Chapter Text
The containment chamber was an embarrassment to Subspace T. Mine’s ego.
He was just hours ago the top scientist in all of the Blackrock facility.
Now he was muzzled and chained like HE was the damn experiment. Which, unfortunately, was what he was now classified as.
And gods, did that irritate him. Medkit was the cause of all of this. If it weren’t for him throwing the prototype substance onto him, none of this would’ve happened.
If it weren't for Medkit starting the fight in the first place.
And if it weren’t for them getting caught, which caused Medkit to start the fight.
Subspace was giving himself a headache out of agitation. He kept flipping and turning on the cold, color-void tiles, hitting the muzzle against them as if it would make it pop off.
He could recall exactly how it happened.
After he’d struck first, taking Medkit’s eye out of its place, he was slapped with shining glass and pink, glistening liquid.
It burned quite intensely along his fingers to his upper neck, which is where it dripped down from.
Subspace remembered dropping to the floor, unable to process nor take the pain of his skin being infused into.
The last time he saw Medkit was him staring down at his weak, squirming body on the ground– before he turned away and darted out of the lab.
He couldn’t depict the emotion or thoughts behind the last look he gave him.
Did he feel bad for what he did? Or was he cringing at how meek he had suddenly become?
He didn’t care– Don’t care, Don’t care, Don’t care!
A sound came from behind him- the door opened.
The Blackrock safety and medical team.
He always hated these guys. Medkit worked in their field when he first got hired by Blackrock. He remembered what Medkit looked like in that same uniform.
“Subspace.” A female-oriented imphernal stood over him. Her eyes were in the shape of thin lines behind her glasses, and she wore a grey gasmask, obviously to prevent breathing in whatever hazardous toxins he was stuck creating now.. “Are you able to speak?”
He sat up and got to his feet, now standing taller than her.
“Of course I am.” He had a hint of offense in his tone. “What do you want?”
She stepped once more towards him and lifted up a gasmask. It was a polished black one with pink valves, brand new by the condition it was in.
“Put this on for our safety.” She threw it towards his direction and he picked it up.
The gasmask actually felt more comfortable than any other gasmasks he’d worn before.
“We assume you’re aware that you’re now classified as an experiment?” She sighed, glancing back up at him.
He nodded, thinking over everything once more.
“Well, normally we’d keep you in here without contact with others, but our higher ups are saying they still need you. So, if you’d just agree that you’ll use the majority of your effort to not cause bodily harm nor lethal harm to fellow scientists or workers, we can let you out and we can go from there. Got it?”
“Fine then.” He scoffed at how stubborn the higher ups were. Was he really of that much importance to them? Interesting.
. . .
A few weeks had passed by now. He was used to being half scientist, half experiment.
Sometimes the others would put him in a room, other times they’d ask him to look at someone else in the same room.
That Friday night Subspace found himself alone in his room. Most of the other scientists had fallen asleep, but he couldn’t rest at all. Maybe it was a side effect of the sub-space matter.
After all, if it made him have a taste for flesh and bone, who knew what else it did.
Maybe he really was becoming a creature like the others were worried about.
The bed did seem very soft from the desk he sat at– but there was an unignorable aching he couldn’t ignore commanding him to go consume flesh.
He hadn’t told the other scientists about his willingness to eat other imphernals yet, but they knew he’d sometimes have to be fed the lab rats, which they took surprisingly well.
He stood up, stretching his sore muscles. He’d been rotting in his bed so long he forgot to eat. Or maybe he was just being stubborn, denying what he was.
Subspace stepped into the dark halls outside his room. No one was in sight, not even a night janitor or guard. His insides had a weak feeling, he wasn’t normally supposed to be up in the night. No one was really allowed to wonder. It made the whole facility feel more like a strict school.
Subspace pressed down the keys to the door’s pad. The small dot flashed green and a faint click sounded from inside the door’s lock.
He laid his hand over the handle, sliding it open and taking a quick, cautious glance around the emptied room.
Not a soul in sight.
The distanced sound of small rodents could be heard though, exactly what he came for. Looking left and right once more, he stepped onto the white tiles which changed to grey in the night.
The secured shelf holding the lab rats was gleaming softly from the moonlight provided by the window too high to see out of.
His steps were light and delicate, as if he had to stalk the mice to catch them.
Subspace flicked the screws holding the cages shut using the sharp edges of his nails. The white and brown mice scurried around hurried themself to their flimsy paper burrows.
His hand darted into the cage, striking one of the mice before it could run. The other three mice of the cage ran to the opposite side of where the mouse was struck.
Something amused Subspace as it fidgeted around and lightly scratched his hand with its stubbed horns. He pulled it out from the cage, spinning the screws back on. He watched with curiosity. Why was it struggling if it knew it couldn’t slip out?
No matter, he lifted it to his fangs, holding its head between two fingers without much effort. It squeaked in a scared tone, still scratching and tapping its tail uselessly against his arm. He tilted it back in sync with his head. Pushing his sharpened teeth into the rodent’s cranium. Dark red splintered the image of his face. He always hated bones, they got in the way of the real treats. Small chips of the bones wedged between his teeth and the rest he chewed without hesitation.
Somehow the mouse was still alive, but its tiny wiggling started to slow.
He took off another portion of the varmint, it looked like a shredded rose now. The petals of meat and gore, the bud its one eye left, and its paws the small leaves.
He put the last bit of the mouse in his mouth, crushing the last bits of its body—
The lab lights flashed on. He got caught mid-feeding.
Even if he tried to deny it, he quite literally just ate a raw mouse, so it wouldn’t be hard to tell with the splatters of blood on his mouth and face.
He turned around looking to see who had discovered him.
A fellow scientist. One he was decently familiar with at least.
“Hey. What’re you doing in here?” They asked squinting at the back of his head.
He sighed, whipping off what he could of the scarlet drops, turning them into smudges and turning around fully around.
Their confused state immediately slipped off upon seeing the colors on his mouth.
“Subspace! You’re not supposed to eat the lab rats without asking permission. I could report you for this and you’d get in trouble again.” The lower class scientist must’ve had no pity trying to shame him about consuming what he needed?
“Report me for what? Feeding myself because you and the others forgot to?” Subspace growled back at them, taking slight offense to hide his embarrassment of being caught.
“How many have you ate? And be honest too.” They snorted in amusement at his stubbornness, walking towards him with a familiar muzzle.
“Is the muzzle necessary? I didn’t hurt anyone, did I?” He stepped back, mimicking a scared dog.
“Yeah, it IS actually. Anytime you do something out of order or our knowledge is considered feral.” The scientist grabbed onto his crimson painted jaw and placed the muzzle over him. “And if we don’t catch on before you have another…episode, you’ll hurt someone.”
. . .
The next morning, Subspace woke up twenty minutes earlier than he usually did. He was extraordinarily picky and precise about his sleeping habits and would get agitated if he missed even ten minutes than routine. He quickly thought over reasons he could have to blame for the early awakening.
Oh, obviously, why hadn’t he thought of that before?
That feeding he had last night messed the sleep schedule up because he wasn’t right side up. It had screwed up his digestion, also explaining the slight nausea he had in his throat.
—and that stupid muzzle was still on him.
Subspace went out into the hallway again after fixing his clothes which he’d fallen asleep in, walking slowly towards the labs, striking a sense of Deja vu from the night before.
His day was regular, experimental tests, dangerous chemicals, and more things that would be illegal anywhere outside Blackrock.
But…Subspace couldn’t help but reflect everyday about him. Everything he did now, he once had with him. He knew he was probably happier to live free and out from under Blackrock’s harsh control— but his heart strained with yearning thinking about being lonely in this desolate facility until he eventually turned into a mindless pink matter creature.
He didn’t know if he would’ve been proud of him for recovering and surviving the very disease that he’d given him that night.
Or would he judge him like all the others?
Push him to the side and call him dangerous?
He…felt himself tearing quietly.
His breath was snagged and deeper.
He really missed him.
He was so sorry for causing it to happen. He just wanted to see him again.
One last time was all he needed to say goodbye, since he never really did wish him well.
It hurt his heart so bad to think how much he’d loved him before they had been punished for their relationship.
The whole reason their relationship fell apart was having it at all.
It was never…even supposed to exist.