Verner Wallace | Male | 23-24 | Scientist | Power: Ability Senser | Location: ERP Labs| Mentions: (Directly) Ignatius, Biwix, Viktor, Cara / (Indirectly)
It seemed he had managed to not die thus far though he felt like death. He wished he could've just given up on life in that moment or at least have passed out but his body was too stubborn. One thing he had learned from medical school was that humans could be surprisingly difficult to kill. If he hadn't passed out yet Cara must've missed his arteries. Ignatius couldn't help him with that leg injury of his, and his breaths were shallow enough he wouldn't have been able to instruct him on what to do either. By now the worst of the pain was setting in now that he didn't have a maniac trying to stab him and any form of movement worsened it. At the least his concussion would keep him from remembering most of this, not that he was aware or concerned with his head injury at the moment. He couldn't even remember being headbutted in the first place.

Biwix was lying on the ground with an odd expression, so he was completely useless only making him wish he had a give up button in front of him even more. Soon enough a tap out option presented itself in the form of exhaustion. He was half tempted to close his eyes, it wasn't like he would bleed to death any faster if he took a nap. But his gloved hand was holding his chest wound shut and he couldn't do that in his sleep. What sounded better though, bleeding to death because Biwix was too busy working through some sort of unknown issue or suffocating in his sleep. Ignatius had tried so hard to prevent him from getting killed though. He pivoted his neck a half inch taking a minute for Ig to come into focus and longer for him to realise he was now looking at his colleague. Oh, there he was. Still on the floor. It wouldn't be fair to give up given the fact that his friend could've simply left him for dead instead of attempting to protect him and being injured in the process. He attempted to read his facial expression for a sign to do anything, a sign he could give up or a sign that Ig wanted him to try to help himself but he simply couldn't read his face. Thinking was a task on it's own right now but he'd just assume he'd want him to try and help himself in some way. He couldn't exactly process what Viktor was saying, so Ig could've said anything then and most of it's meaning would be lost to him anyway.

This was going to hurt, a lot. The dread on his face was unmistakable but he forced himself to move. Well, crawl. He clutched his chest with his left hand while dragging himself forward towards the cabinets with his other hand and pushing himself forward with his unharmed legs. Every few inches he had to stop and would whine or yelp but he had eventually made it to the drawers. Seeing as there was no way he'd ever be getting up he clutched the cabinet handle with his free hand and used his body weight to pull it out of place letting it collapse on the floor. At least he had gotten the right cabinet. He held an aluminum wrapper to his mouth and tore it open, now left with a dressing that should at least prevent more air from escaping his chest. Eventually after some blank staring and poor coordination he had managed to place the damn thing over his chest wound. That was all he could do. There was no way he'd be able to stop the bleeding of his other wound in his condition and he gave what he thought was Ignatius a look that said, 'there, I tried'. After his vision came into better focus and he realized he was staring at Cara's unconscious form he turned to where Ig really was located and gave him the same look. There wasn't anything else he could do. Besides take a nap from exhaustion that he assumed was from blood loss, but instead it was because of a head injury he couldn't remember getting. The bleeding from around where his liver was was relatively slow and steady but wouldn't stop flowing, soon enough blood loss would be a serious concern. For now he curled on his side debating whether or not he should just take a nap or if Biwix would actually be of any use.

The headquarters were quieter the further you went through the labs. Where the cells met with the experiment rooms was busy usually. Experiments going back and forth along with a few scientists. There was always at least one person around, and if not, the experiments didn’t have many places to go. They’d stare out from the glass of their cells. Despite how the Owls painted him, Polaris wasn’t cruel. He felt for the people they’d locked up, some willingly, some less so. He’d bring them things he found from outside. An odd plant, a nice stone, new clothes, or even some food lucky enough to escape the crumbling civilisation. He’d been working on getting crops working so they’d have something fresh and uncanned, but so far they’d been unable to find any gardening stores still standing. The only one he’d known of was now a pile of rubble and twisting plant stems. He talked with the experiments for a short while, dropping off the few things he’d collected over the day. He kept his words pleasant but to the point. He wasn’t here for them, not today. It had been a week and he was headed further in. This wasn’t his last stop. At the beginning of the crisis, they’d made many cells. Most were to keep people safe. The cells themselves were like a timeline. The ones at the front rarely lacked a habitant. The ones towards the middle had emptied around 6 months ago. And the ones at the very back had been empty for years. All except one.

His feet padded gently down the halls. His eyes glanced to the cells every now and then, remembering the inhabitants. The man who’d spat molten glass. His cell was covered in thick ropes of clear glass and in the centre stood a glass statue of a man. They’d been unable to save him. Another had become overgrown with slimy algae. A woman who could become some kind of liquid had lived there. She’d disappeared one day and they never found her. Another was marked in lines of sharp quills. A woman who had become covered in poisonous quills like a porcupine and could shoot them at will. A stray quill shot had caused her to be electrocuted during a test. A man who slowly but surely became gaseous. Another who turned into stone. One who’d simply exploded on contact with water. Every cell was marked with memories. Failures on his behalf. Lives he would never get back.

The very last cells had been specialised. There were only 3 of them. Each had bullet-proof glass, high-tech platinum doors, and sensors for everything from heat to air pressure. They lacked a bed and a bathroom but were tall and wide. They were meant to be for emergencies. They weren’t meant to be permanent. He touched a button at the console that sat in front of the cell. Dim red light filled the cell. It was the only light that didn’t bother the inhabitant. They’d first brought him in due to the nodules he’d grown. At the time, nobody else had any physical mutations of that variety. It was something new. He was confined to the cell and the doctors ran tests. It took a week for his growths to become wings. The day after, he’d grown more nodules. He’d been excited. More wings meant he could fly higher. They’d laughed. Within a week they had grown too. He now had two pairs.

Polaris placed a hand against the glass. The heavy breaths from within felt like a heartbeat.
It had been slow at first. Two weeks to grow two pairs. Polaris wasn’t sure if it was cruel that it took hold so quickly afterwards, or a mercy. Within a day he’d grown more nodules. They were in stranger places now. No longer on his back, now he had pairs across his arms and legs. The doctors had begun to worry. These wings grew faster than the last ones. They were painful. His shaking sobs had echoed down the halls and the doctors, usually so stoic, so sure, would go elsewhere and cry in sympathy for him. Within days they were fully grown with more on the way. Within weeks, his cries were muffled by the wings that had sprouted from every inch of skin. By the second month, he’d become an enormous mass, unidentifiable as human anymore. He no longer cried.

The dim red light of the room dulled the colours, but Polaris remembered them. A rich brown with black as dark as ebony. The feathers had been so long and delicate. The wings outstretched like a hand grasping at the sun. Now there were so many. Wings upon skin, wings upon wings. He no longer needed to eat so he simply lay in this room, his millions of feathers rising and falling with each hulking breath. With a quiet voice, Polaris said that they’d not found a cure yet. It was all he could say. The room had already been filled with apologies a thousand times over. The creature shuffled and repositioned itself. The mass of feathers shifting as the many wings opened and pushed themselves to a better spot. It was not an act of recognition. This thing didn’t recognise him anymore. Polaris wasn’t even sure if it knew he was there. Regret clutched his heart as he turned off the light. In the solitude of these furthest cells, Polaris slid to the ground and cried for his brother.