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refuge-au · 2 years

Note

> Open the Doctor's file

Doc: Prepare for the Procedure

The room was much too small for four people to stay in for fifteen minutes, much less two and a half hours. Barely enough room for a table and four chairs, the undecorated white walls and the windowless door teamed up with the low ceiling to make the sensation that the walls were closing in bad enough that Doc wanted to- to-

To claw his way out of this hellhole with his bare hands, run into the woods, and live out the remaining years he had left before he… live out the remaining years he had left as a wild man in the woods.

The chatter from his team wasn’t helping. Their voices bounced off the walls, reverberating and doubling back on them. He had paced the perimeter of the room two hundred and three times, and he was about to make it two hundred and four as he desperately tried to keep calm. He wasn’t built for small spaces. None of them were.

Well, Etho was, but Etho was an anomaly, and besides, as long as he had the ability to bother Bdubs in one way or another, he would be happy as a clam. To prove that point, the man himself was, as Doc completed his lap around the room, grinning devilishly and reaching across Bdubs, who was sputtering, and holding a small golden pocket watch as far away from him as possible.

“You keep your filthy paws off my property!” Bdubs cried, attempting to shove Etho away with his free hand.

Etho was using his height to his advantage, not even having to strain to keep his prize almost in reach. “Oh, come on, man, I just want to see it-“

“See it? You’ll break it! Take it apart! And it’ll never be the same! Ship of Theseus! Beef! Help!”

“Ship of Theseus is when you replace all the parts of something, not when you take something apart and put it back together.” Beef said, his eyes not leaving the wall. “So, us, not the watch.”

Etho snorted, and Doc sighed heavily, stopping in his tracks in front of the door.

“I’m sick of this.” He said tersely. “They’re not coming to get us. Let’s find our own way down.”

“That would be a wonderful idea, if that door wasn’t locked from the outside.” Bdubs said, lowering his guard as Etho leaned away from him, settling fully into his seat for the first time. “I don’t think they’ll appreciate you breaking down their door.”

“Well, I don’t appreciate them keeping us in here for hours without telling us what’s going on!” Doc said. “You can stay if you want, but I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“Just don’t try to pin the blame on me this time.” Beef said, standing up and moving around to the other side of the room. “Want me to help?”

“No, I’ve got it.” Doc said, and after pressing one hand to the metal, he drew back his other arm, and punched forward.

The door slammed into the wall on the other side of the hallway, a fist shaped dent directly next to the handle. Doc shook out his arm, steam hissing as the vents along its side glowed red, as he stepped into the hallway. Almost instantly it was easier to breath, his back straightening as he rolled his shoulders back.

The rest of the team joined him in the hallway, Beef dragging the door back along the scratches it had made in the floor to rest it gingerly against the doorframe.

“They’ll never notice anything’s different.” Etho said dryly.

“Of course not.” Beef replied. “After all, you did a great job getting us out of there discreetly.”

“Oh, so the story’s that I punched the door open?”

“What’re you talking about stories for? That’s what happened!” Bdubs chimed in, elbowing Etho in the ribs gently, and earning an eye roll.

“Bdubs, you want to take us down to the lab?” Doc asked, craning his neck to look down the hallway. As much as he would love to stay and chat, the longer they lingered, the more likely they would be caught at the scene of the crime- and that never ended well.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get us there.” Bdubs pulled out the watch again, checking it, then flipping it over to check the compass built into its underside. He frowned slightly at what he saw, spinning on his heel to face the other direction and cocking his head to the side.

It was always easy to see when Bdubs was mapping. He always did the same thing. Check the time, check where North is, recall, if they’d been there before, or he’d seen a map, or estimate, if they were on their own. Then, within a few seconds, once he’d determined the right route-

“Alrighty, folks.” Bdubs said, tucking the watch away into his pocket. “Follow me!”

Bdubs led the group down the hallway and into a skinny stairwell that seemed to go up or down into infinity, whichever way you wanted to look. Without hesitation, he started to head downstairs, so the rest of the group followed suit.

Several flights of stairs later, they reached the basement, and entered the lab through a set of double doors that lead onto a metal catwalk.

It was huge, the room stretching off into the distance, much larger than the building they had been in for sure. Computers lined most of the walls, and tables covered in scientific equipment and technology turned most of the floor into a maze. Beef whistled lowly at the sight of it, and even Etho made a noise of approval.

Near the middle of the room a space had been cleared, with several large blue tanks set up around it, and a terminal with lots of wires running out of it square in the center.

A man with frizzy hair looked up from the terminal as they approached, and frowned. “Where’s your escort?”

“We weren’t given one.” Beef said. “Had to find our way down on our own.”

“And we are so sorry about that.” A voice came from behind, and they turned to see Xisuma striding across the floor in a battered green combat suit, a helmet tucked under his arm. Several people trailed after him, including a harried looking assistant that appeared to be holding a breathing mask, and several people in the same uniforms that the team was wearing.

Most worrying of the people following him, was the group of armed guards surrounding a cyborg with pink and gold metallic augmentations. The man didn’t appear to be restrained at all, but there was a large bolt of some sort attached to his neck, close to his jaw, and he didn’t look very happy to be there.

Most interesting of the people following him was a man who made Doc stop dead in his tracks. He was tall, his skin a deep red that was mottled with lighter reds and pinks, two stubby horns barely poking out from his short black hair. His mouth was closed, but Doc was sure if he opened it, he’d see fangs, and if he would move his hands so they weren’t clasped in front of him, hidden, he was sure he would see that the pads of his fingers were black.

He was a Hybrid.

Like him.

He didn’t have time to process what this meant, or say anything, unfortunately, as the scientists swarmed around them, checking vitals, ushering them towards the tubes they would be sleeping away the long journey in- Xisuma stood in the center, next to the man who had spoken to them, overseeing it all.

As the scientists stepped away, the man on the computer cleared his throat.

“Right. Well. My name is Jaspers. I’m the one in charge of the cryounit operation, and this is hopefully the only time you’ll ever see me, since I’m remaining groundside. Let’s skip the pleasantries and get to business, shall we?”

“The first thing that’s going to happen is we’re going to put a tube down your trachea, into your lungs, and then we’re going to affix a breathing mask to that. Then we’re going to put you to sleep, and we’ll handle the rest from there. It’ll be a very quick, almost painless procedure for you.” Jaspers said.

“Ah, almost painless. That’s always fun.” Beef murmured.

Jaspers sighed, and moved over to Doc, opening the cryopod and having him step inside. Doc swallowed as the glass almost enclosed him.

“Hey, Doc in a jar! Five bucks a pop, get ‘em now at your local supermarket.” Bdubs called.

“Come on, five bucks? I’m worth at least ten.” He replied, smile fading as Jaspers approached with a flexible tube and a mask.

It didn’t hurt, necessarily, seeing as his trachea had been replaced with machinery along with his larynx and most of his outer throat, but sitting there, fully conscious with a tube down his throat, inside his lungs, and coming out of his mouth was a weird feeling.

“Very attractive.” Etho said dryly from the pod beside him. Doc wiggled his eyebrows and resisted the urge to speak, trying to swallow the fear that was rising inside of him. He was fine. This was fine. He shouldn’t be nervous.

God knows he’d been through worse.

“Alright. We’ll be putting you under now.” Jaspers said, appearing from nowhere with an air mask.

Doc’s eyes widened. Now? Right now? Before all the others? Without saying goodbye? Right now? What? No. No!

But the mask was being fitted over his face, and he couldn’t make any noise beside a sort of strangled groan.

“See you on the other side, Doc!” Bdubs said, the others chiming in with vaguely reassuring goodbyes- no, not goodbyes. Goodbyes were too permanent. Too final. They weren’t goodbyes, they were… see you laters?

He didn’t have time to think of what exactly they were, as the mask hissed, gas filling his lungs with no resistance, and his world went dark.

Computer: Input Command: Show Available Files:

> Open the Pilot’s File

> Open the Captain’s File (New)

> Continue.

#prologue #the peril the wind sings to in the wires // doc #doc #etho #bdubs #beef #xisuma #biffa #python #hermitcraft au #hermitcraft refuge au #refuge au #hermitcraft arg #hermitcraft refuge arg #refuge arg #nho #command input needed

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