc. what would happen to her.

God, he was acting like Spectator was his kid. That made absolutely zero sense - Sebastian wasn’t a father, unless Zerum hadn’t told him something in those short months of being on trial.

Even the thought of his wife made his heart twist in pity.

His family thought he was dead. Accused of murder and put on trial so quickly that he’d barely had time to organize the rest of his life, before Urbanshade had snatched him away and dragged him down to hell. Nobody, not his mother or wife or brother or sister, knew what had really become of him.

Would he see them again? If Innovation Inc. really could do as they promised and turn him into a human again?

More than anything, that was the one promise he hoped they could keep. Promises were as good as useless in the Hadal Blacksite, but even just that tiny sliver of hope was enough to keep him waiting.

Even the memory of his family had him grinding his teeth to keep from letting tears escape. It wasn’t the time to cry. He had to get through this, and get back to the surface, and then maybe he’d let himself cry once he was hidden away in the safety of an isolated room or something. 

On second thought… maybe not. It wasn't worth it.

He let himself stew in his thoughts, keeping a watchful eye on Painter and the newly named Spectator while they waited.

Chapter Text

At some point, Painter asked to be unplugged. It was an odd request for the AI, considering they despised being unplugged, but Sebastian reluctantly complied with the request. Seeing the screen go dark made him uneasy, and Sebastian ended up staring back toward the door on occasion just to make sure that nothing would try to wander through and attack them. 

Sure, maybe he was being paranoid. But paranoia was how he'd stayed alive for so many time loops, through the days of navigating the madness of a breached Hadal Blacksite. Paranoia would keep him alive.

Spectator had finished eating the Wall Dweller at some point, and was huddled up against the railing a few feet away, leaning against a few crates. The kid seemed listless and a little bit wary, side-eyeing him on occasion with that signature look someone made when they were put in the same room as a feral animal and weren't sure it wouldn't bite them. She had mostly curled herself into a small ball and was keeping her distance.

Sebastian paid her little mind. He was too lost in his hazy memory of the surface, of the faces he’d been trying so hard not to forget, to really notice as she crept closer by a couple inches. At least, until it was obvious enough that he couldn’t help rolling his eyes.

After a few more minutes of Spectator trying to creep closer without him noticing, he sighed to himself. Seriously, why was he dealing with this?

“I’m not blind,” he said aloud, causing Spectator to freeze in place and her tail to stop twitching. it was almost impressive how fast she went still, like she was expecting to turn invisible when she did. “What do you need?”

A brief silence, before Spectator turned to him with a face he had a little trouble deciphering. Her pupils were fully narrowed, little cross-like shapes that reminded him of Eyefestation’s. “I wanna know where we’re going,” she said finally. “You took me with you, but you didn't say why. So what's happening?”

It was definitely only a miniscule part of Sebastian’s heart that broke upon hearing how timid the little mutant was. She hadn't been so nervous earlier - he had no idea what could have changed in the short time between the Wall Dweller and now. “Well, what do you think is happening?”

She shrugged, scooting a little closer again. “Well, everything’s been falling apart for days now,” she said quietly. “I thought that the white-coats were coming to take us to another lab. If it wasn't them, I thought maybe it was you, because you knew where everything was.”

A disgusted chill settled in his stomach. "I'm not a scientist," Sebastian hissed, and Spectator pulled away a bit. He winced a little bit, but didn't dare to look fully over. "I wouldn't do anything like what they've done."

Spectator blinked, but an obvious curiosity had overtaken her face. "Oh. Then are we going to another Urbanshade facility?"

“Absolutely not,” Sebastian said sharply, making her flinch away from the sound. He tried again, reigning in his tone a little so as not to scare her. “No, we’re not going to another Urbanshade lab. You’re never going to need to be in one of their containment rooms again.”

“Then where are we going?” The plain worry in Spectator’s voice could have killed him were he not trying his damn best not to let the first interaction with someone who wasn't Painter in years absolutely wreck him. "Where else could we go?"

“We're going up to the surface. Do you know where that is?” he asked, and Spectator shook her head. Real despair burned to life in his chest, but he bundled it aside to try and see if he could prompt anything out of Spectator. “It’s a place above the ocean, where there’s open air everywhere, and the sky is blue and full of clouds. The sun lives up there, y’know?”

Spectator shrugged, a motion that almost made him feel sick again. “I’ve never heard of it. Am I… am I supposed to know what that is?”

Horror rushed down his spine in a chill, but he did his best to outwardly stay calm. Spectator really was too young to remember much before the Blacksite - he wouldn’t be surprised if she’d never even been told about the world beyond the ocean’s depths.

His gills fluttered in revulsion at the realization that Spectator had probably never even seen the sun before. And if she had, it wasn’t anything she remembered.

A sheer curiosity overtook the kid’s eyes, and she hesitantly scooted a little closer. “Have you been up there before… um…”

“Sebastian Solace, at your service,” he said calmly. Introducing himself should have been at the top of his priority list, but forgive him if his priorities were a bit scrambled. Most people's would be if they were in his situation. “And… no, I haven’t. Not for a very long time.”

“Is that where you came from?” she asked, flicking her tail curiously. "I don't think that the scientists came from the ocean. They're too squishy."

“Yeah, I did." Sebastian's voice wavered, just barely enough for him to notice. Spectator didn't seem to notice, though. "And yeah, none of the scientists or guards or anyone are from down here. They come from up there."

Spectator hummed and let loose a lot of clicking noises. A deeper part of his brain recognized it as the little mutant chattering to herself. Sebastian fought to keep a small smile off his face, because it was ridiculous that he was even doing that in the first place, so stop that.

"What's really up there?" she asked, scooting as close as she dared before stopping. Her tail smacked against one of the crates, and she yanked her tail away immediately. "Like… uh, like, are there monsters?"

"No, no monsters," he clarified, lifting his own tail out of the water and slapping it against the concrete deck. "There's animals, and there's more humans, but aside from that, it's pretty much normal."

"Like Wall Dwellers?"

"Eugh, no. Those things can rot down here."

"Is there anything up there that you remember?"

Sebastian paused a second, letting the foggy memories slip back to the forefront of his mind. "Well, I miss the mountains," he said. "And the surface ocean, although not much else about the ocean anymore. There's some foods, and music, and… and I miss my home town, too."

He didn’t dare mention the people, wary of crying and making himself appear weak in front of the kid. He had to keep himself together, at least until everything was over. “And I don’t know if you’ve ever been up there before you came down here, but it’s a better place than this accursed trench. if I was given the choice, I'd never come back again.”

Spectator shook her head, looking out toward the dark moonpool. “The white coat lady always said that I’m from here. That I was born here by accident or something like that. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I only know this place, so even if there was a surface I remembered, they’d have to have taken me up there really young.”

The pit in his stomach deepened with every word that the kid spoke. Spectator’s situation somehow kept getting so much worse than he thought - having grown up in the Hadal Blacksite before getting experimented on, having never even been told of the world beyond the Let-Vand Zone. Being completely by herself, only surrounded by the scientists and guards and experiments and tests instead of the safety a kid shuold have had. Urbanshade had done a lot of things to piss him off, but even his own mutation no longer measured up against the dark fury he felt toward the corporation for this.

“Would you like to go up there with us?” Sebastian asked, doing a fantastic job of keeping the murderous fury out of his voice. “Dragging you along for the ride wouldn’t make any sense if you didn’t ask for it.”

Not like Sebastian would have left her down there anyways. She was a little kid still, and one who wouldn't survive if the Blacksite fully went under or if Urbanshade got their hands on her.

“Will they have needles up there?” Spectator asked, making him wince sharply. That was a reality he'd forgotten about, and one that made his own skin crawl with buried dread.

“For a little while, probably,” he admitted. She wilted, but he tapped the railing next to him as a quiet invitation to come closer. “But once they’re done with the needles, you won’t have to deal with them anymore.”

Spectator nodded, inching closer again until she was right next to his curled up tail. He sighed, almost asking himself what am I doing? before pulling the kid in closer. Wet scales pressed against his own, reminding him that he wasn’t exactly the most hydrated fish around. Her bones shifted in her arms and her side, a disturbing feeling that made his tail flick around the kid.

They sat like that for a bit, waiting for anything to happen. Nothing did, leaving the two mutants in an eerie, serene silence as they waited still.

“Will it hurt?” she asked, a question that took him by surprise.

“Will what hurt?”

“The surface.”

A pause. How was anyone meant to respond to that?

“It won’t. It’s a good place.”

Another long pause, one where Spectator fully settled into his side and started picking at her claws. Sebastian kept a small watch over the door and Painter's darkened screen.

"Why do you want to go up there?" Spectator asked, her voice dropping even more. "Is it really so much better compared to this place?"

He sighed again, letting himself drop down a little more to be more on the kid's level. "It is better. I'm going up there because I can help get rid of Urbanshade. The people taking us there might be able to take them down if I give them everything in these crates. And… and they might be able to fix what's wrong with me."

Sebastian didn't explain what it was, but Spectator didn't ask. Something he was immensely grateful for, because he didn't want to try explaining it to her.

"Maybe."

"Hm?"

"I'll go with you," she whispered, much to his odd relief. "But I want to know what's happening when they happen."

Sebastian took in a breath, before letting himself sigh. "Okay. I'll let you know."

The silence took over again, a much more monumental one this time. Spectator's head drooped low, keeping her eyes hidden from view. Sebastian curled his tail around her, and she relaxed marginally, but neither of them were able to settle fully.

The dock felt a little too quiet. Sebastian couldn't fully explain why, but it was too quiet.

Too quiet usually meant problems or danger. But nothing that couuld have gone wrong had gone wrong yet, so... it was just a different kind of silence.

“Do you know any music?”

"You have a lot of questions, don't you?" he shot back.

"Well, do you?" Spectator demanded, a little more harsh in her tone.

Sebastian knew a lot of music - he'd had a minor in music in college, and had made some of his own with a roommate. But none of it was really singable unless he had some kind of instrument, making anything he could have played near impossible.

Except… there was one thing. It made his heart try to rip itself to pieces, but it was something.

“The only thing I can remember right now might put you to sleep,” he warned. And make him cry, too, if he wasn’t careful. The melody was foggy, but it had haunted him for years enough to burn itself into the background noise of his brain.

“I don’t mind,” Spectator said, shifting her tail slightly. “Sleep… I guess it would be nice.”

“If…, alright, if you say so.”

He started to hum a few notes, his voice rough from years of disuse for singing. They came out scratchy and broken as he pulled the song from his memory. Initially, it sounded off, like he wasn’t getting the pitch right.

After a little bit of trying, though, the melody came to him easily. Spectator leaned further against his side, something he would have rather violently objected to only a few hours ago. Hell, he had to resist the urge to shove her off.

The song was a lullaby his mother had sung him, once upon a time. A song she called ‘I Heard Your Voice Again’. A melody he learned to repeat and copy throughout his music, to remember her by. It was gentle, and a little mournful. It had always reminded him of watching a starry night sky by himself, with the lingering ghosts of people he'd known sitting somewhere nearby.

A few tears managed to break free, despite the fact he was doing his best to keep it contained. Sebastian kept it up as much as possible, forcing himself to ignore the way his throat tried to close over the noise.

It wasn’t long, though, before he had no choice but to stop. His throat hurt, and it was hard to keep singing it when he was only hours away from freedom, hours away from a life where he could see the very same people who'd taught him the melody in the first place.

But even when Sebastian's voice gave out, the song didn’t stop. 

A smaller, higher-pitched voice was still humming it, and he looked down in surprise at Spectator. She seemed pretty much asleep, or fairly close to it, but the rough, grating noise of her voice continued to hum the melody that had stuck with him for years. Her tenor was a bit shakier, like she wasn’t sure it was okay to sing it, but it mimicked the quiet, mournful tone perfectly all the same, with the additional little click thrown in to shake it up.

He let himself try humming it again, this time along with her, and the shakiness in Spectator’s voice halted as she sang it stronger now, more reassured.

It was kind of stupid, how much his heart swelled at the sound of the kid’s voice. He let her sing herself into sleep, letting the memories of the surface overwhelm him as they waited for their rescue.

Chapter Text

The submarine surfaced shortly after Spectator had fallen asleep.

The rush of surfacing water had made his head snap up, and the rush after that was a bit of a blur. Cargo had to be secured, details had to be confirmed with the crew of the submarine, checks had to be performed - it was a lot of talk and moving shit around that Sebastian pretty much immediately tossed out of his memory. It was too jumbled with anticipation for anything to stay grounded in his brain.

Seeing Painter get put down inside the cargo storage like everything else, though… it made his stomach twist, an urge to grab the little computer and keep them out of the crates overcoming him. But there was nothing he could do that would be safer for the AI. If the submarine got attacked by something, or took any damage to the hull and they took on water, the AI would be dead if they were anywhere other than a storage crate.

So unfortunately for the screaming, panicking lizard in his brain, Sebastian kept his claws securely to himself. It was for Painter's safety, after all, and that was good enough.

It took a little while of moving crates and loading supplies before they finally got to Sebastian and Spectator. And as he'd somewhat suspected, the transport guys weren't exactly pleased when they saw the extra cargo Sebastian was bringing with him.

“Solace,” the on-board overseer said coolly. Not a question, but Sebastian nodded anyways. The man gestured to Spectator, a lump of sleeping scales where he’d put her in the side of his jacket again. “That one yours?”

“If you mean ‘yours’ as in ‘the kid’s coming with us,’ then yes,” he hissed, not entirely pleasantly. As much as he was grateful for the rescue, Sebastian was very solidly over tolerating any kind of corporate bullshit.

“There wasn’t anything in the agreement regarding a third passenger,” the overseer shot back, clearly not wanting to put up with any of Sebastian’s shit either. The look on his face was distinctly exhausted and irritated, the kind that someone who'd spent too much time mopping vomit vomit and shit off of supermarket floors did. “It's probably feral like the rest of them. Just drop it back on the dock, and we will proceed as agreed.”

“It is not feral,” Sebastian said, his voice cold and level. The overseer didn't flinch, but there was a more apprehensive glint in his eye now. “The kid was born down here, and used for an experiment before she was three. That’s what her file details, if you really want to abandon a child down here for Urbanshade to find again.”

He held the folder out with this third hand, trying his best to repress any potential shuddering that might be mistaken for weakness. The injury on his arm, roughly bandaged and barely taken care of properly, started to sting viciously -Sebastian had almost completely forgotten about it, honestly.

Whatever. He'd deal with the stupid thing later.

The overseer took the manilla folder, much to his relief, and started to skim the first page. With every word, Sebastian watched with a hint of cruel satisfaction as the overseer's face drew into something well and truly horrified, revulsion and disgust pooling in the way his mouth pinched into a sharp line, before he slammed the folder closed again and pushed it toward Sebastian.

“That was only a cursory glance, friend,” he said, tone still cold as he fully drew his tail inside the submarine. “Are you sure you don’t want to read the rest?”

He tried to say it as though he’d actually read the entire thing. He hadn't bothered after Painter had been unplugged, nor after Spectator herself had fallen asleep. He just hadn't been able to bring himself to fully look into it, or to reread the details of the operation. No, those were etched permanently into his own brain, memories that could choke him into panic if he wasn't careful.

“No, no, thank you,” the overseer said, his earlier blank nonchalance clearly rattled as the final guard re-entered the submarine. After a moment, he managed to look Sebastian in the eye. “Was this a similar procedure to yours?”

“Are you stupid or something?” Sebastian asked, the irritated question slipping out despite his best attempts to remain polite. “Unless you want to try it on one of your own buddies to see if it works out for you, I'd say it's pretty… obvious, isn't it?”

A tense silence settled in the air, only broken by one guard’s awkward cough, as Sebastian and the overseer had a rather insulting staring contest. Said guard scooted out of the room and back toward the front of the submarine, wherever that was, leaving the cargo hold's door ajar.

The overseer gave in first. “Fine. You can keep your stray, Solace. I suppose we’ll add this to the list of favors our CEO is doing for you.”

“And you can remind him that I’ve already paid my tab,” Sebastian said fake-cheerfully. The overseer huffed, but he just stood and offered a hand to shake. Sebastian took it, his clawed hand absolutely dwarfing the human’s. Hell, one claw was the length of an entire hand.

They’ll look normal soon, he thought, a shiver of grateful hope sparking through his scales. The first real sense of hope that he’d felt after so many grueling years down in the Blacksite. The door to the room slammed shut, the overseer having vanished in the moment where Sebastian had been lost in thought.

Soon.

That one word was enough to get him to marginally relax against the submarine wall, leaning back carefully to avoid crushing the small mutant still hiding in his jacket.

“Departing the Hadal Blacksite, with cargo in tow,” a PA system announced, definitely the radio. “Accompanying are requested passengers. Estimated arrival time at Innovation Inc. docks is within 13.5 hours.”

Sebastian groaned to himself, glaring at the green-lit speaker. Of course it was going to take that long. Maybe he should have eaten more of that Wall Dweller - it probably would have held him over long enough to make the ride tolerable.

“Settle in, you three,” the PA system said, apparently unaware that Painter was knocked out cold. “Take a nap while you’re in there. This will be much faster if you do.”

The speaker crackled off, and he sighed. Sleep was rare for Sebastian, even less so considering that he didn’t particularly like doing it anymore.

Needles under skin, burning pain from injected liquids, pressure as knives flayed him alive-

He slammed the mental wall down with numb, practiced ease. It was always easier every time to put the thought of the experiments to rest, but never did they let him sleep.

Sure, he was exhausted from ferrying shit all over the Blacksite and dealing with Expendables and Mr. [YOU ALREADY KNOW, DON’T YOU?] all the time. He’d literally just spent the better part of four hours corralling Painter and Spectator to the dock, and half of that had been spent dealing with a somewhat irritating fifteen-year-old.

Said fifteen-year-old shifted in his jacket, her tail having somehow flopped out and grabbed the scarf he used to hide his gills. A sleepy series of clicks and hums emanated from her, and to his shock, they still followed the melody of his mother’s lullaby.

Not even the shaky tenor from earlier, either - these were in-tune and properly timed.

There was no camera in here, so if you thought Sebastian was crying about that, then you were absolutely, one thousand percent incorrect. He wouldn’t have teared up over something so stupidly simple, and if you didn’t believe that, then perhaps you were dumber than first appearances could tell. No cameras means no proof, and no proof means no truth.

Spectator’s rhythmic, constant repetition of the melody, however, was infuriatingly soothing to him. Even if just a little, it enough to allow Sebastian to try humming along again. Enough to let him resettled against the wall while the younger mutant continued to shift around to try getting comfortable.

At some point, the world started to blur, only the gentle rocking of the submarine through currents, the pressing metal and small pipes under his scales, the song in the air, being recognizable. Finally, Spectator stopped humming. She sleepily poked her head out of his jacket, looking at him with bleary eyes and flattened ear fins.

“Go to sleep,” she mumbled tiredly. “You’re the one who knows about the surface. You have to tell me what everything is when we get there, and you can’t do it if you’re tired.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he protested, but there was no bite to his voice. Not where there probably should have been if his brain wasn't in so much disarray. “You could just figure it out for yourself. Or get the Innovation Inc. guys to tell you.”

She huffed grumpily, smacking him in the face with the end of her tail that had wrapped around his scarf. “Yes, you do. You’re taking me up there. Besides, you’re nicer than they are.”

“I’m not nice, kid. I’m not even a good person.”

“You’re better than the white coats. They were bad people. So you’re not.”

A tremble from the small fish, and Sebastian sighed. He hadn’t even had this kid for more than… what, a day? And she was already somehow treating him more like a normal person than anyone had in 12 years. To his immense annoyance, whatever she was trying to chip at him with was working. Not very much, of course, but enough that his tired brain relented.

Damn exhaustion. It made anybody vulnerable.

“Fine. I’ll take a a 20 minute nap. But you have to keep sleeping and don’t bother me, okay?”

“Only if you actually sleep, asshole.”

He let out a laugh, mainly from the surprise of Spectator swearing at him. Only a few hours ago, she’d been essentially non-verbal and beyond scared of him.

The difference was… kind of worrying. How the quiet seemed to have faded away from her the second no scientists or guards or overseers were around.

Approximately twenty minutes passed, according to his internal clock, before the sleepy kid whispered something again.

“You’re like me. So you’re better.”

Like he'd said. 

No cameras, no proof.

Sebastian ended up sleeping - lightly, mind you, for obvious safety reasons - for most of the submarine ride.