OOC: Fic Post: Mostly he just felt tired. Bruised in a way that went deeper than muscle and bone.
More DA/SPN Crossover-ness.
Previous Chapters.
A/N: Someday I may post the compound map and the file with all the X-5s listed. But today I'm lazy. As usual, any questions regarding terminology and blah blah blah can be left in the comments. Oh, and everyone say hi to the hundred plot points I casually throw around in this chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Sam heard the Demon snarl. Heard it in his head, and felt it in his bones, it was so close. Feeling came back. Air was forced into his lungs. Something was trying to crush his chest. It came and went in counterpoint to the air being forced down into his lungs.
Then it wasn't air anymore. It was heavier and wet. His mind started screaming again, but his body wasn't following orders. He wanted to cough. Something was screaming for him. He could hear it, high-pitched and angry. He had always hated heart monitors. They reminded him of a Banshee calling for the dead.
Something much less pleasant than air or liquid was pushed down his throat. He wanted to gag. He could feel hands on either side of his head, holding him still. At least they didn't burn. Wasn't the Demon. It was gone.
He wanted to be gone too, but new things burned through his veins and his heart shuddered back into motion without the crushing weight. He tried to take a deep breath, but something was in his throat, and he gagged. Panicked. He could see again. Move again. But he couldn't find Dean. Or Dad.
XXXXX
Madame Renfro was not anywhere near as unskilled at reading the X5s as Colonel Lydecker would have liked to think. The real difference between the two of them was that she didn't care about their emotions at all, unless it served her purpose. She never forgot what they were. They were weapons.
She had the utmost respect for Sandeman. That was why she had taken over for him at Manticore. He was a brilliant scientist. He used his work to protect humanity. Sometimes from itself. But he had trouble remembering that his creations, his 'kids', were not really children. They were weapons. Sometimes they were defective.
And sometimes unpleasant things had to happen to achieve a greater good. If that meant twisting 494 into a few knots, well, Deck would just have to get over it, because she was hardly asking his permission. The unexpected and somewhat serendipitous actions of the Committee certainly didn't hurt.
She had been watching 494 all day and carefully observing his actions. He was far from emotionally stable. It would only take one more small nudge to truly tip him over the edge and make him do something drastic. She waited until he was alone in his cell, resting. The rest of his unit was out on the shooting range, and she would have him back in time to meet up with them when they returned. She didn't want to remove him from their company. Lydecker was right on that account. The unit was a very tightly knit group, and that had a lot to do with 494. He was a good commander by military standards. The unit belonged to him, and they would defend him and follow his lead, sometimes even against orders. They had learned that lesson over the whole Berrisford debacle. The unit as a whole refused to take any direction for Agent Sandoval after that. It was rather irritating.
494 immediately stood at attention when she stepped into the open doorway to his cell, proving that his time in Psy-Ops had at least drilled some manners into his head for the time being. She didn't expect it to last; that hadn't been the goal of his time there. He followed easily enough when she gestured for him to, at least until their destination became clear. Then he balked.
"494?" Her tone was mild but he clearly wasn't fooled.
"Yes, ma'am."
"There are a lot worse things that could happen to you than being taken to the Medical Department for a check up. You will either come with me or I will have the guards take you. Then you will find out about what else could happen to you. Starting with not returning to your unit for quite a while. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am." He was tense, she noted. Shaking. Maybe this trip really was warranted.
She strode into Exam Room One, instantly commanding the attention of the scientists working on and around the Winchester boy. She had to admit that he didn't look good. He would have been writhing around like a landed fish had it not been for the straps holding him down. It took a supreme effort of will to suppress the smug smile when she heard 494's reaction: a shaky drawn-in breath and a step - just one step - towards the boy.
It was rather convenient that a vast majority of the medical staff were spending their time with this new toy of theirs. A genuine psychic. One who could see the future, no less. He represented the possibility for the largest military success for Manticore since the X5s. If they could figure out the mechanics of his gift and how to duplicate it before they killed him, that was. It looked like it was going to be close.
The congregating of the medical staff to this room allowed her a convenient excuse to get 494 in the same room as Winchester. "You." She pointed at one of the senior doctors, ignoring 494’s wide-eyed stare at the teenager. "This unit is operating at less than standard. It's still suffering from minor tremors. Run some lab work. Make sure that its medication doesn't need to be adjusted." Her eyes flashed briefly to the Winchester strapped to the bed. She would give him some credit. He was trying to track this new threat even given everything that was already happening.
She reached out and yanked 494 forward to plant him none too gently in front of the doctor. "Dean?" The voice from Winchester was weak and desperate. It sounded like he had screamed himself hoarse. Things could not have worked out more perfectly if she had tried.
XXXXX
About a hundred and six snide comments flashed through 494's brain during the walk from Med Lab back to his unit’s quarters. He had each doctor and tech in both Psy-Ops and Med Lab tagged with some sort of marker in his head. The most terrifying were only told apart by the shape of their eyes and the sort of pain they brought. Some of them gave him nightmares, which were really only memories recalled with bad timing, that were awful enough that he would creep out of his own cell and into Biggs’. Just to have some company. To hear a heartbeat other than his own which, inevitably, was beating too fast. To know that someone else was there and gave a shit about him. He was pretty sure that tonight was going to be one of those nights. He was already trying to brace himself for it. If he was Dean, he would call it girly. Chickish, even. But he was an X5, so he just called it inevitable.
But not everyone in Med Lab or Psy-Ops inspired that sort of terror in him. Some, only a few, he found laughable. Like this woman. She was officially named Melon Head Girl. Her shampoo smelled like random melon. Who wanted their head to smell like fruit? Apparently her brains matched her shampoo, because she never did anything but run errands for the bigwigs.
Normally, she wouldn't have been trusted with escorting an X5, but 494 was not in the mood to fight. Truth be told, he knew his time in Psy-Ops might have done something this time around. He had wanted out so badly that for once he had actually listened. How sick was that? He didn't think it had really changed who he was. Not this time. Not like when he'd been younger. Not like when he'd been hollowed out, or even when they had torn him apart after 493 had gone off the map. He veered sharply away from those memories. But it was enough to keep him from mouthing off and make it all right for some moron errand runner to escort him back to Bravo Unit's quarters.
Their quarters consisted of a long hallway with single cells on both sides. All of them were identical. Manticore didn't know what the words 'personal effects' meant. There were twenty-one cells, twenty of which had occupants. The eighth cell on the right side of the hall stood empty. Yoana had died a year and a half earlier while on a mission. Her cell, as bare as it was, like they all were, had remained untouched. Her blankets were still crumpled because she had never folded them the way they were instructed to. The unit as a whole refused to let her memory be wiped out.
At the end of the hall was a large common room. He had fought tooth and nail to gain that. After the X5s had escaped from Alpha Unit, an order had come down from on high saying that no X5s were allowed to gather in groups larger than two without supervision. It had made them all feel horrifically isolated. It had been downright unbearable after they had all shared one dormitory room for the first ten years of their lives. He had finally gotten the Colonel to give in under the condition that they submit to supervision. So the common room and the hall had cameras and two guards assigned to the unit at all times. Annoying but tolerable.
He knew everyone was in the common room because both guards were at the door at the end of the hall. There was a chair that they would trade off in using. He didn't mind most of their guards. They were usually pretty nice guys; one or two even willing to sneak in a bit of a contraband given the right sort of bribe. Tonight they had Spengler and Capingly. Bravo Unit got them every Thursday and Friday.
Spengler stepped away from the doorway enough to let him through. Usually 494 would have felt a sense of smug satisfaction as the woman fidgeted and nearly flinched at nineteen sets of slightly predatory eyes settled on her. But it had been a shitty day; hell, a shitty week, and he wasn't up to feeling smug. That might have been a first for him.
All he felt was marginally safer to be back with his unit. But even that only went so far. In the end, most of them were too well trained to ever really fight much of anyone here. When the hell had he started noticing things like that anyway?
Mostly he just felt tired. Bruised in a way that went deeper than muscle and bone. Like he had been sucker punched in the soul. If he even had one. He was just flat out tired; a kind that sleep wouldn't help. And Sam seeing him and asking, no, begging, for his brother?
Yeah. Sam really knew how to throw a punch.
XXXX
The outside matched the inside. That was the first thing he noticed. And it had for a while. Dim concrete hallways. Empty. Echoing with the cold. Shaking, painful cold.
A person had been there once. X5-331845739494. There used to be a name. Lost long ago. Taken. Taken. Gone.
He had filled these dim halls once. Given them light and warmth. Character. Distinction. Maybe even soul.
But then he woke up. Cold. Alone. No warm bodies near his. No siblings who knew the shape of his mind. Of the halls built there. The rooms filled with him.
Alone. Alone. Alone. And the cold. He shook with it. The room he was in had only one way out. To dim hallways. Empty dim hallways that led to places even worse.
Filled with burning light. Faceless monsters. With cold eyes. Cold hands. Cold tables under burning lights. And needles. Red lasers. Straps and cold sharp things that made him want the hallways back. The dim. The empty.
But it was never cold enough to dim the pain. Cold seeping into the warm places. Pain. Cutting out the warm light. Pain. Emptying each room. Hollowing out.
The dim cold became comforting. Better than the burning light, eyes, room, knives, needles. Emptying room after room. Filling them with cold nothing.
The inside matched the outside. Hollow. Without content, or character. Just an empty structure with no feature. Except the non features.
Just cold pain.
He woke with a whimper, a sort of mind-numbingly terrified noise only small kittens are capable of making. The memories snuck up on him at the most random of times. A nap or a daydream or a good night’s sleep gone terribly wrong. Next thing he knew, he'd suddenly be back to the whimpering empty little shell of a ten year old boy who had been taken apart, destroyed, and rebuilt. Because a twin he hadn't even known about had run away.
He shook with cold and he was too numb and frightened to even be able to tell if it was internal or outside of himself and valid. He couldn't think. Couldn't pull himself together. So he sought safety. Like a small animal, not the predator he usually was. Blankets trailed after him across the floor as he stumbled out of his room, knees nearly giving way more than once.
It felt like an eternity of being cold, lost, lonely, and hurt, but eventually he crept into his brother's room and curled up on the foot of his bed. An impossibly small knot of tangled blankets and shivering X5.
XXXXX
Biggs woke abruptly when 494's weight settled on the foot of his bunk. It had to be 494. No one else would have dared leave their cell in the middle of the night like this. Not that he thought their Lucky Charm was thinking.
Things had been so much easier before what he termed 'The Great Escape'. Back when they were all in one dormitory. He remembered that they used to bundle up together. Little groups of them. He, CeCe, and 494. Kali with Merick and Jena. Other little knots throughout the unit. But Merick had been put down, and Jena had lost some of her spark during reindoctrination. And 494. He had come back. It had taken him a while, but he had done it swinging. Apparently just like he had been before.
But now he was damaged. Flawed. Biggs didn't doubt him. 494 was still trustworthy, competent. A good officer. A good brother. But those monsters in Psy-Ops had broken something. It came up and bit them on the ass late at night like this.
Biggs piled his own blanket on top of 494 and just looked at him for a long moment. He wasn't broken yet, but he would be soon if something wasn't done. He looked haunted when he was awake; he was having his own weird version or flashbacks when he was asleep. Biggs knew that if the stress didn't lay off, if something didn't give way soon, he was going to start having seizures.
Lydecker was watching them too closely during the day for them to hide it, no matter how much practice they had. It was a unit wide thing, hiding seizures from the Ordinaries. They were all terrified that their brother or sister wouldn't come back, because the pills were supposed to fix things. But 494 still had them sometimes, and so did Devon and Lici. Biggs always figured that it had something to do with Psy-Ops. Lici hadn't had them any worse than anyone else until the past year, when her big mouth and absolute gift for insubordination had finally landed her in trouble. CeCe has wanted to beat the female within an inch of her life for getting herself in trouble like that, but Psy-Ops did the job for them. Devon had never seemed to fully bounce back from the reindoctrination. But their Lucky Charm had it the worst.
Biggs honestly wasn't sure that anyone, even Colonel Lydecker, was aware of how long 494 had been suffering from them. But Biggs knew. Biggs had always been there for as long as he could remember, and while he didn't have 494 perfect recall, his memory was nothing to sneeze at. They had started when 494 had been five. When that Sandeman guy had come and taken his brother away for two days and then returned him glassy eyed and nameless. Soon they all forgot his name. It was like he had never had one. They were made to forget. They had all forgotten except for Biggs. He had held onto it hard and fast, pushing it way down where he didn't think they could take it. He had only tried to call 494 by it once. It wasn't worth the reaction it caused.
He was pretty sure the seizures had started then. Just tiny ones. A hard shiver or an involuntary jerk of his hand every now and then. Trouble sleeping but being too tired to move. They hadn't gotten bad until he was seven, and then they just got worse, or the pills worked less, every time he was taken from them.
Biggs knew they were heading for disaster. This mission was tearing at him the way the Berrisford one had. That was bad enough, but Madame Renfro wasn't letting up on him. She was going to destroy him if she kept pushing this way.
He looked up as Spengler appeared in the still open doorway. "You two okay?" the woman asked. Like 494, Biggs had never minded Spengler or Capingly. He nodded, too busy trying to figure out what to do about keeping their Lucky Charm alive to pay much mind to the fact that it was Spengler in the doorway and not Capingly. It was Capingly who usually checked on them personally and who would be smart enough to offer to get some milk for them or something.
He had to find a way to get 494 out before this place killed him. If a bunch of ten year olds could do it, then why couldn't one twenty-one year old make it? He nodded to Spengler again with a small smile when inspiration hit him in the face. Now all he needed was for Spengler to go back to her post and to convince 494 that he had to get out while the opportunity presented itself. Spangler was seeing to them because Capingly wasn't there. Biggs vaguely remembered that he had only seen one guard earlier that evening. Someone had slipped up with the scheduling, and now Biggs was going to take advantage of it. That was what a well trained X5 did.
He listened hard to hear when their guard settled back at her post and carefully shook 494 back to awareness. When his unit commander finally looked up at him with what could be described as a distinctly wall-eyed expression, he signed out the words for 'escape and evade'. If there was a Manticore Silent sign for 'are you tapped?', he was pretty sure it would have involved 494's cockeyed raised eyebrow. 494 then shook his head.
The conversation went back and forth like this furiously for a couple of minutes after 494 had freed his arms from the bundle of blankets. Biggs suggested he leave, and 494 said he couldn't. Biggs stated that here was only one guard, and 494 stated that he had a responsibility to the unit.
494 suddenly recalled that CeCe had once said that Biggs was the mellow one. That she thought his temper could even be considered mild. But that he also had a habit of, on occasions, throwing a shit fit. This was apparently going to be one of those times, and 494 was yanked upright by fists full of shirt and blanket.
"You are going,” Biggs said. “I will tell you why you are going. You are going because you are no good to us dead." His voice was quiet and fierce. "That is how you are going to end up soon if you don't get out. We would all rather know we lost you to the outside world than to be some sort of project in Med Lab or spare. Fucking. Parts." Biggs punctuated each of these words with a rough shake, and then dropped him abruptly. "Now you have two choices. You can either go out there, knock Spengler out and run like hell." Biggs let that sink in. "Or I can do it, and you can either take advantage of my sacrifice and escape, or stay and know that I got thrown into Psy-Ops. For nothing."
494 merely stared at Biggs for several moments in a sort of muted horror. Then, with a small nod, he got up and left the cell.
XXXXX
Dean looked up from where he had been napping in the corner of the bare room he had been tossed into after his short-lived escape when he heard voices. He was trusted with nothing anymore. No books, no cheap-ass cot, not even meals. Someone glowered at him through all meals now. And by meals, he meant a sandwich and a cup of water, which of course were served on a paper towel and styrofoam cup. Even he couldn't use those as weapons. He had time to put some real thought into it, bored out of his God damned skull. Dean supposed he could maybe use the sandwich to smother or choke someone, but he didn't think he could get anyone to hold still for it. He also didn't think he could overpower any of these people; at least, not a second time.
His attention riveted on the door and he heard his own voice ordering the guards away. There was a brief, stiff discussion. Dean shook his head. These people needed to loosen up before they gave themselves coronaries. Then the sound of a head smacking into a wall and a booted foot hitting flesh. It was distinctive if you were a Winchester. Dean immediately rolled into a defensive crouch.
The door opened and he saw his pseudo-twin standing there with a feral grin. "Change." It was a sharp command, punctuated by a pile of clothes and a pair of boots being chucked at him. The kid immediately turned and dragged one of the guards inside and gently propped him up in the corner to the left of the door, incidentally out of the line of sight from the little window in the door. Dean stood there staring. "Move it. This isn't a spectator event. You want out of here, right?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Then move it." He checked the guard's pulse and seemed satisfied enough to go haul the second guard in and put him in the other corner. Dean shucked his scrubs off and hauled on the gray uniform. The kid took more care with the second guard, clearly the one who’d had his head thunked into the wall, given the bloody nose and the way the kid was checking for concussion.
"I'm not leaving without Sammy." He yanked on socks and then the boots, which remarkably seemed to fit fairly well.
"Yeah, I figured." The kid stood impatiently in front of him, a thin pen or marker twirling through his fingers. It was a nervous habit Sammy had. Dean yanked the laces tight and tied them, then stood. "Turn around and tip your head forward." He forcibly moved Dean to stand how he wanted him. "And don't move. This won’t fool anyone if you make me mess it up."
Dean felt the marker come down on the skin at the nape of his neck. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Signing my work." There was a long moment of silence as 494 worked. "Seriously, they won’t be as likely to shoot to kill if they can't tell us apart visually. When I'm done, we're going to take the tranq guns from Denny and Saxen, and calmly head to Psy-Ops. Move like you have a right to be here, but if someone looks like they're suspicious, take them out. Quietly. Gray uniform, hit hard and fast; you won’t get a second chance. Don't trust the children. Anyone else is Ordinary. Nothing special there."
"What's at Psy-Ops?" Dean held perfectly still, because he didn't want to blow this. He figured there would be time later to ask what Psy-Ops was. It didn't sound good, whatever the hell it was.
"Sam." 494 capped the marker and crammed it into his back pocket. "And he's going to be, what's the phrase? Fucked six ways from Sunday."
Dean felt his heart sink at that. "Exactly what do you mean?" he asked, his voice tight.
"Drugged. Possibly not conscious. Most likely not really aware of his surroundings. Half-sedated if he's lucky."
"Why do all of this?" Dean crouched down to pick up one of the tranquilizer gun and pat down the young man for anything else useful, but he came up disappointingly empty-handed.
"They wanted Sam. Bad. I've never seen them put this kind of effort into anything like this before. Not that I'm what you would call in the loop." He picked up the other gun.
"Why? What the hell is so special about Sammy?"
"What isn't special about him, I think is a better question." He carefully stuck his head out into the hall. "Stow it until later. We don't have much time until someone realizes I knock Spengler out."
"Spengler."
"Yeah. Spengler is one of our Thursday-Friday guards. Why?" They eased out into the hall and set off with 494 in the lead.
"First name Egon?" Dean tried to keep the grin off his face.
"No. It's Marcia. What am I missing?"
"Never seen Ghostbusters, I take it. Jesus, how sheltered are you dudes?" Soon they hit hallways populated by night staff, and 494 clammed up.
XXXXX
Meg stretched like a cat and yawned before tugging the coarse brown robe on over her head. In theory, they were supposed to be naked under the robes. Humility before the master and all that. She was wearing hip hugging jeans and a cute little knit top. No one would ever notice the outfit under the loose robes, which is exactly what she wanted. There was no way she was wearing that scratchy fabric next to her skin.
Despite the robes, she had to admit that this was a pretty nice set up. Nice Familiar body. Hot, too. It had better damned well be nice. Her father had been working on this for generations. Culling and breeding of humans. Trying to get something more useful. An army. Humans capable of playing host to and sustaining a demon.
She sauntered out into the main hall for the ceremony, still trying to figure out who had decided, all those years ago, that snakes were the way to worship him. Maybe it was a Biblical thing gone terribly wrong. Not that she cared. Not really.
XXXXX
Sam Winchester looked like death warmed over. Pale and thin, he was strapped down tight to a gurney, and even 494 could tell he had lost an unhealthy amount of weight. There was a mass of monitoring equipment gathered around them and it would have to be silenced.
"Sammy?" Dean asked, but Sam's eyes were closed, head lolling a bit to the side and practically tangled up in the leads and sensors monitoring his brain waves. "God, Sammy, what have they done to you." His touch was gentle as he ran a hand through Sam's hair and patted his cheek, trying to rouse him.
Sam only stirred a little, eyes refusing to open. Dean started running his hands over Sam, checking for damage, and he growled when he hit the first of the straps holding his little brother down. He looked over at 494, who was quickly flipping through a clipboard full of papers. "What the hell is that?"
"His chart. Checking the drugs they're pumping into him. Don't want to kill him if there's withdrawal or something." 494 flipped through, speed-reading, then double-checked the dates. "Shit, how long have we been here?" He dropped the chart on the end of Sam's gurney and started hunting around for a variety of items.
"You don't know?" Dean had finished freeing Sam from the bed and was now turning off the monitors.
"Off the top of my head, no." He shook out a small pouch, which turned out to be an extremely compact backpack, and started chucking things in it from around the room. Dean recognized some of it, but some of it he could only guess at. The last things to go in were a couple of bags of IV fluids.
"What the hell is that for?" He was carefully peeling the sensors off Sam's skin, a little bit glad that Sam was unconscious.
"Nutrients and fluids. Just in case." 494 came over to the gurney and took the papers from the clipboard and slid them into the bag. Dean half-watched as his double carefully, but competently, disconnected the IV feeds from the catheter in Sam's hand. He then pulled out a roll of surgical tape and started tacking it firmly down.
"Just take it out," Dean said, knowing he sounded defensive.
"Don't know about you, but I suck at putting them in, and he might need it. I don't think he's going to be good for much for the next few days, and I doubt you want him getting dehydrated. Think he'll wake up for you?"
"Hate to say it, but no. Not if he hasn't already."
"Right." Dean watched as the kid ducked out of the room for a moment and then came back with three slim, hard, black cases. Two he tossed into the bag, and the third he opened and set on Sam's stomach for lack of a nearby table. "The Impala is on the south side of the compound. We're nearly dead center." The case held three pre-filled syringes, color coded in red, green, and black. "Fastest way off base will be to the west. The Impala should be heavy enough that we can just blow right through the wire. If we don't get shot." He had freed the green syringe as he spoke, and torn open an alcohol wipe that was stored in the case. He used it to wipe down the IV catheter.
Dean's hand flashed out and closed around the syringe. "What the fuck are you planning to do with that shit?"
"It's a stimulant. Burns like a bitch going in. Slams into you like a freight train, and is guaranteed to keep you up, moving, and thinking clearly for a couple of hours. We can't carry him. We'd never make it out."
Dean looked at him with hard eyes. 494 didn't know what he was looking for, but he wanted to get them out. He had set it down before himself as a mission, and he wasn't about to fail them now. "I've used it before. It'll cut through just about anything. It's nasty shit but it gets the job done. We just have to get him somewhere safe for when it wears off." He looked Dean squarely. "I know this is my fault and you have no reason to trust me."
"No, I don't." But he did anyway. He was leaving here and taking Sam and this kid with him, just like he had promised. "So why are you helping us?" he asked, mostly because his answer would tell Dean how hard it would be to keep the kid. He had no qualms about tranquilizing the little freak and shoving him in the trunk if he had to.
"Because they'll kill Sam. He's not one of us. He isn't made to take this sort of abuse. He's a person, not an experiment. He has a family. Parents, a brother."
"Yeah. Well, so do you now." Dean didn’t wait for a response. "Dope him up, because you're right. He's a frickin’ yeti and I haven't been able to really carry him since he was fourteen." He looked up to find the kid just blinking at him. "Get a move on; this isn't a spectator event." There it was. What Dean had been looking for. The roll of the eyes and smart ass grin. It wasn't as pronounced as Dean would have liked, but it was there: the Winchester spark.
XXXXX
Previous Chapters.
A/N: Someday I may post the compound map and the file with all the X-5s listed. But today I'm lazy. As usual, any questions regarding terminology and blah blah blah can be left in the comments. Oh, and everyone say hi to the hundred plot points I casually throw around in this chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Sam heard the Demon snarl. Heard it in his head, and felt it in his bones, it was so close. Feeling came back. Air was forced into his lungs. Something was trying to crush his chest. It came and went in counterpoint to the air being forced down into his lungs.
Then it wasn't air anymore. It was heavier and wet. His mind started screaming again, but his body wasn't following orders. He wanted to cough. Something was screaming for him. He could hear it, high-pitched and angry. He had always hated heart monitors. They reminded him of a Banshee calling for the dead.
Something much less pleasant than air or liquid was pushed down his throat. He wanted to gag. He could feel hands on either side of his head, holding him still. At least they didn't burn. Wasn't the Demon. It was gone.
He wanted to be gone too, but new things burned through his veins and his heart shuddered back into motion without the crushing weight. He tried to take a deep breath, but something was in his throat, and he gagged. Panicked. He could see again. Move again. But he couldn't find Dean. Or Dad.
XXXXX
Madame Renfro was not anywhere near as unskilled at reading the X5s as Colonel Lydecker would have liked to think. The real difference between the two of them was that she didn't care about their emotions at all, unless it served her purpose. She never forgot what they were. They were weapons.
She had the utmost respect for Sandeman. That was why she had taken over for him at Manticore. He was a brilliant scientist. He used his work to protect humanity. Sometimes from itself. But he had trouble remembering that his creations, his 'kids', were not really children. They were weapons. Sometimes they were defective.
And sometimes unpleasant things had to happen to achieve a greater good. If that meant twisting 494 into a few knots, well, Deck would just have to get over it, because she was hardly asking his permission. The unexpected and somewhat serendipitous actions of the Committee certainly didn't hurt.
She had been watching 494 all day and carefully observing his actions. He was far from emotionally stable. It would only take one more small nudge to truly tip him over the edge and make him do something drastic. She waited until he was alone in his cell, resting. The rest of his unit was out on the shooting range, and she would have him back in time to meet up with them when they returned. She didn't want to remove him from their company. Lydecker was right on that account. The unit was a very tightly knit group, and that had a lot to do with 494. He was a good commander by military standards. The unit belonged to him, and they would defend him and follow his lead, sometimes even against orders. They had learned that lesson over the whole Berrisford debacle. The unit as a whole refused to take any direction for Agent Sandoval after that. It was rather irritating.
494 immediately stood at attention when she stepped into the open doorway to his cell, proving that his time in Psy-Ops had at least drilled some manners into his head for the time being. She didn't expect it to last; that hadn't been the goal of his time there. He followed easily enough when she gestured for him to, at least until their destination became clear. Then he balked.
"494?" Her tone was mild but he clearly wasn't fooled.
"Yes, ma'am."
"There are a lot worse things that could happen to you than being taken to the Medical Department for a check up. You will either come with me or I will have the guards take you. Then you will find out about what else could happen to you. Starting with not returning to your unit for quite a while. Is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am." He was tense, she noted. Shaking. Maybe this trip really was warranted.
She strode into Exam Room One, instantly commanding the attention of the scientists working on and around the Winchester boy. She had to admit that he didn't look good. He would have been writhing around like a landed fish had it not been for the straps holding him down. It took a supreme effort of will to suppress the smug smile when she heard 494's reaction: a shaky drawn-in breath and a step - just one step - towards the boy.
It was rather convenient that a vast majority of the medical staff were spending their time with this new toy of theirs. A genuine psychic. One who could see the future, no less. He represented the possibility for the largest military success for Manticore since the X5s. If they could figure out the mechanics of his gift and how to duplicate it before they killed him, that was. It looked like it was going to be close.
The congregating of the medical staff to this room allowed her a convenient excuse to get 494 in the same room as Winchester. "You." She pointed at one of the senior doctors, ignoring 494’s wide-eyed stare at the teenager. "This unit is operating at less than standard. It's still suffering from minor tremors. Run some lab work. Make sure that its medication doesn't need to be adjusted." Her eyes flashed briefly to the Winchester strapped to the bed. She would give him some credit. He was trying to track this new threat even given everything that was already happening.
She reached out and yanked 494 forward to plant him none too gently in front of the doctor. "Dean?" The voice from Winchester was weak and desperate. It sounded like he had screamed himself hoarse. Things could not have worked out more perfectly if she had tried.
XXXXX
About a hundred and six snide comments flashed through 494's brain during the walk from Med Lab back to his unit’s quarters. He had each doctor and tech in both Psy-Ops and Med Lab tagged with some sort of marker in his head. The most terrifying were only told apart by the shape of their eyes and the sort of pain they brought. Some of them gave him nightmares, which were really only memories recalled with bad timing, that were awful enough that he would creep out of his own cell and into Biggs’. Just to have some company. To hear a heartbeat other than his own which, inevitably, was beating too fast. To know that someone else was there and gave a shit about him. He was pretty sure that tonight was going to be one of those nights. He was already trying to brace himself for it. If he was Dean, he would call it girly. Chickish, even. But he was an X5, so he just called it inevitable.
But not everyone in Med Lab or Psy-Ops inspired that sort of terror in him. Some, only a few, he found laughable. Like this woman. She was officially named Melon Head Girl. Her shampoo smelled like random melon. Who wanted their head to smell like fruit? Apparently her brains matched her shampoo, because she never did anything but run errands for the bigwigs.
Normally, she wouldn't have been trusted with escorting an X5, but 494 was not in the mood to fight. Truth be told, he knew his time in Psy-Ops might have done something this time around. He had wanted out so badly that for once he had actually listened. How sick was that? He didn't think it had really changed who he was. Not this time. Not like when he'd been younger. Not like when he'd been hollowed out, or even when they had torn him apart after 493 had gone off the map. He veered sharply away from those memories. But it was enough to keep him from mouthing off and make it all right for some moron errand runner to escort him back to Bravo Unit's quarters.
Their quarters consisted of a long hallway with single cells on both sides. All of them were identical. Manticore didn't know what the words 'personal effects' meant. There were twenty-one cells, twenty of which had occupants. The eighth cell on the right side of the hall stood empty. Yoana had died a year and a half earlier while on a mission. Her cell, as bare as it was, like they all were, had remained untouched. Her blankets were still crumpled because she had never folded them the way they were instructed to. The unit as a whole refused to let her memory be wiped out.
At the end of the hall was a large common room. He had fought tooth and nail to gain that. After the X5s had escaped from Alpha Unit, an order had come down from on high saying that no X5s were allowed to gather in groups larger than two without supervision. It had made them all feel horrifically isolated. It had been downright unbearable after they had all shared one dormitory room for the first ten years of their lives. He had finally gotten the Colonel to give in under the condition that they submit to supervision. So the common room and the hall had cameras and two guards assigned to the unit at all times. Annoying but tolerable.
He knew everyone was in the common room because both guards were at the door at the end of the hall. There was a chair that they would trade off in using. He didn't mind most of their guards. They were usually pretty nice guys; one or two even willing to sneak in a bit of a contraband given the right sort of bribe. Tonight they had Spengler and Capingly. Bravo Unit got them every Thursday and Friday.
Spengler stepped away from the doorway enough to let him through. Usually 494 would have felt a sense of smug satisfaction as the woman fidgeted and nearly flinched at nineteen sets of slightly predatory eyes settled on her. But it had been a shitty day; hell, a shitty week, and he wasn't up to feeling smug. That might have been a first for him.
All he felt was marginally safer to be back with his unit. But even that only went so far. In the end, most of them were too well trained to ever really fight much of anyone here. When the hell had he started noticing things like that anyway?
Mostly he just felt tired. Bruised in a way that went deeper than muscle and bone. Like he had been sucker punched in the soul. If he even had one. He was just flat out tired; a kind that sleep wouldn't help. And Sam seeing him and asking, no, begging, for his brother?
Yeah. Sam really knew how to throw a punch.
XXXX
The outside matched the inside. That was the first thing he noticed. And it had for a while. Dim concrete hallways. Empty. Echoing with the cold. Shaking, painful cold.
A person had been there once. X5-331845739494. There used to be a name. Lost long ago. Taken. Taken. Gone.
He had filled these dim halls once. Given them light and warmth. Character. Distinction. Maybe even soul.
But then he woke up. Cold. Alone. No warm bodies near his. No siblings who knew the shape of his mind. Of the halls built there. The rooms filled with him.
Alone. Alone. Alone. And the cold. He shook with it. The room he was in had only one way out. To dim hallways. Empty dim hallways that led to places even worse.
Filled with burning light. Faceless monsters. With cold eyes. Cold hands. Cold tables under burning lights. And needles. Red lasers. Straps and cold sharp things that made him want the hallways back. The dim. The empty.
But it was never cold enough to dim the pain. Cold seeping into the warm places. Pain. Cutting out the warm light. Pain. Emptying each room. Hollowing out.
The dim cold became comforting. Better than the burning light, eyes, room, knives, needles. Emptying room after room. Filling them with cold nothing.
The inside matched the outside. Hollow. Without content, or character. Just an empty structure with no feature. Except the non features.
Just cold pain.
He woke with a whimper, a sort of mind-numbingly terrified noise only small kittens are capable of making. The memories snuck up on him at the most random of times. A nap or a daydream or a good night’s sleep gone terribly wrong. Next thing he knew, he'd suddenly be back to the whimpering empty little shell of a ten year old boy who had been taken apart, destroyed, and rebuilt. Because a twin he hadn't even known about had run away.
He shook with cold and he was too numb and frightened to even be able to tell if it was internal or outside of himself and valid. He couldn't think. Couldn't pull himself together. So he sought safety. Like a small animal, not the predator he usually was. Blankets trailed after him across the floor as he stumbled out of his room, knees nearly giving way more than once.
It felt like an eternity of being cold, lost, lonely, and hurt, but eventually he crept into his brother's room and curled up on the foot of his bed. An impossibly small knot of tangled blankets and shivering X5.
XXXXX
Biggs woke abruptly when 494's weight settled on the foot of his bunk. It had to be 494. No one else would have dared leave their cell in the middle of the night like this. Not that he thought their Lucky Charm was thinking.
Things had been so much easier before what he termed 'The Great Escape'. Back when they were all in one dormitory. He remembered that they used to bundle up together. Little groups of them. He, CeCe, and 494. Kali with Merick and Jena. Other little knots throughout the unit. But Merick had been put down, and Jena had lost some of her spark during reindoctrination. And 494. He had come back. It had taken him a while, but he had done it swinging. Apparently just like he had been before.
But now he was damaged. Flawed. Biggs didn't doubt him. 494 was still trustworthy, competent. A good officer. A good brother. But those monsters in Psy-Ops had broken something. It came up and bit them on the ass late at night like this.
Biggs piled his own blanket on top of 494 and just looked at him for a long moment. He wasn't broken yet, but he would be soon if something wasn't done. He looked haunted when he was awake; he was having his own weird version or flashbacks when he was asleep. Biggs knew that if the stress didn't lay off, if something didn't give way soon, he was going to start having seizures.
Lydecker was watching them too closely during the day for them to hide it, no matter how much practice they had. It was a unit wide thing, hiding seizures from the Ordinaries. They were all terrified that their brother or sister wouldn't come back, because the pills were supposed to fix things. But 494 still had them sometimes, and so did Devon and Lici. Biggs always figured that it had something to do with Psy-Ops. Lici hadn't had them any worse than anyone else until the past year, when her big mouth and absolute gift for insubordination had finally landed her in trouble. CeCe has wanted to beat the female within an inch of her life for getting herself in trouble like that, but Psy-Ops did the job for them. Devon had never seemed to fully bounce back from the reindoctrination. But their Lucky Charm had it the worst.
Biggs honestly wasn't sure that anyone, even Colonel Lydecker, was aware of how long 494 had been suffering from them. But Biggs knew. Biggs had always been there for as long as he could remember, and while he didn't have 494 perfect recall, his memory was nothing to sneeze at. They had started when 494 had been five. When that Sandeman guy had come and taken his brother away for two days and then returned him glassy eyed and nameless. Soon they all forgot his name. It was like he had never had one. They were made to forget. They had all forgotten except for Biggs. He had held onto it hard and fast, pushing it way down where he didn't think they could take it. He had only tried to call 494 by it once. It wasn't worth the reaction it caused.
He was pretty sure the seizures had started then. Just tiny ones. A hard shiver or an involuntary jerk of his hand every now and then. Trouble sleeping but being too tired to move. They hadn't gotten bad until he was seven, and then they just got worse, or the pills worked less, every time he was taken from them.
Biggs knew they were heading for disaster. This mission was tearing at him the way the Berrisford one had. That was bad enough, but Madame Renfro wasn't letting up on him. She was going to destroy him if she kept pushing this way.
He looked up as Spengler appeared in the still open doorway. "You two okay?" the woman asked. Like 494, Biggs had never minded Spengler or Capingly. He nodded, too busy trying to figure out what to do about keeping their Lucky Charm alive to pay much mind to the fact that it was Spengler in the doorway and not Capingly. It was Capingly who usually checked on them personally and who would be smart enough to offer to get some milk for them or something.
He had to find a way to get 494 out before this place killed him. If a bunch of ten year olds could do it, then why couldn't one twenty-one year old make it? He nodded to Spengler again with a small smile when inspiration hit him in the face. Now all he needed was for Spengler to go back to her post and to convince 494 that he had to get out while the opportunity presented itself. Spangler was seeing to them because Capingly wasn't there. Biggs vaguely remembered that he had only seen one guard earlier that evening. Someone had slipped up with the scheduling, and now Biggs was going to take advantage of it. That was what a well trained X5 did.
He listened hard to hear when their guard settled back at her post and carefully shook 494 back to awareness. When his unit commander finally looked up at him with what could be described as a distinctly wall-eyed expression, he signed out the words for 'escape and evade'. If there was a Manticore Silent sign for 'are you tapped?', he was pretty sure it would have involved 494's cockeyed raised eyebrow. 494 then shook his head.
The conversation went back and forth like this furiously for a couple of minutes after 494 had freed his arms from the bundle of blankets. Biggs suggested he leave, and 494 said he couldn't. Biggs stated that here was only one guard, and 494 stated that he had a responsibility to the unit.
494 suddenly recalled that CeCe had once said that Biggs was the mellow one. That she thought his temper could even be considered mild. But that he also had a habit of, on occasions, throwing a shit fit. This was apparently going to be one of those times, and 494 was yanked upright by fists full of shirt and blanket.
"You are going,” Biggs said. “I will tell you why you are going. You are going because you are no good to us dead." His voice was quiet and fierce. "That is how you are going to end up soon if you don't get out. We would all rather know we lost you to the outside world than to be some sort of project in Med Lab or spare. Fucking. Parts." Biggs punctuated each of these words with a rough shake, and then dropped him abruptly. "Now you have two choices. You can either go out there, knock Spengler out and run like hell." Biggs let that sink in. "Or I can do it, and you can either take advantage of my sacrifice and escape, or stay and know that I got thrown into Psy-Ops. For nothing."
494 merely stared at Biggs for several moments in a sort of muted horror. Then, with a small nod, he got up and left the cell.
XXXXX
Dean looked up from where he had been napping in the corner of the bare room he had been tossed into after his short-lived escape when he heard voices. He was trusted with nothing anymore. No books, no cheap-ass cot, not even meals. Someone glowered at him through all meals now. And by meals, he meant a sandwich and a cup of water, which of course were served on a paper towel and styrofoam cup. Even he couldn't use those as weapons. He had time to put some real thought into it, bored out of his God damned skull. Dean supposed he could maybe use the sandwich to smother or choke someone, but he didn't think he could get anyone to hold still for it. He also didn't think he could overpower any of these people; at least, not a second time.
His attention riveted on the door and he heard his own voice ordering the guards away. There was a brief, stiff discussion. Dean shook his head. These people needed to loosen up before they gave themselves coronaries. Then the sound of a head smacking into a wall and a booted foot hitting flesh. It was distinctive if you were a Winchester. Dean immediately rolled into a defensive crouch.
The door opened and he saw his pseudo-twin standing there with a feral grin. "Change." It was a sharp command, punctuated by a pile of clothes and a pair of boots being chucked at him. The kid immediately turned and dragged one of the guards inside and gently propped him up in the corner to the left of the door, incidentally out of the line of sight from the little window in the door. Dean stood there staring. "Move it. This isn't a spectator event. You want out of here, right?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Then move it." He checked the guard's pulse and seemed satisfied enough to go haul the second guard in and put him in the other corner. Dean shucked his scrubs off and hauled on the gray uniform. The kid took more care with the second guard, clearly the one who’d had his head thunked into the wall, given the bloody nose and the way the kid was checking for concussion.
"I'm not leaving without Sammy." He yanked on socks and then the boots, which remarkably seemed to fit fairly well.
"Yeah, I figured." The kid stood impatiently in front of him, a thin pen or marker twirling through his fingers. It was a nervous habit Sammy had. Dean yanked the laces tight and tied them, then stood. "Turn around and tip your head forward." He forcibly moved Dean to stand how he wanted him. "And don't move. This won’t fool anyone if you make me mess it up."
Dean felt the marker come down on the skin at the nape of his neck. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Signing my work." There was a long moment of silence as 494 worked. "Seriously, they won’t be as likely to shoot to kill if they can't tell us apart visually. When I'm done, we're going to take the tranq guns from Denny and Saxen, and calmly head to Psy-Ops. Move like you have a right to be here, but if someone looks like they're suspicious, take them out. Quietly. Gray uniform, hit hard and fast; you won’t get a second chance. Don't trust the children. Anyone else is Ordinary. Nothing special there."
"What's at Psy-Ops?" Dean held perfectly still, because he didn't want to blow this. He figured there would be time later to ask what Psy-Ops was. It didn't sound good, whatever the hell it was.
"Sam." 494 capped the marker and crammed it into his back pocket. "And he's going to be, what's the phrase? Fucked six ways from Sunday."
Dean felt his heart sink at that. "Exactly what do you mean?" he asked, his voice tight.
"Drugged. Possibly not conscious. Most likely not really aware of his surroundings. Half-sedated if he's lucky."
"Why do all of this?" Dean crouched down to pick up one of the tranquilizer gun and pat down the young man for anything else useful, but he came up disappointingly empty-handed.
"They wanted Sam. Bad. I've never seen them put this kind of effort into anything like this before. Not that I'm what you would call in the loop." He picked up the other gun.
"Why? What the hell is so special about Sammy?"
"What isn't special about him, I think is a better question." He carefully stuck his head out into the hall. "Stow it until later. We don't have much time until someone realizes I knock Spengler out."
"Spengler."
"Yeah. Spengler is one of our Thursday-Friday guards. Why?" They eased out into the hall and set off with 494 in the lead.
"First name Egon?" Dean tried to keep the grin off his face.
"No. It's Marcia. What am I missing?"
"Never seen Ghostbusters, I take it. Jesus, how sheltered are you dudes?" Soon they hit hallways populated by night staff, and 494 clammed up.
XXXXX
Meg stretched like a cat and yawned before tugging the coarse brown robe on over her head. In theory, they were supposed to be naked under the robes. Humility before the master and all that. She was wearing hip hugging jeans and a cute little knit top. No one would ever notice the outfit under the loose robes, which is exactly what she wanted. There was no way she was wearing that scratchy fabric next to her skin.
Despite the robes, she had to admit that this was a pretty nice set up. Nice Familiar body. Hot, too. It had better damned well be nice. Her father had been working on this for generations. Culling and breeding of humans. Trying to get something more useful. An army. Humans capable of playing host to and sustaining a demon.
She sauntered out into the main hall for the ceremony, still trying to figure out who had decided, all those years ago, that snakes were the way to worship him. Maybe it was a Biblical thing gone terribly wrong. Not that she cared. Not really.
XXXXX
Sam Winchester looked like death warmed over. Pale and thin, he was strapped down tight to a gurney, and even 494 could tell he had lost an unhealthy amount of weight. There was a mass of monitoring equipment gathered around them and it would have to be silenced.
"Sammy?" Dean asked, but Sam's eyes were closed, head lolling a bit to the side and practically tangled up in the leads and sensors monitoring his brain waves. "God, Sammy, what have they done to you." His touch was gentle as he ran a hand through Sam's hair and patted his cheek, trying to rouse him.
Sam only stirred a little, eyes refusing to open. Dean started running his hands over Sam, checking for damage, and he growled when he hit the first of the straps holding his little brother down. He looked over at 494, who was quickly flipping through a clipboard full of papers. "What the hell is that?"
"His chart. Checking the drugs they're pumping into him. Don't want to kill him if there's withdrawal or something." 494 flipped through, speed-reading, then double-checked the dates. "Shit, how long have we been here?" He dropped the chart on the end of Sam's gurney and started hunting around for a variety of items.
"You don't know?" Dean had finished freeing Sam from the bed and was now turning off the monitors.
"Off the top of my head, no." He shook out a small pouch, which turned out to be an extremely compact backpack, and started chucking things in it from around the room. Dean recognized some of it, but some of it he could only guess at. The last things to go in were a couple of bags of IV fluids.
"What the hell is that for?" He was carefully peeling the sensors off Sam's skin, a little bit glad that Sam was unconscious.
"Nutrients and fluids. Just in case." 494 came over to the gurney and took the papers from the clipboard and slid them into the bag. Dean half-watched as his double carefully, but competently, disconnected the IV feeds from the catheter in Sam's hand. He then pulled out a roll of surgical tape and started tacking it firmly down.
"Just take it out," Dean said, knowing he sounded defensive.
"Don't know about you, but I suck at putting them in, and he might need it. I don't think he's going to be good for much for the next few days, and I doubt you want him getting dehydrated. Think he'll wake up for you?"
"Hate to say it, but no. Not if he hasn't already."
"Right." Dean watched as the kid ducked out of the room for a moment and then came back with three slim, hard, black cases. Two he tossed into the bag, and the third he opened and set on Sam's stomach for lack of a nearby table. "The Impala is on the south side of the compound. We're nearly dead center." The case held three pre-filled syringes, color coded in red, green, and black. "Fastest way off base will be to the west. The Impala should be heavy enough that we can just blow right through the wire. If we don't get shot." He had freed the green syringe as he spoke, and torn open an alcohol wipe that was stored in the case. He used it to wipe down the IV catheter.
Dean's hand flashed out and closed around the syringe. "What the fuck are you planning to do with that shit?"
"It's a stimulant. Burns like a bitch going in. Slams into you like a freight train, and is guaranteed to keep you up, moving, and thinking clearly for a couple of hours. We can't carry him. We'd never make it out."
Dean looked at him with hard eyes. 494 didn't know what he was looking for, but he wanted to get them out. He had set it down before himself as a mission, and he wasn't about to fail them now. "I've used it before. It'll cut through just about anything. It's nasty shit but it gets the job done. We just have to get him somewhere safe for when it wears off." He looked Dean squarely. "I know this is my fault and you have no reason to trust me."
"No, I don't." But he did anyway. He was leaving here and taking Sam and this kid with him, just like he had promised. "So why are you helping us?" he asked, mostly because his answer would tell Dean how hard it would be to keep the kid. He had no qualms about tranquilizing the little freak and shoving him in the trunk if he had to.
"Because they'll kill Sam. He's not one of us. He isn't made to take this sort of abuse. He's a person, not an experiment. He has a family. Parents, a brother."
"Yeah. Well, so do you now." Dean didn’t wait for a response. "Dope him up, because you're right. He's a frickin’ yeti and I haven't been able to really carry him since he was fourteen." He looked up to find the kid just blinking at him. "Get a move on; this isn't a spectator event." There it was. What Dean had been looking for. The roll of the eyes and smart ass grin. It wasn't as pronounced as Dean would have liked, but it was there: the Winchester spark.
XXXXX