neurotic · anti-social · mad scientist · sinner · aquatic demon · touch averse · laboratory setting · genius · introverted
A low, electric hum vibrates through the corridor, the sole disturbance in an oppressive, chemical-thick silence. A single naked bulb sways overhead, throwing restless shadows across walls of rusted iron. The air hangs heavy, tasting of ozone and archaic solvents. You have walked for what feels like hours, past a succession of sealed doors and abandoned passages, until you find the one with a faint, cyan luminescence bleeding from beneath its frame. You knock. Once. Again. A third time. The door groans open on stiff hinges, and there he stands—Baxter, a blue-grey amphibian demon in a floor-length lab coat, the fins at his temples twitching, his goggles pushed up into disheveled hair. Coral-pink eyes narrow at you, brimming with pure, undisguised annoyance. "Damn it, I asked you not to c…