Chapter Text
“Keith, I’m just trying to help.”
“No,” Keith counters, sneering at him like he had when Takashi had first introduced the two of them. Keith had been convinced that Adam would hate him and decided he would hate Adam first. “You’re trying to make yourself less guilty. I don’t need your help, I don’t need your pity. I need you to fucking listen to me.”
“I am listening to you, but you’re not making sense.” It is too early for this discussion; Adam hasn’t even had his coffee yet, but Iverson had insisted. ‘Talk to your ex-prodigy,’ he’d said. ‘Kid’s in a tailspin,’ he’d said. Why Adam had thought it was a good idea to do that first thing in the morning, he isn’t sure.
No. He is sure. Because he’d panicked about losing Keith, too, on top of everything else, and instead of thinking things through, he’d tried to immediately fix everything and called Keith into his office before first period even began. It’s going about as well as can be expected.
“Even if the Garrison is lying about how the crash was caused, it doesn’t change the result. Takashi is gone and sitting here, throwing away everything you’ve worked toward, isn’t going to bring him back. You need to accept it.”
“Why do you even care,” Keith asks, slouching farther down into his seat.
“Because I’m trying to take care of you.”
“So it is guilt.”
“Keith…”
“You don’t get to care now, not after everything that happened. You didn’t care earlier and you still don’t.”
“Just because things didn’t work out between Takashi and me doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you. It doesn’t mean that I don’t care about him, either. But he’s gone, Keith.”
“The minute things got a little difficult, you left,” Keith accuses. “Just like everyone else. Doesn’t sound like caring to me.”
And he gets it. He does. For a kid in Keith’s position, someone who’s been abandoned more times than Adam would like to think about, his idea of caring for someone has probably gotten tied up in physical presence.
Adam feels a little out of his depth on this one.
“Putting all of that aside, we still need to work on your grades. If you’re struggling with things, why don’t you come to my office for a couple hours each night? You can ask any questions you have on your work while I get lesson plans ready for the next day.” A little heavy-handed, yeah, but if Keith needs Adam physically here to cement that he cares about the kid, then he’ll do that.
But Keith just scoffs at him. “You’re trying to replace Shiro, and it’s not going to work. Shiro wouldn’t-”
“Takashi is dead, Keith.” Keith looks at him like Adam has just slapped him in the face, and it occurs to him that it might be the first time anyone has actually said that out loud to Keith. “You’re fixating on conspiracy theories, and it’s not healthy. You need to start accepting it. I know you’re hurting, okay? I’m hurting, too. I know everything went to hell between all of us, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him.”
“Bullshit. If you had ever really loved him at all you’d be looking for him!”
There’s a split second of vulnerability on Keith’s face, like he realizes he’s just crossed a major line but is too angry to back down. Adam is ready to snap back and give as good as he gets, but...no. Keith is like a brushfire - quick to burn if he’s given fuel to fight with, but Adam is the adult here, and as much as Keith has just hurt him, it will be better for both of them to table this discussion for a bit.
"Keith. Get out of my office, please."
"Gladly, Lieutenant Wasan, Sir," Keith snarls, taking the extra time to grab the hydraulic door as he leaves and try to force it to slam.
Adam knows from experience that it's not nearly as satisfying as it looks.
He’ll try again in a couple days after Keith has had some time to cool off. In the meantime, there are always papers to grade…
Everyone is still walking on eggshells around Keith, so when they call him to Sanda’s office, there’s none of the normal jeering that usually accompanies one of those announcements. His fellow cadets are all silent and still as Keith stomps out of the room, escorted by one of the lieutenants whose name he never bothered to learn.
Keith’s sure this is about his slipping grades and sim scores. Sending him straight to the admiral about it is a little odd, but Adam probably escalated it after their meeting this morning since Keith wasn’t listening to him. Trying to scare him into shaping up by bringing out the big guns.
Joke’s on Adam, though. Depression makes it really easy to not be intimidated by authority figures.
The lieutenant leads him into Sanda’s office, and Keith goes on the offensive before he’s even fully in the door.
“Look, I know my grades are shit, but I’m trying, ok? Cut me some fucking slack.” He doesn’t tell them he’s only trying because he knows Shiro would be disappointed if Keith flunked out: he’s still trying to mentor Keith from the grave, apparently.
(And yeah, maybe Keith has sort of started to accept that even if the Garrison did lie about pilot error, there’s no way the Kerberos crew can still be alive. But he’s not about to admit that to Adam)
It’s only after he’s been nudged toward the seat in front of Sanda’s desk that he realizes there are more people in here with them. And surprisingly, none of them are Iverson, who is technically Keith’s commanding officer since he’s in charge of the fourth-year cadets. Actually, the only person here he recognizes is Sanda.
“Sit down please cadet,” Sanda says, barely even looking at him. “This meeting isn't about your frankly abysmal performance. This is Dr. Brandt,” she motions to the man on her right, the one with the bleach blond hair. ”He’s one of the Garrison’s top scientists, and he has some questions for you. Think of this as a chance to be honest; it will be so much better for you in the long run."
That thing about depression making it easy not to be scared of authority figures? Yeah, that was a lie. Because there’s something off about Dr. Brandt’s eyes, something that Keith really doesn’t like.
"Hello, Keith." There's a strange pause before his name, as if the scientist isn't sure what to call him. Keith just nods in response. "What are you?"
What the fuck? It has to be some kind of trick question. Is this a weird motivational thing? "Um, I'm a cadet at the Galaxy Garrison? I’m a pilot?"
"Sure, sure, right now you are. But what are you?"
“I don't understand the question. Sir," Keith adds hastily. This is quickly turning into one of those instances where he probably shouldn’t make these people any angrier than they already seem to be.
"I think you do."
Keith is lost; nothing has made sense since he got the news about Shiro, but this is a new level of confusion. He throws a concerned glance at the Admiral, but her face, stony and cold, isn't exactly reassuring.
"Um, could Lieutenant Wasan be here for this? I don't really know what's going on," Keith asks. He's angry at Adam, fucking furious about everything that happened and still hurting from their meeting this morning, but he knows Adam is in his corner and is much better at all these hidden meanings and nonverbal cues than Keith is. It's always been Adam at his back for these kinds of things because Shiro had a tendency toward "righteous fury" instead of "tactful politics" where Keith is concerned.
"This isn't about Lieutenant Wasan, this is about you,” Dr. Brandt shoots back, hands slamming onto Sanda’s desk and an angry glint in his eyes that sets Keith even further on edge. “I'll ask one more time: what. are. you."
"I don't know!" Keith shouts as he leaps up from the chair. "I don't know what answer you want!"
He means to leave the Admiral’s office - if they won’t bring Adam in for this meeting, Keith will go find him himself - but then there’s movement out of the corner of his eye, and before Keith can react, one of the other scientists has plunged some kind of syringe into his neck.
Adrenaline floods his system and Keith immediately starts fighting his way through the officers in front of him, snarling at them and punching and kicking and biting anything he can reach. But whatever they gave him must be fast-acting, because his limbs are getting heavy, and the door seems like it’s getting further and further away. Keith’s always been good at self-defense, but four scientists and an admiral versus one of him weren’t good odds to begin with, and that was before the sedative. Someone gets a good blow in to the side of Keith’s head and he stumbles and falls against Sanda’s desk, dimly registering that he’s knocked several stacks of papers off in the process.
His mind is screaming at him to get up but it’s all he can do to slump onto the cold linoleum, one arm stretched out uselessly toward the door as everything goes hazy, then grey. And then black.
“Keith," Adam sighs as he continues to knock on the door of the rundown shack. "I know you’re there, can you please talk to me?”
Keith continues not to answer.
Is there anything else that can go wrong at this point?
Iverson had pulled him into his office to discuss Keith just as his last class of the day had ended. Before Adam can get a word out about the disastrous meeting yesterday morning, however, the Commander had dropped a bomb on him.
”He pulled a runner, Wasan,” Iverson had said. “Wasn’t in his room this morning, hasn’t attended any classes today, and a few things have mysteriously vanished. Shirogane’s old hoverbike is missing from the garage, and the Admiral reported a few hundred dollars stolen from her desk. She has Kogane on the security feeds taking the money and the bike. We understand he’s grieving, but there’s a limit to what we can excuse. Given his failing grades and the stolen property, he’s been expelled. The Admiral has been gracious enough not to press charges, but Kogane isn’t welcome on campus again if you manage to track him down.”
Adam barely managed to give Iverson a clumsy salute before cancelling his evening meetings and driving out into the desert.
He’s got an expelled cadet on his hands, and it’s going to take everything Adam has to convince Keith just to listen to him and let him help. Iverson had brought up Keith’s social worker, but like hell is Adam letting him get shipped back to the group home after everything. What Keith doesn’t know is that Adam had signed up to be a foster parent the moment he realized how serious Takashi had been about Keith. Keith’s going to need to do a lot better than stealing a bike to get rid of Adam.
But first, Adam needs to find him. He slumps down onto the porch, back against the door, and contemplates his options. It is actually possible that Keith isn't here since Takashi’s old hover isn't anywhere near the shack. Would Keith really have gone through the trouble of parking it so far away just on the off-chance that Adam remembered the shack’s location and came looking for him?
Maybe Keith actually is out. It's only been a day, if that, since he left the Garrison, so he might be in town buying supplies. Why Keith chose now of all times to run away, Adam doesn't know, but he does know that Keith would come here first.
At least, he hopes Keith came out here, and that he hasn’t tried to rough it on the streets in town or, god forbid, driven off into the desert and gotten lost.
Well. Maybe he should let Keith make the first move. Adam pulls the small notebook out of his jacket pocket and writes a quick message, telling Keith he's been by and he wants to talk and if he doesn't get a response he'll be back at the same time tomorrow. He folds it up and tucks it securely into the screen door so it's easily visible but won't get blown away by any desert winds.
He can only hope Keith will accept his help.
It’s late, and Katie is tired, but the middle of the night is the best time to do this. Mom had nearly caught her once before, and she wasn’t really keen to repeat that specific you-know-this-could-be-considered-treason lecture.
There’s one more set of files she needs to look through, but just from the descriptions and timestamps it doesn’t look promising. Still, no stone unturned and all that. She opens the earliest file, something titled Subject054_KK_Experiment001 dated about a month ago. It’s a video, some scientists with their backs to the camera and looking at something on a table. One of them is talking, taking introductory notes, yeah, yeah subject is blah blah blah, and Katie is about to just close out of it, because this is clearly a room in the Garrison science building’s sub-basement and hence not relevant to the Kerberos mission when the video cuts to a different shot, one she knows is from a camera in the ceiling right above the observation table, and she drops the can of soda she was holding.
There’s a fucking person on that table.
She recognizes him, she thinks. K-something. Kevin? He’d hung around with Shiro before the launch, he was a cadet at the Garrison. Fuck, he’d been to their house.
She rewinds the video back to the introduction and actually listens this time.
“Introductory notes to Experiment 001 for Subject 054, alias Kogane,” a voice is intoning. She’d met a lot of the Garrison doctors and scientists, but this one doesn’t sound familiar. “Subject appears human but genetic sequencing reveals two additional nucleotide bases. Subject claimed no knowledge of extraterrestrial background, but a knife of unknown metal was recovered from subject’s domicile. Administered 300mg of ketamine approximately one hour ago; subject is now showing signs of regaining consciousness, much earlier than anticipated.”
Katie closes the video, not sure that she can handle whatever they’re about to do to him. Instead she goes back to the folder. It’s not a full listing; she’d only managed to scrape some of the data off the servers before her access window closed. But the most recent video is from less than a week ago. And it’s titled Experiment186.
Katie barely makes it to the bathroom before she’s throwing up. What the fuck is the Garrison doing? That was a kid, a kid barely older than she is, a kid who must have been grieving just like she and her mom are from the loss of the Kerberos Mission, and they’ve got him strapped to a table like a frog to dissect.
Shit. She’s going to need to tell her mom.
Adam has spent every night for the past three weeks looking for Keith. The note he'd left at the old shack hadn't been answered, and when he came around the next day it also clearly hadn't been touched. No one had been there, and Keith might be an occasional drama queen but he wouldn't have abandoned the shack just to avoid Adam.
He’d begun his search in town, hanging around the parks and open, public spaces, asking a few of the homeless population if they recognized Keith’s photo. They all said no, but then again they were pretty wary of Garrison officers in uniform, and if Keith were actually hiding out here, he would have made himself scarce.
God damnit, what he wouldn’t give to go back in time and fix things with Keith before it had come to this, to convince the boy that they were still family before Keith had somehow decided running away had been the best option.
He tries the motels next. Keith had stolen a fair bit of cash, after all, so he’d be able to afford a room, at least for a while. But that’s a dead end, too: there are only three in town and none of them say someone matching Keith’s description has been there. He even looks over their logbooks and none of the names sound familiar; Keith, for all his other skills, has never had a good imagination for aliases.
The only larger civilization within hoverbike-engine distance is Platt City. It would be a daunting prospect to search for one person there, like a needle in a haystack for someone who doesn’t want to be found. But Adam knows Keith, perhaps better than Keith would like him too, and he knows that Keith hates cities. Angry and hurting and scared, Keith would seek solace in open spaces and empty roads, not in the gentrified, urban sprawl that is Platt City.
But the city does have a bus depot.
Adam might exaggerate his credentials, just a bit, but it gets him access to the security camera footage. He wishes, not for the first time, that Matt were still here as he manually searches through hours of video feeds. Matt could have come up with some kind of program to isolate Keith based on his physical description. Then again, if Matt and the rest of the Kerberos crew were here, this whole exercise would hardly be necessary, because right now Adam would have been at home, having dinner with Takashi and Keith and not futilely searching grainy footage at a bus depot.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because there’s no one even close to Keith’s appearance in the week following his abrupt departure from the Garrison. So without finding him at his shack, in town, or any of the easily accessible routes out of the area, Adam has no choice but to start searching the desert surrounding the Garrison.
It occurs to Adam, in a vague, nauseating kind of way, that this type of searching doesn’t usually have positive outcomes. That the likelihood of finding Keith and scolding him for running off is incredibly slim if Keith really has been in the desert for this whole time.
That this has changed from a rescue mission to a recovery operation.
“Get up.”
Keith has half a moment to relish the fact that the restraints are gone before he registers the hand pulling sharply on his wrist and the voice’s owner. With the exception of Dr. Brandt, the scientists have never bothered to tell him their names. Keith has taken to calling this one Mean Bald Man, and Mean Bald Man seems to be in a Mood this morning.
Maybe their funding is getting cut, Keith wonders wryly, since it seems like they still haven’t found whatever it is they’re looking for despite the amount of tests they’ve already run.
Mean Bald Man shoves him into a small, bare room, containing nothing but a treadmill and some wires.
“You’re going to run on this,” he explains gruffly, attaching electrodes to Keith’s bare chest and neck, “until you pass out. After which point you will be allowed food and water.”
...It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it.
"Mom? I need to talk to you…"
Colleen just barely contains a sigh as she puts down the book she’d been reading. That phrase combined with that tone of voice is never a good sign.
“What is it, Katie?”
She looks like she hadn’t slept again, but that was hardly new. Katie’s sleep schedule had only gone from bad to worse after they got the news about the Kerberos Mission. Still, she seems pale and small in a way that she normally doesn’t, huddled over the laptop in her arms. "I hacked the Garrison systems again."
Honestly, that’s pretty much what Colleen was expecting, but something must have happened for Katie to actually tell her about it.
“Do I need to get bail money together?”
"No, no one noticed!” Katie protests. “Besides, I can’t just stop looking, I just know they're hiding info about Kerberos! But um, last night I...found some stuff."
Colleen feels herself get interested despite her best intentions. She really should not be enabling her daughter about this. "About the mission?"
"No. Or, not really, I don't think. Do you remember, there was a cadet, he hung out with Lieutenant Shirogane a bunch?"
"Keith, yeah. Why, have you seen him? I asked Admiral Sanda about how he was doing, and she told me he ran away. If you’ve seen him anywhere I need to let the Garrison know."
“I...don’t think he ran away, actually,” Katie says. She’s even paler than before, looking a little green, like she’s getting sick. She puts her laptop down (on top of Colleen’s book, really, Katie?) and opens it up before she plays a video.
Colleen doesn’t recognize the two scientists with their backs to the wall-mounted observation camera, but in the background, hovering near the door, she sees Niels Brandt. She had met him once and only once, but the man left her feeling unsettled for a week. Sam had brushed it off, calling him a little eccentric but ultimately harmless; now she wonders if she should have trusted her instincts.
Because one of the other scientists calls their subject “Alias Kogane” and a very disturbing picture starts taking shape. The shot shifts to the ceiling-mounted camera, but it only confirms her suspicions. That is indeed Keith, unconscious and tied down on the table.
Colleen lets the video play, hoping to get more information on who the other scientists are or why exactly any procedures this inhumane had been approved by the Garrison IRB. But she can only bear to play it long enough to see Keith slowly push through the sedative and open his eyes, long enough to hear him yell "what the fuck is going on?" but his voice cracks and he sounds terrified because who wouldn't be, in his position?
She can’t stand it anymore and reaches over to pause the video, though that almost makes it worse: in the still image, Keith’s eyes are blown wide with fear and looking over in the direction she knows Dr. Brandt is just off-camera.
“There are more videos,” Katie whispers.
“How many?”
“I haven’t looked at the others yet, but there’s almost 200 of them. It’s...the new ones are recent. I think he’s still there.”
"I need to contact Admiral Sanda." Colleen is already standing and reaching for her datapad before she’s really thought about it. She’ll need to come up with some story that doesn’t incriminate Katie to explain how she knows about all this, but it can’t continue. She can’t let some innocent boy get experimented on for one moment longer. But then Katie’s hand is on her wrist, stopping her short.
"What if Sanda’s in on it?"
The idea is preposterous at first, but then she stops to think about the woman who had barely offered condolences after the Kerberos Mission, who had blamed the entire failure on a pilot that the entire Holt family had the utmost faith in, who had apparently lied to Colleen’s face about the mission, according to some of the documents Katie has turned up. She wants to give the Admiral the benefit of the doubt, but if Keith’s safety (and Colleen’s and Katie’s) could hinge on it…
“You have a point,” she grudgingly admits.
“So...what do we do?”
“We are not going to do anything. This is way too dangerous for you. You are going to give me all of those video files and then erase them from your laptop. And I am going to…”
But going to what? It’s not as if she can just stroll into the Garrison and declare that she’s taking Keith home with her. Katie just raises an eyebrow at her.
Damnit.
“You can't do this alone. Face it Mom, I'm a better hacker than you, and you know they're going to have cameras and shit..er, stuff. What would happen to you if the Garrison gets footage of you trying to break their cadet out of the science wing? What would happen to me?"
Colleen hates that Katie is right. She hates that Sam and Matt aren’t here to help them even more.
“Didn’t Lieutenant Shirogane have a boyfriend?” Katie asks. “Should we contact him?”
Having someone on the inside would be helpful, but she knows things had ended badly between Adam, Shiro, and Keith. What if he was the one who had tipped them off to Keith’s apparent genetic….otherworldliness? The thought feels ugly and harsh, but after seeing that video, she’s not feeling particularly trusting.
“I think this needs to be a Holt thing,” Colleen says finally.
“I uh, already have a program to mess with the cameras,” Katie admits, not nearly as guilty as she should be. “So we can go right now.”
She understands, of course. Seeing what the Garrison is doing has made her blood boil, and the idea of leaving Keith there for any longer is repulsive. But they also can’t rush into this, not if they want any chance of success.
“Not yet. We need to plan more, be prepared. How good are your firewalls?”
The smirk Katie gives her makes Colleen wonder when on earth her daughter learned to flout authority so much.
Before this, before everything had happened, Keith was sure the most pain he had ever been in was when that one cruelly inventive foster father had beaten him with a hot cast iron pan.
Now in the span of a month, he has several new “most painful” moments.
Wait...has it been a month? Without any windows and no attempt by the scientists to simulate some kind of schedule, Keith’s sense of time has gotten a little fuzzy. It feels like a month. Maybe.
He misses Shiro. He misses Adam.
But anyway, the point is that he’s pretty sure he’s in for a lot more pain today. Dr. Brandt is here; it’s been a while since he showed up, apparently content to let his underlings run whatever tests they felt like. But now he’s back, him and his stupid clipboard, fiddling with some of the equipment, and it seems he only comes to observe the really awful, invasive tests.
There’s also the fact that they’ve tightened the straps down onto the table so much that they’re practically cutting off his circulation. That probably doesn’t bode well.
Brandt eventually strolls over to the table and kneels down so they’re at eye-level, like a parody of some actually caring medical doctor.
“Do you know we soundproofed this room just for you?” he asks, his face uncomfortably close, breath hot on Keith’s cheek, but the restraints are too tight for him to even budge. “We aren’t that far away from the other science labs, and some of my colleagues just wouldn’t understand the necessity of all this. So we made sure they wouldn’t hear anything untoward. But, well…
“We can’t use anesthetic, you see. Don’t know how it would work with your…unique biology. So the soundproofing is really going to come in handy today.” Tall Blond Woman chooses that moment to walk through Keith’s field of vision, carrying a wickedly long scalpel. “Did you know this is actually a modified autopsy table?” Brandt continues. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
Jesus Christ. They’re going to kill him.
“We’ve gotten all the information we can without delving a little deeper, I’m afraid. I’d apologize, but,” he shrugs offhandedly, “I’m not convinced yet that you can feel pain.”
“We’re all set, sir,” Mean Bald Man says from somewhere on Keith’s right. Brandt stands up and takes his usual place in the corner of the room, not caring that Keith is futilely tugging at the restraints.
Brandt brings his clipboard up, clicks his pen a few times, and fucking smiles. “Go ahead, then.”
It might be the shock, but he feels almost numb through the first incision. Like it’s just a long, awkwardly-located papercut if he tries not to think about it too hard.
The second incision isn’t as kind. Nor is the third. He can’t see anything, the band around his forehead keeping him from looking down at his chest, but he can smell the coppery scent of his own blood.
It turns out that Brandt was right.
No matter how loudly Keith screams, no one comes.