A/N: Already this story is proving (to me, at least) to be more promising than its predecessor. And yeah, the mystery boy is revealed. I doubt anyone will be surprised. Enjoy.

Define Human Rewrite

[2. If]

“You will not tamper with the equipment.”

The words rang in Xeno’s head as he lashed his hand at the metal cuff on his wrist, raking tattered nails at the seam and attempting to, though with unsuccessful results, release himself. A glass window was indented into the side of the contraption where he could watch clear liquid slosh as if trying to break the surface. Scuff marks were a testament to his own efforts to shatter it. This liquid, he knew, was fed into his bloodstream through a tube on the inside of the cuff. What he did not know was whether it was designed to sustain his life or to end it. The camera mocked his frantic clawing.

“When the window is empty, the quarantine will be over.”

Reluctantly, Xeno relaxed in bitter acceptance, if only temporary, of things beyond his limited control. His fingers were still loosely encircled around rigid glass and metal as he let himself lean back against the wall. With ginger precision, he lifted his right arm and draped it over his knees, wincing at the bones that stuck out a bit too far from his wiry frame and the dull throbbing of the vein beneath the pale skin of his wrist. In the glass, his faint reflection seemed desperate and tired; shadows were enunciated under dark eyes. He no longer identified with the image he saw, and he glared at the camera like it was to blame.

“If you should repeatedly try to escape, we will be forced to take counteractive measures.”

Dents mottled the otherwise blank walls, blemishes on what would have been perfect white. Bruises splotched the back of his arm and scabs dotted each knuckle so that Xeno mirrored his marred surroundings. He figured that, despite the warnings poignantly delivered to him twelve days before, he could get out if enough damage was done to the room around him. If he disabled the lights, if he tore at the steels hinges of the door, if he broke the damn lens. The surveillance system bothered him perhaps more than the small oval window set into the metal cuff. Though he couldn’t see it happen, didn’t hear it in motion, the camera whirred into focus, getting a closer look at him from behind a sheet of black one-way glass.

“We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

Xeno rested the weight of his head in the palm of one hand and sighed.

---

Fingerprints smudged the monitor of the television where the guard had pressed his index finger against the display. Where pixels in shades of grey revealed the form of a boy, his face slightly hidden and distorted beneath a coating of potato chip grease, sitting in the corner of Room 17. Elizabeth adjusted silver-rimmed glasses and leaned forward, assessing the situation through the dingy screen.

“This is the one?” she asked, and the guard nodded. Yes. He jabbed at the television again, showing her a small piece of tape that’d been stuck to the base of the screen. Numbers were printed in neat yet masculine handwriting, red ink. The number she’d been told to find. There was nothing blatantly wrong with the image above it, no ragged holes in the walls or shards of glass on the tiled floor. But upon examination, Elizabeth frowned.

“He doesn’t seem to be forgetting, does he?” she muttered, half to herself. This time the guard shook his head from side to side. No. He reached first for another potato chip and then for a paper in a bin labeled “In case of complications”. She snatched it away, lethally chipped gold nails barely missing his skin and then making softly indented lines across the sheet as she scanned the words. A Disney World pen, cheerily out of place in the dim lighting and grey paint palette, cast long flickering shadows when she filled it out.

Then Elizabeth glanced up from her writing and tapped the pen rapidly, contemplating something. “Zoom in,” she commanded at last, “I need to see the IV bracelet.” She watched as the picture quality lessened, as the boy became more pixilated, but also as the camera provided her with a better view of the cuff around his wrist. Squinting behind her prescription glasses, she let out a “huh” under her breath and picked up the pen again. The head of Mickey Mouse bobbed.

With muted curiosity, the guard craned his pudgy neck to watch the woman next to him and the way her eyebrows were drawn together in an impatient scowl as her cramped scrawl filled the paper.

“So what’s the problem?” he asked, splaying crumbs over her work. Elizabeth glared at him for more than one reason and straightened up, tossing his souvenir pen across the wooden desk while at the same time flicking the spit and chip dust away.

“I told you already,” she retorted slowly with condescending dignity, “God, I thought they taught you to recognize the potential symptoms.”

The guard wheeled his office chair back several inches as if this would protect him from the wrath of his superior. Sheepishly, he turned to look up at monitor seventeen. Though he would never admit this to her, there was nothing out of the ordinary there to him. Damn lady is paranoid. Eventually he just glanced back at her and shrugged.

“Do you realize what would happen if the treatment were to fail on him?” Elizabeth didn’t wait for him to answer; instead she poked a finger at the monitor. Static jumped briefly between her skin and the glass. “This one subject, this mere boy, would get us all arrested.” She rapped a knuckle against the TV set lightly, making a hollow sound on contact. “That’s the problem.”

He blinked and bit down on another chip, his crunching breaking the short silence. “Oh.” It was the first word he’d spoken all day. Then he glanced back at the TV. If.