Between The Flesh And The Glass: 4/??

[lalalive23]

Title: Between The Flesh And The Glass
Author: lalalive23
Pairing: Belldom
Rating: R
Warning: Language, Dark Themes, Horrific References
Summary: AU. The year is 2166. Matt works as a cryogenicist for the International System of Health. He volunteers to be the first person cryogenically frozen for 100 years.
Feedback: Tastes like a chocolate rainbow.
Disclaimer: I don't own Muse. This never happened (well, not yet). I don't make money off this. My whole life is a waste lol.
Note: Hello my beauties! Long time no see! I finally had a chance to sit down this evening and finish this chapter. It's been kicking around in a word doc incomplete for about a month, so YAY! I have to make mention that if you are at all afraid of spiders, or squeamish, this chapter might be a bit tough. Matthew is starting his withdrawal, so things will be a bit horrific as he deals with the drug addiction. That said, I have to thank my beta boos ashamedbliss and dolce_piccante for reading this over. My lovely bit readers and plot penguins millionstar and sunshine_173. And to my readers, thank you for being patient with me as I work my bum off to pay student loans <3 Enjoy!

PROLOGUE CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 Chapter 3

I'd only been conscious for sixteen hours before everything went to shit. 

When I woke up after the nurse had tranquilized me, I was completely alone. It took thirty seconds for my eyes to focus so I could finally get my bearings, and I pressed my head into my pillow to fight off a dizzy spell. The place where I'd changed out of my clothes was now acting as my bedroom, though it had definitely been renovated and expanded in size. I made a mental note to congratulate whomever had designed the wall that monitored everything that was happening inside me. From blood pressure to brain function, everything was displayed in a unique color code. I'd be thoroughly disappointed if the guy was dead. I at least wanted to shake his hand.

Apart from a night stand next to my bed, there was nothing else in the room. Not even a chair. Apparently, people of the future weren't very big on decorating. They also really fucking loved white. If I was a morbid son-of-a-bitch, I would have cut my hand to put a little red in the room. You know, brighten up the place.

I desperately wanted to move but everything about myself, right down to my bones, felt too heavy. I was positive I had little to no muscle strength. There was a lengthy pause between the beeps of my heart monitor, as though my blood had turned to liquid steel and my heart wasn't strong enough to pump it through. Even my lungs couldn't hold oxygen for very long without feeling lie they were ripping. My body was learning how to be alive.

A pretty young woman, the same who had brought me the water, came in to chart my progress. She was dressed in white scrubs, a purple fabric belt tied around her waist. Her red hair was an alarming and welcome flush of colour. I wanted to speak to her but my throat was dangerously dry. All I could do was lay there, on my back, relatively helpless. I didn't even have the strength to wave.

"My name is Ana," she said, not looking up from the tablet in her hand. "Don't try to speak. The little fiasco yesterday practically tore your vocal cords. Your body is trying to catch up in its healing." 

She paused, glancing over to regard my expression. I scowled.

"I know it's shit." She finished writing and turned her eyes to me, offering a sigh of understanding. The fact that she didn't sugar coat anything made me like her. "You have to bear with us for a bit. Anything you think you can do, don't. You're smart, obviously, but the fact that you're even breathing will make you do something stupid. I'd like to see you live beyond the twenty-four hour mark. After that, you'll kind of be immortal. I like a guy who lives forever." 

She winked at me, but nothing about the action was flirting. Her straight humor led me to manage a grim smile. I liked that she was doing her job, that she told me what I needed to know without acting like I was an idiot. She respected me, and I immediately respected her.

An endless rotating cast of characters came to visit and marvel at me like I was an animal in some kind of mechanical zoo. Part of me nearly ignored Ana's request to remain silent just so I could shout for them to leave, but the thought of following through with the plan made my throat burn in apprehension.

I don't know how long I sat there, bored as fuck and watching the lines of my EKG flash up and down. Small talk was out of the question for two reasons. First, I couldn't fucking speak, so that put the damper on that shit. And second, I entered their present lacking one hundred years worth of information, so, even if I could speak, who would really give a shit about what I had to say? I ignored the fact that my mysterious shadow person hadn't made himself known. In fact, I kind of liked it. His absence proved that he treated me like someone who needed time to heal instead of a laboratory success. 

A small group of men entered the room at the fifteen hour mark, with Ana in tow looking exasperated. They were all wearing suits, and I didn't need to be one of their contemporaries to know that the fabric was expensive. These were men who handled the money; government folk who sat behind desks all day instead of make worthwhile discoveries. They were coming into my room to celebrate their success. In truth, they were celebrating the fact that I wasn't dead. 

The champagne was popped right in front of my face. They poured it into plastic cups before one of them, the tallest one with a receding hairline, said a brief toast. I watched him closely and waited to see if would he turn to look at me, the very subject of his toast. He never did. Briefly, I toyed with the idea that this celebration would still have occurred even if something had gone horribly wrong. If I had gone deaf, dumb and blind; if I had remained unconscious, they would still be in the room, cheering each other on like they were at a fucking football match. 'The vegetable has a pulse! Fucking hurray!'

Assholes.

Ana stood behind them for five minutes, not taking part in the celebration. Clearly pissed off, she watched their every move until she decided she'd had enough.

"Gentlemen, there is a pub not a ten minute drive from here if you would like to continue....whatever this is. As it happens, this is still a science facility so I am going to ask you to relocate. I have work to do."

Maybe it was because I was battling unprecedented exhaustion, or maybe it was because Ana was simply a remarkable woman, but in the aftermath of her words I contemplated proposing marriage to her when I regained my ability to speak.

"This is a victory for you as well, Ana." One of the Three-Piece-Suits offered her a glass of champagne.

She remained unimpressed. "I will not be consuming alcohol while I am working, thank you. Mr. Anders, I am asking you nicely to remove your party from this room. If you continue to resist, I will call Mr. Howard and he will remove you himself."

Another of the Suits, one whose face looked like dough, snorted into his cup. "He's hardly intimidating."

I wanted to keep listening, curious as to who this Howard guy was and why he was so low on the food chain, but my whole body started to shake. It was nothing like the bone breaking convulsions of my initial awakening, merely chills that were rippling down my spine even though I found the temperature to be quite comfortable. My heart rate kicked up a few notches and I recognized these symptoms as an anxiety attack. Instead of making me fear for my life, the trembling in my arms and legs simply made me mildly irritated. I watched in fascination as my hand started to twitch, small trembles that made my fingers move as though they were pulling a trigger.

Sweat started to collect at my hairline, gliding down my forehead and into my eyes. Still, I assumed this was a panic attack or something similar. My organs were still coming to terms with the fact that they were being required to work, and it was plausible that my pituitary and adrenal gland were overcompensating. While those things should not be overlooked, I considered myself to be pretty fucking healthy.

Over their now heated conversation, Ana heard the sounds of my accelerated heart rate and studied the wall monitor before abruptly turning her attention back to the Suits.

"Leave." Her voice was cold.

"Is that how you talk to your superiors, Miss Breton?" Receding Hairline fixed her with a stern gaze.

"It is when one of the most significant scientific events in world history is placed in jeopardy. Leave. I will not ask you again."

The men glared at her as they turned toward the door. Ana held her ground, arms crossed and a stern grimace. 

"And it's Mrs. Breton," she said as Receding Hairline made it to the door.

He turned back to scowl just has the glass door slid shut.

My heart sank. Marriage was out of the question.

"Sorry about that," she said, walking over to me.

For being married?

"You're not actually in jeopardy. I just said that to get them the hell out."

Oh.

Her eyes narrowed as she checked my condition. She placed a hand on my forehead only for it to come away damp. If she was distressed, she did a fucking impressive job of hiding it. 

"I'll be honest," she began, moving to the wall monitor. "I'm having a hell of a time figuring out what is a side effect, what is natural, and what is caused by the foreign particles we found. Seriously, I have never seen anything like them." She turned to look back at me then. Her face was coated with concern, and that's when I started to worry. 

My vision blurred momentarily, distorting my surroundings and giving me a sharp headache. When the fog disappeared, Ana was standing above me injecting a syringe into my arm.

"This should regulate your heart, but until we can figure out what the hell is in your bloodstream it's going to be hit or miss." 

A wave of exhaustion rolled over me and my eyes began to droop. My sense of time became detached from reality. In a daze, I watched Ana stroke the wall, inputting codes and numbers I would only ever be so lucky to understand. I wanted to scream at her. I knew exactly what was in my blood. If only I could speak, I would have explained it all in great detail. If I had strength, I would have written the exact formula.

I could do neither of those things. So, instead, I remained silent as Ana slipped out the door and I drifted into hell.

~~

Necozine is, if nothing else, a cocktail. And, like all cocktails, there is a specific and calculated amount of each ingredient that is added. Above all, it is a semisynthetic drug that acts as an empathogen-entactogen as it releases serotonin in the brain. However, unlike typical psychedelics like MDMA and LSD, it contains a higher tryptamine compound that offers the affects of synesthesia. If this cocktail had stopped there, it is likely there would be little to no way for a subject to become addicted. If they did, it would be from the lack of increased serotonin, which would affect mood, and the symptoms of withdrawal would cease within a week. In order for Necozine to chemically combine, it contains traces of methylphenpropane and opioid diacetate. This is what made Necozine work so well.

As a chemist, I get a bigger hard on over this information than you do.

All you really need to know is this: it was the traces of meth that made Necozine addictive.

All I needed to know was: it was the traces of meth that made the psychosomatic withdrawal symptoms utterly fucking terrifying.

~~

Something was watching me. 

I knew I hadn't slept for very long, my mind still hazy with half sleep and drugs. It was the uncanny sensation that something was standing above the foot of my bed that made my body prevent itself from falling deep into relaxation. My skin started to crawl and unease flooded my system. 

The intruder was not monitoring my sleep patterns. It was not Ana, whose presence probably would have comforted me. Whomever, or whatever, was watching me wanted to cause me harm.

But not yet.

Even with my eyes closed, I could tell that they were going to prolong their attack and spend their time feasting on my paranoia. 

I forced myself to remain quiet, silencing effort of my breathing for as long as possible before it became painful. In those few quiet moments, I heard the barely discernible wheeze of another being taking in air. 

Slowly.

Softly.

Breathing in union with me. Looming above me.

My eyes flew open, adjusting to the darkness with impressive speed. I immediately wished I had been blind.

A dark figure stood above me. Too tall to be human, to angular to be anything else. It was a shadow that seemed bleed into my surroundings. I could tell it was smiling. I wished it would fucking stop.

A spike in my heart rate at this realization gave me away, the increased speed of the beeps signaling that I was conscious of my surroundings. It knew I was awake. It knew I was aware of its presence. It knew I expected an attack. 

So why would it wait?

It did not, as I expected tear my flesh from my bones. Instead, it opened it's mouth to reveal teeth, too many teeth. Daggers floating in space. It released a high pitched static scream that filled my ears and made them ring. It was an onslaught of sensation, with the pitch and volume of a from a broken radio station. My eyes rolled back into my head and I started gasping for breath, the synapses in my brain going haywire. A headache formed in my frontal lobes, creating a pressure unlike anything I had ever experienced, drilling itself into every core of my mind. The thought of my cranium breaking from the strain did not seem too farfetched.

As quickly as it came, it was over. I was alone in my room once more and as I gasped for air I felt the trickle of liquid from my ear and down my neck. I didn't have the strength to wipe it away, so I remained on my back for the rest of the night as I bled into my pillow. 

That was only the beginning. 

~~

I hadn't slept the whole night. Every attempt I'd made during the day proved futile, as there was too much stimulation between the lights and the sounds and the people checking my progress. In the afternoon, Ana came in with a cup of liquid that looked teal. She moved my bed to a sitting position and ran a hand through my hair. I smiled at the touch. 

"Today," she said, with a tone of apprehension in her voice, "we are going to try to have you speak. All you have to do is be brave and drink this. I know what you're thinking. You froze yourself for a hundred years, you can tackle anything. Well, let me tell you buddy." She turned my head so I could look at her. "I'm always honest with you, with all my patients. And when I say this tastes like piss, I mean it."

I scowled. If it was the fucking synthetic pee again, I was going to break the nose of the guy who invented it the minute I could move again.

She pressed the cup to my lips, and I made a vague groan.

Really?

"Come on. I know you've got balls. Prove to me your bravery wasn't just stupidity."

Fuck you, Ana. 

She tipped the cup carefully, and once again I let the liquid into my mouth against my better judgement. I almost spat it out, but Ana tipped the cup further, forcing me to swallow. I squeezed my eyes shut, skin forming crinkles at the sides. It tasted more like cat piss than it had before. I struggled through the entire portion and gasped for breath when it was done.

"You are a fucking hero, you hear me?" Ana threw the cup away and turned to the wall, turning her hand in a circular motion which made a timer appear on the wall for one minute. "When this beeps, you're going to try to say something to me. This drink is a combination of sugar, water and paracetachormal."

I simply stared at her, not taking her nonsense. What the fuck was that? It wasn't even a real thing.

"This was invented twelve years ago by our very own Doctor Howard. It will help rebuild the muscles in your trachea."

There was that name again. Doctor Howard. At every turn, this name grew more and more fascinating, though why the fucker hadn't shown himself was starting to irritate me.

"I don't want you to hate me, but you will have to drink this every single day until the corniculate and cuneiform cartilage are fully rebuilt. For some reason, those parts of your vocal chords suffered the most damage. That will take about four days, I'm sorry we can't make it any faster."

I cringed at the thought of going through this every single day, but I was loathe to admit that the fire in my chest had subsided minutely. The timer went off, and I watched the way she turned her hand in the opposite direction, turning her hazel eyes back to me.

"Ok. Talk to me, Matthew. I'm eager to meet you."

I ran through my head all the witty things I could try to say, and none of them made any kind of sense when condensed to one word. Because, fuck you, that was all I had the confidence to manage. I turned my head and felt the pull of my skin under the caked blood of my ear. Oh. Yeah. I probably should have told her about that, though how she hadn't noticed before was disconcerting. 

I shut my eyes and gathered as much strength into my chest as I possibly could, hoping to Christ I wouldn't bite my tongue in the process.

"Buh." Was all I managed. How fucking anti-climactic.

Ana smiled. "Try again."

"Blo-" I gasped. Fuck, this hurt. Even moving my mouth was exhausting. "Blood."

I threw the word into the atmosphere and, even though it was a morbid thing to say, I smiled. The sound of my own voice, when it wasn't screaming in terror, was a welcome sound.

Ana, however, was no where near as pleased. "What?" Her voice had gone cold.

"Blood," I said again. This time it was easier. I tried to tell her where. "E-ear." I panted. I smiled at my success.

She rushed over to my bed and turned my head to inspect my ear. I felt her hands along my skin and my flesh tingled at the contact. 

"Pillow." The pain in my chest with each word gradually decreased, and I felt fucking giddy.

Ana pulled my pillow out from under my head and stared at me dubiously. I smiled. Good girl. She looked too concerned to focus on the fact that I had just said three words, one of which had two syllables. I wanted fucking confetti, I wanted a goddamn parade. She held the pillow up, and all the blood rushed from my face.

There was no blood on it at all.

That scared the fuck out of me. I'd spent hours feeling the blood pool onto the sheets and cake onto my skin. My flesh had itched in irritation the entire night, but when Ana held up my pristine pillow I started to wonder if the entire thing, from the shadow to the screaming noise, had been a vivid nightmare. 

"I think….that's enough speaking practice for today," she said cautiously. I had never heard anyone sound so terrified.

Ana changed my pillowcase anyway, saying it due for a wash, but I could tell she was more concerned for my psychological wellbeing than the hygiene of my bedsheets. It didn't go unnoticed that she kept a close eye on me throughout the entire day. Too close to the wall, too close to my bed frame, I could tell she was worried. There was a glint in her eye I didn't like when she charted my progress; the way her eyes narrowed made me uneasy.

Like an idiot, I shrugged these feelings off. I was certain I'd had a visceral nightmare, the kind that makes you think that reality has collapsed around you. Typically, these types of nightmares don't reoccur. Nigh terrors only occur once every month, if that. Occasionally the variables change depending on stress. Even though my body was under a very different level of stress, there was no reason my sleep patterns should be any different. If anything, my body would have been more capable to fall into REM cycles due to exhaustion.

When it was time for Ana to go home, she was hesitant to leave. I stupidly convinced her I'd be fine with a noncommittal shrug of my shoulders.

Why should I be ruled by nightmare? I'm a big fucking boy, I was certain I could take it.

It was only when the lights were turned off that I realized how fucking wrong I was.

I spent three damn hours scouring every corner of my wall for my intruder, though in the back of my mind I knew he wouldn't show so long as I expected him. That was the thing. I had assigned 'it' a gender because it felt too masculine, too much like me to have a vagina. Besides, what I knew of female phantasms was they were fairly in your face and out for revenge. This guy was just psychotic and got off on my fear.

I lost precious hours of sleep waiting for him to come, but he never did. When I started to drift, the sweat began to pour down my face. It streaked lines across my skin, and the sweat from my upper lip dripped from my cupid's bow in between my closed lips. It leaked slowly on to my tongue and I could taste my own anxiety. That was when I was shocked back to reality by the sensation of a holy wound tearing its way through my thigh. I didn't need the use of my fingers to know that a gaping hole was forming, the flesh folding back as though it were being pulled and flayed in each direction. 

The sounds of my screaming began to fill the room, though I didn't know when I had started to yell. My vision was blurring to whiteness from the pain, and I knew exactly what was happening. 

The frequency of my Necozine injections was coming back to bite me in the ass. My prized injection spot was starting to decay, growing gangrenous and toxic. I wondered how long I had before the sepsis would kick in. How long before it would reach my dick and start to rot before my eyes. The thought made me feel ill. The blood from my leg dripped in streams, making thick, slippery pools on the sheets. I couldn't move my leg to alleviate the sensation.

My breath caught when I felt insects crawling up my leg. An army of spiders was making its way along my limbs, only to burrow in the hole that had only just appeared. Fuck the sepsis, this was a bit more urgent.

Thousands of the fuckers were burrowing into my skin, and I clenched my teeth together to wheeze my apprehension. I wanted to kick them off, kill them, roll out of the bed and crush them under my weight. Heaving my chest off the bed, seized with panic, only once took all the strength I could muster, and I collapsed onto the mattress once more. Tears formed in my eyes, and the idea of spiders residing in me made me ill.

I vomited on myself in fear.

The lights in the room came on, forcing me to squint with the sudden blow. A young man, no more than my age, came running in, the coat tails of his lab coat flapping behind him.

"What the fuck is going on?" 

He was muttering to himself, just as panicked as I, and asking the only question I cared to ask. In his demeanor, I saw confusion and panic. He was reading every single number and line about my body with great care, running his hand along the glass as though he were caressing a lover.

"What the bloody hell….is any of this."

He rounded on me, and suddenly, I knew him. The one who caught me, the one with the grey eyes. My shadow person. Warily, he approached my bed, kindness forming in his irises as he did his best to smile at me.

"Matthew, my name is Doctor Howard." How fucking ceremonious was this meeting. I was trilling with excitement, which made me vomit once more due to the sudden shift in my emotional state.

He tilted my head and swiftly grabbed a steel bowl for me to vomit in, utterly unscathed my the whole ordeal. 

He continued to speak.

"I am the lead scientist on your case. While I wish terribly that meant I could be here with you, monitoring your progress, my title merely means more paperwork than I ever fucking cared to look at in my life."

I laughed in understanding, against my better judgement, and the breeze caused the vomit on my bottom lip to fly. 

"Ugh," I moaned.

"Eh, no big deal." He waved a hand, not bothering to look in my spray's direction. "What is a big deal, is your neurological pattern. Something is dragging you deep into psychosis. Would you, the person who invented this process, be able to offer some insight? I'm told Ana started you on the paracetachormal."

I nodded, slowly, narrowing my eyes and immediately filling with panic. This fucking cunt. What did he want from me? Was he too lazy to do his own research on the project? Did I need to be responsible for everything? My mood swung from joy to rage back to panic, and I started to tremble once again. My brain was being overloaded with information: too much light, too much fear, too much hatred for this idiot scientist. I knew it wasn't his fault, that he wasn't responsible for the Necozine, but pointing the finger at something made the rage ebb just a little.

I weighed my options. Tell him his prized subject was a fucking junkie and get a cure, while also getting strapped with malpractice in my own project in the process or suffer in silence and try to fucking live. I went in the complete opposite direction and decided to tell him that I was now a husk made of spiders.

"Spiders." I whispered, a wicked grin forming my face.

Howard looked taken aback, his hands resting on the arms of my hospital bed - that looked too much like a skeleton - before blinking twice. "What?"

"Spiddeerrrssss." I repeated, with a hiss. And then I laughed. The nonsense of it felt delicious.

"Matthew, where do you see spiders?"

"Bed." I laughed again. "Bed, with me."

Howard ripped my sheet off my body, and we both stared in horror at my thigh.

No wound.

No spiders.

I looked back up at Howard, only briefly, before I vomited down my chest and collapsed in exhaustion.

Fucking Necozine.

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