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Gordon opened his eyes to find a blurry, glittery kaleidoscope in front of him. Real bright. Snowball, maybe? Maybe he was living inside a snowball. He’d cracked one open as a kid on a dare, but it really hadn’t been anything special on the inside. If his life trajectory had changed, he could’ve written a poem like that. Gordon wasn’t really a poet, though. Like, he always thought he was a sensitive guy, but not that kind of sensitive. Like, crying at don't-go-where-I-can't-follow-Mr. Frodo sensitive.
Snowglobes didn’t beep, did they? No, and there was an awful lot of beeping going on, and he couldn’t actually move all that much. Shame. He wanted to put on his glasses. Maybe get to see something in this grey-walled room, trimmed in white. Only supervillains did the grey-and-white color scheme. Or Heaven.
Oh-ho! There was no mistaking that cueball over there, though. That right there was his best friend. So much as Gordon was capable of feeling things at the minute, what with Blofeld’s cat making biscuits in his brain folds, Gordon liked seeing his best friend. The beeping sound started to speed up.
“Hey.” Ooh, he didn’t sound right, did he? Heeeeeyyyyy. He sounded drunk. No, high. No, really drunk. “Hey, Warren! It’s Warren. Hi, Warren …”
He tried to wave his hand. That was definitely a no-go. Gordon tried to nudge the edge of the metal chair Warren was sitting on, right next to his bed, and he didn’t manage more than a tap.
“Gordon! Gordon, hi, it’s me, it’s Warren!”
Thank god Warren sounded just as bad as he did - if a bit more energetic about it. Sounded like he'd just come off of running a marathon, honestly. Warren didn’t move much off his chair. Not that Gordon expected a hug or anything, he was pretty sure that he hadn’t nearly died – wherever they were. Had he gotten his appendix out? He'd always been really concerned about his appendix. Gordon’s eyes followed a vaguely transparent line coming from Warren’s arm. Snake? No, probably not a snake. Gosh, he missed Waffles, who was also a reptile. Where was Waffles?
“Hi, Warren,” Gordon mused sleepily. “What’s goin’ on?”
“You nearly died, man.”
“Did not.”
“Did …” Aw, sleepy boy! Sleepy time bald man. Biiiiig yawn. “Did too. You were shot. By m’wife.”
Did he remember that? Gordon put his last sober brain cell together to focus on that point. That’s right! There was a place called Red Valley. Bad place. Scary place. Kind of cool, if you avoided the horrors. They were going to escape, and he’d been trying to get Warren alone so that they could go screaming into the sunset, but then …
Oh, yeah! He did nearly die. Byrony. What a dreadful woman. There'd been a gun! Had been a long time since Gordon had ever seen a gun.
“Oh, no,” he sighed fretfully. “That’s not good?”
There were a couple of transparent lines coming from both his arms, actually, and a few less transparent ones elsewhere. This wasn’t the way Terminator started. Boo. One of these lines was definitely feeding him the good stuff. Gordon knew that because he was a very smart boy.
“Yeah. Yeah, they had to put you – put you into cryosleep, Gordon.”
“Did not.”
“Did too,” Warren insisted. “And your body … body’s all … fucked up?”
“Oh. ‘m not bald like you, am I?”
“’m not bald.”
“You’re more-or-less bald.” Thing was, he’d tried to be diplomatic about it before. Some guys were sensitive about their hair. Not everyone could be gifted with Gordon’s fantastic hair (if he did say so himself). A couple of trips in and out of hypersleep would really fuck up his hair follicles, though. It’d all just come out, once. Poof.
“’s your blood that’s bad. They used the, the bad serum on you,” he tried to explain. Gordon forgot what the word serum meant. “Not my fault. I was bleeding from everywhere. Wasn't asked.”
Gross.
“So. So we’re. My blood. ‘s all. Going to put it in your body, and. And you’ll be set. They just need a lot of it, y’know.” To explain, Warren raised his arm. Gordon tried to focus as he wiggled it around. “My blood.”
Like Warren must be mistaken, Gordon corrected. “Can’t do that. It’s yours.”
“So?”
“You need blood.” Gordon’s eyes half closed; he had to forced them to open again. A steadily growing anxiety was filling him under several million layers of mental blankets. “Or. Or you’ll die.”
“Don’t care.” Warren sounded like he were about to nod off, himself. “You’re m’best friend.”
“Warren.”
“An’ I want to. So.”
“You’ll die.”
“I’m doin’ it. They’ve already taken it, so. That's it.”
Gordon was crying. He hadn’t sure when or where he’d started doing that, but his tears were freezing cold. Couldn’t be sure why. “W-Warren –”
“No. Nup. It’s happening. You’re my best friend.”
“You’re my best friend,” Gordon sobbed drowsily, starting to sniffle. “I don’t want you to die for me, you … you deserve more than –”
“Can’t think of a better way to go,” Warren slurred in return. Gordon felt something quite cold on his hand, and realized it was Warren’s own. “I want to. I wanna help. So. Take it. Take all my blood.”
“W-w-warren –!” Gordon started to sob, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.
“For god’s sake!” Another voice sounded from the doorway, but Gordon couldn’t quite turn his head to see. “Your body makes more blood! Stop – will both of you stop bloody blubbering about it? Warren, I swear to god, you get out of that chair and I’m strapping you in.”
“Whozzat?” Gordon mumbled, because he was saying goodbye to his dying friend, and this person was being a little rude about it.
“Neither of you are dying. Your body makes more blood. Warren’s body has adapted to the effects of the serum, and his blood has properties that might make up for some of the problems brought on by your degraded version. It’s practically a simple blood transfusion, and ...”
... And they were asleep. Gordon hadn’t even moved, but Aubrey could hear the heart rate monitor starting to level out. Warren was sitting on the chair like he were dead, cheek awkwardly pressed against his shoulder.
Aubrey groaned, disgruntled.
“You can’t blame them too much, can you? Surely.” Hester was at her elbow. Aubrey didn’t doubt that she’d overheard the whole business. After Warren’s repeated attempts at escape, she’d had the foresight to put cameras in both of their rooms. “They’re off their tits.”
“This is the third time they’ve had this conversation. Warren dehydrates himself from crying and Gordon wrecks his heart rate. They’re a terrible double act.”
“At least Warren remembers what he’s doing here?” Hester soothed, putting a hand on Audrey’s back. “That’s progress.”
“It is. Better than him trying to beat down the door.”
“We probably should move him back to his own room, soon. He’s nearly finished his IV bag. Time for another feeding from the vampires. And Grace will need to give Gordon a few more injections.”
Still so odd to see them both. They were more-or-less what Aubrey remembered. Warren looked like an experimental lab rat – not a metaphorical one, either.
Gordon’s body had crunched a bit when he’d been taken out of the cryopod. Ice. His pod might have failed, or it might have been a consequence of the degradation. Aubrey wasn’t certain if she could say yet, nor which outcome she’d rather. It wasn’t a good sound. Brought back bad memories. During the first few trials, the noise always reminded Aubrey of cracking ice cubes out of the tray.
It wasn’t a sure thing, Gordon surviving. When Warren had been out, earlier, Gordon’s heart had decided that it didn’t like being outside the cryopod much.
There wasn’t much else they could do, though. Red Valley was being decommissioned, and the power and space for the cryopods along with it. They would’ve died.
Aubrey wondered if that made her heartless, only waking them up because the money had run out. Then again, waking them up before probably would’ve been crueller.
Scarcely mattered, anymore. Aubrey had stopped caring about those things a while ago. Not that she considered herself a cruel woman – but she’d stopped worrying about it as much. She leaned against Hester’s side a little, watching those two memories sleep away in their beds.
She hoped they were okay, really. Bad run of things, the both of them. They were both a bit prickish, sure, but this was something else.
“Call Grace,” she said softly to her wife. “I’ll get Warren back to his room.”