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“Hey, come on! Wake up!”
Caleb banged on the glass, eyes wide with horror as she didn’t get up. Scientists ran around in a panic, yelling about how the energy of the Aether Core was unstable. Terror gripped him, and he yelled louder. His evol cracked the glass before he received a hard electrical shock.
Finally, she woke up, gasping for air. Caleb pretended not to hear the scientists say she’d been dead. This wasn’t the first time she’d danced with death, and it wouldn’t be the last. Over and over he saw her die and her heart restart. It made him sick, and each time he vowed to get them out of there. Get her to someplace safe where they could grow up together without the fear of more needles, pain, and experiments. The scene in front of him melted away, replaced by one that was no less terrifying.
“What did you do!?”
Caleb lunged at Zayne, eyes blazing. Zayne didn’t even try to stop him. In the background he could see her being taken away in an ambulance. The air was still freezing, the ground decorated with lethally sharp spikes of glimmering ice. Caleb knew it wasn’t Zayne’s fault, but he couldn’t lose her. Not again. Never again .
“Since you’re grown up now, I won’t cover for you.”
Smoke burned his lungs as he tried to gasp in air. His body hurt like hell, and he couldn’t feel his right arm. His head spun and his ears started to ring. Caleb struggled to his feet, vision blurring as he thought he saw people dressed in black approach the rubble he was trapped under. Before he could say anything, it all went dark.
Caleb screamed in agony, fighting against the evol cancelling restraints. Scientists with tools fiddled with his right arm, making him metal braces and prosthetics. It hurt so much. Caleb screamed again, clawing at nothing. He tried to reach out for his evol but nothing happened.
The chip was worse. They were cruel enough to keep him awake as they implanted it. A test of pain tolerance, they said. Caleb knew the truth. They just liked to hear people scream. EVER, the damned professor, the Fleet, Caleb didn’t know who to blame anymore. His throat was raw from screaming.
“Stop it!” Caleb jolted up, breathing fast and hard. He clawed at his hair, pulling and tugging. His heart pounded and cold sweat dripped down his back. It was dark, and he couldn’t recognize the sight of his room. His body wracked with shudders and quiet sobs. Theroom was too dark and too quiet, reminding him of dark isolation chambers.
He reached under his pillow with his mostly numb right arm, relaxing slightly when his fingers curled around something hard—the handle of one of his guns. The other was hidden away in case of emergencies. Even though he could tell there was something in his fist, the lack of sensation in the heavily modified limb meant the familiar cold creeping from the metal of the gun was missing, so he switched it to his left hand. Caleb needed to feel something. He shivered and shuddered, his hands shaking.
His chest hurt. He couldn’t breathe properly. There was too little and too much noise all at once. The walls were closing in on him, and if he shut his eyes he’d be plunged into a deeper darkness. The chip sent pain through him as his emotions kept rising.
Pain, pain, pain, pain…
Pain is all Caleb had ever been in. He grit his teeth. When would the pain end? He wanted it so stop! Why wouldn’t it stop!? He felt like he was drowning and he couldn’t swim. The gun fell to the floor as he ripped his night shirt off, clawing at his chest and where the metal merged with skin on his shoulder. More pain.
At least it was him and not her. That thought alone was all that grounded him as the agony running through his body threatened to drag him back into that kaleidoscope of all the worst moments of his life. Another broken sob escaped him. He cursed EVER for taking him as a child. He cursed them for blowing him up and taking him back and turning him into this weapon. He hated it. He hated it. He hated it!
The burden of it all—the pain, the horrors, the secrets—threatened to break him but there was nothing he could do but bear it. He couldn’t bother Pips,he made a promise not to. He was supposed to be the one to carry everything, to protect her from what she couldn’t fight against. Besides, Pips had just gotten home with Xavier from a long mission, and Caleb refused to wake her up. If she saw him like this, she’d panic and ask questions he didn’t want to answer. Caleb had always been the strong one, the one to shoulder the pain and burdens of the world for her. He’d never allow her to see him breaking down. It just couldn’t happen.
Pain jolted through him, and his fingertips came back red. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to see the blood from scratching and pulling at the metal. He grimaced and angrily scratched harder. Pain was nothing anymore. It was so frequent he’d gotten good at ignoring it. More blood coated his fingers.
Screams echoed in his mind, followed by flashes of electricity and those cruel, cruel bastards. The EVER logo ever present in the background. Caleb hated them. He wanted to crush them under the weight of his gravity, throw them into the deepest, darkest black hole he could muster. Or maybe he’d simply blow every EVER lab and building he could find.
“y…ey…h’y…HEY!” A hand smacked him, his head jerking to the side. Purple eyes widened and locked onto blue-pink ones, reflecting his own sweat-drenched face back at him. Rafayel frowned, the arch of his eyebrows and the twist of his lip spoke of anger, likely at being woken up in the middle of the night, but there was a faint trace of concern in his eyes too. “Snap out of whatever crisis you’re going through. Some of us need to sleep.”
“What are you—” Rafayel was cut off by Caleb lunging at him, hands wrapping around his throat, cutting off air supply. The Lemurian sea god coughed, eyes glowing a deep blue as scales formed on his face. Before he could summon a sea spirit or a rush of water, the room got cold, too cold, and Caleb was pulled off of him.
“What the hell was that?” Rafayel spat, gasping for air and coughing. He rubbed his throat, already mourning the makeup he’d have to use to cover up finger shaped bruises. Hiscomplaints were cut off when he saw the state Caleb was in, eyes wild and panicked, body quivering and shaking, blood on his hands and shoulder.
“Hey, hey,” Zayne soothed, holding Caleb tightly. “Calm down, they can’t hurt you anymore. You’re not there anymore.” He gently cupped Caleb’s face in his hands, the cold grounding Caleb. “You’re home. With me. With us. Breathe.”
“Make it stop! Make it stop,” Caleb trembled violently, pain shooting through his arm and head. The more he got worked up, the more it hurt. Tears slid down his cheeks, his vision blurred as he tried to focus on Zayne and Rafayel. His chest hurt from hyperventilating.
Mephisto cawed, signalling Sylus’ return from Onychinus business. Caleb barely registered a fourth person in the room, too lost in scenes from years gone by and the feeling of a knife jamming its way through his brain. He vaguely heard Zayne tell Sylus to get the medical kit, a clean cloth, and some water. Gradually, the throbbing in his skull receded and he allowed his head to drop onto Zayne’s shoulder, all the while wishing he could disappear.
Caleb despised showing any kind of weakness, especially around Pips. He certainly didn’t want to have a literal god and a dragon watch him fall apart, the cracks he was usually so good at hiding, gaping open and leaking the ruined pieces of him all over the floor. Zayne was the only one he truly trusted he could break down in front of. Zayne wouldn’t hold his weaknesses over his head for blackmail or manipulations. No, Zayne would never do that to him.
The doctor frowned when Caleb barely flinched as he cleaned his bloodied shoulder. He was still shuddering violently, his shaky exhales interrupted every so often by a faint sniffle. Zayne didn't have the heart to push Caleb's head from his shoulder,it would help with his visibility and mobility in cleaning his bloodied shoulder, but Caleb's comfort was more important right now.
“You're safe,” Zayne murmured quietly, feeling cold anger in his chest as he looked at the scars littering Caleb's back and torso. He finished wrapping up Caleb's shoulder and wiping away the blood from his hands.
“Don't go,” Caleb hissed, clinging to Zayne when the doctor moved to inspect Rafayel's bruised neck. “Please,” he whispered quietly, the vulnerability in his voice making Zayne's heart clench.
“I'm not going anywhere. I just need to check on Rafayel,” Zayne spoke gently yet firmly. “I'm right here.”
Caleb winced as Zayne mentioned Rafayel, vague memories of his hand clenching around the Lemurian’s throat resurfacing. His grip on Zayne loosened, and he was stuck with the desire to sink into the floorboards and away from the watchful eyes in the room. It was a small miracle Pips hadn't woken up with the commotion.
“What happened?” Sylus' deep timbre echoed in the small space. He sat down on the plush armchair in the corner of the room. The bed was a bit crowded, and the dragon knew Zayne would yell at him if he tried to join them. The doctor needed his space while he treated Rafayel and Caleb.
Caleb clenched his jaw and looked away. “Just a nightmare,” he muttered bitterly. He didn't need Sylus worrying about him or worse, mocking him. Logically, he knew Sylus probably wouldn't mock him for having a nightmare, but Caleb's mind was too hectic to think logically at the moment.
Sylus raised an eyebrow, sharing a glance with Rafayel and Zayne. Caleb never liked to talk about what he’d experienced at the hands of EVER and the Fleet. But they all knew where these night terrors originated. The first time Sylus had heard what EVER did to Caleb, he wanted to see the entire organisation reduced to naught but ash, a sentiment Rafayel had echoed.
“Try again, without lying this time,” Sylus drawled, giving Caleb a pointed look.
Caleb’s frown deepened and he bit the inside of his cheek. If it were anyone else, he would have ignored them and changed the subject. But when it was Sylus or anyone in the polycule, the same rules didn’t apply, and the automatic dismissal died in his throat. Caleb looked down at his fingers, where Zayne was gently cleaning away the blood having already dabbed his shoulder with an antiseptic.
“...it’s just night terrors. Sometimes it’s about my childhood or other times it’s after the explosion,” Caleb quietly spoke, taking deep breaths and avoiding eye contact. He hated how vulnerable he felt and looked. He was supposed to be the strong one. He…He had to shoulder everything. To keep her safe. To keep the others safe. If they knew everything then they’d…No, Caleb wouldn’t think about that.
He didn’t notice Sylus and Rafayel sharing a look or the fact Zayne had finished cleaning and tending to his self inflicted wounds. Exhaustion crashed over Caleb, and he struggled to even keep his eyes open. He didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to end up back there .
“Don’t fight it,” someone murmured to him. “Sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up.” Caleb let them push him back into laying down, his shoulder twinging faintly in pain. Someone apologized, and then a warmth surrounded him.
When Caleb woke up hours later, he couldn’t move. Not due to fear or anxiety, but from the fact he was at the bottom of a cuddle pile. Sylus was on his right and Zayne on his left. His head was on Sylus’ shoulder. Blinking away his grogginess, he lifted his head to see Rafayel and Pips on top of him and Xavier sprawled out over his legs.
A small smile made its way on his face.
He wasn’t alone anymore.
For the first time in a long time, Caleb wasn’t afraid or in pain.