Work Text:
Lizzie is the odd one out. She has been since the day she was born. With her strange fascination with nature, oddly colored hair and eyes, and apparent social anxiety, she has never found a place she truly belonged…that is, apart from the strange cave that from an early age Lizzie knew to keep secret. With its biological wonders, there was simply no way the people who found it would truly understand and appreciate it. So, one day, when she was nine, after a visit to the cave, when her father has some strange ‘investors’ come, saying even stranger things like “Subject A81” and “imperfection probability”, she is understandably confused and scared, but her parents seem to have no recollection of these strange monthly occurrences. Everything only escalated when a couple finds out about the cave, and go to the authorities, Lizzie’s life turns completely upside down.
Clide–the later name for Subject B32– is completely isolated. Since a fire in the main labs, which he was blamed for, the only human interaction he’s had is with the guards and his ‘therapist’, Alaquina. He’s spent his entire life certain he’d be sent to the dreaded C.S.R–Council of Scientific Rehabilitation–where he’d most likely be forced into the most dangerous work they could find. His only hope is the fact that the ‘therapist’ is sympathetic. Unfortunately, Josiah, the head of the organization, dislikes her just about as much as he hates Clide. But when a strange girl with a strange name joins him in his solitude, he just begins to hope.
Alaquina is this close to being fired. The only thing stopping her from almost certain unemployment and, consequently, at least for her company, death, is a shortage of staff and her late father’s former occupation as the head of the organization. Both her brothers and father died to accomplish this dream, and the new leader has a much less benevolent outlook on how to proceed. Josiah, the new head of the organization, has given her one last chance to stay at the labs: Manage to escort two subjects, one of which she has played therapist for three years for, to the C.S.R, and keep her job. Alaquina accepts, but everything becomes much more confusing as Alaquina realizes that the two subjects she is leading to a life of servitude and labor are actually the first ‘Success’es in decades. So Alaquina has an inescapable decision: Deliver them safely to the C.S.R, and continue living a life of fear and uncertainty, or help them escape, and be on the run…and possibly finish what her family started.