A Lion Still Has Claws (Sandersides AU)

Chapter 2

Two hours on the treadmill and Roman was absolutely exhausted, despite his heightened stamina. His legs felt like jelly and sweat stung his eyes as he gasped and slowed to a stop. He staggered onto the floor and dropped on one of the chairs that lined the cold brick wall. Roman picked up his bottle and drank more water than should be possible in the amount of time, his tail twitching as he observed the others.

Patton and Remus were struggling to lift weights while Remy cheered them on, gasping as much as Roman had been with an inhaler in hand from the floor. Janus, as always, was focused, ignoring everyone else as he ran on the treadmill next to the one Roman had just been on. One of the scientists, a woman Roman vaguely recognised, stood by the door and made regular notes on a clipboard.

She looked down at her watch as Roman got to his feet, wiping his mouth and dropping the bottle onto the chair behind him.

"Alright, that's enough exercise for today. Break is in five minutes so go get cleaned up,"

Her voice was brisk and cold, her face impassive and uncaring, as was normal for the workers at the facility. They all lacked personality and had little patience for anything. Roman shoots his head and wiped his forehead with one of the towels that hung by the door. Janus did the same next to him. His chest was heaving and his hair stuck to ten scales on his forehead.

"Tryhard," Roman said.

Janus glanced at him. "Shut it Aslan,"

"Oh don't you start at the Aslan thing as well slithers,"

Janus hissed, but it had no real menace behind it. He hit Roman with the towel before spinning on his heel and going to pull Remus to his feet. The boy had collapsed onto his stomach after doing the bare minimum exercise and was trying to steal Remy's inhaler with a tentacle. Remy's tail lashed irritably.

"Can you not, I need this to breath,"

Remus giggled in that manic way of his as he was pulled up. "Hi Jay," he said, giving up on his theft attempt.

"Hello Remus," Janus sighed.

Patton shook his head at Remus and dodged under the tentacle that was swung his way as he walked over to Roman. "Heya,"

"Hola padré," Roman said, stretching.

"Why do you call me that?" Patton asked.

Roman thought about it. "You know, I don't actually know. I just kinda do,"

Patton's tail swished. "Ok then. We should probably get going,"

"Yes dad. C'mon guys," He called over his shoulder, shoving the door open with his side. Other than a single flickering light, the corridor outside of one of the many gym rooms was void of movement, although Roman could see figures moving behind a few of the doors that lined the left hand wall. The right, like every hallway in this place, had depictions of graphs, charts and other science related things Roman couldn't understand.

The break room was empty as it always was on Thursday mornings. Roman and the others sat on the hard plastic chairs around one of the many tables. Remy pulled a pad of paper and a pen towards him and started drawing random doodles on it, a cheetah, cat, lion, snake and octopus. He had drawn similar things everyday and was getting pretty good at it.

Janus glanced around and leaned back in his chair, his lean frame relaxed but also somehow coiled like that of well, a snake. Patton sighed and leaned his head on Roman's shoulder. He was the smallest of their little group of misfits and the two hours of nonstop workouts were hard on him. The five of them sat in silence (apart from Remus, who regularly laughed or suggested twisted activities they could do and was often met by a clap on the back of the head by Janus). They liked the peace their breaks brought, free from tests and monitoring.

Ok there was a security camera in each corner of the room, but there were cameras everywhere in the facility.

Their ten minutes of peace was cut short by Janus dropping his feet of the table and looking toward the door. He had gone incredibly still, his hand resting on the table.

"Someone coming?" Remy asked, his pen poised above the page. He turned his ear towards the door and so did Roman. Soon enough he picked up the sound of three sets of footsteps.

The others had heard them to, excluding Remus, who was looking at the door with a confused expression. He didn't have heightened hearing or a sensitivity to vibrations so when the others picked up on something he couldn't he looked where they looked and pretended he knew why was looking at it.

The door swung open and three scientists walked in. Two of them Roman didn't know; they worked with the older inhabitants, but the third was the young man with the limp they had seen at breakfast. The fact that they were in there put Roman on edge; scientists didn't usually enter the break room on their own. The two older scientists looked to be following the younger and his voice was irritable. They cut of as soon as they saw the boys but Roman had managed to grab the words 'ridiculous' and 'ungrounded', which just made him confused.

Roman and the others kept theirs eyes down and pretended to be doing something. Only Remy was successful, continuing with his drawing. The two scientists left the room quickly after their conversation died, but the young man limped over to Roman's table.

"Hello," He said, in a short, clipped tone. He sounded nervous and his eyes kept darting around. "I don't think we've been introduced. My name is Dr Logan Berry. I'll be working with you five from now on,"

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Wow Logan's here now yay. I don't have much to say here other than that ok I'll go

Later🤟🏻