Six months had passed since he'd met Elias, and as much as he wished it were otherwise very little had changed within the walls of the facility. Elias was permitted to visit him weekly, a present for both of them displaying 'good conduct and loyalty', which felt more like an insult than a compliment to Wander but what did he know?

He knew it wouldn't last forever, for there were always too many unknown variables at play where creatures like the two of them were involved, too many unpredictable abilities and phenomena.

And when it came to a cryptid as esoteric as Elias, a cryptid that had not only warranted the attention of the Administrator himself but also required an entire new ward to house him, such phenomena were all too common.

He'd been privy to more than one moment of quiet confiding from the young angel, always by the stream in his own enclosure so that the listening devices would have a harder time picking up what was being said, wherein his friend had told him that they really didn't understand the things they could do, nor the events that seemed to surround them. Things just happened, and he couldn't really do anything to stop it.

Wander had winced internally when he'd heard that. He knew what would be running through the heads of the bigwigs at the moment, because he'd had something similar when he'd arrived; when first the scientists worked out that he couldn't control the cyclical nature of his venoms and toxins, they'd spent a year using all sorts of training methods and machines and medicines to try and 'fix' that. Eventually they'd given up when they realised that there was a risk of damaging his venom-come-toxin glands permanently if they continued, and Project Hecate had been shut down.

The extraction process for his chemicals wasn't pleasant, but at least it wasn't like it used to be.

So with those experiences he knew what the scientists were likely trying to do to Elias at the moment. There was nothing he could do to stop it, but he could at least be a consoling figure for his friend for twenty-four hours a week. That was something, wasn't it?

That night he had a dream. A nightmare. He couldn't remember the details, just... just a blinding golden-white light, burning away the shadows he lived in. The light was warm, but overpowering. Scorching. It had hurt his eyes to look at, and filled him with a sense of existential dread for reasons he couldn't fathom, let alone put into words. It was something primal, deep inside the recesses of his mind and soul, telling him that the light wasn't bad, but that it was dangerous. It was lashing out, burning away too brightly and too quickly. It was frantic, and woe betide those who-

He came awake at the sound of his enclosure door opening, a man in a white coat and two heavily armed guards entering with weapons at the ready.

"E-005, there's an emergency, we need to move."

Wander jolted out from the last dregs of his sleep at the frantic words of the researcher, the two guards at the door hurriedly scanning his room as if looking for threats. Almost at once he knew that the doctor was right; there was an emergency, for they could feel something was wrong. Alarms were sounding in the back of his head, the same sense of dread he'd felt in his dream settling throughout his body.

Something had gone very wrong somewhere.

"Okay. Where do we need to go?"

"F-Ward," the scientist replied without even a moment's hesitation, "F-001 has responded badly to ongoing Project Michael procedures, and its powers are threatening to overpower the security countermeasures put in place by Operation Eden. That's where you come in."

"Me?"

"Yes, you. We tried sedating him with pills made from a distilled and diluted version of your toxins, but that was insufficient. Doctor Daniels, the project lead of this phase of Project Michael, has requested access to an undiluted form of the toxins. We haven't the time to extract your toxins and refine them, so the Administrator has given us access to you. Your venom cycle was observed ending two days ago, and so you are now in a paralysing agent cycle, correct?"

Wander nodded, still saying nothing. Something didn't sit right with this situation.

"Good. Then it will be your task to incapacitate subject F-001 with as many toxins as you deem necessary. It trusts you, so you shouldn't have much difficulty performing this action."

"What is Project Michael?"

The scientist shook their head, seemingly annoyed.

"We don't have time for this. Even if we did, that's classified information."

Wander folded his arms across his chest, defiantly staring up at the researcher.

"Then I don't go. I've served the wishes of the Agency for years; without me every time there was a breakout you'd have to shoot the cryptids here, losing your research subjects. I want to know what Project Michael is."

The scientist stilled and looked over to one of the masked soldiers, who spoke into a radio. The words came out as a garbled mess of radio static, but he knew that the men on the other side of the radio would be able to understand the guard perfectly.

After about thirty seconds the radio crackled to life again, and another burst of static filled the room. Wander grimaced at the sound, glad he didn't have the enhanced hearing that some of the cryptids here had, as the guard nodded twice at the scientist.

Stolen story; please report.

"Project Michael," the scientist began, "is our most important research project to date. Subject F-001-"

"Elias." Wander interrupted. "His name is Elias."

"Subject F-001," the researcher continued, slowly and deliberately, "is the key to controlling events that were once thought of as biblical. Divine. With our understanding of how he works we would be able to effectively control the world of the paranormal. It would revolutionise medicine. It would render conflict obsolete, and do to nuclear warheads what the atom bomb did to conventional warfare. Project Michael is the next step in human evolution, and we need F-001 to be stable whilst we proceed. So, E-005, do we have your cooperation?"

Wander grimaced at the proposition. He didn't like this idea, but he didn't really have a choice, did he?

"Yeah. Let's just get this over with."

The walk to the elevator was tense, and for good reason. If Elias really was on the verge of a breakdown, if his powers really were about to run wild, then there was every chance that Wander might find himself turned into ash without so much as a moment to run. The elevator dinged and he stepped inside with the three men, the scientist pushing a button simply labelled 'F'. With the swipe of a keycard the elevator rumbled to life, and they descended to F-Ward.

F-Ward was... it was beautiful. It looked like a palace, all marble and gold with purple cloth; it was the sort of thing that normally came from the pages of history, filled with beautiful works of art and religious imagery. Right now, none of that phased him.

What did give him pause was their friend strapped to a table in the middle of the room, and the fact that both of the guards at his side immediately levelled their weapons at Elias' bound form.

"Hang on, I can- I can talk to him! I can calm him down without-" he swallowed hard as the idea of biting his friend as though they were pray washed through him, "without resorting to biting."

The researcher he'd been travelling with, as well as a second researcher who'd been present in the room when they'd all entered, looked at him with incredulity.

"Please," he said, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn't need to hurt his friend, "just let me talk to him."

The researcher by his side looked to the one by the table, who nodded sternly.

"Alright. You have two minutes, starting now."

He nodded his thanks to the man even though he didn't feel particularly thankful, and took a few steps towards Elias.

"Elias, can you hear me? Elias?"

His friend looked around frantically, as though the light in their eyes was obscuring their vision, before eventually the angel's gaze settled on him.

"Wander?"

"Hey," he smiled with a small wave, "they called me down here because apparently you were going wild. I didn't know you had it in you."

"I don't- I'm scared, Wander. I don't want the white-coats to hurt me."

Wander once again forced down any visual sign of the sympathy he was feeling. He'd developed a fear of those same men when he was younger as well, and it had never really gone away.

"They won't hurt you if you're calm." He turned to face the researchers. "You won't hurt him, right?"

"Of course. Now step aside, the subject is stable again. Dr Miller, you have permission to begin."

The researcher stood by his side stepped forwards to reach the table, and all of a sudden Wander found himself being pulled backwards by the two guards.

"Keep him here. He may yet be needed again."

The next ten minutes were filled with tension as the guards stood to his sides, and he nervously wrung his six hands as the scientists prepared themselves for whatever the next procedure was. One of them picked up a scalpel, and that's when everything started to shake. Elias screamed as a burst of golden light filled the room, and Wander knew that both he and Elias had already eaten their fill of the agency's shit.

The scalpel came closer to Elias, and the boy writhed and shouted where he was laid out. As soon as it touched his perfectly smooth skin a tiny bead of blood dripped down his chest and onto the floor, and at that moment there was only one thought running through Wander's mind.

Yeah, fuck this.

With a strength they didn't know they possessed they punched out with their three left arms in rapid succession, sending one of the guards to the floor. Without so much as stopping to think they plunged their teeth into the guard next to them, only to recoil when the man's thick body armour chipped one of his fangs. He whimpered a little as he pulled away, pain running through him, but he didn't have time to stop and think about that. Instead he picked up a few scalpels from the tray and used them to cut through the straps that were holding his friend down.

"Come on," he said, pulling Elias to his feet, "we need to leave right now!"

They ran out of a side door of the underground palace, and entered into a maze of corridors. Even if Wander hadn't been down here before, he knew exactly what was above them and could use that to navigate perfectly well. He knew there was a maintenance stairwell to the east, and if they could get to that then there was an old mothballed section of the facility directly above them. That would give them some time to work out an escape plan.

He grimaced as some of his toxins dripped uselessly from his broken chelicerae, numbing his lip and mouth. Elias spoke up when he realised what had happened, likely having seen the purple toxins dribbling down Wander's chin.

"Your chelicerae, it's-"

"It'll grow back, I hope. It doesn't matter right now."

"But Wander, you're hurting!"

"Elias, as much as I love that you care about me, we don't have time to waste dealing with my minor injuries. If those men get their hands on you they'll cut you apart, and I'm not going to stand by and let that happen."

With a sad expression Elias made to open his mouth again, but before he could do so there was a brief and yet bright flash of light, and almost as if by magic the pain was gone. Wander stopped in his tracks, aware that it was probably the most stupid thing he could do and yet too transfixed to move. He gingerly rolled his tongue over the chipped chelicerae, fully expecting for the motion to send a fresh jolt of pain through him, and yet when his tongue touched the spot where he had been injured he found nothing but a perfectly intact chelicerae.

"Elias, how did you... how did you do that?"

The boy looked at him with a mixture of wonder and fear, leavened by more than a little confusion and anxiety. It seemed that the angel had just as much idea as Wander did as to what had just happened.

"I don't know. I just... I thought real hard about how I didn't want you to be hurt anymore. Then there was light, and now you're... you're better, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Wander replied, nodding slowly, "yeah, I think I am."

There was the sound of footfalls somewhere behind him, and so he grabbed Elias by the hand and began running once more.

"Come on, we don't have time to stop and work this out. We need to move, move and run!"

He caught the sight of Elias nodding through his right eyes when he turned his head back to make sure his friend was alright, and then he picked up the pace and tore off down the corridors and hallways that made up the facility of the Agency with wild abandon. They'd held him here for years, just as they'd held Myndie before him, but they wouldn't keep Elias. He swore it, here and now: they'll never harm him as long as I live.