cw; body horror, brief allusion to child experimentation, drugs
[He keeps drawing parallels to the lab. To the days when he was much younger than now.
And those days—much like they are currently—blur together at their seams, their recollections fuzzy at best. Yet Henry still recalls the substances they administered, the hallucinogenics that would “open” the mind, that would leave it vulnerable to images of the world warping, or melting like candle wax. To heighten the senes, to make one’s abilities more potent, more malleable. And then after? Left alone, to deal with the aftermath. If the trip was a bad one? Then there was no choice but to ride out the worst of it alone.
This feels nearly the same; but even Henry can concede one thing about the lab, if begrudgingly: it wasn’t this bad.
His sleep is constantly interrupted by bouts of coughing, blood eking from the corners of his lips. Lesions form along his arms, and one even eats into the edges of his 001 tattoo, warping it into nothing more than a nettled mess of old black ink and weeping red, teeth lined in the wound, illegible. He runs a fever, he can feel it burning beneath his skin, his body in an almost-constant state of trying to sweat it out. His hair sticks messily across his forehead, and his eyes are bloodshot.
And he is angry. But that’s nothing new. He has always possessed a deep, bitter well of resentment, and now it threatens to boil over at the edges, constant, constant.
Yet he still doesn’t think he’s gotten the worst of it. Across from where he currently sits, back against the pit wall, he recognizes another Summoned from the settlement, affected similarly. The young man who helped him with the garden when he first arrived, who showed him a shrine, who he saw present during the group gathering of that game in the Horizon—
He doesn’t seem to be doing well. In his current state, Henry cannot bother to feel concern, more than he experiences a shared indignity at what’s been done to them, but maybe that's enough. He practically barks out his name to get his attention.]
Steve.
[Is he a lost cause, like those who’ve already died around them? No, surely not yet—]
When was the last time you had something to drink?
—CLOSED TO STEVE (HARRINGTON); THE RITUAL'S AFTERMATH
[He keeps drawing parallels to the lab. To the days when he was much younger than now.
And those days—much like they are currently—blur together at their seams, their recollections fuzzy at best. Yet Henry still recalls the substances they administered, the hallucinogenics that would “open” the mind, that would leave it vulnerable to images of the world warping, or melting like candle wax. To heighten the senes, to make one’s abilities more potent, more malleable. And then after? Left alone, to deal with the aftermath. If the trip was a bad one? Then there was no choice but to ride out the worst of it alone.
This feels nearly the same; but even Henry can concede one thing about the lab, if begrudgingly: it wasn’t this bad.
His sleep is constantly interrupted by bouts of coughing, blood eking from the corners of his lips. Lesions form along his arms, and one even eats into the edges of his 001 tattoo, warping it into nothing more than a nettled mess of old black ink and weeping red, teeth lined in the wound, illegible. He runs a fever, he can feel it burning beneath his skin, his body in an almost-constant state of trying to sweat it out. His hair sticks messily across his forehead, and his eyes are bloodshot.
And he is angry. But that’s nothing new. He has always possessed a deep, bitter well of resentment, and now it threatens to boil over at the edges, constant, constant.
Yet he still doesn’t think he’s gotten the worst of it. Across from where he currently sits, back against the pit wall, he recognizes another Summoned from the settlement, affected similarly. The young man who helped him with the garden when he first arrived, who showed him a shrine, who he saw present during the group gathering of that game in the Horizon—
He doesn’t seem to be doing well. In his current state, Henry cannot bother to feel concern, more than he experiences a shared indignity at what’s been done to them, but maybe that's enough. He practically barks out his name to get his attention.]
Steve.
[Is he a lost cause, like those who’ve already died around them? No, surely not yet—]
When was the last time you had something to drink?