trans_9 | A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

The static got louder and louder, like someone blasting an out-of-tune radio in his ear. He could pick out snatches of words and voices-- GLaDOS' and others, some he knew were definitely not really there. It was so loud he could barely think.

And all of a sudden the room was bright and he heard another voice. He opened his eyes-- his irises were blood red, and everything looked blurry-- and there was Luke.

Steve gasped out a ragged breath and coughed, a minor spray of blood. Green, scaly-looking rashes were rising across his hands and up his arms. He clutched at his chest with one hand and tried to say something, but all that came out was another freakish, growling moan.

Help...

Luke had seen a lot of strange things happen to people, during the war with the Vong and during the Dark Nest crisis, and so seeing something like this happen to Steve didn't even faze him. Not to mention that Steve was like a son to Luke, and his love for the teen took precedence over more superficial things.

That, and Luke had a good idea what was going on. Steve hadn't said much about it, but he could hazard a guess. "Steve!" he repeated, rolling the teen over onto his back. "You have to fight it! You can do it, I know you can!"

GLaDOS's simulation breaks, flickering out and leaving Steve and Luke in an empty sensorium.

She, however, is still there. ||Crewman ^{Ste-eve Burnside} has failed the non-routine stress capaity test!|| she announces.

||No party for Steve. No cake to share with fri-ends. Nobody likes you. Ha HA ha.||

His eyes flickered upward at GLaDOS' voice and he clenched his teeth together, still struggling to breathe.

Jesus Christ is that AI going to pay for this.

Steve moaned in pain and clawed at his chest-- where his hands were starting to look not-quite-right. The green skin was starting to leech up the side of his face and he stared at Luke, obviously terrified.

His eyes closed again and his body suddenly crumpled like he'd been punched in the gut. He screamed and lurched as something ripped out of the right side of his shirt, near his ribs.

He looked down and when he caught a glance of something clawed and insect-like sticking out of him, his face went totally blank.

Luke saw it too, and stared a moment before bringing his attention back to where it was needed.

"It's going to be okay, Steve," he said. He felt it was important to keep using the teen's name, keep reminding him that he was still Steve Burnside, not whatever had been done to him. "That AI is wrong, you know that. Don't listen to it. Just try to calm down and stop this, I'm here to help you."

Luke normally didn't go traipsing about through the minds of others, but in this case, he simply gathered the Force around him and brought it to bear on Steve's mind, plunging into the turmoil and countering it with a place of calm, a rock in the middle of a raging river. But at the same time he kept talking, kept encouraging.

"You're stronger than this, Steve," he said, locking eyes. "You're strong and you can fight it. Just remember what I told you."

He turned over to sit up halfway, holding himself up by his shaking hands-- the tremors seemed to go down his whole body, but looking carefully, they seemed to be slowing down.

The expression had not returned to his face as he stared blankly at Luke, right in the eyes. Something flickered suddenly on his face-- something feral in his eyes, something violent and primal that turned into a furious glare.

He growled deep in his throat and picked himself up off the floor, eyes still locked with Luke's.

Luke stared straight back. When he was growing up on Tatooine, he'd learned that with some of the native fauna, if you backed down, you got attacked. Backing down meant this kept going. Staying calm, staying in control--that could mean the difference between Steve coming out of this, and Steve needing to be stopped by other means, and that made Luke's heart hurt to think about.

"Steve, listen to me," he said, and his voice was the perfect calm of a Jedi Master, the serenity given him by the Force flowing through every part of his body. Rising from the floor gracefully, Luke spread his hands to show he had no weapons in them. His lightsaber was on his belt, but if it came to activating lightsabers Luke would be in a lot of trouble already.

"Control," Luke said. "You must control this. Whatever was done or said before this does not matter right now. All that matters is that Steve Burnside exerts control. You have to win that fight, Steve."

Remind him who he is.

"You have to win because I love you like a son. I don't want to see my sons hurt."

He just stood there, staring at Luke. His lip twitched and the slitted pupils of his eyes changed size, first growing wider and then narrowing. He stepped forward, lowered his head and tilted it to the side, like an animal-- his muscles tensed, clawlike fingers clicking together softly under the sound of his breathing. If he lunged, even halfway mutated he could do enough damage to make it count. There were thirty seconds where he was ready to strike at any moment.

Then he blinked a few times and the vague look in his eyes was gone. He looked confused for a moment, but then seemed to recognize Luke again.

Steve let out the breath he'd been holding and it caught in his throat, choked down by half gasp. His eyes filled with tears and he collapsed to his hands and knees, lowering his head and sobbing so hard he started shaking again.

Luke eased forward, making no sudden moves that might rouse the... the thing again. But he was still calm, though now worry showed in his blue eyes. Worry for Steve, who--it was true--Luke loved like Steve was one of his own.

"It's okay," he said soothingly, putting an arm around Steve's shoulders. Memories came to Luke's mind--memories of holding Ben when the nightmares woke him up, memories of holding Mara when she had dreams of what she'd done as the Emperor's Hand. He knew what those were like. Steve was forced to live one, and Luke couldn't imagine...

"I'm here," he said. "I'm here, Steve."

There was a terrifying blank in his memories and Steve knew exactly why. That sudden silence in his head scared him, more than anything GLaDOS had pit him against, more than the taunts and the teasing suggestions that he'd only considered in his darkest states of mind-- who knew if they were true? Maybe he was a mistake. He couldn't handle it. He had been gone.

For the first time since his death, he'd lost control.

He clung onto Luke until he caught a glimpse of his hands, patchy with the swollen green of Veronica, twisted the wrong way. His eyes widened and he pulled them away, though it was too late to hide them. And there were things ripping out of the side of his shirt, twitching along like they were totally normal.

He shrunk away from Luke, gasped in a breath and managed to speak in a hoarse whisper. "--t's wrong with me?"

"You were..." Luke looked for the right word. "Changing. You didn't hurt anyone though--see, I'm fine," and he spread his hands again to show he was unharmed, the beachwear he'd come up in unripped and no blood anywhere. "And you stopped it. You did it, Steve, you got control."

The turmoil in the Force wasn't going away, and it worried Luke. He'd hoped Steve would calm down once he'd stopped the changing. He hadn't thought that the young man would start panicking more.

This didn't calm him down whatsoever. Steve choked down another series of sobs and tried to inch further away, turning his back. He felt embarrassed and exposed, hated Luke seeing him like this, wishing he could just disappear into the floor.

He felt suddenly exhausted and dizzy, like the stress of the change was catching up to him. He could have leaned over and fallen asleep. Maybe he should drop dead, a dark voice suggested in the back of his mind. He was a mistake anyway, right?

"Freak," he muttered. "-m' a goddamn freak..."

"That's not true, what kind of talk is thaaat?" Some of that farmboy incredulity had come back into his voice. It was a certain kind of twang that crept in every now and then, usually when Ben had just done something ridiculous like paint the walls with food. But it had its uses here. "You're not any more of a freak than I am and that's for sure."

He pressed forward, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "You're very brave. Do you think it's possible to be a brave freak?"

"Will you just shut up for five seconds and look at me?!"

It was the snappiest Steve had ever gotten with Luke-- and with one blood red slit-eye glaring over his shoulder, it only added to the dark tone in his voice; anger, terror and sorrow all rolled up into one.

It was escalating again, and he started talking faster and louder. "She called me in here and made me run through rooms like-- like I was a rat in a maze. Stress test. Someone gave permission and-- I got hurt. I could've died. I was gonna die. I was gonna die-- she said I was- I was a-" His voice died in his throat and he broke down again, gasping as his chest tightened once more.

Even in the face of all this, Luke responded with calm, still that rock, the still pool in the torrent. "It doesn't matter what you look like," he insisted gently. "Neither of us is going to be winning any Galactic Beauty awards anytime soon, but appearance is not what matters. Whatever that AI said about you doesn't matter. You're not dead, and you're in control of this thing again."

He kept his hand on Steve's shoulder, kept the channel of calm flowing from his mind to the teen's. "And whoever authorized that test is obviously not someone with your well-being in mind. But it's over now. That was just a moment in time, now, and you have to let it go and keep moving onward."

Luke would sit here, being the voice of calm and reason to his friend, for as long as it took. He knew he had to get Steve to the med bay and get back to Mara--who was probably wondering just what he was up to--but however long that took, was how long it took.

Steve forced himself to take another deep breath, holding it in until he willed the ache in his chest away. His whole body was still trembling awkwardly, he still felt achy and far too warm, and there were still tears stinging his eyes. He couldn't remember feeling this horrible. Medical was going to flip when they saw him.

He tried to focus on Luke's voice and the calm he was projecting, but something he said was starting to dawn on him again. GLaDOS had said it. But he never got any real answers out of her. She had probably been lying anyway, but Steve felt a wave of nausea pass through him as he spoke again.

"Wh-who would... do this to me?"

Luke's face closed up; for a moment a few ideas popped into his head as to the nature of what would happen to the person who'd hurt Steve this way, in the lowest way possible, but he knew that the Jedi didn't do things like that. Much more Vestara's style of justice, which ran counter to everything Luke believed. Still, as a parent it was hard not to want to cause bodily harm to the person who'd hurt your child. Even if that child wasn't your flesh and blood.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I'll let Security know when they get back on board so they can find out, and I'll help as much as I can. But that's not important right now. We've got to get you to the med bay so you can rest and recover--that, Steve, is more important to me than showing who did this to you the business end of my lightsaber. Think you can walk?"

It was apparent from the look on his face that Steve's thoughts were a million miles away at the moment-- somewhere scary and dark that he hadn't been in quite a while.

He let out another desolate sigh and tested his weight on his knees. He tilted and wobbled like his balance was missing, then reached for Luke's arm to help himself stand up.

"I hate this," he muttered.

"It's not pleasant," Luke agreed, "But not worth hatred. And the more you hate, the more you suffer and cause suffering."

Taking Steve's arm, Luke looped it over his shoulders and put his own arm around the other's torso. His fingers brushed the extra, slender arm, but it didn't bother him. Many species had more than four limbs, and Luke had worked alongside several of them. Slowly, making sure Steve could keep up, Luke began walking toward the door.

"Hopefully the door opens, or I'm gonna have to make my entrance wider." He looked a little sheepish. "I hope Stacy's not mad I cut her up. I had to get to you."

Steve flinched and pulled away at the touch on his new... whatever those were. "No. I'm pretty sure I hate it," he replied deadpan.

Everything hurt-- like the growing pains you felt in your legs when you were a kid, except everywhere and all of them, ever, at once. He limped along with Luke and eyed the hole in the door. He'd had no idea what was going on and didn't even notice it before now.

"Probably gonna give you a violation," he said under his breath. "Figures."

'Speaking under one's breath' didn't apply with Jedi, who had Force-enhanced hearing when they wanted to. "Hopefully the fact I did it to rescue you will be a mitigating factor, but if it's a violation, then that's what it is." Luke shrugged the shoulder that wasn't supporting the other's weight. "Your life's more important to me than that."

Luckily, the door opened, and Luke made his slow and methodical way out with Steve in tow. "What were you doing up here, anyway? I thought all you kids would be down planetside."

"I was," Steve said, his voice a mixture between irritation and a groan of pain. Luke might have noticed him holding on a little tighter. "I had to come get my treatment in medical. I-I was going back down and they called me to the sensorium, and that's when she-"

He sucked in a breath through his teeth. "A lot of goddamn good treatment does, huh?"

"You're better off with it than you are without it, I've found." Luke shifted his grip, using the Force subtly to help lift Steve, make his steps easier. "And I'm sure all the Rogue Squadron pilots would agree. They've done their time in bacta tanks."

He smiled a little. "And now we know not to talk to strange AIs, right?"

"Yeah, maybe I would've grown arms on both sides if I didn't get my shots." It was easier to walk for some reason, and it let him stop tensing quite as much. He still held on tight to Luke.

"It didn't sound like her," he protested, a glare set on his face. "S-somebody set me up."

"Or maybe you'd have lost it completely," Luke pointed out. "Which was probably what whoever started this wanted, and what you refused to give them. Like I said, Steve, I'm real proud of you. This doesn't change anything with me."

A Most Sinister SCIENCE [Closed]

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