Chapter 6

The Rabbit Den

The thing with tranquilizers is that, between getting knocked out and waking back up again, it feels like no time passes at all. One moment, Nat has blood on their teeth. The next, their eyes already snap open—to the sight of absolutely blinding light, so white it feels like it singes their retinas to a crisp.

Nat thrashes their head to the side, blinded. Stars dance across their vision, pink and yellow and flashing. They thrash again, but nothing budges. Panic blooms up in their chest—why can't they move?

They squeeze their eyes shut and move their head to the other side, hoping that the light is only coming from overhead, that they got unlucky. Nat squints through their lashes at a wall, panting, waiting as the stars slowly fade and reveal what on Earth it is that they're looking at.

They wish they hadn't. Against a stark white wall, the outlines of an entire slew of medical instruments solidify slowly. Drips and machines spread out wires and tubes into all directions like an uprooted plant. Before they can fully recognize any of it, they squeeze their eyes shut as cold fear clamps down on their windpipe.

Out. They need to get out. But as Nat tries to move their hand, they realize that they can't feel it. Heaving up their arm, nothing comes into sight, nothing happens. It forces them to squint down, down to where their hand is supposed to be. Still there. Still attached. But relief is short lived, because Nat has been tied down to an operating table.

They strain, struggle. Just as they think they feel the first crack, something grips their wrist and pushes down.

Their heart pounds in their ears as a figure in a white hazmat suit bends over them.

"No," they gasp out, muffled. They scream, and it's muffled too—they can't feel their mouth properly, but it sounds like there's something in it. Muzzled, they realize, like a rabid animal. Nat thrashes harder against their bounds, shaking the cold table underneath their back—

"Hi Natalie," the figure in the hazmat suit says, and Nat's blood runs cold. "Long time no see."

They'd recognize that voice anywhere. It's fucking Rabbit of all people. And this time, Nat howls with rage.

"Well, yes, it's nice to see you too," Rabbit says, and presses down harder on Nat's wrist until they think they can feel the bones grind against each other and Nat tenses in pain. She reaches underneath the table, and something tightens round Nat to pull them down, down against the cold table. "I didn't really expect much of a different reaction from you, especially considering the kind of semiochemicals flooding your brain right now."

Nat tries to snap, tries to show teeth.

"I'm sure you would love that," Rabbit says as she turns away from them. "Biting a chunk out of me. You already did a number on Aarón." Ron. Nat's eyes widen as they realize that he must've been the one who brought them here. The traitor. So much for 'fuck Rabbit, I'm not talking to Rabbit'.

"But to be honest with you, I don't really care," Rabbit continues her monologue, and leans over Nat fully, all 6'2" of her, looming. She's talking fast, probably pounded caffeine pills again. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime for me, you know that? And I don't really care how you feel about it." She reaches over their head and pulls at something—Nat can't tell what, but she grabs them by the chin with so much more strength and violence than her small voice could ever promise and forces them into a cold metal hold, prongs on either side of Nat's face.

"I never really understood that!" Rabbit continues as she pulls up a swivel stool, leaving Nat to throw their weight around desperately, feel the metal press the flesh of their cheeks down into their teeth. "You know? You're always calling yourself a person of science, but whenever I tried to come near you with it, you'd try to murder me. Which, by the way, is not very polite."

Nat laughs out loud through their bounds. They'll fucking show her polite if they ever get out of this.

"See," Rabbit pulls a pair of blue gloves over the ones built into the hazmat suit, "If you were really that concerned with being famous, with leaving some kind of trace, you would have let me study you. But you didn't. So it kind of follows that you weren't really ever all that serious about it. You've always been kind of a liar. ...But we're going to make up for all that today! You are so much more fascinating right now than you've ever been. I can't believe how lucid you still are, or for that matter how intact your brain is."

Nat tries to spit through the gag. Satisfyingly, some of it lands on Rabbit.

She stills and stares through the black screen of her suit. "You know what?" she says, "I think, actually, you're just a little too lucid," and reaches over to the drip that Nat regrettably knows is hooked up to them, that they can see just so out of the corner of their eye, the shape of it like a thorn dug deep into the flesh of their mind.

She's stuck a needle in them, violated the bounds of their body. Their skin is no longer a barrier between them and her. Rabbit is in. And as the edges of their vision blur and Rabbit holds up a pair of scissors, Nat realizes in terror just how much more true that's about to get.

The smell of honey hits them.

Nat twitches in their bounds. No. Antiseptic, cold metal, and coriander, somewhere, faintly, but no honey. Rabbit grabs for the edge of their shirt and tears the scissors through it. It's a dull sensation. She's definitely drugged them in more ways than one. Nat shakes.

"I need to get at your plants somehow," Rabbit has the nerve to scold them. "You know very well that you need to be naked for that. This is purely professional." Only another tear of fabric betrays that she's cut up their shirt.

"This is nothing to be ashamed of," he smiles. "Please, relax."

Nat squeezes their eyes shut.

"I'd knock you out completely," Rabbit sighs, "But I have to make sure your brain keeps functioning correctly as I work." They'll knock her out alright. Tear her to fucking pieces. But Nat reaches for that same rage again to try to strain against the bonds and comes up empty, mollified. Where there was fire, there is only fear now. What did she do to them? What the fuck did she do?

Rabbit pushes her rolling chair away from them and, without getting up, like it's nothing, she opens the chute of an incinerator and throws Nat's clothes in before slamming it shut. "Okay, that's taken care of! Now—" She flips a switch, and an incongruently cheerful pop song starts to play, some fast tempo electronic thing.

"Let's begin." Doctor Bishop's eyes crinkle kindly behind his safety goggles. "Are you scared?"

Nat nods their head, their windpipe too tight to make a noise.

"There's no reason to be, Chalice, I promise that this won't hurt. Here, can you feel this?"

Rabbit puts the knife against their skin, humming along with the music. "You shouldn't be able to feel this."

Nat shakes their head. They can't feel a thing.

"See?" Doctor Bishop smiles. "You're numb. And later when this wears off, I'll help you manage any pain that you might have. It'll hurt and itch as it heals, but that's nothing that a brave young scout like you can't take, is it?"

Nat takes a deep, shaking breath.

"Let's check on the health of your original sanguinis first, then." Although they're numb, Nat knows the exact moment that she makes the cut, because their brain is hit with a searing wave of pure panic. "Oh, good," Rabbit says, likely with a look at their face. "Their blood-brain communication highway seems to be intact. You're still getting signals from the sanguinis." She lifts a slice of stem on a scalpel away from them, and it's like watching her take their own liver out of their stomach. The edges of their vision fuzz.

"Do you know much about blood spider lilies?" Doctor Bishop asks.

"No," Nat admits. "They're not endemic here, right?"

"They're not," he smiles, and they can smell the honey on him from where they're sitting on the cloth-covered operating table. "The one I'm going to give you is from South Asia and blooms in response to downpours. That means that you're going to have to drink more water, especially as you adjust."

"These have taken a massive hit," Rabbit says. "I can see the cellular damage under the microscope. Why didn't you come to see me about this sooner? Sure, it's much more interesting for me like this, but you have to have some kind of self preservation instinct, don't you?"

"Fuck you," Nat gums around the thing in their mouth, unable to feel their tongue.

"This," Rabbit sighs, "is going to take a while."

"How long?" Nat asks.

"I'd like to be careful," Doctor Bishop smiles, then pulls a mask over his face. "An hour, likely two. Would you like me to explain the procedure to you?"

"I'll have to extract most of the myosotis by hand." Rabbit's voice feels distant, but her knife's blade very close. "Put you on a steady drip of targeted sanguiherbicides to kill what I can't get, then flush that out of you with blood encouragers so it doesn't rot inside you. And after that—" They don't catch the rest of what she says.

Doctor Bishop opens up a black glass cabinet. Heat radiates out, laying itself gently against Nat's bare skin. When the doctor turns around, he's cradling a small, writhing mass of roots. "This is your new friend."

Nat leans towards it over their knees, wide-eyed. "It's moving."

"It's just scared right now," he tilts his head at them, a smile on his voice. "We will fix that. But first..." He lays the wriggling thing back into its enclosure and shuts the door. Doctor Bishop changes out his gloves, then, to Nat's horror, picks up a silver-sharp scalpel, glinting in the light of his office. Nat pulls back on the table.

"Don't be scared, Chalice," he says. "Remember what I told you about the pain? And you'll be so much more when everything is said and done. You'll be a new thing, a miracle. You'll be our collective future."

Traitorously, Nat wonders for a moment whether the future really has to be them. They swallow hard, but let Doctor Bishop beckon them to lay back down.

"It won't hurt?"

"It won't," he soothes them. "If you don't want to, you don't even have to look."

It's only then that they realize he's already cutting into them. His hand on their shoulder holds them in place dully, no expression on his masked face, speckled with wide brown freckles where his skin peeks out behind the respirator. His breath rattling quietly through the filter, the gentle hum of lights, and the heartbeat in their ears are the only things they hear.

And then he pulls back, finally, and they do look. Nat does look. And he pulls back with a thin, red rag of blood and skin, as wide as his entire blue gloved hand. He has to startle back as they retch.

There's red on her knife now.

They watch Doctor Bishop wash their rag of skin out in a small bowl full of liquid, then another, until it's nothing but beige and pink. He's talking to them, they think, but the blood rushing through their ears is louder than his words.

With a sharp knife's tip, he carves out half and discards the rest. Wait, Nat wants to say. That was theirs.

He serrates the leftover rag, then pulls it apart just as gently as he'd touched that plant. Waffle-weave holes form in the skin, large enough to stick a pinkie finger through. Nat has to think about the hole that this rag must've left in them, but they can't. It's like touching hot coals. They can't look.

When they open their eyes again, Bishop is spraying the now dried off skin with something.

"What—"

"To reattach to you better," he says, his voice jarringly soothing. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I should have done this under full anesthesia," Nat tries to joke.

He laughs.

Rabbit cuts.

The writhing mass of roots lays itself into their shoulder. Doctor Bishop holds it there, gently cradled like a scared animal, as Nat squeezes their eyes shut and tries not to retch again.

"You're doing so well," he soothes.

"If you say so," Nat says.

"Soon you'll be warm and comfortable again," he says. "You just need to settle in."

For a moment, it doesn't feel like he's talking to them.

"All of this is way too good to burn." Rabbit pulls away blue and green. "This is such a pity. I wish I had the infrastructure to keep everything."

"Such a pity," Doctor Bishop sighs as Nat stumbles back out of the test chamber, their stomach twisting queasily. "No increased endurance, still prone to fatigue, and now you've failed the strength test too."

"I'm sorry," Nat pants, their lungs burning, their surgical scars itchy and painful. "Can I have some water? Please."

Doctor Bishop pinches the bridge of his nose and waves them away. "Back to your chamber now."

"More tests tomorrow?" they ask, a sinking feeling in their chest as Bishop turns away from them wordlessly and leaves.

"I never really understood why you ran away from the lab," Rabbit's voice echoes dully through their head. "Didn't you get everything there you ever could have wanted?"

Of course Nat can't answer her. Even if she hadn't gagged them—they wouldn't have the words to explain.

One night, two. Rabbit comes, cuts, leaves. She talks and talks, but Nat doesn't listen. They don't even feel.

By the time she finally undoes their wires and tubes, slides a finger between Nat's skin and their bounds, they barely even recall what that means.

"You're done with treatment," Rabbit says as she frees Nat. "There are more tests to run, but I need you to walk around so I can see if I hit any important nerves."

She props them up even as Nat sways, letting them lean on her heavily. Their feet hit the ground and suddenly, their legs remember what it is to stand, and then, what it means to leave.

They have to be on elephant grade painkillers, because Nat doesn't feel a thing as they start to run.

They're at the door faster than Rabbit can look.

"Hey, that's not—" she calls out after them, but Nat is already in the hallway.

Their bare soles slap against white tile as they scramble around corners, their heart in their throat as Rabbit takes up pursuit. Her legs are so much longer than theirs. It's no time at all before she grabs for them, and Nat's bare shoulder crashes into a cabinet. Books clatter onto the floor, and Nat's veins sing as they grab one and throw it straight into Rabbit's face with everything they have. It hits her straight between the eyes.

Victory is short lived. She reels forward again and grabs them by their jaw. As she slams them back into the wall, her face comes inches within reach of theirs, glasses cracked over eyes as blue as a riptide. It's with a start that Nat realizes that they can't wind their way out of her single handed grasp.

"Fuck," they strain. "What did you do to me?"

"Except save you, nothing," she says, a grim excitement on her face. "The much better question is what I did to myself."

"Hey," Ron barks. "Hey, let them go!"

He's standing in a doorway behind Rabbit, something like a holding cell behind him, and he looks like shit. His bad eye is swollen and bruised purple, his wrist and shoulder bandaged, and his arm is held in a sling. Rage overwhelms Nat at the sight of him, then gratitude, then pity—the fucking traitor.

"Why would I do that?" Rabbit looks at him over her shoulder, terrifyingly genuine. "I have zero reason to. They were absolutely headed for the door."

"I meant let go of their jaw, you fucking psycho," he snaps, grabbing her by the shoulder to haul her back. Rabbit fights back, never losing their grip on Nat's jaw as she does, even as Nat starts to dig their fingernails into her and draws deep red crescents into her skin.

Ron growls, putting his weight into it as he struggles, visibly giving Rabbit a run for her money. "Step number two, of course they were headed for the door! We are—" Rabbit shoves him off her before he can finish. Ron hits the ground hard, and despite everything, that is what makes Nat finally punch her, fist connecting to jaw, bone to bone, sending Rabbit stumbling.

She gasps in pain as she pushes them back into the opposite wall, away from her, and holds her face. "Ah, damn it," she hisses. "You still hit like a freight train."

"Damn right I do," Nat spits, widening their shaking stance like a bull ready to charge again, naked as they are.

Ron picks himself off the ground—he doesn't hold his hand out for Nat to pull him up. Nat doesn't offer it. "You got your gross ass specimens. We fulfilled our end of the deal."

"You made a deal with her?" Nat stares at him. "With Rabbit of all people?" His hair looks like shit, they note. It's half grown out, half poorly shaven, the curls at the back of his head an uneven length.

"Yeah, well," Rabbit rubs her jaw. "I'm not holding up my part of that. I get literally nothing out of letting someone as scientifically valuable as Natalie go. I would have to be an insane person to do that."

"You are," Ron and Nat snap in unison.

Rabbit wipes the blood from her mouth, shaking with rage. "I don't have to take this kind of thing from you two anymore." She grabs for Nat's shoulders again and yanks them violently back towards the exam room. But Ron is on her again in the blink of an eye, elbowing her in the guts. Rabbit heaves, but recovers and swipes for him so fast that he can barely jump out of the way fast enough, and then she shakes it off like nothing even happened.

"What the fuck," he holds his elbow as he stumbles back. "That's not normal. What did you do?"

Nat doesn't wait for the answer. Who gives a fuck what Rabbit did or didn't do to herself? They know what she's doing right now, to the more important person: them. They kick her shin with the full intention of breaking a bone, winding out of her grasp as they do. Rabbit screams out and grabs for their hair, and takes out a full bushel of it as Nat runs and Ron follows.

The next turn of the corner, unfortunately, is a dead end.

Nat's back hits the cold wall, Ron right next to them as Rabbit slowly rounds the corner and spits blood onto the floor, her glasses crooked and broken on her nose, the light hitting her from behind and drawing a terrible halo around her ginger red bun as she encroaches.

"Fuck you," Nat spits, rabid like a cornered animal. "It doesn't matter if you drag me back there again and do God knows what to me. You're never going to wash off the shame of flunking out of school, you fucking loser. Cutting some plants out of me is not going to make your mother love you again."

Rabbit gasps out, her eyes wide and hurt. "Why would you say that to me? Why are you always so rude? Get back into your rooms, both of you." But just as she grabs for them, Ron ducks, winding away from her, and pulls out his phone.

Rabbit freezes, startled as the dial tone rings out through the hallway. "I thought I took that from you."

All Ron does is flip her the bird. Rabbit tries to wrestle the phone away from him as it rings, hand on his wrist—but she's too late.

"Ron, hello," Haru's voice sounds out. "It's nice of you to call, but don't you think texting me back first would have been even nicer?"

"Sorry about that, boss!" Ron grins grimly, making perfect eye contact with Rabbit, who freezes in place like an icicle and reflexively lets go of him. "But hey, different topic real quick. Guess where we are right now!"

Nat would laugh if they still had that in them, or if they wanted Haru to hear their voice.

"In trouble," Haru deadpans, but there's an edge of worry to it that makes Nat do a double take. That tone of voice has never been directed at them.

"Man, you don't make these guessing games any fun," Ron snorts. "Yeah, so, we're at Rabbit's place and guess what, she's trying to hold us hostage. You wanna talk her out of that or should I?"

Haru lets out the longest sigh. "Lyd?"

"Yes," Rabbit says, small.

"Let them go, for the love of everything holy. We've been over this."

"And you know my arguments," Rabbit tries to defend herself.

"Yes I do. And you know mine. And you are also aware that this is a choice between locking my friends up in your dingy basement and staying friends with me. Yes?"

"...Yes."

"Good," Haru says, deadpan, short. "Have a good night." And the call ends.

Ron stares Rabbit down. She holds his gaze for a moment, then breaks away, angry and embarrassed, and fetches Nat's and Ron's belongings.

"Paper tiger," Ron mutters under his breath, holding his backpack one-armed, as Nat hobbles their way into a fresh set of clothes. They don't stop walking for it, don't even stop as they twinge and hiss.

"Then what are these," Nat snorts, gesturing at their bandages, before pulling a shirt over their head. "Paper cuts?"

"Fair 'nough."

Both of them flip Rabbit the bird one last time as they get into their car, and then they put the pedal to the metal.

Silence settles between them as the road flies away underneath them.

Where do they even start?

"Still relying on the Haru card, are you?" Nat finally breaks the silence.

"You mean asking her for help?" Ron pulls a face.

"I mean letting her solve your issues," Nat says, wrinkling their nose at him in disapproval.

Ron forgets to look at the road for a moment as he stares at them, straight at them, something unreadable in his big brown eyes. "Why exactly do you think you're still alive right now, Nat?"

"Bah," they spit, trying to stomp down the tinge of guilt that wells up in them as fast as possible. "Yeah, sure. We would have made it out without her. What did she even do? Say three words? We could have punched Rabbit's lights out. Me especially. You're still too much of a coward to hit that hard."

Hurt crosses Ron's face, but instead of snipping anything clever back, he turns to face the road.

"...Hey," Nat says. "Hey, I'm talking to you. And what were you even thinking, getting us into the fucking rabbit den? When has that ever ended well?"

"Tonight," he mumbles.

"Tonight?" Nat gasps and hits his shoulder. "Tonight?! Do you know what she did to me?!"

Ron tears the wheel around abruptly and swerves the car into the shoulder. Nat's head is thrown against the window as they shout in protest, and the ATV comes to a stop.

"Do you have any," he shouts out, "any idea what kind of fucking state you were in? Do you have any idea what kind of a near miss this was? You almost died! I almost died! I was bleeding out—I had to drag your body—and all you can fucking do is keep trying to dig at my friends?!"

Nat stares at him, wide eyed. They've never seen him this angry. Never at them.

"...I was awake when she cut me open," they say quietly. "I was conscious for all of that. And you weren't there. Ron. I was so scared. I'm—I'm sorry."

Ron shivers hard. He reaches for his face, and Nat sees the shine in his eyes, just a moment before he breaks into a heaving sob. He curls up to try and hide it, presses the balls of his fists into his eyes as he shakes and falls apart.

Nat reaches for him, panicked—he's theirs, still theirs, and he's hurting. He's crumbling right in front of their eyes. And he doesn't bat their hand away as they thought, so they pull him in, his seat belt cutting into his neck and Nat's cutting into theirs as they wrap their arms around Ron, around their Ron, let him wrap his arms around them in turn, and bury their own wet face in his uninjured shoulder.

Something has broken. And they don't know what.