#because that's just utter confirmation of this y'know? your take is so unique that it's become an entirely new thing

[fstbmp-a]

A friend inspired me with smth so I'm finally going to pop off and sound like the pretentious art college grad I secretly am

Writing canon characters is a farce. You're writing your character.

"Mirth what do you mean"

Thank you, strawman, allow me to elaborate. The second an author picks up a character, it is instantly their own. People put too much stake into fitting the mold, when really, you have ceased being a proper canon character the nanosecond you have initiated writing. You are writing your interpretation and, arguably, that cannot be considered the same.

You are INSPIRED. That's marvelous. That's fantastic, even. Your mind is fundamentally different from everyone else's, meaning this character, inspired by whatever take you enjoy most, is going to be irreplaceably unique. No matter what or who changes, that is a constant!

You're allowed to change and develop your character, unbound by whatever canon says or does. Roleplaying is a collaborative front and, frankly, you should be allowed to be as free with your muse as you wish. Get inspired by works, allow your characters to change and grow-- heck, if you get so inspired that it's so fucking different from canon it has to become an OC? THAT'S FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!! GO FOR IT!!!

You're a WRITER! Your work is irreplaceable because there will NEVER be another you and that's so freeing! You aren't held down by anything save yourself! If inspiration strikes, go for it! The entire purpose of this artform is to INSPIRE AND BE INSPIRED! So fuck around! Find out! That's the point! That's SICK AS FUCK!!!

Anyways, that's all! Have a good one, everybody!

[pinnithin-writes]

Good Jokes

Chapter 14

They were moved in the middle of the night. Tommy saw it - felt it - happen, from his silent watch against the wall in the storage room. The air shimmered and warped like heat off blacktop. A feeling of weightlessness followed, a suspension of the self, unbecoming and particulating in a different place. The group solidified on an elevator lift in some kind of warehouse and the air around them went still and silent. Tommy shook out his hands to dispel the latent feeling of having his atoms rearranged.

Benrey jolted awake, startled, and snapped his gaze around the room. When his eyes met Tommy’s, pupils wide and feral, Tommy could only shrug in return. Wasn’t his doing. He guessed his father had given them a nudge - perhaps not in the right direction, but in the direction he wanted them to go.

The rest of the team remained undisturbed. Benrey sat up, crossing his legs at the ankles and drawing his knees up to his chest. He stared at Tommy across the sleeping forms of their companions, the steady in and out of their breathing the only sound to be heard. Tommy had been monitoring Gordon’s in particular, but apart from some murmuring through unpleasant dreams, he at least seemed stable. He met Benrey’s gaze passively, tolerant of his presence aside from his hands on his rifle.

“Can I help you?” he finally asked.

Benrey quirked his mouth in an indecipherable expression. “Nah.”

“You - you’re just gonna stare at me,” he replied. He’d played this game before. “Okay.”

A few seconds passed, and the entity spoke, as Tommy knew he would.

“You stare at him.” he pointed out, jerking his chin toward Gordon.

Tommy narrowed his eyes. “So he doesn’t die in his sleep,” he replied. “Because someone,” he shot him a steely look, “cut off his hand a day ago and he nearly bled out.”

“Whatever, dude.” Benrey blew out a breath. “You’re obsessed with him.”

Tommy would have outright laughed if he didn’t despise the entity so much. Instead, he ran a frustrated hand through his hair, which he immediately regretted on account of how greasy his fingers came away. He’d kill for a shower. “Okay, passport guy,” he muttered, rubbing his fingertips idly together and feeling the grit that had settled there.

Benrey only mocked him back in a babying tone. Fair. Tommy should have known better by now than to engage in conversation with the guy. Curiosity chewed at him, though, so he risked it again.

“Why - w - what’s the deal with that?”

“Huh?”

“The passport thing. Why are yo-”

“People need their passports,” Benrey interrupted him, shrugging. He uncurled himself from his sitting position and let his legs stretch out, leaning back on the heels of his hands. He gnawed on his lip absently. Tommy wondered how he didn’t draw blood doing it. “He doesn’t have his passport. He shouldn’t be here.”

“Wh-” Tommy paused as another question occurred to him. “Do you know what a passport is?” he asked, arching an eyebrow delicately. “Do you know what one is for?”

His eyes flashed dangerously. “Do you know when to stop asking idiot questions, idiot?”

“So you don’t know.”

Benrey snapped his teeth together like a bear trap. Tommy racked his rifle in response. The air between them was taut as they stared each other down in silence.

This particular car crash of a conversation was interrupted by the scientists stirring from their sleep, and both demigod and entity backed down from one another. Live to threaten grievous bodily harm another day. There were more important matters at hand.

---

The room they descended to in the cybernetics department was… not what Tommy remembered it being.

It was still the same room. It had the same panel of electronics on the wall. And he was almost certain that analog clock had always been there, but that was where his familiarity ended. The shelves had been cleared of biological research materials, replaced instead with vials of liquid in a delightful array of colors. The far wall held a desk and a computer, and a lab station had been set up in the middle.

An unfamiliar voice floated over to them. “Twenty one, twenty two, twenty three unique flavors! I can’t wait to show them this.”

Had they moved the department? Tommy stood behind Gordon on the elevator lift, craning his neck to get a look at the only individual who seemed to work here. He seemed more relaxed than the rest of the employees they’d encountered, tinkering with something at the lab station with a detached poise. Tommy’s eyes caught a barrel of Powerade mix on the shelf behind him. Maybe he had something to do with the strange desert phenomenon.

Gordon glanced back at his companions. “Fuck is he saying?”

The man looked up from his work, eyebrows lifting in mild surprise at the group’s appearance. Tommy observed the contents of the lab station, a perplexing mix of chemistry equipment and everyday household items, wondering what he was working on. The man idly cut off the gas line to the Bunsen burner while he watched them expectantly.

“Hey,” Gordon said, waving. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Bubby added.

“Hey,” the man answered, his voice only a touch wary as he removed the safety glasses from his face, folded them neatly, and set them on the surface of the lab table.

“How’s it - how’s it going?” Gordon asked.

“Uh. Alright,” the man answered. “Been here for about… three days.”

The man introduced himself as Darnold. An odd name, maybe, but Thomas Coolatta, Ph.D, wasn’t exactly in a position to judge. He was unusually calm for someone barricaded in his own office for the past three days, and he surveyed the group that had dropped in from his ceiling with a contained sort of curiosity. Tommy eyed him carefully. He didn’t have an ounce of blood on his clothes.

Gordon quickly gave up on social etiquette, striding straight up to the man and demanding answers. Tommy didn’t blame him - this department was supposed to be his salvation, the only bastion against a slow death by infection. Now there was just this guy and a table full of soda cans. Or, what Tommy assumed were soda cans. He flitted his gaze over Darnold’s research with interest while Bubby and Dr. Coomer crowded around the table with him. Benrey, already bored with the conversation, began poking through the office.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Darnold warned, placing himself between Gordon and the lab station. It was the first sign of alarm he’d expressed since the team entered the room. “You gotta step away from my research.”

Gordon stopped in his tracks, perplexed. “That’s research?”

Darnold collected himself in a cool, practiced way that Tommy himself knew quite well. He inched Gordon backward until he was a healthy distance from his equipment. “This is not soda,” he explained. “This is not a fine wine - I know what it says. This is not milk.”

Tommy could see by the fogginess in Gordon’s stare that he was lost. “Okay,” he uttered.

Darnold straightened his tie. Smoothed over his lab coat. “I am in charge of the mixology department,” he informed them.

“Mixology…” Gordon responded dimly. “I thought this was supposed to be the cybernetics department. I thought you guys-” he interrupted himself to throw a verifying glance in Coomer’s direction. “Dr. Coomer, you said the cybernetics department was on the way to the Lambda Lab.”

“Absolutely, Gordon,” the scientist affirmed, nodding.

Light dawned on Darnold’s expression. “Oh, cybernetics,” he said. “The cybernetics department. Uh, they were here,” he reasoned, passing a look around the room. “They got their funding cut after their ill-fated Cyber Mutt project.”

“Such a shame,” Coomer intoned, while Gordon sent a flabbergasted look to his teammates.

“Well this is a nightmare,” he grumbled, but his expression brightened somewhat as a thought occurred to him. “Wait, wait wait, wait. You said their funding got cut?” he asked. “You said their funding got cut?” He began gesturing to his arm, teeth flashing in a pained smile.

Tommy winced. At least he was feeling well enough to have a sense of humor about it.

Darnold seemed to just now notice the injury. “Oh, your hand is missing,” he remarked, the faintest hint of revulsion tugging at the corners of his mouth.

He studied Gordon’s stump more like it was a fascinating specimen than the final resting place of a functional appendage, leaning as close as he could without touching the thing. Tommy watched the chemist as he investigated, unsure of how he felt about him. He was a polite enough guy, but there was no way someone had spent three days in isolation while the world ended outside without loosening a few screws. That calm exterior undoubtedly hid something, but Tommy couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

Benrey had found himself a perch atop an industrial steel barrel, and he launched a harsh laugh across the room. “Yeah you fucked up!” he called, clambering down to jostle Darnold’s shoulder. “Yo he fucked up,” he told him. “He lost his arm. Like an idiot.”

Darnold ignored the entity, his focus homed in on the end of Gordon's arm. “Is that - is that some green in there I see?” he asked.

“That’s probably the sewage. And the sepsis.” Gordon sighed.

“That’s not good.” Darnold murmured to himself, scratching his chin pensively. “Y'know… How long have you had that off?”

Gordon blew out an exhausted breath. “I don’t know. How long has it been, a day?” he cast a glance at Tommy for confirmation. “A day and three hours, give or take?

Darnold straightened, rolling his shoulders back as if he had made a decision. “Studies show that the longest you can live without your hand is a day and four hours,” he told Gordon, the edges of his mouth tilting upward in a near invisible smile. “I think we need to help ya out.”

Okay, never mind, this guy was cool. Tommy could see on his face that he was well-intentioned; he was likely just on guard about having five strangers drop through his ceiling. Not to mention that excellent jest, handcrafted and subtle, was the work of a master.

Tommy was about to give the man an appreciative nod when a loud clatter pulled his attention away. A few yards off, Benrey had drifted back over to the storage shelves and begun knocking items to the floor like a cat. Tommy rolled his eyes. The entity had to get the attention he craved somehow, he guessed.

“Oh, shit!” Gordon exclaimed, laughing. “Wait, so it’s not about the blood loss, it’s about the lack of a hand? Like, your body just shuts down?”

Darnold’s smile widened. “Yeah.”

“That’s just weird.”

“Don’t ya know this?” Darnold asked, cheekiness beginning to shine through his expression. “You’re a scientist, aren’t you? This is what they teach you in every doctorate. It’s a part of every Ph.D.”

Tommy covered his mouth with his hand and turned away to hide his amusement.

“Gordon, I hope you haven’t been lying about your diploma,” Dr. Coomer interjected from across the lab table.

Gordon was about to fire off a response when a wave of pain rolled over him. He tucked his stump in close, gritting his teeth. “You - you said you were the mixology head,” he ground out. “Not the - how do you know about this? Why do you - like - you don’t know anything about my arm more than I do. It’s my arm, man, I think I know best.”

“Because - because, I’ll tell you,” Darnold said gently, holding his palm out toward Gordon in a gesture of peace. “I have been working on a top secret project. It’s a potion.”

Tommy had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep his laughter in check. “That isn’t just the Powerade?” he asked.

“A potion?” Gordon repeated. He glanced at Tommy again, searching for some kind of anchor amid uncertainty. “Who is this clown?” he asked.

A comedy genius, Tommy wanted to answer, but he instead settled on giving Gordon an approving nod. He’s okay, he told him with his eyes. Darnold actually seemed alright. Seemed like he wished them well, a rare occurrence on their road trip through the hellscape that was Black Mesa.

And if he didn’t? Well, Tommy could take care of that, if needed.

“Yes, a potion,” Darnold went on. “What do you think mixology is, mister-” he faltered. “I don’t know what your name is,” he admitted. Mild embarrassment wrinkled the chemist’s brow, which Tommy found funny, considering that they were the ones who had so rudely neglected to introduce themselves.

“My name’s Dr. Freeman,” Gordon said. “Dr. Gordon Freeman.” he turned with a sweeping gesture to the rest of the party, scattered in their own right around the room. “These are my compatriots,” he explained. “This is Dr. Bubby.”

“Hello,” Bubby said distractedly as his eyes wandered the equipment on the far wall.

“This is Dr. Coomer.”

Coomer offered a congenial wave. “Hello.”

“This is,” Gordon paused for only a millisecond, but Tommy didn’t miss the way his expression softened as he said, “Tommy.”

He smiled at Gordon fondly before giving Darnold a polite inclination of his head.

“I’m not even going to introduce the other guy,” Gordon grumbled. “I don’t even think he’s in the room anymore, I wasn’t watching him.”

Benrey had migrated away from the storage shelves and was fiddling with the laptop on Darnold’s desk. “I found a torrent of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on this computer,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Gordon frowned in concern. “I think he’s going to delete all your files.”

Darnold, unbothered, flapped a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Can you seed that for me, please?” he called to the entity. “Anyways, Dr. Freeman.”

He bobbed his head in an affirmative nod. “That’s me.”

“You’ve disrespected my potions,” he said, giving Gordon a significant look. “Which I don’t like. But a scientist can’t live happily knowing that somebody’s had their hand off for a day and three hours.”

Gordon gave his arm a despondent glance. “Mmyeah.”

“So, this is what I’m going to do,” he continued. “I’m gonna make use of my top-secret, government funded, extreme, delicious potion. I’m gonna give you some, because it has secret regenerative properties unknown to man.”

So, like Pedialyte? Tommy studied the chemist’s expression, trying to parse what he meant by ‘regenerative properties.’ He detected no subterfuge on the man’s face, and his voice held sincere concern, even if it was professionally contained and wrapped up in a joke. Perhaps this ‘potion’ was a risk, but it was a risk Darnold believed would help.

“Unknown to man?” Gordon echoed as he followed Darnold to another steel barrel near the lab station

Incidentally, Dr. Coomer had chosen that barrel as a seat. Darnold frowned at the boxer while Coomer smiled blankly back.

“Please don’t sit on the potion,” Darnold told him.

Coomer hastily dismounted the barrel, sending it rattling sideways and rolling along the floor. Darnold let out a huff, frustration pulling his brows in as he knelt to heft the barrel in his arms. “You knocked the damn potion over,” he muttered, carrying his cargo to rest its weight on the lab table, spout facing downward.

“It’s probably fine,” Dr. Coomer said sheepishly.

Tommy couldn’t help but find the situation funny, from Darnold’s sheer display of strength while he tried to contain his irritation to the absurd size of the barrel in his arms to his unshakeable dedication to the ‘potion’ bit. He watched the exchange with half his attention, the other half following Benrey as he circled the lab like an understimulated animal in an enclosure.

Meanwhile, Gordon’s voice had gone shrill as he realized what he was about to do. “Are you tellin’ me I gotta - is that full?”

Darnold tugged at his lab coat to pull out the wrinkles, balancing the barrel with his free hand. “I tried to put it in beakers, and I only had… three,” he said. “And they all melted when I put the potion in them. But, this is okay.” he slapped his hand on the container in reassurance.

Gordon’s volume climbed and he began to protest, but Tommy spoke up, interrupting him before his elevated pulse could push the poison in his blood any closer to his heart.

“Trust him Mr. Freeman, he made the Powerade earlier.”

“The Powerade was pretty good,” Gordon admitted, turning in Tommy’s direction to search his gaze.

He didn’t know what to believe, who to trust, besides Tommy. He had to remember that. Gordon was following Tommy’s judgment like he was a ship about to wreck, and Tommy couldn’t leave him to smash on a rocky shoreline for the sake of a few jokes. He offered the man a comforting smile. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.

Darnold was still attempting to cut the tension with a little humor as he balanced the barrel on the table. “Now, I’m holding it at the proper potion sipping angle, so just break out your Black Mesa official silly straw and get to slurpin,’ okay?”

Tommy snorted. “What flavor is it?”

“It’s brown flavor!” Darnold shot back with a grin.

Benrey had stopped pacing the room and was now leaning his back against one of the shelves to watch. He caught Gordon’s eye and ran his tongue along the razor line of his teeth. Tommy honestly couldn’t tell if it was a threat or a sign of approval.

Gordon wasn’t sure, either, turning to Darnold with a bit of nervousness. “Hey,” said, leaning in close. “Before you ask me questions about any of this: one, I don’t have a passport. Two, I don’t have a Black Mesa silly straw. Three, I don’t know anything.”

Darnold blinked mildly at the interruption, angling his head away from the sudden closeness and shooting the science team a perplexed look.

“He doesn’t even have his silly straw,” Coomer commented unhelpfully between giggles.

The chemist sighed. “We can work with this,” he said, pushing Gordon delicately back with his free hand. “Here, I’m still holdin’ it at the proper angle. Now, just put your mouth on it, and… get to… suckin.’”

Tommy could tell he immediately regretted his phrasing by the grimace that tightened his mouth.

“He should!” Benrey jeered from his spot against the shelving unit. “Gordon knows how to suck and he does it well.”

As Tommy fought the impulse to gag, Gordon stabbed his finger threateningly in the entity’s direction. “Don’t you tell me what I know about suckin,’ buddy!”

“Gross!” Bubby interjected.

At least without the silly straw it was less like watching the world’s worst beer bong and more like watching the world’s worst shotgun. Reminded Tommy of his college days. Gordon made it through a few swallows before he collapsed onto the tile floor, making a horrible, gut-wrenching sound.

Tommy practically materialized next to Darnold, gripping his upper arm in a warning and ignoring the stares from the rest of the science team. He couldn’t tell if the look the chemist gave him was startled because of Gordon’s condition or Tommy’s sudden proximity.

“What’s it doing to him?” Tommy asked in a low voice.

“Uh, well, from what I’ve gathered, it’s like a month long juice cleanse in the span of five minutes,” Darnold explained, flitting a glance between Tommy and the man lying prone on the floor. He was smart enough to connect the dots. “It doesn’t feel great, but he should be fine,” he assured him, with gentle confidence. “Toxin free.”

After a moment of processing, Tommy released him, choosing instead to fold his arms thoughtfully across his chest and monitor Gordon’s status while the man keeled on the floor, groaning. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Darnold trying not to wince as he rubbed his arm.

They watched Gordon in silence for a few moments before Darnold ventured a question. “When was the last time his suit was charged?”

Tommy rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to remember. “A - uh - a day ago? Two maybe?”

“There’s a charging station on that wall,” Darnold said, nodding in that direction. “Let’s get him over there while he’s…” he paused, frowning while Gordon convulsed. “Going through it.”

Together, they wrestled Gordon across the room and hooked his suit up to the device. It beeped softly and took on a charge. Gordon didn’t resist, letting out a pained moan as his head lolled against the wall.

“Tastes like brown, tastes like green…” he murmured. “It tastes like most colors.”

Yeah, this was definitely reminding Tommy of his college days. He crouched beside him, watching carefully for any signs of his condition worsening, while Darnold stood to his full height.

“Brown is supposed to taste good,” he remarked, earning himself a thin laugh from Tommy.

He decided he liked Darnold. He was funny, and he had dropped what he was doing to help them, despite the fact that they were all, well, the way that they were. Ragged and chaotic and just to the left of coherent. Darnold met them all graciously with that carefully contained sense of humor, and for that he was thankful. Tommy hoped they were able to seal the rift before any sort of creature got its teeth in the guy.

Tommy remained by Gordon’s side while Darnold turned to converse with Bubby and Dr. Coomer. As the concoction worked its way through Gordon’s bloodstream, the wound drained out a colorless fluid and began rapidly scabbing over. A medical marvel, really, Tommy thought as he watched it heal. Lifesaving technology. He wondered bitterly how long Black Mesa had been sitting on this research, how many people around the world needed something like this. Keeping it hidden away in a bunker was such a waste.

The HEV suit beeped again, indicating it had hit full charge. Tommy steadied Gordon with one hand as he slumped over, breathing heavily. With his other hand, he gently rotated Gordon’s severed wrist so he could access the control panel beneath. He didn’t exactly have a lot of experience with one of these, but he guessed the suit at least needed to recalibrate. Tommy hit the button.

Recalibrate it did. The suit’s internal computer must’ve interpreted Gordon’s lack of a hand as a need for some sort of substitute, and it whirred out lines of tubing and protective metal casing around the area. Tommy watched, fascinated, keeping a solid grip on Gordon’s shoulder to hold him upright. He had settled down somewhat at this point, the pain leaving his body as the newly charged suit flooded him with morphine.

Where there used to be a hand, there was now what looked like a sized-down gatling gun, flanking Gordon’s forearm with five identical barrels. There was no place to feed a magazine, and Tommy wondered distractedly how much of the suit’s real estate was taken up by rows and rows of ammunition within the exterior casing.

Gordon let out a confused grunt as the fog in front of his expression began to clear. When his gaze fell to his own arm, Tommy felt his shoulder go rigid in shock.

“Huh? Whoa. Whoa, what is this tube?” he demanded. “What is that?”

Their attention drawn by Gordon’s outburst, the scientists wandered back over to investigate. Three pairs of curious eyes stuck on the barrel on the end of the man’s arm. Benrey, settled in the chair at Darnold’s desk, didn’t even bother to look over.

Dr. Coomer gave his mustache a thoughtful scratch. “I think that’s your hand,” he finally said.

Gordon sent a questioning look to Darnold. “You told me this would regenerate my hand. What is this?”

“Is that not what your hand looked like before?” Darnold asked, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement.

Fully alarmed now, still a touch disoriented, Gordon scrambled to his feet. As Darnold began calmly explaining the bizarre prosthetic and its functions, Tommy circled around behind Gordon and began unhooking the HEV suit from the charger before he forgot he was attached to it and tried going anywhere.

He was tuning out the conversation as he carefully undid the clasps, so when the gun extension on Gordon’s arm fired off a staccato of rounds, Tommy leapt back, startled.

He wasn’t the only one - the entire room was taken aback by the firepower Gordon’s new weapon possessed. Save for Benrey, who was bored as usual, and Darnold, who appeared more intrigued than alarmed. The chemist crossed his arms and studied the gun, brows knitted as he puzzled through the mechanics.

“This… really is like your hand,” he began. “You just uh - did… You just fired your fingernails from your fingertips.”

Not a bad metaphor, Tommy allowed, but Gordon was ever the literal one, his judgement a little shaken by the forcible purge of toxins from his blood. “No,” he argued, glancing at the science team for help. “Right? No. Please back me up.”

“Why do you think my hand’s always in a fist?” Bubby reasoned. “I don’t wanna hurt you.”

It was so rare Bubby willingly made a joke that Tommy almost forgot to laugh.

“You said I’m shooting my fingernails,” Gordon insisted, turning to Darnold. “I’m s’posed to have only five of those. In fact, my fingernails should be gone-”

“Gordon, I believe most people have ten of those,” Coomer corrected.

“Fingernails can grow pretty fast,” Tommy added as he unhooked the final cable from the suit.

The man was nervous, for good reason, and now probably wasn’t the most appropriate time to make light of his predicament, but Tommy was so relieved Gordon wasn’t going to die of blood poisoning that he truly couldn’t help himself.

Gunshots peppered the room while Gordon oriented himself with the new extension. Tommy remained by the charging station, coiling the cables around his arm and hanging them neatly back on the rack. Next to him, Benrey’s eyes were glazed over as he tacked randomly at the keys on Darnold’s laptop.

“Is the internet working?” Tommy asked, sliding the panel shut on the charging station.

Benrey gave a narrow shrug. “I dunno, I’m playin’ TF2.”

Tommy circled behind him and glanced at the screen. “That’s Minesweeper.”

“I’m installing the Pyro update,” Benrey insisted.

His tone was even, but Tommy could see flames flickering between the entity’s fingers in a subtle threat. He sighed and left him alone.

Tommy rejoined the rest of the group just in time to see the south wall become pimpled with bullet holes. Damn, that little gun had some kick. Gordon reeled backward, panting and looking more clear-eyed than he had in the past couple days. It was good to see him steady on his feet.

“I’ve increased your fingernail effectiveness by ten thousand percent,” Darnold commented, a touch impressed, with a smile on his mouth so small you’d miss it if you weren't looking.

God, this guy was funny. Chill as hell, too. Tommy wondered if he had been the one to put those bullshit posters up in the break room. Hard to believe that was earlier this week and not an entire lifetime ago.

With Gordon healed and recharged, they thanked the chemist for his hospitality and prepared to push on. Tommy was hesitant to leave. This was the only real reprieve they had gotten all week - the room was safe, the company was enjoyable, and a weight had been lifted from Tommy’s shoulders knowing that Gordon was no longer actively dying on his watch. He approached Darnold gratefully while Gordon wrestled Benrey out of the office chair before he could pour more soda on the keyboard.

“What’s the next flavor of Powerade?” Tommy asked, eyebrows raised in a humorous challenge.

Darnold’s smile rose to meet it and he stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Hmm, well, I shouldn’t tell you this,” he said, humor sparkling in his black eyes. “But we’re working on an evil flavor.”

“My favorite,” Dr. Coomer interjected while Tommy giggled.

It felt good to laugh, to have something silly to focus on while the world turned further and further on its ear. Darnold’s lab was a cheerful sanctuary, a final stop before their journey’s end. Tommy was still exhausted from running and fighting for days, clawing with desperate hands for a way out of this nightmare. This guarded rest, however, this brief repose, made him think that they just might make it in the end.

Chapter 13 <-----> Chapter 15