Caide followed her to her apartment like a lost puppy, and to be honest, he felt just like one. He noticed the door crooked on it’s hinges and how the apartment did not have a lot in it, as if she didn’t take the time to decorate, but who did in times like these? Caide actually hadn’t seen an apartment before, being locked up in the lab and having previous memories erased, so who was he to judge?
When she offered him the bed, he almost instantly protested, but as he saw her drinking the whiskey from the bottle, he decided she didn’t need such petty arguments in her life. Instead he simply said “Nice place.” in a respectful tone before obeying orders and taking a shower. After being in that cold, damp alley, the steamy water felt good on his skin, as if it was washing away his worries and healing him, literally. He then took the closest towel nearest to him to dry himself with, not thinking whether she wanted him to use a specific towel, but soon after drying he realized this, guilt soaking in, he hoped she wouldn’t notice. As for his damp clothes, he willed the water out of them, drying them, but leaving them a bit ‘crusty’ from the dried out dirt left on them. He then got dressed and moved to stand in one of the corners of the apartment, near the couch.
“Cadmus, or rather, Project Cadmus, was a program that was shut down a while back, they were replaced by the OMAC Project, which specialized in creating enhanced humans, but after that lead to major issues, the OMAC Project was shut down, and returned to it’s former name, Cadmus. They seem to be helpful, but they have tons of secrets, like, making a team of Metahumans that each have the ability to control an element, mine being water.” He lent against the wall behind him, using one hand and arm to add gestures to his explanation, whilst the other crossed his chest, with the hand resting on his shoulder. “I was kidnapped, experimented on and turned into a weapon, called an ‘Elemental-Meta’. Cadmus sends us on missions after they train us, and If we don’t complete the mission, they torture us by taking pieces of our humanity away, blocking off feelings, and our conscience and basically turning us into organic robots. My friend Alex, whose element was fire, had a traumatizing time with watching his victims burn, and thus Cadmus brainwashed him into being okay with it. He is nothing like he was before, you can’t even have a conversation with him, and that’s what scared me. I didn’t – I don’t want to become like him.”
While he was in the shower, she went searching for old shit of Luke’s or Malcom’s, something she could give him. She found an old hoodie in the corner of her closet, plain blue and decently clean, but that was about it. She went back out to her desk and started googling, but CADMUS didn’t get her much. A few press releases, some vague mentions. She’d gone through a quarter-bottle of whiskey and had jack shit to show for it.
She didn’t look up when he walked in, but he started talking anyway. She listened, a little disconcerted by the straight-forward explanation. “You know that I wasn’t ordering you to tell me shit, right?” she asked, brow furrowed. “You could’ve like, sat down.” She paused, standing up.
She took a breath to steel herself, then walked around her desk, and towards him. She stopped in front of him, her gaze steady. “I’m not gonna let that happen, okay?” she said softly as she could. She couldn’t do ‘soothing’ well. But she recognized the fear in his eyes. She remembered what it was like, to have someone else inside your head, picking at the pieces of your mind and rearranging them. “Where’d you grow up?” she asked suddenly. “Before this all happened. The last place you called home, what street was it on?” It was a knee-jerk reaction for her now, repeating those names. Even now, she relied on it.
Secret experiments. Kidnapped kids, with superpowers. And mind control to top it all off. Fucking perfect. “How’d you get away?” she asked, trying to piece this all together. She bit her lip and made a mental note to get him to write this all down. “And what exactly was your mission?”
She still had the hoodie in her hands, and she held it out to him. “Here. I got this for you. All I could find,” she said with a shrug. “If you’re hungry, we can order a pizza or something. There’s nothing in the kitchen, but somebody’s gotta be open still.”
