Important Author's Note: Dear LORD it's been a long time since I updated. I've almost completely moved to AO3 so I didn't even remember what my fanfiction login was when I tried to get back on here.

I just wanna say thank you to everyone who read this story and an especially big thanks to everyone who reviewed.

To be perfectly honest with you, I don't want to continue this story. It was one of the first fics I'd written and I feel like it has a lot of problems with it. I'd like to rewrite it (and I'm ehhh, only at a couple chapters right now) but I'm getting my degree and I have a part-time job and lots of other responsibilities so it could take a long while.

But, I didn't want to do the crappy thing of making an update just to tell you I'll probably be deleting and rewriting this story in a few months(?). I figured I'd upload the last little bit I'd written a while back too.

So thanks again for reading this story and I'm sorry I don't update anywhere near frequently. I hope to upload a better gen rex story here soon, but until then... just know that you guys are awesome.

xiv.

"Rex. You left so quickly yesterday! We didn't even get a chance to catch up!"

That voice. It haunts his nightmares; it leaves him shaking and petrified on the cold floor; it torments him relentlessly.

And it's here.

"Van Kleiss." Rex whispers.

He turns around. Instantly, he's slapped in the face by two realities.

It's just a man. This is a man with grey in his hair, age lines scarring his face, and a worn trench-coat around his shoulders.

Yet Rex also inexplicably feels that this is not 'just a man', that he is in fact some sort of demon or monster or hell-beast. And there's some evidence for that too.

The man is also trimmed in gold, brandishing a vicious, needle-sharp claw in his left hand – or perhaps it is his left hand, Rex can't be sure – and there's a certain wrong feeling associated with how he peers out from underneath his limp, lanky locks.

Van Kleiss looks out at the world with wide, unblinking eyes, darting his gaze back and forth so he doesn't miss a thing.

He looks...unbalanced. Determined.

Rex thinks that there must be nothing you can't accomplish with unyielding stubbornness and no sense of morality. Maybe that's what Van Kleiss is thinking too.

A very long time ago, perhaps he'd been sane and handsome. But now he's thrown both attributes to the wind in his pursuit of...

What? Torturing Rex? That seems to be the only goal Rex can think of.

I hate him, Rex realizes. He's scared, terrified, shaking no matter how hard he digs his nails into his skin to make himself stop – but more than that, he despises this man.

If he's never thought of murder before (here's hoping), he's doing it now.

"Rex. Why do you keep running away from your family?" The man practically purrs, like he's a cat pinning a mouse so well, he could take a nap and it would still be there, trapped and helpless.

He's so confident it makes Rex's skin crawl.

"My family would never torture me." Rex doesn't have the courage to do more than whisper the retort.

He thinks he's just reminding himself of that fact more than anything.

Still, he immediately regrets it.

Sweeping into the room, Van Kleiss raises a fist and commands the door behind him close. This is why Rex had such trouble finding a door – in this place (Rex thinks he knows the name, but can't quite reach it in his mind), Van Kleiss can control the very ground. He simply tells the rocks, the walls, to seal like the world's most inconvenient door, and it obeys.

No wonder Rex couldn't even smash it open. Maybe he could've sliced through like ten feet of solid rock (concrete?), but smashing only dented the first few feet.

"I don't know what lies Providence has been filling your head with," Van Kleiss says. "But we'll soon fix that. We're your family, Rex. Not by blood, no, but by something stronger. Nanites."

Doesn't everything have nanites? Rex wants to ask. But his throat is too busy trying to remember how to swallow and his lips feel numb, so.

Nothing comes out.

"You, I, and our EVO brethren – we're going to change the world."

"W-what's wrong with it?" He snaps, blurts out, really. "S-seems fine to me."

Van Kleiss slams his fist into Rex's face, quick, without warning. The punch hurts, but the suddeness amplifies it tenfold, and Rex can only clutch his cheek for a moment, heart hammering inside him.

The fire in Van Kleiss' eyes is extinguished as swiftly as it started. His mood swings completely, like a pendulum, from rage to a relaxed calm.

"You see? This has always been your problem, this. You have no respect for your elders, Rex."

Rex curls in on himself and doesn't answer.

A part of him, deep within, sneers at his pathetic whimpering, but it's all he can do right now not to cry.

He wishes someone were here with him. Someone. Anyone. Anyone besides him.

"Now, you are going to stop with this nonsense. You will stop trying to escape me and will accept that your new life is here, with us."

A word pricks at him, makes him lift his head slightly. He needs to know. But he shouldn't speak again, he shouldn't –

"W-who's 'us'?"

He flinches at his own words – will he raise his hand again? – but Van Kleiss doesn't seem to mind.

The man laces his hands behind him and tilts his head, gazing down at Rex like he's some king, peering down at all the people he owns.

"Us. Those EVO's who know well enough to join my cause. We will be your new family, Rex. We are your family. Together, we'll change the world."

He looks happy. Satisfied. Vindicated.

It churns Rex's stomach.

But maybe as long as he can keep him talking, maybe Van Kleiss will keep not hitting him.

Rex thinks he'd do just about anything to never feel his touch again.

So he keeps talking.

"How?" He asks, still breathless from before. "H-how will you –"

"We." The man's eyes narrow.

Wincing, Rex corrects himself,

"How will we change the world?"

"I'm glad you asked, Rex. I'd be happy to tell you." Van Kleiss blinks, something Rex can't ever recall him doing before, and he braces himself for the fallout.

It's not something he could've prepared for.

"First, though. You...probably want to hear about your family. Your biological family, I should say."

Rex's mouth dries up. He remembers those first couple of days, lost and alone and so desperate for his family to come find him.

Someone found him – the Providence people – and they're all lovely, really, but it's still not the same.

They aren't his mom and dad.

Rex, this is a crazy person. You can't reason with him, He reminds himself. But you can't dangle a bit of food in front of a starving person and tell him not to eat it, that it's gone bad.

It doesn't matter. It won't make a difference – he's simply too far gone to listen.

"You – you know my family?"

Van Kleiss's smiles like this is a victory.

"Of course. I used to work with your parents, you know. And your brother. We were all...researchers. Scientists."

Rex doesn't think he can breathe.

"Scientists? My family – and I-I-I have a brother?"

He's so excited he misses something big implicit in Van Kleiss's words. He forgets the fact that he hates and fears this man – he forgets that he's cold, hungry, thirsty, and beaten up – he even forgets the fact that he's not supposed to trust anything Van Kleiss says.

Suddenly, none of that means anything.

He has a family.

He has a brother.

"Tell me more." He demands breathlessly. "What are their names? Where are they? What are they like?"

"Oh, Rex. I'm sorry."

Rex's blood chills too slowly at those words, he's still so thrilled and lost in thought.

"What?" He blinks.

"I'd tell you everything but I'm afraid you'd simply run away again. I'll tell you what – if you stay here, spend time with your new family, join our cause, then I will tell you anything you want to know about who you are."

He feels his fragile, painful world crumbling into dust around him.

There are scars on his arms, torso, legs – there's a freaking broken arm – that live as proof as to why Van Kleiss cannot be trusted.

He would hurt Rex again if he thought that would get him what he wanted quicker. Rex knows that.

And he's not suddenly okay with it. He's terrified even now. He can't even stand up because his legs tremble too much.

But it's just – it's right there. Answers. To his past. In the back of his mind, he thinks of a dream where he shunned the truth, where he ran like a coward, and he doesn't want to do that again.

Rex wants this so bad he licks his lips and finds them bloody, realizes he's bitten them through.

Plus, he's already escaped this cell twice, he reasons. If he really wanted to, he could do it again.

Well. He already really wants to. And he was taken back here eventually, both times, a small voice reminds him.

"O-okay." He hears himself blurt out, heart so raw and wanting that he clutches the skin, the shirt above it, trying to quell the ache.

When Van Kleiss grins slow and horrific, like a snake uncoiling, Rex feels more shame than he's ever felt pool in his stomach.

He regrets this. But at the same time, he doesn't. Not one bit.