Ceres watches the whole thing without screaming. She's honestly trying to remember how she'd gotten stuck in his cell in the first place. “Mom is going to kill me.” She whispers, too caught up in her own plight to try to do anything about the escapee.
Then, she remembers.
She hadn't clicked the lock all the way closed as she had walked out quickly to get the right dosage of his afternoon medication. Before she could turn back to him, he had wrenched her wrist and pushed her firmly into his room, sliding the lock into place with a muttered apology.
Now, he strides by her without a second glance, looking only at his son, trying to stamp down his elation at getting this far. There is likely a lot further to go.
He retrieves his son as soon as his breathing calms down enough that he knows he's not going to scare the boy and heads for the only way out he can find- the elevator at the end of the hall. Whatever thing Planchette had tried to do last minute hadn't been successful, or must not have been; as no alarms were sounding, no unusual changes in lights had occurred and the elevator doors slid silently open, seeming to be in perfect operation.
However, a strange thing, the only floor that was an available choice is down further, and not much comfort upon its discovery. Malcolm's heart sinks. How does one get out of this place? Should he have stolen Planchette's ID card along with his keys? There must be a trick to the elevator. Emir shivers from the cold air which is now also damp as if there is an actual water source nearby.
Which there is.
Before he can retreat up to where he stashed the security guard's body to look for more tools, the elevator hums back to life and fills the dank underground crypt-like room with a jarring incandescent stream of light.
And one of the last people Malcolm wants to see saunters out of it. Though, it could probably be worse. But he's likely one of the strongest sims here, and very, very low down on Malcolm's fantasy revenge list. In fact, he's closer to being someone Malcolm had wanted to avoid at all costs.
There is no way he doesn't know they are here, so showing his back like this is certainly an opening for a confrontation, but there's no way Malcolm is going to take the bait. He waits for the young man to turn around.
“I'm sorry, son, let me put you down for a moment.”
“Col. Col.”
“Yeah, I know it's a bit cold here, I'm sorry, please wait for me.”
Beaker waits, too. He has no real father figure that's been a constant in his life, so these sorts of interactions are somewhat fascinating to him. Malcolm looks as if he actually enjoys holding the wriggling thing, and doesn't want to let him down.
He fully expects the human to surrender.
Emir just grins at the vampire, having no apparent fear at all.
After Emir is sitting down, he approaches and beckons Malcolm to come closer to him. “I'm willing to overlook the fact that you are trying to escape right now, if you can afford the price of my silence.” He says with an overly excited smile.
Malcolm raises an eyebrow, but when the young man licks his lips it becomes more obvious what he's after.
“I'll be generous, and try not to take too much.” Beaker's tone is all too casual. “You have such an internal turmoil that I'm sure it's delicious, even if I only have a little taste...”
“Uh- No WAY. Absolutely no.” Malcolm manages to back up without tripping over his child, who was still sitting on the cold stone floor.
Beaker's not sure if he should have tried using any magic when he asked, but he'd expected a yes, even if begrudging. Wasn't Malcolm just another human, and more than that, one that never refused the requests of the people in the lab? He's got a lot of nerve. Beaker isn't sure if he's angry or not.
Malcolm shakes his head, refusing again silently.
Beaker feels a bit ashamed, for some reason. He tries again, using a friendlier tone of voice. “Be reasonable. I won't tell anyone about today's attempt, and you won't have additional punishments. But when I need an extra pick me up, you will supply it.”
“Really will I?” Malcolm raises that eyebrow again. “Does that mean that you want her to know how certain... compounds and illicit substances keep disappearing from the lab whenever you are left alone in it?”
Beaker shoots him a frustrated glare. “Fine, so we can't blackmail each other.”
...and Malcolm is not so full of himself that he believes he can take on a vampire in his condition. He lets out a short breath and surveys the level one more time. There's really nowhere to go. His attempt must end here.
Emir is cute though.
All the terrible things I do to your parents are totally worth it, if it means that you get to exist. You cutie- pie.
“Was there anything else?” Malcolm asks. If he's done all this work just to go back into that cell it would be too bad, but what can he change now?
Beaker is starting to get more irritated. This is the guy that is all yes ma'am, no ma'am to his mom and has been through much more than a little plasma donation yet somehow has the gall to look at him this smugly?
So he launches at him, all claws and fangs and echoing voices.
“I can take whatever I want, actually. It'll be symphonic.” He hisses out threats.
Malcolm nods and gives him approval for this behavior. “Wow, really big teeth you have there, Beaker.” He manages not to sound all that sarcastic. He likes the kid and wants him to do well, so he coaches him. “But, I did notice that if you didn't turn midway your movements would be smoother and more arresting. When you pivot on your foot that way someone can trip you easily since your eyes are not watching the way you are going.” The kid is friendly, maybe he can be friendly in return, he thinks.
It doesn't work well. Beaker's shining eyes fall upon Emir, and Malcolm has had enough playing around. “AH! Don't come near him.” He warns in a grave tone, moving immediately in as a shield.
Your vampire mode is cute and all so I humored you, but don't push it.
“If you touch my kid I will end you.” He says out loud. Malcolm begins to plan an assault in his head. He hadn't wanted it to come to this, and it shouldn't have, but the man was pushing him. Maybe he could take on a vampire after all. He didn't want to die trying, but his son would witness a final brave act instead of experiencing the horror of being abandoned to the whims of a monster.
...It's not a bad way to go out, he thinks.
To Malcolm's mild surprise, Beaker starts to apologize. “I'm sorry, look. I'm not into children, they wouldn't be enough of a meal anyways. I was only looking at him because I don't get how you're so protective. My mom could've just lied to you about him in the first place. But shouldn't you try to appease me a bit more? I'm a lot stronger than you, and you listen to everyone else in the lab, what's one more big pinch? I can make it like you didn't do anything wrong, today.”
Malcolm sighs gently. This guy is just a tiny person trapped in a much bigger body sometimes. He seems very... sheltered. “I very much doubt your ability to do that, Beaker. I attacked and injured your security guard, and Ceres has seen everything. Also, we just went over this. If you do nothing for me, how do you expect me to protect your secrets?”
Beaker awkwardly purses his lips together. “I don't have any secrets.”
“I've been watching you steal for a long time, kid.”
“Hey! You can't tell my mom about that.” The younger man hisses loudly. “She'd never believe you anyway!”
“She would believe another adult over you, she still sees you and thinks of you when you were small, doesn't she?” Malcolm guesses.
If a vampire could blush, he probably would have been treated to the sight of it in that moment.
“I won't tell her, then. But you will owe me something...” Malcolm continues. “Next time, I want you to look the other way.”
“But for now... can you do something about Ceres? Make her... forget or something? Otherwise our agreement means nothing.” Malcolm hates to ask a question like this, but he has a feeling that Beaker is not conscious of what all his abilities are, and he's heard rumors from the other people in the lab about the possibilities. Thinking about using a vampire's ability to infect someone else's mind for his own gain just feels so wrong. For now he ignores the feeling, he can feel guilty later.
“Also, check on Planchette. He's in the storage alcove upstairs. I hope I didn't accidentally kill him.”
Beaker takes a moment to seriously try, although it's not like he can easily sense other minds if they are on a different level than he is underground. Then again, if the guard was in the storage area that Beaker just walked by earlier and he hadn't sensed his normal brain activity... Beaker frowns. “He... might've checked out a bit early for the day.”
Malcolm doesn't want to curse.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Malcolm growls and scoops up his son off of the floor. Zero children and zero adults have been rescued because of his actions today.
“Come on Beaker, hell's up a level, here. You have to put us back before you get in trouble.”
They get into the elevator quickly enough and ride up in a strained silence. Malcolm nearly can't believe he's willing to stop here, but he's lost the element of surprise, and doesn't want to make an enemy out of this likable kid.
Beaker brings them both back up to where they were and helps Ceres to forget what she was doing for the last twenty minutes, a feat which he wasn't even sure he was capable of. For now, she accepts that her normal forgetfulness has brought about a lapse in memory.
Planchette, however... maybe he could do something, after all.
For all this trouble, I should have just bitten him anyways, but then my mom would find out for sure...
“No nono put don, staywis. No donn.” Emir is speaking close to full sentences these days, although mostly only to Malcolm, and he babbles at Beaker and Ceres on occasion. Malcolm sighs deeply and sets his son gently into the crib and walks back into his cell, allowing himself to be locked in. He will never know if it was a mistake not to just try to get through Beaker today. How long will it be before he gets another chance?
A few days go by after this incident and Planchette is noticeably missing from the lab. Malcolm is not given much in the way of answers from Beaker, other than Beaker told him in a moment alone that it was taken care of. Whether the man was dead or hospitalized is anyone's guess, though. Beaker seems a bit self-satisfied and Malcolm suspects that Beaker simply drained him while his body slept. He reminds himself to keep the kid on his side if at all possible.
It wouldn't be too long before the entire episode is largely forgotten, as suddenly one day the specimens are tranquilized all at once and moved quietly into an entirely new location. There had been a scare, several articles had just been published exposing corruption, and some of those people who were exposed were benefactors of the lab in one way or another. It was now only a matter of time before their ties to the local hospital were exposed, and with them, the lab itself. Circe has her own ties to a place where her mentor once ran a similar operation, so the she begins to shift their focus there. She had purchased a wide swath of land on the outskirts of the small but bustling city of Roaring Heights a while back just in such a case, hoping to build something new with state of the art technology. Of course, she has also acquired the run down labs that her mentor once operated as a fall back, so they will have more than one hide out in the new city. Not that she wants to renovate the old fallout shelter era facilities very much, but who knows? Her research must survive no matter the cost.
While it takes the better part of two days for the subjects to wake up and shake off their grogginess, at least when Malcolm comes to he is in a room with his son, though temporarily.
Lab 02 is endless at first glance, but actually there are a few strategically placed mirrors making the halls seem like twisting pathways when they are actually much more plain. Must be a security measure. More importantly, where have they been taken that the subjects had to be asleep for so long? How far are they... from their families? It's clear they have been transported far away from Starlight Shores. Malcolm doesn't know any other place, but there's no reason to worry over that which he cannot control.
And a certain person is added back into the ranks of operators at the Lab.
Flickering in and out, a clear sign of time sickness.
He's trying to figure out when he is, before he even can begin to worry about the where.
For the Director, he's right on time. He doesn't know this, but once his body is thrown back into the Wellsian Time Portal, the flickering begins again, endlessly on a rotation, every twelve hours for a period of a hundred and two minutes at 17 minute intervals, until someone calibrates the machine to pull him back out into the current time. This means that they have six chances twice a day to retrieve him again. He always comes back; sick, unstable, but alive. It's easy to obtain a work contract with him in exchange for curing the time sickness which in turn, prevents his death. Circe does not care how Planchette died this time. Her son can drain him as much as he wants, as long as there is just enough left to toss back into the void and bring him back to the lab again. He won't remember it anyways. It's like a reset.
He agrees to help out with security in exchange, as he always does. “Thank simlish we found you and pulled you out of there, we'll get you treated for it very soon, as soon as we can get the ingredients we need to make the medicine you've described.”
Not knowing any better, he breathes a sigh of relief. “That would be... wondifus.”
“You mean, wonderful?”
“Is that the expression? Then, yes.”
“Great. Then we'll do our best not to keep you waiting too long,” she lies. They always keep him waiting a while. He has to know he wouldn't be alive without them, and they don't want him turning around to leave before he gets to enjoy their work and decide to stay longer.
Business continues similar to how it always has. The same people are in charge, after all.
Circe instructs Malcolm that he will be helping out with the children in this place. He agrees (of course). He has no idea how Beaker managed to conceal his escape attempt, nor does he feel like he owes him anything because of it. It's possible Circe knows about it and has chosen not to punish him, or to play a long game and make him suffer later. Malcolm would barely notice a difference in her actions either way. No regrets.
Nervous has been conscripted against all protesting to begin helping out with the research in the lab, and he is not very happy about it. However, he has spent the entirety of his life, as far back as he can remember, in the lab. So he dares not refuse to comply now.
New place, new experiences.
Circe is sooo evil. Those aspiration rewards- I mean, academic objects, aren't going to test themselves.
Success. At least someone is happily living out their daydreams.
Taking it as it comes, for awhile.
It comes in an imperfect and frustrating package. But Malcolm is starting to realize that without his earlier rebellions, he never would have even met his kid in the first place. So it's not all bad.
Planchette seems different, and acts hostile to Malcolm, but doesn't seem to recall that they've ever fought before. Something is up with him but it could be anything. It's almost like... he's a different person.
Malcolm would sort of like to know what transpired between he and Beaker last time, but maybe it's better not to know. From the mild-mannered guard who was impossible to offend, to this easily irritated character... which one was he?
“I'm just trying to get a bottle for my son, can you let us pass?” Malcolm leaves off the please this time. Screw this guy. He's fed up.
“You're... my enemy, that's why.” But the guard seems confused as to how that happened. Did Beaker mess with his memories, too? That seems like quite the feat in his case.
The Director walks over slowly as if he were a wild animal that she doesn't want to spook and calms him down with a few words quietly spoken.
For this effort he points and calls her something like a liar and an idiot, and reminds her that she's not fully cured him yet. She owes him for helping her out here, did she forget about it?
So disregarding how it all looks, Malcolm begins to understand, to have a little bit of empathy for him. It doesn't seem like anyone is here because they ultimately want to be. Circe must have something on all of them. Some thread of control.
Malcolm can't keep himself from trying to end the conflict... but nobody else is in the mood to have their day be brightened.
Circe walks away and leaves the man although she didn't help him at all and he seems confused.
He runs off to the side and has an accident, apparently no one had told him where the bathroom is in this new lab, yet?
Circe never changes.
Time however, has dictates of it's own. Knowing this, the lab techs get right to work in the new place, and while building expansions are being conducted, many of the children age up. Without the pleasure of having cake, of course.
Ceres is now working part time as a beat cop (cough because I needed a police cruiser in the family inventory cough) to 'keep the lab safe'.
This young boy joins the children's room and become Emir's roommate. Like Emir, he has been here since the day he was born. Emir knew him, but not well. Like many children raised by Circe's dictates, he has already become neurotic, worrying over every little detail and washing his hands five times in a row or flicking the light off and on repeatedly.
This new lab is where Ceres' perfectionist nature really shone. She had established a place for the more important young subjects to gather in between experiments so they could socialize and play a bit, most of them for the first time. She had convinced the Director, based largely on their success with Subjects 901 and 1601, to add a bit of quality of life to their daily routines in order to encourage them to participate more willingly as they grew, to be more productive. Malcolm is eventually given a small cell to sleep in off of the main facility here as he was placed in charge of several children like the Director had promised.
This works well for them. The goodness of his nature would not allow him to ignore the children's needs, and furthermore he would become too busy to focus on anything other than the work they were giving him.
This little girl, she doesn't have a lot to say. Never has, really. Of course, there are more than one of her to begin with. As to why this one has been separated from the other clones, set apart from the nursery and placed with naturally born kids, Malcolm is not provided with any explanation or given specific instructions.
Nervous has grown, and changed much. He still tries to placate those who control him, but he's become something that they rather do not understand well, and is finding new freedoms because of it. He has a new desperation for water, and there is talk of letting him go up to the surface to see how well he is effected by the sunlight or the rain. There is a ratty little neglected garden fenced in at the back of the lab, so although during these excursions he is a higher risk for escape than normal, the trade off in studying him is deemed to be worthwhile. The children are almost all jealous once they hear about this, as they have no concept of an outside (or above ground) world. The new lab allows them to socialize and mingle, and for the first time they can really share opinions or disagree with one another. They've all agreed that Nervous has it the best right now.
Despite the passing of so much more time, Malcolm can't shake a feeling he has of hope. It may be because he knows he is helping the children in some small way, it may be the new place, or the fact that there are cracks among the staff here that may be signs of a future dam break.
Time will tell.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The longer you play the Sims game, the longer you have to write.” -An intelligent five year old.
I wish Malcolm wore glasses, at least once, so I could pretend that the drawing Everet is making is of him. It's so hilariously bad that it could be the real forensics of the time, you know.
Malcolm's too brave to care about echoing voices and all of that nonsense.
...but he did say no, very adamantly. Let's ignore his picture here as the story didn't turn out that way this post.
Malcolm when he has an enemy, I guess...? Kinda creeped me out. Don't think I'd want to be on the receiving end of that expression.
Malcolm feeding Emir. Thanks Becky for putting this mod in your game, I was on the fence but it's pretty great.
Circe Scaring Planchette. One of them probably deserves it.