Another day, another test for Víctor. So far this would be the third one he's been called in for and this time around Ambrose wasn't around to over see it. Apparently neither was the good doctor. Leaving only the lower doctors and assistants to handle the watching and noting of the drug effects.

There were cameras set up as well to ensure nothing went unnoticed. They let him know that the footage would be secured on the companies private network in real time. It was all secured of course, password encrypted for future viewing.

Not that Víctor minded all that much, just another thing that was probably in that agreement he signed. The one that he really didn't give much of a read. Honestly it was full of lawyer mumbo jumbo that he really couldn't understand it. So he just settled for nodding quietly while the drug was being prepared.

"Now don't be nervous, this variation is fairly similar to the last. But not so similar as to be redundant. Hopefully we nudged it in the right direction."one of the assistants giggled nervously while preparing his arm for the injection. She wasn't looking directly at him. "Warm enough? Alright, injecting the cure. Fingers crossed."

She barely waited for him to nodded before pushing in the needle and pressing the depressor, releasing the chemical into his system.

The assistants stepped back and waited, knowing that their jobs may very well be on the line with this one. At first it seemed as before, the slow shrinking of appendages, the splitting of his one eye. It was holding, he could feel it working, just a little bit more please.

And then the recoil happened. Far worse than it had ever been before. He roared in pain, standing and stumbling, lashing out. He hit something, someone, he couldn't be sure. All he knew was pain, furious burning hurt. It was the fever all over again. He spit fire and sent what dull witted assistants left running for their lives. His jaws snapping at their heel.

The room was lock with just him inside. He was vaguely aware of an alarm going off. The sound was maddening and he searched for it's source, seeking to silence it. Silence everything. He couldn't stop himself, he felt mindless, monstrous. A roaring burning creature with nothing to do but trash everything around him.

These were the best dogs ever.

Some of them were very big and lumbering, and they took awhile to wake up, but they were very strong when they did. Some of them were small and they ran into walls if he was not careful with them but they were fast and cute and fast. Some were in-between, with personalities all their own. Some had wings and some had rotors, some looked like helicopters and some planes, some like strange UFOs. But they were all very good dogs, and they were his. Jaager had said so. Panu had an entire kennel of--what was the English word? Drones?--and entire kennel of drones, and they were all his. He did not think that a boy had ever been this happy in the history of boyhood and if they had it was only because they did not know how much better this was.

These were the best dogs because they were his. He had a bedroom at Jaager's house and now he had dogs. He would call this one Rottweiler and that one Greyhoud, and that was Spaniel and that was Schipperke--

Something pinged his alerts as he was testing out Terrier.

It was not the first time, so it was probably okay. He was still getting used to this building, and what was normal inside of it. The filter was very general: if something deviated from the observed norm in any feed, it pinged to the forefront of his mind. So far an order of twenty-five pizzas being delivered had pinged (HR was having a send off party for the summer interns; he dismissed the ping). So had a giant four-armed man coming through the front doors (he had followed this man from the entryway to the labs, but the doctors did not seem concerned by him. One of them had the man's file up on its computer. Victor Calisto Ochoa-Echeverría, birthdate 7/4/1994. He looked very cool to Panu but apparently he did not think so himself, because he was volunteering for the 'mutant cure' testing. Panu dismissed the ping).

And now there was this third ping. He toyed with putting Terrier into a lazy flight path around the room, trying not to hit any walls. This was easier for Panu because he did not have to use the controller shoved in his hoodie's pocket: he told it what signals to send, and it sent them. But it was harder for Panu too because there were four cameras in the room—three in the ceiling, and a little one mounted on Terrier itself, and it was not always easy to tell distance exactly from their different views. Sometimes he thought he was seven inches from a wall, and he was actually six. This was a problem the Terrier's blade cut a six inch radius. But he should check on that ping (even though it was probably pizza or test subjects again--)

The alarms went off. Loud and blaring. Helpfully, his alerts set up a fourth ping for these.

Panu dialed down the volume on his audio, and brought up the ping he had been ignoring. He had a feeling he probably should not have been ignoring it.

It was the four-armed man. He was very, very angry. Outside the lab people in white coats were gathering like pigeons, uselessly cooing and milling in front of the door they had locked behind them. One of them touched it as if to open it, then recoiled with a hiss, clutching her hand. The other side of the door had just been hit with a fireball. Probably it was very hot. Many, many things in that lab were getting hot.

This was not Panu's problem. It did not look like the man would get out, and no one was locked in with him. Just equipment. It was sad that the computers would probably burn to death, but computers did not actually feel pain, just like helicopters were not actually dogs. Panu just like to pretend, sometimes. He turned back to Terrier--

--but something in Victor's file pinged as important. Ambrose Jaager himself had accessed it, and directly observed some of the earlier testing. This research subject was important to him.

Okay.

Panu settled Terrier on his shoulder, like a little blue helicopter-dog-parrot. Then he turned his full attention to the problem.

Step one: He threw the fire alarms. Now the building would evacuate, because that's what they should do when many things were being lit on fire and maybe a giant fire-spitting man was about to get lose.

Step two: He turned off the lab alarms. They were annoying.

Step three: The sprinkler system. He triggered it in the room the man was in.

Step four: He set the AC system in the area to max, and flooded the room with cold air through all undamaged vents. There were notes on the file that said he responded to heat, and he obviously liked fire. So maybe he would respond to cold, too.

Panu would deal with this, and then Jaager would be happy with him. He would know that Panu looked after his interests.

The lab was engulfed in flames and he never felt more alive, so alive and everything was burning. The pain was passing into glorious warmth and relief. His clothes had long since disappeared. No longer was he a monster draped in false civilization. He was burning all that once was. Disappeared fragments of himself as kindling.

He looked to the door wondering in his feral mind how the world outside could not burn with him. They needed to see, see how bright this world could be. The beast ram-rushed the door, heard the metal squeal under his heat. He dug his claws in, roaring in single-minded frustrations.

They needed to see, they need to stay. He headbutted the door again as he watched the people rush for the exits. Why couldn't they stay here and burn with him? It would only hurt a while. The fire was glorious and bright, so bright.

Then something new caught his attention. Water! It doused his flame from above, ruining it and drowning him. He roared flame, attempting to melt shut the spouts. But the colder it grew, the weaker his fire became. He tried to absorb more heat but only succeeded in dropping the temperature even further.

He whined, loud and in distress. The monster tried for the door again, fumbling with the charred handle. It didn't seem to matter, because the cold was taking over, making it hard to move, hard to keep his eye open. Until he collapsed with a loud groan.

Panu watched through many eyes as the door began to cave under the mutant's onslaught. There were no functional audio feeds left in the area. The scene played out in the boy's mind, completely silent. The charge, the claws against steel, the tearing and prying--all of it silent. 

That was the inside of the room. Through the cameras outside, he watched claw tips pushing their way out between the seam in the door.

Panu realized that the hallways was empty. The researchers had already evacuated, and a flick through cameras elsewhere showed that the rest of the building was not far behind. The closest living soul to the labs was now Panu.

The sprinklers kicked on, and the mutant reared and fought like they were a real enemy, like he could kill them if he could only burn bright enough, like there was an intelligent force behind this attack. Like he could sense Panu on the other side, causing him this torment.

The Finnish boy caught his Terrier as it started to tumble from his shoulder. He pressed it to his chest, and wrapped both arms around it. It was small but it still had a decent size, a decent weight. He could feel all its circuits. They were alive and ready and waiting for his next command. Just like a real dog.

He squeezed Terrier more tightly as the thing rushed the door again. It was hard to think of it as a mutant now. As Victor. It was not acting like something that would respond to Victor.

It collapsed.

Panu's hands were shaking around the Terrier. He canceled the fire alarm--everyone was out already, any way, it was just him and the monster.

The test subject was not moving.

The last of Panu's cameras in the room, battered by fire and now drowned, shorted out.

He could only see the hallway, now. The deformed door, sitting on its frame like it was a baby's block, a star shoved into a square hole. Nothing moved. Only water, which began to slowly seep out from under the frame.

...Was it dead? It was probably dead. He replayed the last few seconds of the camera feed, the collapse, and it looked very dead.

He had killed Jaager's test subject and the man would be so mad at him, maybe he would be punished or worse sent away and he would be alone again and and and

He could fix this. It was probably not dead, just unconscious, unconscious things looked very dead sometimes. Should he call Jaager? No no no. Madeline? No she would just tell Jaager. The researchers? No they were outside the building, milling again like stupid birds, the ones from the lab huddled together and whispering, away from the rest of the building's staff. They knew what was happening, they knew it wasn't just some fire, but they weren't doing anything. Useless.

The Terrier creaked a little in Panu's arms. He stopped squeezing so tight. The boy took a deep breath in, and let it out. Still no movement in the hallway, no signs of something pounding on the door frame again.

He could fix this. If it was still alive then all he had to do was, ah, get it dry and warm again. Jaager didn't need to know anything. The sprinklers and the fire alarms would have gone off on their own eventually, and he could hide the log of the AC turning on. No one needed to know that this was him.

Please please please don't be dead, that was the only thing he couldn't hide.

Panu left the storage room he had been playing with his dogs in, and ran to the lab. A few times he tripped because the camera angles weren't quite right, there were blind spots and some of those blind spots were walls. But then he remembered his Terrier, and he sent the little helicopter ahead of him, showing the path.

The lab doors were much scarier in person. Bulging and mangled, and there were slivers of steel showing under the white paint where claws had tried to break through. The boy tip toed closer, and pressed his ear to the door.

Nothing. Just the patter of rain. Which was maybe exactly what the monster wanted him to think, if it wasn't dead and it was waiting on the other side of the door for a foolish boy to open it--

Panu shook his head. He took a breath, then grabbed the handle and sent the command for unlock. It squealed open. A inch, two, a foot. He sent the Terrier inside to look and then he put his back against the door and used all his weight to close it again. Lock lock lock--

But it wouldn't close. It was stuck open now, the tile floor under it scraped where he had tugged it open. If the monster was awake it was going to light him on fire and then probably eat him.

Inside the door, he had trouble flying Terrier straight. The little blue helicopter was being battered by the sprinklers. Its casing was sturdy, but too much more of this and it would drown. His dogs were not made for the rain.

But through its eye he found it. The monster. It was laying on the floor.

The blue helicopter circled once, then came down to hover in front of the creature's eye. Panu could not tell if it was breathing.

Panu was not sure if he was still breathing. He was in so, so much trouble.

Darkness swallowed everything and the cold made him feel as though he were frozen. A statue in the rain, a remanent of former glory. His body ached to move but he could not find the energy for it. Was he dead? Was that it? Did he no longer have a body to move?

No...No, he could hear the world around him. The patter of sprinklers, the sudden squeal of the metal door opening, the faint buzz of something. It reminded him of an electric razor. What was that? He tried opening his eyes, no eye, to follow it. Found the ache had extended into his eye lid. It even ached to see.

But he saw something, someone. A small someone, blurry but he could see they were small. The figure reminded him of David, his cousin. He remembered though, he wasn't at home. This was someone else's child. God, what was a child doing in the labs?

Victor's eye shut again, it was too hard to keep it open...

He tried opening his mouth to speak but all that came out was a deep, rumbling groan. Still sounding more animal than man. Was the child scared? He wanted to say something, anything to reassure the kid that he wasn't dangerous. Though...that wasn't entirely true was it. He had just sent a whole team of lab techs running, now that he was remember it. Set the whole lab ablaze.

And god, had he enjoyed it. There was no denying it, there was pain and then joy connected with the memory. He wanted to see things burn, feel the flames lick at his skin. It had felt so right. The idea that, that's what he wanted made him feel nauseous.

Its eye opened. It was huge and all wrong--black where it should be white, white where it should have color. The little helicopter zoomed back a foot. On the other side of the door, the blond boy stayed very still, hoping it would not see him. It had very many teeth spilling from its mouth. They looked much bigger through the Terrier's eye than they had through the wall cameras.

The eye shut again. Panu began to relax.

The mouth opened, all teeth and noise, and now he was close enough to hear it. It sounded like a volcano waking up. His heels skittered against the floor as he tried to shut the door again, but the water from the sprinklers had swept over the titles, and he only slid in place. It stopped making the sound. Panu went still again, panting where he stood.

He called the Terrier back to the door way, out of the rain. He could watch from here. This was what people with organic eyes did, right? They watched from wherever they were?

"Are you--" His voice was too quiet. Even he could barely hear it. Panu took in a deep breath. "Are you still wanting to light things on fire? Or are you Victor again?"

He listened, the longer he was awake the easier it was to hear things. The sliding and squeaking of shoes on tile, the desperate panting of struggle. The child was scared of him. He smallest motions seemed to send the boy into a panic state. God help him, he didn't want to be seen like this. Especially not by a kid. An adult may be able to handle it. Might forgive the lapse in his sanity.

But a child...He knew well enough from his cousins and siblings that they didn't forget or forgive that easily. This moment might stick with them forever.

The boy murmured something, then louder, "Are you still wanting to light things on fire? Or are you Victor again?"

"Victor..." Somehow he managed to mumble his own name, ignoring how the boy could possibly know his name. He tried opening his eye, look at the boy, show him he wasn't a monster. But it was so damn cold, moving felt like...like...He couldn't describe it. There was no saying just how much the cold ached his very skin, froze him to the bone.

It recognized its name. Repeated it back to him, when he said it. Or was it just echoing sounds, like a bird? If the Terrier could hover suspiciously, then it would. But it was a helicopter. It did not convey emotions very well. 

The monster--maybe the mutant--he did not sound very healthy. But he was alive, so Panu could still fix this. Jaager could not be angry that he stopped the creature from burning down his whole building, not if Panu saved the building and the monster.

He searched the local computers until he found what he was looking for: an inventory list. They had what he needed. The boy made his decision, and nodded to himself. 

"Okay. Wait here."

The lab inventory included blankets. It did not say where they were, but his eyes in the nearby rooms picked out several smaller doors that did not have their own cameras inside. Probably these were supply closets. His sneakers squeaked in the wet hall as he ran to the first of them. He took Terrier with him to speed up the search, but kept the hallway camera, the one facing the stuck-open door, in his main consciousness. If the monster came through then he would see it, and then he would run.

The first closet had mostly microscope-things and also spare toilet paper. He closed it and ran to the next room. This one had more useless science things. The third had big white sheets, folded up neatly, and thin grey blankets. Panu picked up as many of each as he could carry and ran back. They went up higher than his chin, past his eyes, but that was okay. It wasn't like he needed his eyes.

He paused just outside of the doorway, the little blue helicopter hoovering over a pile of blankets with just a little bit of blonde hair peeking over the top.

"I am turning off the sprinklers now, but if you try to light me on fire I am turning them on again."

Now the monster was warned that Panu was serious. He waited a moment for the threat to sink in, then he turned them off. He stepped cautiously in the room, Terrier leading the way. There was nowhere dry so he simply set the stack on the floor. The bottom ones would get wet, but he had brought many. He thought he was out of arms reach, but it was hard to tell with the thing curled up like that, and with only one camera in the room. 

...The creature, the Victor, was still not moving very much. Panu picked up a blanket, and cautiously approached. He tossed it on the monster's arm, then waited. When he was not lit on fire, he took a step closer, and started patting the big creature dry.

Pat pat. Pat pat.

He turned the AC off, and began sending heat into the room instead. But maybe not as fast as he had sent in the cold air. 

"Okay. Wait here."

It wasn't like he could go anywhere. He waited for the child to return, mentally sorting out what he should do once recovered. He never thought he'd scare someone so badly. Hell he scared himself. He just had to make sure that the kid understood he wasn't going to hurt him. That he wasn't some monster that would eat him. His stomach ached at the sick thought.

He heard the squeak of shoes long before he saw them. The boy had returned on his own.

"I am turning off the sprinklers now, but if you try to light me on fire I am turning them on again."

He hummed in agreement, remaining still even as the sprinkles turned off. He opened his eye, watched the boy set the sheets down, watched him hesitate to approach. Then finally started patting down his arms first. A silly thing to do but he didn't expect the boy to understand that his arms could take care of themselves. It was his body that needed warmth now. But he could wait. Not like he could do anything about it.

He didn't realize it at first but the room was slowly warming up too. The contradiction made him shiver, absorbing the new heat slowly. He couldn't help but purr at the sensation. A deep, rumbling sound, like what one would expect from a large cat. "Thank you, chico."he mumbled, the ache in his muscles recovering from the cold enough that he could speak and look at the boy direction.

Pat pat. Pat pat. 

This was going to take a very long time. The mutant was huge--like a giant mountain of arms and and teeth and horns and gray skin. There had to be a better way to do this. Panu went back to the pile of blankets, and grabbed a fresh one. He shook it out, this time. Then he marched over to the mountain, and foofed it out, trying to get it to drape over all of Victor like he sometimes tried to make a sheet cover all of his bed with one flick. The blanket covered most of his back, now. It started to stick, absorbing the water where it had landed. That was better. Faster.

Victor did not seem to want to hurt him or the room. He did not seem to want to move. Panu took courage from this, and used the mutant's arms as stepping stones to get up on his back.

Pat pat. Pat pat.

WebMD said that you had to get a person with hypothermia dry, and then wrap them in blankets. He had the article up in his head. Probably this was hypothermia. That seemed a good word for drowning and ACing a fire mutant.

The little Terrier hovered around them in a loose circle, like planes circling King Kong. This way Panu could see if it moved.

...Sometimes he forgot he was in the same place as his cameras. Everything was always so distant through their eyes, even his own body. He did not need to see Victor move, he could feel it through his hands and knees where he knelt on the mutant's slightly-less-soggy-now back. The Finnish boy froze as an earthquake went through this ground.

A shiver, he realized belatedly. Just a shiver. Panu was shivering, too, by the time it had passed, but he was not cold.

Then something else. A rumble. It crested and fell, like waves on a lake. He rested his head against the mutant's back, and listened. The boy's breathing calmed. He stopped shaking, and sat up straight again.

"You are like a cat." Pat pat. Pat pat. "This is better than being like godzilla."

He did not respond when Victor spoke, but he relaxed by another degree. If the man was awake enough to thank him, then probably he was not going to keep hurting things. Though Panu did not understand all of what he said--the chico remained chico when he tried to translate the phrase. He tried putting it through on its own.

Oh. It meant boy.

"English or Spanish. Not both." The blonde boy instructed. The mutant was shifting again, a great titanic movement of muscle. But he was only turning his head to look at Panu, and he was still purring, so it was okay. Panu did not turn his own head. He kept working diligently.

Pat pat pat.

His own clothes were getting just as wet as the blanket, but the room was much warmer now, so he did not mind.

The large mutant grunted as the boy climbed on his back to pat the moisture from there. He didn't mind, the child was small, light enough to be ignored. Hell he might have even been lighter than David. In the back of his mind he worried about that. Children shouldn't be so light. He wondered where the parents were in all of this.

"You are like a cat. This is better than being like godzilla."

He chuckled at this. He supposed, but a big cat couldn't shoot fire or resist it like he could. Still he continued to purr, finding that it helped relieve the aches in his muscles, sooth the cold from his bones. The longer Panu worked, the more he would find color and warmth returning to Victor's skin.

He watched the little helicopter circle around, curious to it's purpose in the room. "Mmm, is that your toy?" He had seen some in shop windows, cheap plastic things that would probably break in little hands.

There was something about the way the boy spoke too. A slight accent and the way he constructed sentences. They were very careful and clean, textbook even. It reminded him of his Peruvian family members who were still learning the language.

"English or Spanish. Not both."

He smiled at the boy, "<Oh? You understand Spanish?>" Interesting, the boy didn't look hispanic or latino. Might have learned it from a parent or perhaps he was and his looks were deceiving. It wouldn't be the first time that he's been wrong on looks alone. A silly thing, given his own looks tend to make people judge without knowing better.

The chuckle made the mutant's back heave up and down, like a horse ride at a store where he put a quarter in to make it move. Well, other kids put a quarter in. Panu could have free rides.

The sudden motion made him gasp. Then giggle. He put a hand over his mouth, because giggling was a very stupid sound. Jaager would not want to keep a giggling child around.

...But Jaager wasn't here right now, so it was probably okay.

Under his hands, the man's skin was getting softer. And orange-r. Panu compared the color to earlier footage, from when the man had first entered the building. Yes. Orange was a good color. Panu was doing a good job of making Jaager's test subject be not-dead.

Pat pat pat.

"It is not a toy. It is my dog. His name is Terrieri." No, that was the Finnish. English was... "Terrier." There was no music living in the English word. It made his Terrier sound flat and boring. Most of English was this way.

Toys were for fun. Dogs worked. There was a difference. Terrier was a good working dog. 

"<I understand everything>," the boy returned in Spanish, without pause. "<But not everything at once. So English or Spanish. Not both. I am sliding down now, do not be startled.>"

He needed a new blanket. This one was like a sponge that had been sitting in a bucket of water. Panu put it on the floor, where it started making a puddle around itself. He grabbed a fresh blanket, and clambered back up.

"<Is it because you attack things that you want to be cured?>"

Giggling was always a good sign, though it stopped abruptly, as though the child didn't want to get caught. A worrying thought that laughter was a bad thing to this kid. Again, he couldn't help but wonder who and where were Panu's parents. Surely they'd be looking for him when the fire alarms had gone off.

"It is not a toy. It is my dog. His name is Terrieri. Terrier." Interesting name for a little helicopter, not something that most kids would think up. Nor was the fact that the kid called it a dog. As if that differentiated it from a toy. But there was no point in arguing with him. It would only serve to make him upset. "Terrieri is a cute name."

"<I understand everything. But not everything at once. So English or Spanish. Not both. I am sliding down now, do not be startled.>"

He was getting the feeling that this was no ordinary child. Mutant perhaps, it would make sense given how smart the boy sounded. Not that one needed to be a mutant to be smarter than average. He lifted his head this time to watched the boy but didn't move much more. He was rapidly becoming better as he absorbed more and more heat.

"<Is it because you attack things that you want to be cured?>"

"<This is the first time this has happened but I feared it would. So in part, yes. How did you know that I was here for the cure anyway?>" There was definitely something different about this kid. He just couldn't put a finger on just exactly what it was. Was he psychic or something?

Victor gave a passable pronunciation of Terrieri. He even rolled the r's right. The blonde boy gave him an approving pat for this. Not with a sheet, but just with his hand. That is what you did with things that purred, yes? You patted them? He had never had a real pet. Only Dog, and now Terrier.

His reply to Victor's question was very matter-of-fact. "<Your file says so.>" 

The man was mostly dry now, and he seemed to be moving a lot more (but not in terrifying, camera-destroying ways). Panu hopped down again, and grabbed another blanket. This one he carefully threw over one of the mutant's shoulders. With Terrier's stiff legs, he nudged it over the other shoulder, as well. He tapped the mutant's chin, and pointed up, gesturing for the man to raise his head. Then, very carefully, he felt his way through tying the blanket ends in a knot.

There. Cape-blankets were very warm to wear. Panu wore them all the time.

"<Are you feeling better now? You are not going to die? It would be bad if you did, Jaager would not like it.>" 

"<Your file says so.>"

He blinked at this, now that confirmed that something was definitely up. "<And how would you know about my file? Only the doctors and Mr.Jaager should have access to that.>" Perhaps one of the doctors was Panu's parent and that how the kid knew. But by this time was getting the feeling that it had nothing to do with parents.

He lifted his head, letting the child tie a blanket cloak around his neck. The sheet covered enough, but as he sat up slowly, he grabbed another one to wrap around his waist. Just in case the little cape didn't cover all of him. Wouldn't do to let the child see him indecent.

"<Are you feeling better now? You are not going to die? It would be bad if you did, Jaager would not like it.>"

He smiled again, keeping it closed mouthed so as to not frighten him. "<Yes, much better. Thank you for helping me. What's your name?>" The kid had connections to Jaager, which was...interesting? He couldn't say whether it was good or bad. Ambrose made him suspicious, natural instinct pegged the man as predator, dangerous. But he knew the man to be civil and generous. So maybe Panu had a better idea of what the man was really like.