#0
The fingers that grip his shoulder tremble with revelation.
Isaac doesn’t initially hear him through the haze of the medication that makes the world heavy. He doesn’t know how long he’s been staring at the wall in front of him - it could be seconds or hours. Time has ceased to be a concept that his brain can comprehend - all he can see are the fucking symbols.
The slap to his face serves to ground him.
“Isaac. Isaac!” There’s a light in Stross’s eyes at Isaac’s growl. “They call you Patient Four, but I know…I know your real name. They don’t care, but I do…” He raises a shaking hand to Isaac’s face, and the pads of his fingers trace a map down the uneven patches of stubble.
Isaac senses a substance to this tangent, to this invasion of his space, but when he opens his mouth to speak, it’s static in his ears. An automatic transmission from somewhere deep in his head.
The nightmare is over but it will not end.
Sympathetic alpha wave attenuation.
Twinkle, twinkle little star…
“Yes! Yes yes yes.” Stross leans in even closer now, his nose almost brushing the tip of Isaac’s. The grip on his face tightens and his words come out in broken anticipation. “Y-you see them too, right? Hear them?”
There’s a moment between his sentences, pauses to look over his shoulder and evaluate the volume of his words before he decides to lower his voice. “T-the symbols.”
Isaac’s head bows slightly - the semblance of a nod through an airy head and a heavy tongue. Stross’s words hang in the air, in his ears like a tune stuck in his head - there’s something so distant about his lips, about the residual secrecy in his tone. A poisonous clairvoyance.
But there’s an understanding between them, about the secrets they keep, something that the machine can’t get to and the medication can’t take away. That covenant of the words that slice through their heads…
It’s theirs.