taxonomites | In Person [location: Taxon Forest Cliffs]

Entry tags:

In Person [location: Taxon Forest Cliffs]

Scott’s marker comes back onto the map with as much pomp and circumstance as it vanished.

More strangely, his tablet doesn’t join him instantly to broadcast his misfortune. It appears nearby, resting on a tree stump out of the way, but whereas usually it delights in showcasing these moments, it remains quiet now, when perhaps he needs it most.

Five days is a long time where he’s been. He’s pale and drawn, deprived of sunlight and enough food and water. He has dark circles around his eyes, a mixture of exhaustion and bruising.

There’s no awareness of being moved again. He’s simply regaining consciousness and feeling grass and dirt rather than the metal and stone of where he’s been held, a deep ache in his head and uncomfortable pressure in his eyes.

Slowly, he reaches up, feeling over his face and flinching as his fingers poke sore skin and no visor. He has to risk it anyway, bringing his hands to his face, fingers white knuckle laced as he flickers his eyes open.

Nothing.

No light. Not in or out. No warmth over his hands.

He opens them again, fully, but nothing reaches outwards. Nothing explodes, nothing is rent apart.

Everything is dark.

He can’t see.

He snaps his head up, eyes wide and unseeing, a solid, lightless red covering them from side to side.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"So much faith in my Summers. I wouldn't poke and prod at you. I would make a machine to do it for me. Don't you know anything," he asked, moving closer.

"There's nothing to make a machine out of in this room. Unless things have been moved in while I was gone."

He sat up more, rubbing at his cheeks. He was bare chested, restraint bruising across his chest and biceps.

"You have no idea what I could do with a coffee maker and a lamp. Do you have any idea what I went through to save my life and build the first suit," he asked, arching a brow.

"So what do you remember?"

He leaned into the headboard, blankly staring ahead. "Metal and concrete. Like a sci-fi, technology of the future style cell. A table that I was strapped to. Being fed something that tasted bland and gritty. And a lot of pain."

He came a step closer, noticing Scott's reaction and regretting asking it as quickly and roughly as he had.

"A table and metal?" He paused, thinking about why that sounded familiar. "Like the room we got here in?"

"No? Like, a lab. A biology lab. Or a morgue." He blinked, lids dragging on the hard substance covering his eyes.

"You're here and alive. So not a morgue," he said. "Coming closer," he said, leaning his hand on the wall over Scott's head and looking into his eyes. Or where his eyes were.

"Definitely need a full scan of this. Find a way to find out what property that is too."

"It's ruby quartz. It's the only thing that can stop them. It just has to be a much denser variation. Glitch can make the stuff, but if you want to run your own tests, take my glasses. I brought them with me from my world, so I know they're the correct compound."

He reached a hand out and planted it on Tony's face slightly too hard. "Sorry. Wasn't sure where you were."

"We don't know this is exactly the same. You can see through your glasses," he pointed out, making an oofing sound at that hit. "No worries. I came closer. I didn't say how close."

He considered that. "What do you remember? Beyond the room?"

"It's clearly not exactly the same, it's a higher density. I've been blinded before, but last time it was wrapped around the outside, not inside of my eye."

He dropped his hand and turned his face away. "White faces. Like masks. But that be purely a subconscious projection."

"Do you think it's part of the eye now," he asked. "How does it feel," he asked, wanting to know all he could before he asked permission to start experimenting on him as he could.

"So tell me how it feels, what you think. And then tell me you trust me to either make, or at least find, a machine to check what we can."

"It feels like wearing a contact lens. Only much more so. More pressure, more coverage, just... more." He was tired and worn and couldn't find how to explain it. "If anyone can, it's you, Tony."

He listened, considering it. "Do they feel they encase the entire orb," he asked, science of the eyes not being his forte but he could learn enough in a night. "What causes more pressure? Them being opened or closed? Hot or cold? Anything like that," he asked, pushing for answers because Scott was right. He wouldn't give up until he, or someone, found the solution.

"What about the rest of your health and body?"

He paused a moment and then sighed.

"We're going to fix this Scott," he said softly, using his given name.

"I don't know, neither changes the pressure and I haven't tried heat or cold since I have excessive bruising around the eyes. Otherwise, I feel like I've been held in a cell and experimented on for several days, but otherwise fine.

"And you can't promise that. I mean, I've had a lot of surgeries over my years, removing shrapnel, removing bombs, removing parasitic psychic beings. But nothing done up here has ever gone well."

"Anything else but your eyes touched that you can tell," he asked. "Pressure? Bruising anyone told you about? Anything like that?"

He moved to sit down on the edge of the bed. "I promise I'm not giving up," he said with a snort. "How about that promise? No one seems to have talked about anything like this. I wonder why now. At least nothing I've ever seen in the back logs I can find on the tablet."

"Don't think so."

He shook his head. "I don't know why now. Being more powerful than me have been safely confined here. Maybe they were worried I was actually going to try blasting Logan apart?"

"I don't even know either of you and I can't believe you'd do that," he said with a snort. "No, it couldn't be that. Besides, they leave the vampires and werewolves and all running loose. Not to mention Maddy. Why worry about you after letting you loose here," he asked, mostly musing to himself.

He straightened slightly. "You don't think this is about the glasses, do you?"

"I have. I try not to, but it's been done. Sometimes it's all that stops four hundred pounds of frenzied, regenerating mutant."

In contrast, Scott slouched a bit more into his bed. "What?"

"Stopping him is different than actually trying to hurt him. Like Nat knocking sense into Barton. Same thing," he said with a shrug.

"When Selina took them. It was the only risk she made. You don't think it worried the hamsters, do you?"

"I doubt it," Scott mused. "I still had my visor, which is just as safe. When I first came here, I had no backup."

"And there was nothing that happened with the blasts before this all happened," he asked, curious to find why to know if they would only be causing him more pain if they did it again.

"No. Not that I can remember. I've been very careful, I don't want to hurt anyone. I don't actually like hurting people as a rule." he just sometimes has had to.

“Course you don’t. Who does? Well, who does that we care to talk about,” he asked, considering some of the people he had dealt with in this last few years. Hell, even the last few days since he’d come to Taxon.

“Okay so… we have no reason why. No idea what it is. And we don’t know if it was actually the hamsters and not some mad scientist hiding in some creepy hole in this town. That about sum it up?”

"Plenty of people." He massages the bridge of his nose. "I'm pretty sure it wasn't some mad scientist. People are brought in in a uniform way. A sudden deviation from that makes no sense."

"But this is a deviation, isn't it? Changing people doesn't seem to have come this way. So why make this change with you," he put out there, curious because it might give them a solution.

In Person [location: Taxon Forest Cliffs]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

Re: [Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

[Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

Re: [Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

[Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

[Location]

Re: [Location]

Re: [Location]