#lmk if i messed up any pronouns tnx

[itswhumpday]

Lifeline

“Holy shit.” 

The lab is as sci-fi as it gets. Even with the roaring sirens and the red blinking alarm lights, it’s pretty cool to see. Screens projected onto glass, all equipped with touch technology. People in white labcoats start to fuss, scream, run and punch buttons as they notice the entrance of the team. 

“Police! Hands where I can see them!”

As Caretaker walks inside, they gape at what all of the scientists were looking at. At the other side of a glass, a large tank. Large enough to fit quite a lot of sharks. But had only one occupant: a person. 

They had been briefed before the mission. Large underground human experiment complex. Seeing the plants on a blueprint was one thing. Seeing it right in front of you, three meters tall, was a complete other thing. 

The Whumpee’s only connection to the surface was a tube linked to a respirator strapped around their face. When Caretaker looks at them for the first time, they’re frowning. Computers are beeping, charts are climbing, something is getting urgently printed. As Caretaker watches, they move their hands slowly, as if fighting a dream. Caretaker reaches into their comm unit and presses the button. 

“We have eyes in one of the victims. Might need medical support.” 

It’s not long until other claims are made: two on the next room and another in a third room. The blueprint showed at least twenty five cells on this complex. Caretaker feels a shiver. There were over a hundred of missing people cases that fit the M.O. of this place. There can be other labs just like this one. Maybe even bigger. But it’s better to focus on the matter at hand. 

Caretaker turns around, where their team seems to have taken over the scientists. Most were already cuffed and being conducted out, far more gently than what Caretaker would have done it. 

“You have no idea what you’ve done!” One of the scientists spits their shoes. Caretaker looks down and raises an eyebrow.

“They’re people.” 

“They’re all but.” Two men put him to his feet by the armpits. “They might look like cute trinkets, but you don’t know what they can do.” 

“And you won’t either. Take him away.” 

As the room clears, Caretaker turns back to the control panel where their own nerds are trying to stabilize the situation. On the com he hears someone is already working to disable the sirens. 

“What’s in there? Is it safe to remove them?” 

“Still trying to understand… There is a record of dosages, though…” One of them says. 

“Couldn’t be the readings on the waters?”, the other wonders.

“No, too small to keep a tank this big…” The first debates. 

Caretaker’s eyes are finally averted back to the person when he catches a glimpse of movement. The person is definitely awake now, dazed eyes big in terror. Waves spread inside the tank as they swing around slowly and weakly, trying to free themselves from something they can’t see. 

Caretaker recedes, trying to see where the tube from the respirator connects them to. It climbs to a platform and climbs to the ceiling, to a big blue cylinder and a smaller red cylinder. It’s far and dark, but they don’t see the pressure meters moving. 

“It’s oxygen. It’s oxygen, they cut the oxygen!” 

Caretaker tries to kick down the door that grants access to the lab. The alarm light is right over it, burning red. 

“Get this open, right now!”

“On it!”

They start typing. Caretaker looks at the prisoner and they’re kicking now. They turn and toss. Their eyes are closed again. They’re trying to swim: somewhere, anywhere. Caretaker waits impatiently, watching. 

“The commands can’t be overrun from here, boss!”

Before they can even finish saying that, he’s already screaming into their communicator.

“Turn off the alarm! I can’t get to the civilian!”

Affirmations of attempts sound, but he can’t hear. All he can see is Whumpee struggling. They pulled on the black tube strapped to them, in hopes it’d bring them up, but the excess of it is just floating around them in the water now. They start to tangle in it as they struggle: in their arms, in their legs. Finally they take one turn too much an it’s around their neck, like a dark deadly snake. 

“Get me in there now!”

Caretaker screams to the com, to no result. The red lights keep blinking. The alarm keeps ringing. Whumpee continues to struggle, but they’ve tangled themselves irreparably. They pull and push, but all they only tighen it. 

With a wave of bubbles, they start to stop. Caretaker takes off their gun and shoots the door handle. There is a muzzle flash, but the door handle barely holds a scratch. Caretaker growls. Bullet proof? They try to think, but the lack of movement on the other side of the glass window is making the deadline each second more deadly.

They then shoot the hinges, that fall with two shots either. They always forget the hinges… 

“Get a med team here, NOW!”

They scream at their over their shoulder, throwing their gun to the side. 

Walking inside the lab is like walking right into a storm. There is a smell of petrichor. Waves as spilling from side to side from the inside of the tank. As they walk, their ears pop with static electricity.

 Caretaker throws their body without thinking against the glass. It’s thick. They step back, trying again. A wobble of the tank sends a wave of cold water over him and he realizes it’s probably a terrible idea to try and break it. It would flood the whole place. 

The Whumpee is back to their dazed blind fight. They’re past thinking. All they can do is pull on the very same thing is slowly killing them as if it were a lifeline. Their neck is starting to turn purple around the tube. 

Caretaker finally finds the wet metal stairs that lead to the cylinders and to a small platform on top of the tank. They rush up, slipping all the way to the top. When they reach it, it’s like the eye of the storm. The waves stop. The smell is gone. The tank is slowly getting still. 

When Caretaker looks down, they can’t know for sure if the slow movement they see is the Whumpee’s last struggle or a trick of the water. They have to believe it’s the first. 

By grabbing the tube from the top, they can easily untangle it from the Whumpee’s neck by wiggling it. This sends a wave of bubbles up and the unmoving body starts to sink to the bottom. 

Caretaker pulls on the tube, bringing the body on an awkward angle upwards. They’re still very tangled one it. As they climb up, Caretaker can see flashes of the white sclera of the Whumpee’s rolled back eyes when the red lights shine over them. They’re crossed by a chill. 

There’s hardly any room, but they manage to lay down the Whumpee down on the metal platform. They throw the tube back to the tank and pull on the straps, free their face from the respirator. 

Even with what just happened, they seem in pretty bad shape. Their skin is discolored and squishy from the long immersion. The respirator left red lines all over the lower part of their face. Bruises in the form of fingers and belt buckles mark their upper arms and ankles. They match the dark mark around their neck and the even darker color their face has taken. 

Caretaker tries to take their pulse in their impossibly thin wrist. They take what feels like forever and don’t find it. Terrified, they try their neck instead and finally accept it: their barely passing grade at first aid will have to do until help in on their way. 

They starts compressions. They time it so there is seven compressions every time the damn siren sounds. It feels like forever. It feels like so many. They keep trying and trying, but it feels like they’ve been in this existence for so long… Help will never come… The sirens will never cease. They have never seen a new day without the blinking red lights. 

And then it changes. Sirens are gone. Red lights are gone. The whole complex, down. There is a deafening silence. And then, coughing. The Whumpee’s body convulses as water pours down from their mouth. Caretaker puts them to the side so they can spit it all out. Their breath comes in desperate gasps. Caretaker can finally breathe too. 

They feel a small pressure at their legs. Somehow, Whumpee has found a way of moving their hands toward them. At first, they think it’s a sign of hope. The Whumpee must know they were coming, they must know they’re safe. But as they try to hold the thin hand, they feel it pulling away. Whumpee starts shivering against the cold metal of the platform.

The sound of sobbing is the only one filling the room. 

“Please, no more… No more…”