Chapter Text
By the time they find him, it's already too late.
They’ve tracked him down to an empty building in some town inexplicably far out from Cleaner HQ. Alone. He’s stuffed himself in the very corner of a dilapidated room, curled loosely on his side around his jinki, directly against the dusty floor and molding, yellowed wallpaper. His shoulders are shaking – no, his whole body is shaking. They are these awful, devastating convulsions, like that of an addict suffering withdrawal. His teeth clatter together as though he were cold, but the sweat beading on his forehead and trailing down his temples tell a completely different story. His hands are tense, fingernails bloodied from where they have been digging futilely against the tiled floor, veins standing out clearly underneath his skin in long, branching paths. His eyes are clenched shut, and from the way a weak, rolling growl rumbles from his chest as Enjin first tries to approach – his sense of smell must be impaired. That, or his thinking is. Neither option is good.
From his spot, he can barely see around the piled refuse and splintered furniture. Zanka has holed himself up here pretty well, hidden behind large objects, in some top floor unit, inside of its innermost room. If not for the tracker and the very mean scent that has spread, though quite faintly, even past the unit itself – he may have been able to remain this way for far longer.
Enjin, about 12 feet away in the threshold leading in from the rest of the unit, raises his hands in a placative gesture. It’s one that his ward would not look up to see. “’s me, okay? It’s pack, remember?” He doesn’t move for a moment. Swallows a glob of saliva, his mouth wetting and his gums aching out of instinct.
Zanka’s scent is all over the place. It’s loud and harried, takes up the whole space, looms over his head. It roars, Stay back! Every bit of its intense, burning malodor echoes in arching waves that has him staggering. Maybe you would be able to call this a rutting scent, if while in rut Zanka also had to be protecting his den, his pups, and his mate – all while half-deaf, half-blind, and probably grievously injured. And – yeah – there is that tangy, metallic scent of blood in the room, too.
Enjin takes in a breath through his mouth this time, so that his own instincts don't respond like a firecracker to a lit match. Pack as they may be, the language Zanka is practically hollering with every cell in his being, would probably be enough to get Tamsy going. And Enjin has never once seen Tamsy so much as hint at his sub-gender, much less give himself fully into it.
His voice wavers over each word, bobbing between speech and growl, as he attempts to continue, “Don’t you worry one bit. ‘m not here to stress ya. We just wanna take you home, Zanka.”
The malice does not let up for a second, and he doesn't dare to hope, naively, that it has gotten any better. Enjin grimaces; they did prepare for a few worst-case scenarios, as they always do. A standard pack carried by Cleaners usually has some level of suppressant, scent-blocker, and sedative. So they are not out of options, here. However, everything about what he will have to do, should he take that last option, will be unpleasant. For all of them.
“C’mon, kid,” he says, forcing another tense step forward. And again. “I don’t wanna have to hurt you. We had Granny Stilza help make up our packs, remember? I don't know what she packed in these, and I’m sure you don’t wanna find out.” Again, he plants his foot in front of himself, clearing another few inches, his approach light, cautious. He barely even puts any weight on his foot, and he has been sure to control his scent as much as he could. The less of it, the better.
The snarling and snapping stop abruptly, and Enjin knows that last step was one-hundred-percent a wrong move.
Zanka’s eyes fly open, exposing the thinned rings of his deep, blue irises. They are almost completely overwhelmed by the bottomless holes of his dilated pupils. Taking in everything, priming him for a hair-trigger collision.
“Oh, hell,” he mutters to himself, getting into a readied stance. “Zanka, let's talk about this–!”
But Zanka is off. Hardly gives Enjin room to breathe before he throws himself onto his feet and practically flies towards him, fingers curled, nails pointed, and teeth bared. He's pretty fast, he thinks while he ducks off the side, hopping over broken tables and tripping on the rusted legs of downed chairs. The thought is accompanied by a brief, hardly apropos twinge of pride.
He had left Umbreaker, like his mask, with the others. Hopefully in the other room and not creeping up the hallway. The reasoning had been sound enough. He’d wanted to avoid aggravating the guy and thought that a friendly, unarmed face would keep Zanka calm. If things had gone according to plan, by now they would have had him shoved into the car and traveling at break-neck speeds back to HQ.
Enjin curses his luck, which, for some reason, has decided to rot spectacularly right when he needed it most. Maybe Tamsy, when he had offered to tackle this in Enjin’s stead, had been right. Leaving an Alpha to calm another Alpha? Yeah, okay. Put the pressure cookers on high and wait for the duet, while you’re at it. But Riyo is an Alpha, too. Rudo is an Omega, but he’s certifiably shit at any so much as resembling de-escalation. And the rest of the Cleaners they’d brought aren’t really in his closest circle of pack, so.
Honestly, he’d thought that the pack thing would work. Not too sure why it’s – Enjin grunts, scrambling to the ground when Zanka sprints across the room again – not working right now. He’s been able to coax both Riyo and Rudo out of bad spaces a couple times, all the while solely banking on that little fact. So why not Zanka? What makes him different? Or, he calculates, something grim settling heavy in his chest, what’s different about him?
The hairs on the back of his neck rise while he is turned around. The prickle is sharp, insistent; it won’t be ignored. Enjin, not one to disregard his gut, dives to the ground, then rolls out of the way as the young man completes a devastating side-, then downward-swinging combo with a very sturdy wooden stick. Oh, Lovely’s out to play too. And, hey. Despite his evident status as ‘threat,’ she’s not activated, so maybe the pack thing is working in his favor?
Zanka swings again, and between one movement and the next, the wall cracking precariously where she had connected, his eyes start glowing an eery, empty blue. Enjin stares at the impact site in disbelief, about one foot away from the construction hazard. So, maybe not, actually.
“Okay, Zanka, last warning!” In one smooth movement, he reaches in front of himself, digging into the little white pack strapped to his waist. He feels for a long, pen-like form inside, and grips it tight once his fingers find its smooth surface. “You can be mad at me now, but you’ll understand later when you can actually think!”
While he is down his own jinki, he is decidedly not out of options. He’s been on defensive this entire time out of his own stubborn refusal not to harm his the younger man. Zanka is fast, sure, but he's also so severely shrouded in this feral haze of rut that he makes un-Zanka-like mistakes. Like, leaving his right side so painfully open. Or, like letting himself get distracted when–
“Enjin!” Rudo shouts, his hand on the threshold, legs bent into the room, red eyes wide as he registers what exactly is happening between Enjin, on his ass and Zanka standing, looming dangerously over him.
Oh, goddammit. He’d told them all to stand back the moment he’d smelled the acidic, scorching scent of wood left to burn too long and heard the low, vibrating growls from a wrecked throat.
“Rudo, don’t come any closer!” he shouts back in an order, his eyes never once leaving Zanka’s back. If there is only one good thing about him being like this right now, it’s that he has allowed his attention to be removed from what is, clearly, the biggest threat to person right now. It might have been Rudo’s high, shocked volume, or simply the sudden emergence of a new potential danger, that gets him to whirl around. Lovely Assistaff is held tight, readied in his hands. His shoulders shake with a taut exhale. His stance widens, center of gravity lowered as he prepares to sprint off and pounce.
Before Rudo can be sliced and diced with Zanka’s claws alone, and not to mention bludgeoned with his jinki – because Enjin has his doubts that he would be able to properly take on Zanka when he’s like this – he yanks his hand out of his pack, popping off a bright cap, and pushes against the wall to launch himself at the poor guy. They both land hard against the grimy, unforgiving floor, Enjin ending up atop him.
Zanka fights back. Oh, he fights back. Like hell incarnated. Thrashes like a live wire hitting water. He tries to buck him off, so Enjin stays down, stays heavy atop his legs to keep him from finding the purchase. He tries to viciously bite chunks off of him, his top half rising to get at him, so Enjin shoves and keeps him pinned with a weighty hand to the sternum. Zanka tries to rend his whatever skin he can get to with his sharpened nails, so Enjin takes both of his wrists with his broad hand and grips onto them, tight. He was able to catch his a bit of hand with one of those quick strikes, and the sting makes the man wince. And the smell of fresh blood makes Zanka far more active, like he can taste his own victory, because he tries and tries to scratch and cleave, cutting himself further in the process.
“Hey, Rudo!” he calls, because, yes, now he might need the assist, thanks. Before this goes from bad to worse. “I’m gonna need you to stab Zanka a little bit.”
“Huh?!” comes a strangled sound of incredulity, Rudo rushing in. “Stab? What the hell are you talking about!”
“Just grab the injector I dropped over here.” He jerks his head back, toward where he had left the device behind before the brief scuffle. “I’ll hold him down. You just jam it into his thigh. And I mean jam it. ‘S gotta get through his clothes. Do it hard. Leave it in there for a few seconds.”
“Right.” He says it like he’s psyching himself up. Enjin grimaces. Maybe they’ll need to re-up his field training. “Okay.” The kid races off somewhere out of Enjin’s line of sight to grab it, just as a truly savage snarl rips out of Zanka’s mouth, his lips twisted harshly over his pink gums, completely peeled back over his elongated teeth. He’s literally foaming at the mouth, clear trails of not-quite venom trailing down its corners and down his tightened jaw. His angry eyes glow this bright, bright blue, pin-pointed on Enjin, then Rudo, then Enjin, and then Rudo–back and forth like a pendular laser. His nose exhales so forcefully his chest lurches forward and Enjin imagines white billows of steam coming out of it.
“You’re gonna be okay. Got that, Zanka?” he starts saying, willing his scent to project something of a calming, soothing sense upon the room. If anything, it just aggravates the younger man more, as he starts to more harshly wrench his body around, neck throwing side to side so hard he could swear he’s just heard it crack. Lots of wrong decisions, Enjin’s making today. His hair gets all messed up in a way Zanka definitely hates, and his face is so rigid that Enjin can individually count the veins jutting out from the skin, so big and fat they might just pop. Maybe some have already popped, or maybe Zanka has scratched something else, because the scent of blood is so, so strong this close. And huddled underneath it, he can note the scent of something rotten and fermented. Ew. “Gonna be all right. We’ll get you to take a little nap, first. Then, you’ll be all safe and sound in the – the infirmary, probably. But don’t worry about it; Riyo’ll get your sheets from your room and Rudo will make you a real good nest that you’ll probably hate–”
A grumble. “The hell I will.”
“The injection,” Enjin says easily at Zanka as he addresses his other kid. “Now, please.”
There’s a shuffle behind him, then a decisive, apologetic inhale.
He waits one, two seconds.
Zanka jerks up with a rough wheeze, eyes going wide, neck arching back so quick that his head thwacks right up against the floor. Ah, fuck. That’s another injury, for sure.
A long, desperate keen trembles from him now, gaining in pitch the longer it goes on. It’s completely different from venomous hostility he’s been acting with since they’d arrived. No, this sinks in the chest, wraps tight around the lungs, and makes it hard to breathe. The sound tugs at every string Enjin can think of. Heart-strings, gut-strings. Hell, soul-strings.
In a show of persistence, Zanka wrenches himself a few more times, but the strength wanes behind it with every yank.
Then, Enjin catches something, now that he has slowed down. It makes his breathing go shallow.
The weak motions bring attention to the twisting chords of his neck, protruding from his thin skin. Enjin smells metal. He sees red red red. He’s bleeding, yes, and that’s both something he had smelled outside and they had been prepared for. Expected it, even. But this—
Zanka’s body undulates with shaky, uneven breaths. Bloodied lips quiver around his whining pants. His eyes blink, fast and then slow, his long lashes fluttering, wet with pearly tears that escape their dark brush.
“It’s okay, Zanka.” His mouth is moving but his lungs feel stripped of breath. “It’s okay.” Hey. What the hell is that? “Sleep.” He lets up on the hand pressing down on his chest to run it through the light streaks of hair over his head.
“Holy hell, man,” Riyo breaths out, jogging into the room and falling onto her knees next to them, pulling her teammate’s head into her lap and taking over Enjin’s motions.“Fuck, Zanka.” Her appearance acts as a trigger of sorts, because after she comes in, so does Gris and Tomme and Tamsy and Delmon and–Enjin had told them all to wait until he gave a signal, but hey, this is as good a time as any. Not like Zanka is on his rampage anymore.
He’s looking up, gaze heavy-lidded. Staring and staring and staring endlessly at Enjin. His irises have darkened back into their usual deep blue. His pupils are still dilated, but there is no way he can attack, so they aren’t an indicator of a sudden spring into re-action. He stares with those those eyes like he’s got a little something to convey to his mentor, but no more time or energy to do it. Which, yeah, he might. And he keeps going until his body sags and they ease close.
His rampage has officially ceased. His rampage, caused, if partially, by…
Enjin lets the gathered hands slip out of his grasp. With both of his hands free, he wordlessly grabs the high collar of Zanka’s torn-up top – his outfit isn’t even complete, with spots ripped out and one earring missing – and tears it open.
Gris sighs, a long-suffering strain in his throat, “There’s a zipper, Enjin, you could’ve–” A pause, and a sharp exhale. “Wait!” he barks.
Riyo has gone quiet. Her hand lays on Zanka’s head, unmoving, as she takes in the sight he has exposed so vehemently.
“Oh, my…” Tamsy has his eyes wide, his mouth covered by his slender hand.
Rudo squints. Then, he makes a sound of disgust. “Looks like a–”
While it still bleeds sluggishly against Zanka’s pale skin and dirtied clothing, this bite is not so fresh.
Enjin bows his head and grits his teeth, fingers white where they grip the torn sides of his collar. There’s a drumming in his ears, and a rush behind his clenched eyes. An ache in his mouth. The noise of it all is deafening. So goddamn loud that he has to say something. Anything. Voice out his displeasure. Get it to calm the hell down.
“Hey…” His voice is so low he feels it drag roughly along his throat like gravel.
“Enjin.” Two hands wrap around his, tugging them away from Zanka. He looks up at Gris, who has crouched down close to him with a set expression on his face. “He’s going to need medical attention.” He removes one hand from the gathering and makes a vague motion toward Zanka with it. “I’m sure he’s got other injuries beyond what we have seen so far.” And boy, does Enjin not like the sound of that, but Gris shakes his head; he had not meant it that way. “Not to mention what he has sustained since we arrived. Getting him to Eishia sooner than later might do us all–” he looks pointedly at the pitiful scratches that aren’t even bleeding anymore on Enjin’s hand– “some good. Get me?”
He’s silent for a few beats, but when the man in front of him gives an expectant nod, Enjin nods back. He exhales, feels the noise fizzle into obscurity, and lets his lungs deflate under the realized, though very familiar weight of responsibility. Right. Zanka needs to see Eishia. They’ve got to get back to base. Anything other than that will have its run afterward.
Gris helps him get Zanka settled on his shoulders. Riyo, for an understandable moment, is reluctant to let Zanka leave her side. A hand that stayed on his arm a touch too long, the last pat upon his sloppy hair that rung with finality, the darkened quality of her green irises, the soft noises that have left her throat in replacement of true words. All of it is indicative of her instinctive unease. It’s her pack-mate that has been injured, and she wants to keep him close.
As they carefully make their way down the grungy stairway of this deteriorating building, he remembers the time when Zanka had been so brutally injured over a year back, by that Raider punk. How she had dragged his damaged body for so long in the hardened caverns of that trash beast, clinging onto him despite the fact that Zanka was much taller and heavier than herself. It must have been exhausting for her, who was already so spent. He thinks to before that. To several interactions between the two of them since picking up his second stray. He thinks about her now, sliding into her place in the back of the car, attentive gaze on him alone as he eases Zanka’s prone form in beside her. She’ll make sure he stays safe, even as he races down to HQ.
Rudo comes in too, right after, which is a bit of a surprise, but she welcomes him in with an encouraging nod and small smile. Though he is looking at their unconscious pack mate with a very curious, somewhat disturbed expression. Enjin…doesn’t want to poke at that right now, especially since the conversation that emerges from that, once popped, is very likely only going to go one way. He’s not sure if he wants to take that route yet.
The conversation happens anyway, because no one on the Sphere mates, apparently. Or talks about mating. What, no – what was that book called again? That stupid, cartoon-ish-looking book fit for children? He had found it recently in a trash heap in No Man’s Land…Oh – Birds and the Bees?
It’s not even ten minutes into the two-hour-long drive. Enjin’s behind the wheel again, because they are prioritizing speed here; not comfort. Murmurs had been stirring in the back. They could only be between Riyo and Rudo in the back, because everyone else is tortuously silent, stewing over everything that has happened this far.
He’s gleaned all he can easily get from Riyo when he asks, in an unsure, stilted voice, “What does it mean…for Zanka now, to have gotten bit like that?” Enjin closes his eyes. Only for a second, though. Gris flicks his forearm immediately, with hard, meaningful eyes that bore into him, then roll out the window into the path, and back. Message received.
One, two, three, four, five more seconds pass in the enclosed space of the car. With Delmon’s hulking figure taking up as much room as it does and the sheer amount of people gathered inside, the space feels far more cramped. Normally, with these kinds of things, their familiarity with each other provides a slippery, protective coating that reduces any friction. This time, the lack of room presses into them all. Eats at their brains. Squeezes their chests.
Tamsy, who is probably the best person for it, takes the plunge. Huh. He would have guessed Gris, with his gentle voice and diplomatic way of phrasing, would have done it, but it appears that Tamsy had gotten to it first. Or maybe Gris could not muster up the will to talk at length about it. Hell, neither could Enjin, really.
“Rudo.” Tamsy’s calm voice is silky, a smooth balm against the stinging wounds of the situation at hand. “What exactly do you know about sub-genders? And the process of mating?” Mating. Like that is what this is.
“You don’t have to give me the Talk, I know already!” the kid excuses, waving his hands. It’s with less energy than usual. He’s definitely embarrassed, but not noisily so. He’s blushing, but he’s not completely red. His eyes are wide, but not with indignation at his troublesome clueless-ness. “I just—most people on the Sphere are betas. And if they aren’t, they don’t…do things that betas wouldn’t. Like claiming each other through bites.” He grimaces. “The scar makes ‘em look dirty. So they don’t do it, and they don’t talk about it.”
The man hums in understanding. “Yes, well. I’m sure you are already aware that typically, after a period of courtship, an alpha and omega–”
“I already know that!”
“Yes, yes.” Tamsy pauses, as though looking for the right way to continue. “I’m also sure that I don’t have to tell you, then, that it’s not a good thing when it happens with force.” The mood in the car, already dire, just plummets. Tumbles to shit. “The bite bonds two people. In ways even I wouldn’t be able to explain in depth. If it came about through circumstances like that, well.”
“Was it?” Rudo intones, voice flat.
“That…” Bright eyes turn to the rear-view mirror, catching Enjin’s gaze. It’s a question, requesting permission. Enjin nods. Whatever he has to say – honestly, they might all need to hear it. Tamsy has this way of making the biggest thing feel so small, in the grand picture of it all. It can rub the wrong way, especially when that ‘biggest thing’ is a big feeling. Like the world has put you and your loved ones on its shit list, and has no intention of scratching your names off it. He just shrugs at most things; his disposition usually amounting to ‘that’s rough, buddy; the Ground’s pretty tough, you know?’ But sometimes it’s well-needed. So it can be a dose of realism, or reassurance, or whatever the fuck else – as long as it gets them through this car ride. “We can’t be too sure, yet.”
“What…?”
Yeah, ‘what?’ is probably right. Enjin entertains, briefly, the feeling that maybe that’s enough. Thank you for the weigh-in, Tamsy.
“The state of the bite brings its conception into question. And I did briefly locate a few of what may be defensive wounds on his body, in the moments before we rushed into the car. So it’s very likely. However, there are several details we might have missed. Therefore, we will have to conduct a safer, more intensive examination later before coming to a conclusion.” He leaves it at that. Rudo does not ask after it, so they all just stew. Silent, once again.
Fuck, man. Just…fuck.
Enjin’s grip tightens over the wheel. There’s a lot of feeling bubbling inside of him right now. It churns violently, as turbulent as a trash storm. Bitter, angry, relieved, murderous. All of it mixes into a, frankly, nauseating soup. Especially that last, gamy ingredient. He fights to breathe out, releasing his shoulders from their vantage point around his ears.
At his side, Gris hums in approval. Then, he murmurs lowly, for Enjin’s ears alone, “Don’t get us all killed.” He has this look in his eye. This heavy, hardened look that hosts a world of different meanings, given the circumstances. “We’ll take Zanka in. Get him looked at. Fix him up. Then, we’ll find them. And we’ll make sure that it gets taken care of.”
He swallows thickly. Yeah.
Until then.