#invisgal dispatch

Like it’s something you need in order to make an informed decision instead of something they’re using to split you open from the inside without touching you.

Like this is something you’re being given.

Not something being done to you.

A man you don’t remember being introduced to stands near the wall-mounted screen.

He occupies the space too cleanly. Too precisely. Every line of his posture is intentional, every movement minimized to only what’s necessary. He doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t shift his weight. Doesn’t exist in the way people normally do. He just… waits.

He doesn’t look at you like a person. He looks at you like a switch that hasn’t been flipped yet.

“We understand you’re hesitant,” he says.

His voice is smooth. Measured. The kind of tone that suggests your reaction has already been anticipated, categorized, filed away under something clinical and unthreatening.

You don’t answer.

The screen flickers on, and then you see him. 

Robert.

It takes your brain a second to accept it because your mind keeps trying to correct the image. To place him somewhere else. Somewhere normal.

Robert is upside down.

Suspended from somewhere out of frame, hanging by restraints that don’t get the dignity of being shown clearly, just implied by the way his body pulls taut against them. Gravity has been reassigned to him in the worst possible way- blood rushing where it shouldn’t, hair hanging loose toward the floor like the world has been inverted just to make him easier to break.

He’s shirtless.

That detail lands late, like your brain refuses to prioritize it until everything else has already failed to make sense. Bare skin under harsh, unforgiving light. Bruising that doesn’t belong to a single moment, it’s layered, older and newer violence overlapping in shades that shouldn’t coexist. Marks that suggest time didn’t pass normally for him either.

His head lifts once.

Just once.

A small, strained motion that shouldn’t be possible in his position, like it costs more than it should just to acknowledge gravity is still there. Even inverted, even hurt, even held in a body that clearly isn’t cooperating the way it used to- there’s something in the way he moves that refuses to fully shut off.

And even through the distortion of the camera, you can see it: he’s still tracking. Still aware. Still him.

That’s when something in your chest locks. It clamps down hard and sudden- like invisible hands closing around your ribs, squeezing until your lungs forget how to expand. Air doesn’t leave you so much as it gets stuck, caught halfway between inhale and exhale, like your body can’t decide which one it’s allowed to finish.

Because that’s your brother.

The recognition burns through you fast and brutal, dragging everything else with it- memory, instinct, fear- until there’s no distance left between what you’re seeing and what it means.

The one who, at six years old, began dragging a blanket across the floor of your room because he decided storms were “less scary if you share the floor.” Like fear was something that could be redistributed if you just got close enough to someone else in it.

The one who would wedge himself beside you anyway, shoulder pressed to yours, pretending he wasn’t awake when thunder hit too close. Whispering counts under his breath like numbers could keep the sky in order.

The one who used to turn your scraped knees into projects. Sitting you down with too much seriousness for a kid, inspecting injuries like he was assigned to them. “Don’t look at it,” he’d insist, even as he cleaned it clumsily.

The one who would blow on the sting afterward like that alone could fix it. Like if he did it carefully enough, the pain would listen.

The one who used to check your room before bed- not in a way he ever admitted to. Just lingering in the doorway a second too long, eyes scanning corners like he was making sure the dark stayed where it belonged.

The one who used to split things evenly without being asked. Food, time, always making sure you got the better half when he thought you wouldn’t notice.

The one who got hurt himself and immediately tried to downgrade it into nothing. Smiling too fast, too sharp. Saying, “It’s not even that bad,” before you could even decide whether to worry.

The one who used to steal the worst of things from you without asking- fear, blame, attention- like it was just another job he could take on if it meant you didn’t have to carry it.

The one who, even when you were both older and pretending you didn’t need that kind of protection anymore, would still quietly position himself between you and anything he didn’t trust, like it was muscle memory he never grew out of.

The one who, even now- even now- is still trying to hold himself together upside down.

And the fear that hits you is not clean. It isn’t abstract or distant or manageable.

It hits like something tearing forward through your chest, immediate and animal, because for the first time there is no version of him in your head strong enough to outrun what you’re seeing now.

The man beside the screen speaks softly.

“Robert Robertson III,” he says, like it’s a case file name. “High resilience baseline. Exceptional adaptive response under stress.”

Your hands curl without asking you first- fingers tightening hard enough that you can feel your own nails press into your palms, grounding you in something physical before the image can pull you any further under.

“Get him down!” you order.

Robert’s body shifts again, and for a second his breath catches- not breaking, not stopping, just interrupting itself like a system forced to re-evaluate every function mid-process.

Your fingers twitch- and stop.

Because they can’t move any further than the restraints allow.

Your throat goes dry.

The chair registers it immediately.

A faint adjustment at the base of your neck, support shifting, posture corrected just slightly so your airway stays “optimal.”

The man by the screen tilts his head slightly.

“We were told you would respond strongly to him,” he says.

When your voice finally does surface, it cracks on the edges.

“Why is he-”

“If you comply with a single administration,” the man interupts, still watching the screen more than you, “we will release Robert Robertson III.”

A pause.

“Take the compound,” he says. “And we will discontinue his involvement.”

The man’s voice softens, as if sensing the fracture forming.

“One administration,” he repeats. “That is all. And he stops being useful to us.”

The word useful scrapes against something in your mind that still remembers what people are supposed to be for.

Your vision tightens at the edges.

The syringe is closer now.

The man steps forward, just enough that the light catches the fluid inside it. Clear. Precise. Like it’s already decided what it will do before it ever enters you.

“You are not being coerced,” he says gently. “You are being offered an outcome.”

Your fingers curl inside the restraints until they shake.

“…Do it,” you say.

The syringe moves.

Your body tries to pull back before you can think about it.

The restraints answer instantly- firm, precise, inescapable. our movement stops mid-attempt, arrested so cleanly it feels like your own body has been edited out of the equation.

Fingers spread slightly, anchoring you in place, and then your head is tilted- carefully adjusted, like positioning something fragile under inspection. The angle removes your ability to choose where you’re looking. It narrows the world down without asking.

You feel the cold wipe first. It lingers just long enough to register as preparation rather than comfort. A marking of what’s about to happen.

Then the pressure.

Then the needle.

It doesn’t hurt at first.

That’s the lie your body tells you in the half-second before it realizes what’s happening.

It spreads in branching networks, like fire learning your internal structure, like something inside you is being read and rewritten at the same time. Every nerve it touches lights up not in sequence, but in clusters, as if it’s choosing where you are most vulnerable and arriving there first.

Chest first.

A brutal, crushing clamp from the inside out, like your ribs have been filled with molten pressure and then cinched tighter, tighter, tighter until movement stops being an option and becomes a violation. Every heartbeat becomes a collision instead of a rhythm- each one slamming against resistance that wasn’t there a second ago.

Then your throat.

It doesn’t close. It locks. Hard. Violently. Like the muscles have been seized in a fist made of fire and refusal. Swallowing isn’t just impossible, it’s a memory your body tries to perform and fails at so completely it feels like choking on the concept of breathing itself.

Your spine ignites next.

An electric, vertical collapse of sensation that doesn’t travel so much as occupy. Each vertebra lighting up like a switch being forced on with too much current, too fast, too deep.

Behind the eyes.

It feels like your skull is filling with pressure that has nowhere to go, like your vision is being squeezed from the inside. Light turns vicious, overexposed, every edge of reality sharpened into something that hurts to perceive. It feels like your brain is being pressed too tightly against the inside of your skull, like even thinking is scraping raw tissue.

Your breath catches hard.

Not voluntarily.

Not gently.

A clean interruption in the middle of the cycle, like someone reached into your chest and pulled the timing out of your lungs. Inhale becomes a broken half-start. Exhale never arrives. The rhythm you’ve lived your entire life on simply… disappears, leaving your body suspended in the aftermath of a pattern that no longer exists.

The man withdraws the syringe calmly, as if nothing has changed.

“Administration complete,” he says.

“Hey. Hey, look at me.”

Flambae’s voice cuts through it first. Not loud, not panicked, but firm in a way that refuses to let you drift any further. Like he’s reaching into the space you’re slipping through and grabbing hold of whatever part of you is still listening.

Then Prism, somewhere to your left, sharper now. “Okay- no, no, you’re not in that. You’re here.”

Your lungs catch. A violent inhale that feels like it drags you out of somewhere you were still partially inside.

The stairwell slams back into place around you.

Metal steps. Fluorescent buzz. Cold air that is real instead of engineered.

Your knees almost don’t hold.

Flambae catches you before that becomes a problem. His hand catches your arm mid-fall, firm enough to stop you but careful enough not to jolt you further off balance. Heat bleeds through your sleeve where he grips you- steady, contained, not burning, just there. Real in a way everything else is struggling to be right now.

It anchors.

Like someone pressing their palm against the edge of something that was tipping too far, holding it in place until it remembers how to be still.

“Okay,” Flambae says again, lower now. “You’re out. You’re not there.”

Prism moves into your line of sight- too close, but deliberately so.

“Listen to me,” she says quickly. “You’re not in the facility. You’re in the stairwell. That’s Flambae. That’s me. Okay?”

Cold surges, moving inward, a reflexive collapse from somewhere deep and animal, older than thought. Your body trying to conserve itself by narrowing everything down, pulling inward like a hand curling into a fist around something fragile.

Flambae tightens his grip slightly.

Not enough to restrain you- just enough to remind you there’s something solid still holding on. His fingers adjust against your arm with subtle precision, like he’s registering the shift before it fully shows itself on the surface.

Like he can feel you trying to pull away from here before you even move.

“Hey,” he says, quieter now, right near your ear. “Don’t fight it. Just-stay with me, okay?”

The stairwell returns in sharper focus: the railing, the slight dampness still clinging where everything earlier overheated and cooled too fast, the faint echo of footsteps somewhere far below. Prism looks like she’s trying not to overwhelm you with the fact that she has approximately twelve emotional reactions happening at once.

Flambae doesn’t let go.

Not yet.

“Okay,” he murmurs. “There you are.”

You swallow.

It hurts in a normal way now.

“Don’t,” Flambae says immediately, firmer now. “Don’t go back in your head. Not alone.”

Your breath stutters again, less violent this time, but still wrong around the edges, like your lungs haven’t fully agreed to come back online yet.

“I’m not,” you manage.

It’s not entirely true.

Something in your chest is still half-turned toward that room. Toward the screen. Toward Robert suspended in a place your body remembers too well.

Flambae doesn’t call you on it.

Prism hovers at your other side, hands half-raised like she keeps forgetting what she’s allowed to do with them. 

“Your eyes did that thing again,” she blurts, then winces. “Not- not a bad thing. Just. A thing that happens when people are about to emotionally leave the room.”

You let out a weak, uneven breath that almost passes for a laugh.

“Great,” you mutter. “Love that for me.”

“You with us?” Flambae asks.

You nod.

He doesn’t accept that.

“Say it.”

Your jaw tightens, but you do it anyway. “…I’m here.”

“Good.”

Flambae watches you a second longer than he should.

It’s subtle- most people wouldn’t catch it. The way his attention lingers not just on your face, but on the small things. Your breathing. The slight tremor you’re trying to hide in your hands. The way your shoulders are still a little too tight, like your body hasn’t fully accepted that it’s allowed to exist here again.

“That’s how you got your powers,” he says.

The words are simple. Straightforward.

It lands differently coming from him.

Prism presses her lips together, processing that, and for once she doesn’t immediately fill the silence. 

Flambae’s hand curls slightly at his side, fingers tightening once like he’s resisting the urge to hit something that isn’t there anymore. He exhales a second later, slower than before, dragging a hand back through his hair. The motion lacks its usual restless energy. It’s heavier. Grounded in something closer to frustration than irritation.

“…That’s why you didn’t want him to know,” he says.

You nod once.

“If he knew,” you say, your voice steady in a way that takes effort, “he’d see it as his fault.”

“He would,” Prism agrees immediately.

Flambae glances at her, then back at you. “…Yeah.”

And there’s something quieter in it this time. Something that sounds like he’s not just agreeing with her, but recognizing it for himself.

“He’d try to fix it,” you continue, the words coming a little more carefully now. “Or undo it. Or carry it somehow. And he can’t.”

Your voice tightens slightly.

“He already carries enough.”

Flambae looks at you for a long second.

“You don’t have to carry it alone either.”

You huff out a breath, something caught between disbelief and deflection. “I’m doing a great job so far.”

“You almost passed out in a stairwell,” Prism points out.

“Details.”

Flambae doesn’t smile.

“That wasn’t nothing,” he says, and there’s a steadiness to it that makes it harder to brush off. “That was you getting pulled back into something that hurt you and trying to handle it solo.”

You open your mouth to argue.

Nothing comes out.

Because he’s not wrong.

“We’re here,” he adds. “Whether you like it or not.”

Prism nods quickly. “Aggressively here.”

That almost gets a real laugh out of you.

“So,” Prism says carefully, “just to recap: traumatic backstory, secret powers, morally questionable experimentation, protective older brother, and-”

“No recap,” you and Flambae cut in at the same time.

Prism exhales sharply, shoulders dropping in exaggerated defeat. 

“I’m being silenced in my own workplace.”

Your lips twitch. Flambae’s attention flicks back to your face again- quick this time, like he’s trying not to make it obvious- but it’s there. That same quiet tracking.

“Hey-” Robert’s voice echos out

Flambae’s hand doesn’t jerk away. He doesn’t drop you like he’s been caught doing something wrong. Doesn’t flinch, doesn’t scramble, doesn’t overcorrect. Your brain, still half-threaded through memory and adrenaline, latches onto that detail and doesn’t know what to do with it.

Robert stops mid step. His eyes flick once- to your face, then to your hands, then to Flambae’s hand still on your wrist.

“You ok?”

“…Yeah.”

The word leaves you thinner than it should- flattened on the way out, like it had to squeeze past something tight in your chest to exist at all.

Robert doesn’t move right away.

And somehow, that’s worse.

Because if he’d reacted- if he’d argued, pushed back, laughed it off- you’d have something to meet. Something to deflect. Something you could work around.

But this?

This is him thinking.

And when Robert thinks, it’s never passive.

You can see it happening, even in the quiet- the way his focus narrows, the way his gaze fixes just slightly past you instead of on you, like he’s already rearranging what he knows into something more complete.

“Caught him before he hit the floor,” Flambae says simply.

Prism makes a small noise that sounds like she just swallowed a scream and filed it for later.

Robert’s gaze snaps back to you.

“You almost fell?”

“I’m fine.”

“You almost fell.”

“I didn’t.”

“You just said you were fine like you’re trying to convince me,” Robert replies, stepping closer now, voice still even but tightening at the edges. “That’s usually a bad sign.”

Flambae finally moves.

Not away- just enough to release you fully, his hand dropping back to his side in a controlled, deliberate motion. No suddenness. No guilt.

“I’m here,” you say quickly, the words coming out a fraction too fast, like you’re trying to get ahead of the next question before it forms. Then- before Robert can follow up, before he can start pulling at threads you don’t want touched- “I just tripped.”

“…You tripped.”

“Yeah.”

“On what.”

You glance down at the perfectly empty stairwell. No obstruction. No debris. No excuse.

“…The floor.”

Prism chokes.

An actual, involuntary choke, sharp and immediate, like her body rejected the statement on instinct before her brain could catch up. She turns away so fast it looks like she just witnessed something illegal and decided, instantly, she does not want to be associated with it.

Robert doesn’t even blink. 

“The floor.”

“It came out of nowhere,” you say, completely straight-faced. “Very aggressive.”

Flambae exhales sharply through his nose- there and gone in a second, the sound caught halfway between disbelief and laughter before he forcibly buries it.

Robert lifts a hand and pinches the bridge of his nose, slow and deliberate, like he’s buying himself a second to decide how to respond without saying something he can’t take back.

“…You tripped,” he says slowly, “on a stationary, non-sentient surface.”

“In my defense,” you say, holding up a hand, “I was also moving.”

Robert lowers his hand.

He does not look amused.

“I prevented that outcome,” you add, because apparently you’re committed now.

“No,” Robert replies, voice flattening, “he did.”

His gaze flicks to Flambae.

Then back to you.

You hesitate.

“…team effort,” you amend.

Prism turns back, wiping at her eyes. “I just want it on record that if the floor attacks again, I will be filing an incident report.”

“Thank you,” you say. “I feel supported.”

“You are not helping,” Robert says.

Flambae’s head dips slightly.

Not enough to be obvious.

Just enough that you catch the way his shoulders tighten for a fraction of a second- like he’s suppressing something again. Laughing, probably. Or maybe just… letting you have this.

Prism, apparently deciding this has reached a level of tension she is not emotionally equipped to survive, raises a hand slightly.

“…I could go get snacks,” she offers weakly. “This feels like a ‘snacks would help’ situation.”

“No,” Robert says immediately.

“Cool,” Prism replies, lowering her hand. “Just checking.”

Robert’s gaze flicks between all three of you in rapid succession- like he’s trying to solve a problem that keeps refusing to stay in one shape long enough to be solved.

“…Next time,” Robert adds, voice steadier now but still edged, “if the floor launches another surprise attack- maybe lead with that part.”

Prism snorts.

You latch onto it instantly.

“Thank you,” you say. “I’ve been saying the floor is hostile for years and no one listens-”

“Stop,” Robert cuts in, but there’s a faint crack in it now. Not quite amusement. Not quite exasperation. Something in between. “Just- stop talking.”

You do not stop talking.

“Statistically speaking-”

“Stop talking.”

“-I’m actually very brave for continuing to use stairs-”