project madness

five: //c stirling

five: //c stirling

Ivo was one of us, until he wasn't.

I was kind of surprised, actually, when it happened, though I probably should have expected some room for mistakes in a scientific trial. They certainly did. They had the room ready and everything.

That room was where Beetle, Scippio, and I were going. Evie wasn't aloud to come with us, Fox preferred to stay on high ground with the carnivorous rat on the loose, Pilot was who knows where, and Tatiana and Ivo never really had the best interactions, even with him in his diminutive state.

When we reached the room, Scippio flashed his keycard wordlessly at the scanner next to the door, and the lock clicked. We stepped inside.

Ivo looked like he was sleeping - his hospital bed was reclined all the way, his eyes were closed, his breathing even - but as soon as the door opened, his eyes followed suit. They were those kind of eyes that you never could shake - the color of ice and just as slippery. It was hard for everyone to hold his gaze.

"Hey," Beetle said first, sitting down in the single chair beside Ivo's bed. Scippio glared at him until he glumly got up, but after Scippio sat down Beetle sat on his lap. I just leaned against the wall by the door. I didn't know Ivo like they did.

Ivo's gaze flicked to me, and I blinked, surprised. Normally, he barely even noticed me. "Your person is missing," he informed me.

"She's in the lab, I think," I replied. Ivo always called Tatiana my person, and me Tatiana's person. It was what pets were supposed to call their owners - their person.

"No. She is missing." Ivo's head snapped to the left, his gaze going cloudy in the empty air. "But she's coming back - no, she was never here in the first place - she's missing, but she's coming back - no - how are your experiments going?" He finished, like nothing previously had happened.

Beetle, Scippio, and I shared a look. "Fine, same as usual," Scippio said.

"Have they found him yet?"

Another look. "Maybe they could, if you could tell us who he is," Scippio said.

"You know already," he enthused. "Just find him before something bad happens."

Scippio sighed and pushed Beetle off his lap. "Well, in other news, there's a carnivorous, cannibalistic rat on the loose."

Some of the old Ivo popped back into his amused glance. "How lovely." His eyes clouded over again, and his head moved to the left. "He knows, he knows - they must know too, then, they have to - should we tell him? - we might have to - she definitely knows - I wonder if he remembers - should we tell him? - no - of course, of course, he's the only one who keeps our gaze - should we?"

Awkwardly, I felt both Scippio and Beetle turn to stare at me. "I don't remember anything before Project MADNESS," I told Ivo.

He narrowed his eyes at me. "You remember your person. Don't you remember? - should we . . . "

He wouldn't stop staring at me. I turned to Scippio and Beetle for backup, but Beetle was grumpily sitting on the ground, ignoring everything, and Scippio was just smirking. Finally he sighed and turned back to Ivo. "Leave the puppy alone. Hey, what's that?"

"Hey!" I called indignantly. It was a long standing joke for them to call me a puppy, something started by Tatiana ages ago and encouraged by Evie as soon as she got here, not to mention egged on by Ivo's 'person' thing. Tatiana once said I looked like a puppy. That wasn't exactly how I liked to picture myself. She said it fit with my name. Also not how I liked to picture my name. I told her my grandmother gave it to me. She asked me if my grandmother liked puppies. I ended the conversation right there.

"No, seriously." Scippio stood up, his brow furrowed. "Ivo, what's that?" He pointed at Ivo's nightstand. I followed his line of sight to the open sketchbook on the table. The profile sketched there - my stomach flipped. I knew that. Somehow, I knew that.

I wasn't lying when I said I couldn't remember anything before Project MADNESS. But that face - that was definitely there somewhere.

"I've seen this before," Scippio muttered. He looked to Ivo for consent, and then picked up the picture and held it up for Beetle and me. "I've definitely seen this before."

The door swung open, making Beetle and me jump. Pilot swished into the room, closing the door behind her. "Hi, T caught the rat, so - " she spun around and stopped talking, her mouth hanging suspended as she caught sight of the drawing. "What the hell is that? That looks really familiar."

"Yeah, no kidding," Scippio said. "Ivo, who is this?"

Ivo snapped back to reality and grinned eerily at Scippio. "Should we? - no, they don't deserve to know - but we should - we should - that's him." He finished.

All of us in the room - minus Ivo - shared a very prominent look. "Who is he?" I asked.

"You know already. You all know already, you've just forgotten."

The door opened again, alerting our attention. To my surprise, it was Grayson who burst into the room, his lab coat hanging half-off and his face grave and pinched. He stopped short at the sight of the drawing Scippio was holding, but he didn't look as surprised or unnerved as I would have thought.

"Ivo," he said evenly, with an undercurrent of danger in his voice. "Why don't you focus on drawing something else from here on?"

Ivo tilted his head. "This is bad - very bad - they'll forget their test tube friend next, at this rate."

I frowned. Test tube friend? From the confused look on everyone else's faces, none of us knew what he was talking about. None of us kids, I mean.

"Don't repeat that to my test subjects ever again, Ivo," Grayson snapped, his voice deadly quiet. Beetle's eyes widened. Grayson never really yelled at anyone but Tatiana.

"Aren't I your test subject, too?" Ivo's voice was taunting. He didn't normally get this way - this sounded almost like the old him. "Or did that experiment go down the drain - literally?" He laughed, even as my stomach turned and I saw Scippio's face darken.

"Don't joke about that," Scippi said in a clipped tone. I hadn't paid attention much when I first got here, but according to Fox and Pilot, Ivo had been Scippio's best friend, until -

Well, until the experiment went south. In other words, until, two years back, Ivo lost it and slit his wrists over the bathroom shower drain, until Scippio found him in a pool of his own blood and had to resuscitate him, until he woke up a different Ivo, someone we never would and never could know.

Ivo frowned, and him and Scippio stared at each other for a while, until Scippio looked away. The doctors weren't sure, but it was entirely possible that he could have had some memory loss, or maybe some catatonia induced block, but it was possible that he might have completely taken Scippio out of all his memories. That he might have taken all of us, all of our friendships, out.

"You should probably leave," Grayson told us quietly.

Slowly, reluctantly, we all filtered out the door. As I passed by, I asked, "Who is it?"

Grayson sighed. "I don't know."

Pilot shuffled past me with a look that said 'liar.' I couldn't help but agree.