Dynasty Decapitated

Throw Your Problems On Me

((Title from stfu by Aminé))

Ashton's just walking through the open door, socks sliding on fresh tiles, when an alarm blares. Luke ducks and whips around, but Ashton keeps walking. It sounds like an air horn echoing around the warehouse.

"What the fuck is that?" Luke demands. He straightens up when the noise stops and hurries to follow Ashton into the room. It seems to be a one time thing. Deafening, but only once.

"Alarm," Ashton replies. "Every three hours."

He leads Luke into a fully equipped lab, papers spread across multiple tables and small refrigerators running gently. Luke glances around, but he can't piece together why this door had sprung open so suddenly. For what? Ashton loves science work and experimenting, a full lab would give him more joy, not make him miserable like he figures a kidnapper would try for.

Luke furrows his eyebrows, but he's still kind of focused on the abrupt alarm. And the fact that he's only been here three fucking hours. He looks at the back of Ashton's head and says, "For what?"

Ashton walks over to what is clearly his main table and settles into a stool. A second stool is next to his, so Luke settles into it and watches Ashton blink at his papers and say, "So I don't sleep. They want me to lose my mind and do something stupid."

It makes sense. Ashton had just tried to fucking kill him and the abruptly fallen asleep in the floor. Luke doesn't doubt he's slowly losing his mind in this small warehouse. He wonders what stupid thing they want Ashton to do.

Ashton rubs a hand down his face and mutters, "Of course it's you. Obviously that's why they brought you here."

"What?" Luke watches him stand and turn around three times with a blank look on his face, before he spots a mini fridge across the room and heads for it with a purpose.

"You wanna know why we're here?" Ashton asks. He pulls open the mini fridge across the room and grabs a small container of samples from it, along with a paper bag.

Luke frowns at the items in his hands. When he looks up, he meets Ashton's dull eyes and immediately replies, "Yes."

"I'm a scientist," Ashton tells him honestly. "I need help. You're a scientist. If we're missing from Calum's life, they'll get under his skin. He'll go insane."

He's not wrong, Luke thinks. Calum is losing his spark. He can't imagine how upset he'll be to find out they're both missing. Ashton trudges back over to his stool and settles down to pull out a plastic bag from the brown paper bag. There's a cheap looking kitchen knife inside, coated with blood on the blade, with a small section near the tip rubbed off.

Luke recognizes it instantly.

"This is Calum's blood," Ashton tells him. Luke flinches. It's somehow worse when Ashton says it so blandly. Like a robot. Ashton reaches over to the case of small test tubes and shakes one with his pinky finger. "This is Calum's dna. But only the mutant part. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

Luke doesn't want to admit it, so he shakes his head quickly, like that'll make Ashton stop talking.

Ashton sighs at him and rests his pinky on a second tiny test tube. "This is Michael's mutant dna. Do you get it now?"

"Stop," Luke replies. "Stop it, why do you have those?"

Ashton rubs his heavy lidded eyes and sets his face in his hands, elbows against the black table. "If I'm good, I get to eat. I haven't- I didn't eat for three days, but I gave in yesterday because I was so hungry and they said they'd turn off the alarm and let me go and they locked the bathroom and-" he cuts off and looks at Luke with red rimmed eyes. "If you don't help me, they'll kill us both in here."