+ Reid +

On Nyx's insistence, Reid stumbled his way into the shower in Dr. Ferber's sparse bedroom, and let the water wash him clean of the blood and gore. He emerged clean, and laid down the doctor's towels and some clothing to make a semi-dry path through the bloodsoaked room. Reid gave the mad, malformed doctor one last hateful glance before he closed the door to the man's room and ripped off the handles.

Standing over the bed, a few things were clear. First was that the process was still incomplete. Bubbles was glowing - not as intensely as he had been, but enough that Reid had trouble clearly distinguishing what was happening to her by sight alone. Second was that he didn't have the slightest idea how to stop what was happening - or even if he wanted to. His attempts to shift her on the bed revealed to him that her body was morphing - and it was doing so back towards something more Vuxarinan. He was almost certain her legs were shorter and thicker. Maybe she'd get to jump in puddles like a regular little girl.

Third was that, while Reid wasn't going to stop what was happening to her, he didn't want to leave her here while it happened. The room - and the entire underground facility - was slowly filling with more and more of the orange gas. The screams had stopped somewhere between the doctor's demise and Reid's showering. He tried not to dwell on the fact that he and Bubbles were probably the only ones left alive down here.

He took a few minutes to gather a few pieces of evidence of the Doctor's misdeeds, including what seemed like a personal journal, and stored them. Then he did the same with toys, books, and one snake-shaped plush that seemed to have some wear. His last effort was to make a carrying crate for the girl. Having her in his arms was good in theory, but there was no guarantee that they were out of danger. So, he crafted a case big enough for her - and big enough that she could morph larger - that could be carried on his back. It had holes for air, and plenty of layers of shielding to protect her.

The case was damn heavy, and it made flying difficult, but Reid wanted out. The bottom floor was a graveyard covered in skill-related gas and the bodies of monsters - and unfortunate kids. His wings manifested and carried him back to the elevator shaft. Bone spikes dug into the shaft's stone, and Reid began his climb to the surface. He lost track of time as light faded below, and then grew above. He smashed through the top of the elevator when he couldn't get it to rise to the surface. Then he climbed past the other floors. Each blinked with red warning lights, but no audible alarms. More distressing was that each was thick with orange gasses.

He didn't poke his head into the other floors. Didn't check for survivors. He pulled his stone spikes out of the wall, lifted his foot, and kicked into the rock, over and over, until he finally found himself at the ground floor elevator lobby again. There was no orange gas here - but there was something else. A caustic, burning smell was present in the air, and intensified as Reid drew closer to the entrance and the main lobby.

The opulent entrance to the Ferber compound looked far different than it had when Reid walked through it before. The floors and counters were cracked. Blood and debris littered the ground, and over a dozen adult-sized pods were lined up against a wall. Above them, one of the flying spiders was halfway through making itself a web. Caustic saliva leaked openly from where it had been de-fanged.

Pieces shifted and fit themselves together. The people here had captured one of the spiders in the most recent wave, because of course they had. It was used for experimentation, and he'd seen the thing's fangs down on the lower level. Reid couldn't objectively condemn evaluating what beasts were capable of. He'd performed his own tests to understand how to best fight beasts. But these people had made the same mistake he did. They captured it, and prevented a new wave. Reid took a deep breath, and threw a shattering marrowbomb that ended the spider. The notification shortly followed.

-

NOTICE: Beast Wave Completed! No bonus experience awarded. NOTICE: Settlement, [Ferber Compound] lost on technicality - survivor percentage! 4/6 Settlements Remaining. 3/6 Settlements Eligible.

NOTICE: FURTHER WAVE IRREGULARITY DETECTED. Compensating....

Next Wave (60 Enemy Beasts) begins in: 15H 59M 56S for Dayo Sovni, Dayo Evni, and Dayo Norte.

-

Reid felt numb. There had been too much death here. Too much avoidable death. Too many screwed up people. And too much of a reminder that Reid had limitations no amount of strength or skill or speed could seemingly make up for.

He walked into daylight, troubled and tired. His mind went to the other settlements. They would be fine. They needed to be. He had given them the tools to survive, and now they just had to make that happen. Their outcome was their own. And Reid needed a nap. The events from within the depths of the Ferber compound had drained him - physically and mentally - and it hit him all at once now that he was above ground.

He built a simple shelter over the carrying crate Bubbles was still sleeping soundly in, and then did another shelter over that one. He took off his armor, leaned against the bone without grabbing his dreamroll, and drifted off.

#

Reid dreamed a memory of a rainy Sunday.

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Susan was sleeping in their room after a double shift, and Sara tracked mud all through the house to excitedly show Reid a frog she'd found in the yard. Her excited shouting had been enough to wake his tired wife - but Susan hadn't seemed to mind. She and Reid teamed up to relocate the frog, get the mud off the floor before stains could set in, and dry out their daughter's wet hair and clothing.

The three of them had curled up on the couch together, under blankets. Susan leaned into Reid's side with her back, and Sara was tucked into his elbow like it was a pillow. A sappy kid's movie played on the TV, and Reid couldn't move his arms to get the remote without waking one or both of them. He'd stayed like that, content and comfortable as one movie ended and another made it halfway through. Right up to an action scene slightly louder than the rest. The swelling music had woken his daughter, and his wife.

Susan lazily lifted one arm and stroked the back of his head, down to his neck. She tipped her head back with a smile.

"I love you, Reid."

He leaned to the side, and kissed his wife in response.

Sara looked up at him from the couch through bleary eyes, and said, "Ummm, hi? Hello, Reid."

That wasn't right. That's not what Sara said, and she never called him by his name. It wasn't how the day had finished. There was more.

Reid tugged at the memory and tried to keep it, but it faded as his awareness came back to reality. To Vuxarina where his back rested against a simple bone construct.

"Sorry sorry sorry. I'm sorry."

Reid rubbed his eyes. "It's okay kiddo. I'm glad you're awake. How are you feeling?"

He pulled down the overshelter and made sure the surrounding forest was clear of enemies as she answered.

"I feel weird. Not bad weird. Good weird. I... followed you back into Randy's house. Sorry."

"I know, Bubbles. We're not in Randy's house anymore. We're outside." He got rid of the shelter over her carry crate as he continued. "And Randy won't hurt anyone else, ever again."

The excitement rose in her voice. "Really? Really really? Oh! Who else is here? Are Jesse and Lalit? I missed them."

Reid swallowed. "It's just you and me, kiddo."

"...oh."

He closed his eyes, and blew out a breath. Then summoned the plush snake from storage.

"I'm going to open up the shell for you, alright? And I brought you a friend."

When she didn't say anything, Reid pulled at the bone surrounding Bubbles and forced it to peel back on itself to open without disturbing the child resting inside.

Light spilled over Bubbles, and Reid took in the changes done by Randal Ferber's concoction. Her body was partially covered in colorful chitinous material with splotches and swirls of yellow, orange, purple, and pink. The massive insectoid abdomen she sported before had shrunken down to a smaller, longer growth that came out of her lower back. It still ended in a stinger. The long and thin legs had been replaced by a set of wonderful, normal-looking Vuxarinan appendages. She still had four arms and two sets of wings, but Bubbles had regained more of her Vuxarinan form. Her skin was pale compared to a regular Vuxarinan composition, but she had the right number of fingers and toes.

Her head looked elongated, but more normal. She still had a set of mandibles around her mouth, but they were smaller and darker. Hair grew from her head, and her antennae hung down over two sets of green eyes that glinted in the sunlight.

Under the mandibles, a smile flashed when she saw the plush snake.

"Flick! You saved Flick!"

Both pairs of arms reached out and grabbed the full length of the plush, then pulled in and held it tight. Reid let her sit with the toy for a minute, then pulled some food out of storage and made a bone table to put it on. Bubbles watched him work in silence, holding the snake tight to herself like it was going to get taken away. She reluctantly reached forward when he was done, and shoved a few bites into her mouth before chewing loudly.

Reid was about to launch into a reactionary talk on table manners when he realized he was holding food between his fingertips, about to pop it into his mouth. Culinary etiquette could wait. He let her finish one plate of food and get halfway through another before bringing up some of the other questions on his mind.

"Hey kiddo - you got to see some of my dream, didn't you?"

One set of her eyes closed, and the other looked down at the ground. "Am I in trouble?"

"You're not in trouble, Bubbles. I wanted to know if you saw it - and if you interacted with it."

She shifted uncomfortably. "It was cozy. And warm."

Reid filed away the fact that Bubbles was capable of visiting other people's dreams to think about later. "So, you were in there - and you called me Reid."

She nodded silently.

"Okay. No worries. But - and this is important, Bubbles - you can't call me that here and we can't talk about anything or anyone from that dream. I'm Serroc."

She finished the rest of her plate in telepathic silence, but her emotions fluctuated. Reid caught her gaze, then her eyes flit over the table, and back to her stuffed snake.

"If you're Serroc, can I ... Can I be Sara?"

Reid tilted his head. "But you're Bubbles - do you not like your name?"

She shifted again. "I just think I'd like being Sara." As she spoke, her eyes went to Reid's elbow. He kept himself from tears, and put a sloped piece of bone behind himself, then pulled out clean clothing from storage and his dreamroll to make cushions and blankets. He gestured for the girl to take a seat, and spoke as she tried to nestle herself into the same position Sara had taken in his memory.

"You don't need to be somebody else to be cozy or warm, Bubbles. You get to be that, as yourself."

He felt her mind relax as she nestled into the crook of his unarmored elbow. Three hands clutched her toy, and one wrapped itself in the makeshift blankets Reid laid over her. He smiled as she slowly calmed and relaxed further, until Bubbles fell asleep. Drool ran down from the corner of her mouth and fell onto his forearm, and Reid smiled. This one serene moment made the frustration and pain he'd experienced here all feel worth it.

Reid took a deep breath of fresh air and watched sunlight play through shifting leaves. Susan and Sara were close on his mind, and his urgency to have this kind of moment, this comfort and embrace with his daughter and wife again swelled within him. Reid needed to get to the mainland, regroup with Lycra and Hugo, and get a way off Vuxarina.

He didn't regret spending the time to make the people here safe and equip them with the tools they needed to ensure that. He had enjoyed teaching Quinlan, Meeting Rongo and Zeke, and - well, he could have gone without the cult siblings. But everything he did had actually felt... rewarding. Good.

And now, he was ready to go.

The hangars would only be a short run - or flight - from where he and Bubbles rested.

As soon as she awoke, they were going to find their way off this island.

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