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There's a crash of glass and shouting. Meg knows it's bad when Mona perks her ears up and jumps down from the bed. The four-month-old kitten doesn't run from chaos so much as lurch towards it with interest. Which just proves that she's in the right house -- one of them. Meg included.
She tears the door open and heads in the direction of the shouting -- which, of course, is emanating from the basement. West needling and defensive, Dan angry and admonishing. Both of which considerably quiet the second she opens the basement door. By the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs, they’ve both turned to face her, abruptly close-lipped with matching guilty stares.
"What's going on?" she asks, suppressing a shiver. Late November nights are cold in Arkham and the basement is little more than exposed walls and a concrete floor.
"Nothing!"
Oh hell, that was in unison.
"Really?" she says. They're standing shoulder-to-shoulder, braced in front of the lab table like an asymmetric wall. "Move."
"Meg, please--" Dan says.
She steals a peek between their bodies, taking in the shape of an item… that seems to be moving. "What's under the bucket?"
"Consciousness in whole parts," West says from behind Dan's right shoulder. Winces as the taller man twitches a non-verbal reprimand.
"Move ."
Dan lilts to the side and the bucket finally topples over on its own.
It's a hand. Amputated at the forearm cleanly, a square patch of the dermis has been peeled away to reveal working and re-animated tendons shifting and pinioning as the fingers open and close. Meg swallows her revulsion as she takes in more details: the fingernails are long, the remnants of what was glitter nail polish with a clear top coat rubbed off inexpertly with ethyl acetate, and ragged in a few places that match some nasty scratches on Herbert's neck. She suspects bruising from the finger marks will pop up tomorrow. Like the ones that were on her neck for weeks after...
"You are. So. Stupid!" The hand is forgotten as she charges forward to swat and the shorter scientist's arms, and shoulders, narrowly missing his face with a closed fist.
"How dare you insult my intelligence?!"
"How dare you not practice basic lab safety in your own home?! Was one life-ending experience just not enough for you, you fucking idiot?!" Dan grabs her arm and she reverses course, turning on her taller partner. "And you! Where the hell were you when this happened?!"
"He was upstairs, canoodling with you, I expect. It is Thursday, isn't it?"
Thursday. The night Dan sleeps with Meg.
They have their relationships and various interactions mapped out in terms of days and schedules, in different colors and different handwriting, all very neat and orderly as per West’s stated preference back when all this started. All the more necessary now as their normal school schedules have become a morass of meetings with law enforcement, financial aid officers, and probate lawyers. It's on the tip of her tongue to tell him to not use her date night as an excuse to be a little psycho, but his eyes are darting around the room and his mouth is tight and, after so many weeks of recovery, she may recognize some of these signals now.
"It is Thursday,” she confirms, voice flat. “And you hurt yourself. Because you would rather distract yourself with something dangerous than actually tell someone you're having a difficult night. Was it worth it?”
Furtive glance at everywhere but the other humans in the room. She’s cut him and he’s cornered and it doesn’t matter because she’s furious and can’t stop.
“You're bleeding, you stupid idiot! Was it worth it?"
"I bleed all the time!” he shouts, the jittery mask dropped revealing the raw fury underneath. “My very first experiments were with my own blood -- this is all irrelevant!"
"It's not to me," Dan says, quietly. His eyes are wide and misty when they turn to look at him, and he shrinks against the banister, face bare with anguish.
Dan's fugue sets off a domino effect: because now Herbert is throwing a towel over the "specimen," shunting his equipment to the side of the lab table... scrambling in his way, in the same manner a kid caught in an indiscretion might. Scrambling and stumbling into Dan’s space in appeal and groping their boyfriend’s arm and chest and face in frenzied reassurances. That he’s okay (he’s not), that nothing serious happened (it did), that he has everything under control (he does not ).
And, because this has suddenly become Not Her Fight, she scoops up Mona (who has taken advantage of the distracted humans long enough to ascend to the lab table, sniffing the spot where the bucket just was) and beats a steady retreat back up the stairs.
--
Of course, the night isn’t over. Dan returns eventually and the adrenaline spike they all experienced evens out, but Meg’s good night’s sleep is effectively canceled.
She sits at the kitchen table for the first hour or so, wrapped in a quilt and waiting for her brain to stop firing random synapses so that she can finally crawl over to the sofa pass out. Around 5am, when sleep still hasn’t come, she swaps the quilt for Dan’s Miskatonic sweatshirt, toes on her tennis shoes and walks down to the basement.
“I told you, Daniel, I don’t need to sl--!” West’s eyes widen as he looks up from his notebook to see who’s actually disturbed his basement sanctum.
"’Consciousness in whole parts?’" she asks, relieved to see the dissection tools soaking in a tray of Betadine solution next to him. At least the slash-and-poke game appears to be over for the time being.
"I learned it from--" He doesn't trail off so much as stop. Meg wonders if it’s discretion or the unconscious horror on her face that she fails to tamp down.
Confirmation that the nerves were not just reacting to the reagent -- well, attempting to strangle the scientist who reactivated your system showed a certain level of intent. Unless it was merely reflexive. And the source of the hypothesis could hardly be counted a professional experiment, so of course he would need repeated experiments to address the question…
"Did you take notes?" she asks, pulling the zipper on the hoodie up to her chin and briefly wishing she’d thrown a scarf on as well.
"Obviously."
"So you've established that joints and tendons have full functionality with the reagent. What else is in the murder fridge?"
"It's not murder,” West corrects her, “it's light theft at best. The school wasn't using them."
"Stop stealing body parts from the school!"
"It's the school or the cemetery,” he says, frustration visible, morphing to bargaining. “Unless you know of another place I can procure human specimens?"
“You can’t use lab mice like everybody else?”
“The nervous systems of rodents are not even remotely comparable to human beings.”
She sighs, reminding herself to take on one battle at a time. "What else is in the fridge?"
He doesn't answer, doesn’t stop her as she moves toward the back counter where the mini-fridge is mounted; chained and padlocked. She tugs at the chain to test the give, finding none.
"Give me the key," she turns to look at him, hand open, palm up.
"Dan has one."
"I'm asking you ," she retorts. "Or you could just open it yourself and save us the trouble."
He produces the key, releasing the lock with a sniff.
The vials of West's serum cast a green glow on a stack of vacuum-packed limbs and internal organs. Vacuum-packed. At least it's not sandwich bags. She reaches for a familiar-shaped one.
"Kidney?"
"It's not particularly pertinent without a bladder," he replies, tone almost dismissive.
And yet he had taken it anyway. This was beginning to look like a compulsion.
"If you're focusing on the reaction in individual parts, let's see what it does without a bladder attached to it. See if it attempts to filter nitrogen from blood independent of a system providing it. I'm guessing you know what that looks like."
"In theory," his eyes are glittering now. She’s surprised him. Maybe impressed him, though she doubts he would ever admit that.
"A kidney can't throttle you. Put it in a dish deep enough, it won't even hiccup."
"You can always stay and spot me," he offers. "If it will ease your mind."
She stays.
"You got these from the morgue?" she asks, pouring a bag of donor blood into a pan, nudging a box of latex gloves with her elbow until West finally takes the hint.
"Yes,” he replies, pulling on a pair of gloves. “Specifically the materials reserved for in-lecture demonstrations."
"If you help yourself to many more of these, someone is definitely going to notice. Let’s try and make it count."
--
It's about safety, not curiosity. Not even morbid curiosity. That's what she tells herself. It's what she tells Dan who, in spite of (or maybe because of) tender emotions, is more than happy to cede some of his lab assistant responsibilities for his boyfriend. The man who can't seem to let even personal catastrophe after personal catastrophe slow him down.
She doesn't say anything to West himself, who just adds a new timetable to their calendar in green pencil.
--
"What exactly are you studying?" West finally asks, after they've been at work together in the basement lab for three nights in a row.
"I'm a medical student,” she answers, eyes not leaving her notes. The kidney continues to hiccup in the pan, emitting bubbles in a pool of donor blood. “Just like you.”
“What's your degree concentration?” He produces a Hach Test strip, waiting to swap the pan at the 30-minute mark, same as he did at the 5-minute mark and the 15-minute mark.
“Double-major: evolutionary biology and biochemistry.”
“...I've not seen you in lectures.”
“I'm in my last year,” she replies, turning to a blank page in her notebook. “Well, I was. Between this semester’s leave of absence and everything else, I’m probably looking at finishing up when you and Dan do.”
Unless, of course, she opts to take a lower position in a research lab, or follow the microbiology team on another Antarctic study that, given the school’s history, she may have a 15 percent chance of returning from. It would, she thinks, be one way of avoiding the bad news she suspects is coming about her tuition waiver after they return from leave.
The dread so consumes her for a moment, interspersed with observations of the kidney in the dish, she nearly misses West’s stare: curious, edged with awe.
“What? Not bad for a bubble-headed co-ed?”
West shakes his head.
“Not at all.”