#dead eggs

Bad arrives home alongside a gust of wind.

Hidden far from the prying eyes of the Federation, doors slam open as he barrels through them, files caught between his claws.

Jaiden and Cellbit startle a bit from their spots beside Dapper, tired faces quick to alert and quicker to draw their weapons, a sword and a crossbow jerked his way.

While outside it was clear that their night shift was coming to a close, the sun beginning to rise, the only tell of the passage of time is their exhaustion in the windowless room Bad's squirreled away his son in.

Bad lets the files drop onto the room's center table with a thunk, every bit of information he could carry set between them.

"Did you find it?" Cellbit asks, gaze roving over the files pensively.

"I think so," Bad says, and he does. He doesn't know what he'll do if he hasn't.

Jaiden is quicker to move, flicking through the files with a rapid intensity. It takes a moment for Bad to remember exactly what is in the files, but by the time he remembers to warn her it's too late.

"Wait, Jaiden it's--" He stops, the warning dying on his breath.

Jaiden stands stock-still, her eyes wide as she touches the file almost reverently, her fingertips brushing one of the only remaining photographs of Bobby. Why the Federation felt the need to erase every aspect of his existence, Bad still isn't sure.

Cellbit steps closer, barely glancing at the file before stepping away with a sympathetic look.

Bad can see the moment she moves on from his photograph, her shoulders stiffening as she reads.

"What is this?" Jaiden demands, her voice hollow and crackling as her grief turns to something sharper, the glass she has to swallow.

"I don't know."

Cellbit peers over Bad's shoulder to look at the file again, finding the spot that has Jaiden gripping the table's edge with white knuckles.

"Pass?" he reads, scanning the file. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Bad says again, "It was in Tilín's file too."

"What kind of test do you pass by dying?" Jaiden demands, distraught. "Direct casualty? A direct casualty of what?"

Bad pauses, returning to scanning the files again with dread low in his gut. The words 'ability alteration' seem all that he can focus on, his eyes drifting back to them whenever he tries to look away.

"What if it wasn't a test for them?"

Jaiden turns to him, an unreadable look in her eyes.

"What do you mean?" Cellbit asks.

"What if--" Bad swallows around the sick in his throat. "What if the thing that passed wasn't them."

"It was the thing that killed them," Cellbit says, starting at the files with an unnerving intensity, "This 'XXXY.'"

Jaiden stares at the file, grief thick in the air.

"They killed him," she realizes with a quiet sort of despair. Emotions flicker over her face like a candlelight, the shadows of her features shifting from grief to resignation to a different sort of realization.

Eyes narrowing, she echoes, "They killed him."

"They did," Cellbit agrees, with a silent ' what are you going to do about it?'

"They already took my son," she says, loss twisted into a thrumming fury that meets Bad's gaze. The words sound like they're painful to say. "I won't let them take yours too."

Badboyhalo nods, Cellbit following suit, and they sit together at the table, a plan growing between them.

---

Bad saved his son.

He knew he would, he didn't have any other option than to save him. He knew that Dapper wasn't just sick, or that if he was the Federation knew how to cure it. He knew something was wrong.

It's all kinds of terrifying to know that he was right.

Scrawled in a fine print is confirmation of every fear he's ever had. If he hadn't put Dapper on lockdown, away from even the Federation's prying eyes, his son would be dead right now.

The current experiment requires multiple and continuous instances of direct exposure with the E.G.G. Failure to maintain contact with the E.G.G. will result in experiment Failure. Experiment conclusion projected two weeks from final exposure.

There's no note of any final exposure occurring, and Bad clings to the flimsy hope in his chest that it hasn't, that his son will still wake up.

It eats at him, a gnawing fear he does his best to dismiss in favor of tearing through the rest of the E.G.G.s files.

They won't have a repeat of this. He, Jaiden, and Cellbit scour every letter for any new information on the ability alteration.

They do find more about the ability alteration, ultimately.

It comes in the form of files that shouldn't be as jarring as they are, more deceased E.G.G.s than they'd ever guessed. At most, the islanders had thought one batch of E.G.G.s and islanders might have come before them. Maybe two, but even that seemed unlikely with the state of the island.

The reality is dozens of E.G.G.s, child after child after child pictured moments before--and sometimes after--their deaths.

In the thick remaining files lie page after page of experiments detailing horrific deaths, gruesome lives no creature should have to live, let alone a child. Bad's heart aches inside his chest.

If the files are any indication, though, this ability alteration is a fairly new development for the Federation. Or at least the earliest E.G.G.s with it as their listed cause of death are from the batch just a few years before the islanders awoke on the island.

"There was another file," Bad remembers, suddenly breaking the contemplative and almost crushing silence, "I couldn't access it. It was in its own case, away from the EGG files, but it exploded when I tried to open it. And the authorization was by XXXX."

"The ability alteration must be tied to it then," Cellbit decides.

Jaiden shrugs halfheartedly, not glancing up from the files. "It might," she agrees, "or it might be somewhere with even higher clearance than what we found."

Cellbit pauses. "I thought this was the highest clearance."

"The highest clearance aside from Cucurucho's office," Bad reminds him.

It's why they needed this to work.

Cucurucho's office wasn't an option, not really. It would be next to if not impossible for them to get into the office by force, and no signals could get in or out of it. Only Pomme's telepathy could permeate the office walls, but never the Federation Workers or Cucurucho himself. That wasn't a risk they were willing to take, though.

Bad is confident he could take on most of the Federation in a fight. Cucurucho was the glaring exception to that.

"Bad," Jaiden calls, sounding pained as she grounds him back to the present, the E.G.G. experiment files under her hands, "Look."

With a heart that grows heavier by the second, he does.

The dead faces of the dozens of E.G.G.s look back, the experiments that killed them summarized in neat little bullet points beneath them.

He stops where she points, his eyes raking over the blank-faced little E.G.G., startling.

Their photograph is listed as taken only a week ago. But more glaringly, below that, their final trial date sits set four nights away.

Across the island, hidden away in some Federation building, another little E.G.G. waits patiently to die.

At the table, Badboyhalo begins to scheme.

---