Chapter Text
The hum of the generator was comforting in its predictability. Steady. Familiar. David had been alone on the far side of Coldwind Farm for several minutes now — long enough for unease to creep in through the edges of his calm. No crows, no screams, no signal pings. Just a gently chugging generator, and a nagging worry at the back of his mind.
Felix had been missing for at least two trials now. It was normal to not see him around the campfire with the rest of the survivors. He was never overly social, often retreating to the far end of the safe zone to write or just stare off into the fog, but David hadn’t even been seeing him there lately.
Nobody said it out loud. They never did.
Dwight fumbled for excuses. Jake diverted. Elodie looked like she’d been holding something down so long it had congealed behind her eyes.
The more the others avoided mentioning Felix’s absence, the more David noticed it. The survivors were spooked. People didn’t just go missing like that. Not here. There were rules to this place. A rhythm to it all that could be predicted. No matter where you were sent, you always came back.
Although with how often people were being cycled into trials, it was a little difficult to tell who had been around lately. Some survivors he hadn’t seen for several days before they randomly showed up in a trial with him, looking stressed out and exhausted. The grind must have really picked up lately; either that or they have been spending a lot longer in trials than he thought.
Unless…His hands paused on a valve. Had more people been going missing than he had noticed? Who all had he actually SEEN lately, anyway?
David shook off the train of thought and tightened the bolt on the generator he was working with, his knuckles white. He needed to focus on the task at hand, not get lost in the chaotic trial schedules of people he barely knew. It was this place, he decided. The silence here was too thick. It let his mind wander far too much.
The sign that shit had gone sideways came up without warning. That skin-prickling, stomach-tightening shift in pressure. Static. Distant. Pulsing. His heart rate kicked up from the telltale aura of a terror radius nearby.
How did it get that close without him noticing? Had he really spaced out that far?
He turned, trying to find what direction it was coming from, and had barely managed to check behind himself when the open stretch of corn fields was obscured by the white blur of a lab coat, and the rapidly approaching whine of a baton, sparking as it arced like a baseball bat towards the side of his skull.
The world dissolved into sludge.
When David came back to himself, it felt like surfacing through molasses. Awareness seeped slow and thick; darkness dragging him down, a nagging sense of wrongness bubbling him back up.
He came to with a groan, his head thudding a harsh echo of his heartbeat that made his teeth ache. He was upright, sort of; his arms stretched over his head, chained looped through manacles locked to a massive pin sunk high into the wall. Concrete bit into his spine, his own limp weight sinking his restraints into the skin around his wrists.
His shoulders ached like they’d been dislocated and shoved back in wrong.
The room stank of ozone and antiseptic, and something burnt.
His head lolled, the world reeling sideways, as he tried to blink his double vision into compliance again. A wave of nausea coiled just beneath his ribs, making him hiss softly through clenched teeth.
A shuffle of footsteps and a soft rasping cut through his haze, finally centering his attention on the room around him. Bright lights reflected off nearly every stained surface of the rounded room; massive monitors suspended from the ceiling like an audience. The central rotunda at Léry’s. Hadn’t he just been at the farm? The hell was he doing in a totally different domain?
David’s skin prickled lightly, the air around him absolutely alight with a static hum, as the familiar whine of electricity vibrated through his aching skull. Off to one side of the room, the imposing bulk of the Doctor was pacing between machines, adjusting dials as he worked his way around a chair that looked like it had been ripped from a torture manual, a young man bound firmly into it.
He was lightly twitching, hands flexing against leather restraints. Straps across his chest holding him upright. Electrodes tracked every inch of his arms and collarbone, the wires running like vines up his arms and into a machine that looked like a warped generator prototype. His sleeves had been removed, seemingly sliced off with very little care given to spare the skin underneath, and the exposed skin was scorched in surgical patterns.
Violet. Red. Black.
Some of it still weeping.
His head was bowed, hair clinging wet to his face, but David would know that outline anywhere.
Felix. A cold knot settled in the base of David’s stomach. Had he been here this whole time?
Herman rounded the machinery, jotting something down on a notebook pressed into the metal clamp of a clipboard and thinking out loud as he adjusted an electrode on one gently shivering shoulder.
“Subject 7B showing remarkable resilience despite prior overstimulation,” he murmured quietly. “We’ll begin phase four of the experiment shortly.”
The chain above him rattled against the wall as David pulled himself more upright, drawing the Doctor’s gaze away from his notebook for a moment.
“Ah, Mister King. You’re awake. Excellent.” Herman adjusted something behind Felix’s chair with a dull click. “I’ll admit, I was concerned that you were struck too hard for a while there. Severe brain damage would skew my data far too much to be usable. I trust you rested well?”
David gripped the chain, letting the circulation return to his hands.
“…the fuck…? What is this?”
“Statistical correction,” Herman replied, plainly. “7B's physical typing is regrettably overrepresented among your peers, and I do so hate when variables get too homogeneous. Six premature failures. I was at risk of redundant output.”
He turned to face David fully. Smiling. Pen in hand.
“Your inclusion to my studies will greatly enhance contrast.”
David tugged against the chain, the heavy bindings biting into his already raw wrists.
“You actually think I’m gonna help you?!”
“You already are. Auditory induction. Emotional contrast.”
He smiled faintly, gesturing towards the chair where Felix had lifted his head, eyes alert and locked on David.
“You provide resonance. He provides data. It’s quite elegant, really. He had been flagging prematurely before your arrival. I was at risk of needing to find an 8th ahead of schedule.”
Another dial click, another jotted note.
“Now then. We have our baseline established. Shall we begin the fine-tuning?”
The dull sound of a switch being toggled set the machines whining.
A second one danced sparks across wires.
Felix flinched hard, away from David’s stare, arched into the straps…
And screamed.