06. 𝒑𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒄

EDDIE was intoxicated, practically. With the mixture of his curiosity and a room full of mysterious-looking human-sized glassed containers, he couldn't help but explore.

Quietly of course, as Dora dealt with the issue outside.

Step by step Eddie took a picture, trying to capture all the evidence he could to possibly use against Drake.

And at first, as he went down the main stretch of containers, he only found disassembled internal organ-looking substances, which did gross him out slightly but didn't have other effects on him.

But then he came into contact with a certain cell; it encompassed a human being.

The body was sprawled on the floor, orange vitals readily fluctuating on the front of the glass pane. Eddie took a photo of that.

Now, he should've been concerned, but he and Dora discussed it earlier. She was telling the truth, and he believed her enough to come here himself.

The next cell he met reminded him that he had a daughter. It wasn't the woman in the cell, rocking back and forth, that reminded him of Riley, but the fact that Riley was at his apartment right now, and that if Drake ever did find out he was here, the first place the man would look would be Eddie's apartment.

Pondering whether to call Riley or not at the moment, he quickly snapped a photo of the woman inside the cell and stalked off with a quick pace--

Suddenly, banging came from behind him as he startled, whirling around to see a familiar face-- Maria. A woman he knew from the streets, one he considered a friend, was inside this cell.

If Maria could be in this cell, he started to frantically ponder, then so could Riley.

Eddie rushes to the glass pane as Maria's shouts and hits to the glass just intensify his compassion.

"Please-- please let me out!" Maria's cries didn't help him, as Eddie looked the window up and down, side to side: the key panel, bingo.

And then he just started slamming it wildly, as though it would actually work, until suddenly red alarms, red lights (everything red) started blaring, hurting, and panicking.

Maria's cries turn to loud groans of misery, as Eddie backs up a couple of feet, suddenly hitting a wall. He jerks around, his eyes finding a fire extinguisher; use it!

Listening to himself, he works quickly to slam the metal object into the glass with the means to break it, albeit alarms going off, albeit alarms alerting others of his whereabouts.

But within three hits, the glass suddenly shatters, bringing on a new set of problems; ones that are quite lethiferous. Because Maria suddenly leaps to Eddie, both of them fly back ten feet, her slamming him into the ground.

But that wasn't Maria, not anymore at least, not by a long shot.

In favor of the truth, Maria was dead, because as Eddie's shouts of her name and his hands trying to pry hers away did nothing, suddenly something happened.

Something incredibly hungry, as that something moved itself from Maria, attaching itself to Eddie, seeping through his skin and into his body.

And for an instant, Eddie didn't know what the hell to do.

But then his instincts kicked in, alongside a rerelease of more adrenaline, Eddie scurried around the secretive lab he was in for no more than a couple of minutes, and with a burning passion, out of the said lab.

Slamming through some doors, he slips right into a brightly lit hallway, only to be met with two police guards.

Without a second's hesitation, one yells freeze, barreling towards Eddie, but Eddie knows what to do; or, in reality, his conscious (of sorts) knows what to do.

Leaping to the wall, he uses the friction to slam a good punch to the first guard, sending him down. Then, for the next guard, he drops down and slides, dropping the man from his feet.

Eddie glances back, just in time to see more guards heading his way from doors opposite him.

Of course, Eddie continues to run, through the maze of the LIFE Foundation, but finally to stairs, seeing the glorious EXIT sign glaring at him with red eyes.

It's his savior-- but then he slams through that door too: it's a fully locked and bolted stainless steel door.

Or it was, anyway.

A frown forms onto Eddie's face for a second, as he rushes it awkwardly out of his way, hence looking for the next way out.

Alas, a big open forest to his left brings him to prepare himself to climb the fence separating him and the freedom of San Fransisco, yet only to- somehow -go completely through the fence.

This sends him tumbling down the hill below, but almost as quickly as he was down, he's back up and sprinting again, even with bullets firing at him from behind.

Everything becomes a blur for him, as he dodges tree branches to his own feet, but he knows his fight isn't over yet.

With more guards, alongside a whole ass RV, chasing him, he tries to wind through some of the forests to get away from the bullets, shouting, and probable death.

As he looks back for a moment to check how close the guards are to him, he doesn't see the thick tree, fallen straight in his path. Before he can react, Eddie simply runs straight through the tree itself, dropping anchor on the ground harshly with a groan.

Moaning as he looks at what he just ran through, he's upright and on his feet once more.

What the sh-, Eddie doesn't have time to finish his thought, as abruptly his physique just moves without his consent.

But that's not possible, it's simply not. He is the only person in command of himself, right?

As the guards and RV's close in on Eddie, he disappears.

Disappears?

More like clinging for his life onto the tree directly above the people trying to kill him.

RILEY was panicking. Eddie told her he'd be home within the hour or so, and it was now the next morning.

She hadn't called the police, just her Dad over ten times with each message getting more and more emotional than the last.

She had gone from pacing around her room to trying to watch some TV to painting what a YouTube tutorial said to her to calm herself, yet none of it worked.

She was haywire, as her father always responded right away and kept to his word with her.

It was highly unusual for him to break that cycle, especially with Riley.

Riley hadn't taken a shower like she'd wanted to, tried on the new clothes she had bought for twenty bucks at a thrift store, nor had she tested her new painting supplies.

That all flew out the door when her Dad didn't answer. She simply was incredibly protective of those she cared about, besides popular belief of the Brock's not giving two shits about others' wellbeing.

Riley was the exact opposite of that steriotype, especially when her loved ones could be in danger.

Her YouTube tutorial she watched used her older supplies, of which she ended up breaking one of her brushes and calling her father to try him once again. That was two hours ago.

"Jesus, Dad, where the fuck are you? Excuse my French but what happened to--" Riley was in the middle of leaving another message for her father, when the man himself suddenly flung into the apartment.

She leaps up from the couch and spins around, eyes darting to the intruder.

"Dad?!"

Eddie isn't listening, as he's on the phone with someone.

"Hey Ms. Skirth, yeah it's me, I just got back," Eddie locks the door behind him and Riley rushes up to him.

He doesn't let her hug him, as he just engulfs her first, wrapping his arms around her, and lets go to plant a kiss on her forehead.

Abruptly he tears away from Riley, half walking to the refrigerator.

"Uh--uh, are you alright? I haven't heard from you so I wanted to know if you're alright..." Eddie trails off as he grabs two beers from the icebox.

Riley stands shell-shocked at what's just happened, but the sound of the beers clinking against one another checks her back to reality. Eddie cracks open a beer as Riley frowns, rushing over to grab the other one.

Eddie, mistakenly thinking she was going to drink it, looks her way and shakes his head, using his free hand to take it from her.

Riley tries to explain, "hey- no, I wasn't--"

"Yeah it was a great call, absolutely right. Yeah listen, I gotta, I gotta go-- I gotta call him and," Eddie takes his beer from the island and takes a gulp. "I got a bunch of photographs..."

Eddie shuffles to the sink to fill up a cup of water.

Riley throws her hands in the air with sudden irritation, manifested by not knowing what the fuck is going on, as she instinctively grabs the closed beer and scrambles to put it back into the fridge.

"-Just call me back, call me back.."

As Eddie hangs up, Riley watches in horror as he completely engulfs the entire glass of water within three seconds flat, then proceeds to become startled as the glass shatters in the sink.

Her lips have been started this whole time, eyes wide as she watched her father barge in and do some pretty weird shit.

She doesn't waste any time, "Dad?! What the fuck is going on right now?"

Eddie turns to her as the realization that she's been here the whole time hits him--

Oh shit, Riley.

He stutters to get the words out as Riley's eyebrows arch upward in confusion as she waits, her patience growing thinner.

Eddie would've answered, if not for the sudden hunger inside of him. Almost like a second voice in his head, just a second sense for now, he bends down quickly and holds himself steady.

Riley reaches for her father immediately, bending down to try and see his face.

"Wait-- Dad what's wrong, what's going--hey, uh, you know you're gonna be fine, um- ?" Riley's voice delays the frantic panic starting to form once more, for how long she doesn't know.

Eddie just groans, shaking his head, and he would've taken the time to explain what Riley wanted to hear (kind of), but was stopped dead.

He yanks open the freezer doors pulls out a bag of tater tots, rips the bag open, and just dumps the bag into his mouth.

Meanwhile, Riley had taken steps back, suddenly a childish fear that maybe, just maybe, something had taken over her Dad's body.

Like a demon, she thinks, hearing the dominant thump of her heart suddenly in her ears, its pace increasing steadily.

In a blink of an eye and Eddie was in the trash can, digging out some chicken, and eating away at it aggressively.

Riley, rooted to her spot a few steps away, debates the legitimacy of her statement, and if she really should call the police.

Eddie's sudden movements to the bathroom makes Riley flinch, his newfound fuel to act like a madman sparking a bad feeling in her stomach; it forces a neuropathy of fear into her frontal cortex.

Her whole body turns as she hears her father's regurgitating sounds from the bathroom, of the disgusting shit he just ate she thinks, she scurries close enough to the couch that she jumps onto it from the back, eyes glued to the bathroom door.

She feels frantically around for her phone, and when she finds it, for some reason the first person that comes to mind is him; Peter.

She swallows as she hears her father whine, "uh, what is wrong with me?"

The teen blinks a couple of times before realizing he'd asked a question. To her or to himself she didn't know.

"Uh, I don't know Dad. I was hoping you could tell me..." Riley raises her voice so he could hear her, but Eddie's already moved onto brushing his teeth.

He hates the taste of the food he just ate still lingering, so why not brush his teeth, right?

Wrong.

Because as Riley flicks her attention and eyes from the bathroom door to her phone, wildly trying to locate Peter and their messages, Eddie spits into the sink, looking up into the mirror.

Accept he doesn't see himself staring back at him-- white, oval eyes practically grow out of his and- !

EDDIE.