THE GRAVITY IN YOU [P]

[Caleb Ostling]

Blue lights flashed behind thick glass, machine readouts scrolled meaningless symbols, charts, and texts. The room was warm, but the broad press of restraints was cool against his wrists. A rig of sorts, metal with some sort of dark plastic, kept his jaw firmly shut. A thin insert wire no more than the width of a pencil lead entered into his mouth from either corner, curving back in a spade over his tongue. He'd gagged on it for the first few minutes, but adjusted out of necessity; they'd shown no inclination to remove it. In fact none of the UNIT guards would come so much as in the same room as him without a taser, something they'd used on him already for absolutely no reason. Twice. Caleb had the distinct impression that they had encountered his brother, who'd clearly managed to leave something of a reputation behind. One shorter, fatter scientist in particular, one with an ice pack often pressed to his badly bruised nose, seemed to hold a vicious grudge. It was him who had ordered the muzzle (there was no other word for it) the second he'd looked at the last name on the profile.

Alone, chained to a transport, Caleb was shaken. He ran into burning buildings for a living, helped out dangerous people with often violent secrets for a past time, walked nippy shelter dogs when Katrina had to pick up her son from her ex's unexpectedly. But he had no value here beyond a number, beyond his test results. Neither had Kite. They'd taken Caleb more than two weeks ago, and the past fifteen days had been a blur of tests and needles and machines and cages. They'd make him shift and back again until he passed out from the effort, transfused his blood with someone else's, then seemed disappointed when his body had gone into shock. When he ate it was, he decided, the shapeshifter equivalent of dog food, or maybe a cross between it and soup. At least they were feeding him, the others he'd seen, though only from a distance, had often been skinny, so skinny it hurt to look. Starving. And there was screaming, from time to time, and sometimes two or three UNIT officers would hustle past, stun-guns and tranquilizers at the ready. Once he'd seen a body-bag wheeled past, occupied.

Tonight (he could see the machine's clock, it was six-twenty) he was in a new room. The test name glowed blithely in front of him in long, meaningless letters. He knew a little Latin, but nothing that was even close to being useful here. There were two IV's in his right arm that were slowly going from painfully cold feeling to sickeningly numb, and he couldn't stop himself from glancing at them all the time. He really, really was afraid of needles, and if he hadn't been before he certainly was now. Were they talking about sharks now? He was pretty sure he caught something about sharks. He was a shark. But they weren't speaking English, both were French or something, they rolled their R's a lot.

And then he himself was rolled aside as someone else was marched into the room. In a matter of seconds the man was scanned with a blink of a green laser grid, uncuffed, and shoved into the glass cagebox along the far wall. And then eyes fell expectantly to him, and his stomach flipped; he was next. He wasn't sure what for, the second empty cage suddenly seemed much more terrifying than the needles in his arm, to the point that he didn't even feel the scientist take them out until it was already done. He definitely did feel the sudden bite of an injection into the side of his neck, however, and the scream of surprise and pain was choked into silence by the gag. And then it was ripped out of his mouth, banging his teeth as he was dragged up at the same time. The room spun oddly, his head throbbed(what the heck had they shot him full of anyways!?), and he bounced stupidly off the door of the nearest machine as they clicked his restraints off and more or less tossed him into it.

What he did not expect was to be hucked into the already occupied machine. It was a graceless encounter, hard and all elbows to stomachs as he fell down onto his butt with a strangled attempt at a holler of surprise; his tongue was still numb from the pressure of the gag. Caleb barely had a chance to lean back and gawk upward at the swimming double-image of what could only be another shapeshifter standing above him when there was a loud, mechanical hiss, and water poured down over both of them from above.

[Lincoln Avery]

They had taken him somewhere near the border of Fulsi, decision marked by a sting in his calf. The bright tuft of feathers, when he glanced down, a belated warning that sent him staggering in blind misdirection. Three and a half strides all he managed before his left leg crumpled, dart dislodged, tearing skin as it came loose, and he tipped sideways into a warm sand drift, promptly falling unconscious. It was the icy press of metal along his bare spine that jolted him awake the first time following, in a room sterile white, wires and tubes pumping something tar brown and iron-brand hot into his veins from various bags above his head, limbs strapped down, mask fit over his face doing nothing to stop the assault of antiseptic on his nose. They'd jammed another needle into the flesh of his arm once he'd screamed himself hoarse at the pain, and he sunk, gratefully, back under. The next time he opened his eyes it was to a soft sizzle and uneasy quiet, senses lagging when they tried to process the overwhelming stench of burnt hair and bleach past waves of stabbing ache. At least until he rolled weakly to his knees, every muscle in his body flush with pain, protesting being alive as much as the motion, and found himself staring through the bars of his cramped cage at his neighbor; her arm twisted and furred, fingertips blistering, the rest of her body misshapen angles from whatever the Keepers had attempted to accomplish. She had been human, once, that much was clear to Lincoln as he turned away, swallowing back what little, bitter liquid was left in his stomach, before it could exit his mouth.

The boy to his right whimpered brokenly, and Linc couldn't bring himself to do much more than skim a sympathetic look over the kid's sickly-skinny frame, before he curled inward, both arms banding bent legs in a hug, neck of his shirt tugged over his nose to mask the scent of death surrounding them, and closed his eyes to shut the world out. He lost track of time--it was so easy to do, with in and out his cell the only markers between this injection, and that test. The half jackal of a woman vanished, barely carted away before they tossed in a new occupant. How many days had he been here, he tried his best to keep count--Three? Four? A week?--and gave up every time. It didn't matter, it'd been limited from the beginning. So when they came for him, just before what qualified as dinner that evening, the last thing he felt was surprise. Two big, burly guards for one thin, half starved australian? That was absurdly heavy handed at best. [What did they think he was capable of, staring them to death?] A laugh bubbled up and refused to quit when they impatiently yanked him from the cell, earning him a few blows to the cheek that blurred his vision. A set of cuffs slapped pinchingly around his wrists before they were forcing him, once they felt he was securely under wraps and entirely incapable of going on that mass murdering spree he'd been planning all day, through halls at a crippled jog. Down one corridor exactly like the rest, then the next, sharp turns of corner confusing him as they drug him along the labyrinth of the labs, roughly jerking him back into step whenever he slowed or stumbled.

Through a pair of large, swinging steel doors the trio went, the sudden flux of light in the new room enough to have his eyes watering uncontrollably. A rapid series of blinks and he could make out the white bob of lab coats, Keepers, and a lot of them, moving about between machinery he'd never even dreamed could exist. A green light flashed twice, wince twisting his mouth open with a surprised, half-pained noise as he tried to turn away from it a beat too late, sour tang of the gathered Keepers and equipment coating his tongue in that instant, and sturdy guard number two wretched on the arm in his grip so hard Linc was sure the joint would give. Something pierced his leg, the sudden flare of pain in the upper portion of his limb instinctively jerking him back, a clumsy scramble away halted only by the wall of chest on either side and the hard spike of agony in his shoulder cuff. A belated, agitated growl bleeding through his bared teeth at the balding worm of a man in a lab coat who shuffled back to his colleagues looking pleased with himself. The cuffs clicked as they came off, but his hands were not yet freed--one of the ham-fisted gentlemen, so kind as to escort him to whatever fresh hell the Keepers had planned, pinned his wrists together at the small of his back, using them to steer him towards a shiny glass chute.

Through a slit of doorway he went with a shove, landing on the opposite side, hurried splay of fingers all that caught his weight, and that seamless door went sliding closed behind him faster than he could whirl to watch it. It only took a handful of seconds, but the open press of palm he drug around the circle of glass enclosing him confirmed his suspicion, the door of this thing opened from one side only. Their side. The glare Linc leveled through the wall in front of him, crude gesture or two matching the look, was interrupted by a puff of displaced air brushing his bare toes; chin jerked toward the section of glass that opened on the opposite side. A space very promptly filled by another body, person, who was chucked, much in the same gruff manner as he'd just been, in beside him; the already small space of the tube swallowed further by the new shifter. Door going, going, gone too fast for him to even consider making a run for it. So instead he peered at the other occupant; Blonde, male, hands smeared with something--an ointment perhaps? Linc canted his head, worked up a slim smile, and bent toward him curiously; maybe, he thought, he could convince the guy not to rip out his larynx, if at all possible, by being nice enough. And if plan A backfired, he'd blame it on the head wound.

"Hey, uh, mate. Y' alri--" Extending his left hand carefully, lest Blondie start biting right off the bat, the loud hiss above head drowned out the rest of the words on his lips and had his attention darting upward in a too fast snap of neck. Just in time for the first burst of cold water to hit him face first, blinding him as his eyes slammed shut and he reeled backward, crashing into the wall behind him, arms covering his head uselessly. The sticky patch of blood staining his cheek where he'd been punched streaking thinly down one half of his jaw and forearm as it mingled with the water, heart galloping wildly, and sodden clothing stuck to his back; all a cold, smothering weight. "Sweet Chris'." Linc hiccuped crackle of laughter, legs giving when the first lick of true panic went up his spine, dropping to a seat in the growing puddle beside the blonde, and tucked his forehead against the point of a knee, struggling to breathe behind too-tight bands wrapping his chest. "Coul' this get any g'damn worse?" A beat of silence filled by the stomach-churning sluice of water, and a hand went up, palm flat in the blonde's direction. Wry grin fighting the corner of his lips for purchase as chin point rolled over kneecap, his shock-wide blues lifted to survey the new cage through sheets of wet; hope flaking away already bit by bit. "Wait. Don' answ'r tha', mate. I ain't really keen t' know 'r giv'im ideas."

[Caleb Ostling]

Everything was lurching about, the floor, the wall, his vision, the guy in front of him. It was like sitting on the deck of a ship in violent waters, only without the nausea that should have come with it. Regardless, it was awful. His face was all messed up as he tried to see what was happening, one eye squeezed shut against the water blinding it, mouth open in a one-sided grimace that was wholly unattractive. Caleb really really really hoped this guy didn't want to eat him or something, and he leaned hard against the glass wall when the stranger hunkered down under the torrent next to him. Dude was looking a little hysterical. He talked kinda weird, but at this point in his life Caleb more or less considered himself an expert in mumbly-slurry wordage. He told him not to answer the question, and Caleb tried not to, he really did, but in the end he couldn't help it.

"Well.... there could be three of us?" he ventured, the softer timber of his voice nearly lost to the steady roar of the water and machinery. A third person, even a fairly slim one like the stranger, would make the space way too personal. Not that it already wasn't. A short moment of mental configuration, and Caleb lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the water, and found his gaze stuck on the red line across the man's cheek, probably bleeding, but being washed away far too fast to drip thickly.

"You're, um. You're..." he pointed at his own face in the same spot, his arm seeming to lag, sluggish and distant. "Bleeding. There." And what a dazzling first impression that was, he sounded like a drunkard, and not the kind that got smarter the more hammered they were either. "Sorry, sorry, they gave me something, everything's kinda..." he wobbled the flat plane of his hand a bit, eyes on it warily to make sure it behaved. And it did, mostly.

The water was, he noted with some alarm, already halfway up his shins. It didn't make a lot of sense, if they were just trying to rinse them off or shock them a bit, shouldn't it be draining? But it was pooling, and quickly. And the water was showing no signs of stopping, something he realized with a sick drop of his stomach. "We should up, up-up-up," he mumbled, and started dragging himself to a standing position. It wasn't easy, he had several layers on and soaking wet they weighed a ton. With only slick glass and a perhaps-unwilling-to-be-of-assistance man to lean on, it threatened to be a process.