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He comes to to the sound of a whistle. Not a scream, not an alarm, not a human calling out for help. A whistle, like you’d do to call over a dog.
An urge rises to let the sedatives pull him back under, but he fights it back: this is new, this is exciting, this could be a threat. Keywords. Something simple enough for the pulse under his skin to understand and settle down, let his eyelids force themselves open, the fog around him focussing into hard edges and pristine surfaces. White on white, fluorescents shining down hard enough to sting. Same as always, if he takes the lack of restraints as normal, and – wait, the restraints?
Nothing around his ankles when he pulls at them, knees pressed hard against the tile: he’s on the floor, knees tucked under him in, well, a kneel, bent double with his head against the floor. His arms are restrained behind him, wrist to elbow, sedatives still burning out of his system, but this is the most freedom he’s had in… a long time. Not completely free, but freer than usual.
His mouth pulls at the cage around it, metal and plastic and cloth pulled tight around his mangled jaw. Like an animal. His teeth ache, pressed too tightly against each other. The humiliation hurts worse than the muzzle itself, shame burning hotter than pain, straining around his skull.
But it's not a muzzle, is it? It's a jaw support and the fact that it locks his mouth closed, keeps him from eating, keeps him from talking, keeps him from biting is a coincidence. He's just disobedient, ungrateful for how much he hates it, for how badly his jaw wants to split apart where it hadn't even done so before.
That's what the scientists say, after all.
The pale-haired one – the one in charge, he knows that voice – whistles again, more impatiently. A quick point to the empty space at his side, and the message is clear: come here. Now.
No is what he wants to say, but no is the one word that's all but fallen out of his vocabulary. The Hero of Harran doesn't get to say no, not when someone needs him, not even when someone just wants something from him, and he's less than the Hero of Harran, now. He’s just a monster, straining at its leash, watching another monster across the room and wondering whether to play along.
These games have rules, they always do: Rais played them, Bozak played them, other survivors played them. Do what I say, and doggy gets a treat. Disobey, and doggy gets a bullet to the brain.
His jaw works, slowly. He could shake his head, if he really wanted to refuse, park his ass on the floor and wait for punishment to come. If he really wanted to say no to the man who's made his life a living hell since Harran, he could. He should. He could lunge at him and stamp his throat in, he could tear the muzzle off and bite his throat out, he could get his hands in front of him and smash his face in with the metal. If he really wanted to, he could take revenge for himself and every other poor son of a bitch the man’s gotten his hands on over the years.
But he won’t. He’s dizzy. His head hurts. His pulse pounds under his bound wrists like a drum.
He wants to play along and pray that they let him stay slipping in and out of consciousness for another few hours, another precious few moments of nothing awful happening. Another second or two where they don't shove a shock prod into his neck and let him fry.
He’s so tired of hurting.
With a grunt of effort he staggers to his feet, swaying like a tree in the wind, and forces himself forward. His weight lands heavily on the first step, almost takes him back to the floor. It hurts. A twinge of complaint spreads like rot along the backs of his shins, through his thighs to his spine and further up, landing with certainty in a headache in the back of his skull – right where the buckle of the muzzle clips behind his head, hard and unforgiving.
The scientist clicks his tongue again, and he groans. A low, painful groan, less like a person than a dying animal, and his stomach twists at the sound. He forces himself to take another step, ignores the sway and takes another.
Maybe staying on the floor would’ve been a better idea. They don’t punish him as badly for not doing anything as they do when he acts out – maybe an unreactive corpse is better for them than a rabid monster – and they’ll probably take him falling as acting out, forget the sedatives that leave him barely able to stand. But he’s managing it, one step at a time, feet heavy and gait unbalanced.
Five steps left. Four. A dizzy spell sweeps through his head, vision fuzzing over like a TV losing signal, and he closes his eyes in the vain hopes it will help. Three steps. Just two more, two more and he can let the sedatives take him to the ground and maybe today won’t end with a stun prod against his throat.
Two steps. The room is spinning around him, and he knows if he tried opening his eyes he would see that pale-haired asshole’s face carried along with it. Eyes shut, keep moving, don’t fall.
One step. It’s like moving a mountain, but he just needs to take the final step and he’s home free.
He staggers forward and lets himself fall, hitting the floor with an audible crash, but he’s made it – he’s made it, and everything will be okay. He did what they wanted him to do. He did it. His head is swimming and he feels more like a loose, aching bag of bones than a person, knee digging into his collarbone and one of his elbows jabbed into his hip, but he did it. He’s okay.
Then the relief passes, and the joy turns to nausea.
God, look at him, so fucking eager to do what he thought they wanted from him. Didn’t even have to say anything, just pointed and watched him go. Watched him stagger over when they whistled for him like a fucking dog.
Who’s to say he’s even safe? Just because they won’t punish him doesn’t mean they won’t hurt him, doesn’t mean they won’t jab another needle into his hipbone or do another spinal tap or put him in the UV machine ‘til he’s more burn than skin or stick needles in his eye again or – anything. They can do anything to him, and it won’t be a punishment: just science. Just taking apart their little pet monster on the vivisection table. It doesn’t matter if he plays nice, because they’re just going to hurt him anyway.
He remembers he used to fight them. There’s a reason they muzzled him, bound him, keep him cuffed to a stretcher 24/7. Once upon a time he bit, he clawed, he screamed, he took every last opportunity he could find to try to claw his way to freedom. Where’d that fire go? Did they take it out of him with some other organ, draw it out in a blood sample?
…Maybe he’s just tired of fighting the inevitable. Maybe he’s come to terms with the rest of his life being a death march from one operating table to another, nothing but pain and exhaustion and fear until his heart finally gives out. Maybe it’s easier to just lie still and let them hurt you.
(Coward.)
He forces his eyes open, cold tile bleeding through the fabric stretched over his cheek to leave a cool patch on the skin. Breathe. Forces himself upright after a moment, lets the dizziness pass through his skull like water through a pipe, and finally turns to the man who orchestrated this whole pointless little game.
The scientist stares down at him for a long moment, piercing blue stuck so firmly into his skin that it’ll feel impossible to pull out – like barbed wire wrapped along the bare width of his shoulders, over his arms, between his wrists. Around his neck. He reminds Kyle of nothing more than a scalpel to the spine, a clean point shoved in where it’s impossible to remove.
(Kyle. That’s his name, not Subject Alpha, not him. There’s an urge to cling to it, quickly pulled under by nausea.)
Is there where he gets a reward? Doggy earned its stupid fucking treat, doggy staggered over like a good little pet and only collapsed at the end. He doesn’t even know what it would be: solid food, freedom to move off his cell bed? Hell, at this rate he wouldn’t be surprised if it was a pat on the head.
…He’d take a pat on the head. His skin crawls at the thought, but he’d take it; it’s been so long since anyone touched him gently that the idea of it makes his stomach twist but he’d take it.
It’s been so long that he can barely even imagine it, now. The Tower emerges, its people falling into place like puzzle pieces, but he can’t remember what it was like for someone to shake his hand, to clap him on the shoulder.
But he still dreams of them, on and off every time he slips out of reality like a kid with a security blanket. Like the Harran sun and the stink of rotting corpses is better than this, like the memory of the sunburn on his neck and the crayon drawings on the walls can keep him out of here – like clinging to the memory of Brecken and Lena and Spike can help him any more when they’re dead, think he’s dead or hope he’s dead.
…Sometimes he dreams of other things, too. Old things, new things, things where doesn't know if it's worse if it’s real or worse if it’s just some sick, twisted fantasy where latex-skinned hands pull down the thin fabric of his scrubs when the lights are low, skim the delicate skin of his thighs, rubbery touch leading higher and higher until-
(Maybe some questions are better left unanswered.)
His head’s still spinning, thoughts crashing into each other like a derailing train. He wants this to be over. He wants them to just get on with whatever happens next, whether it’s a beating or a reward or just lugging him back into a wheelchair and taking him to another test, another shot of sedatives in his arm before he can start to wake up. It’s taking too long: something’s different about this. Something more than the lack of restraints.
He blinks up at the scientist, mouth working silently behind the muzzle. There’s an ache building in his shoulders, arms pinned behind his back for too long, fingers starting to go numb.
The scientist still hasn’t moved, continuing to scribble on his notepad. It’s just like these crazy leader types, like Rais: they think it makes them cool to pretend to be unaffected by all the bullshit they’ve orchestrated when it just makes them looking fucking crazy at best. There’s a guy sitting bound and gagged on the floor next to you that you just called over like a dog. It’s actually, physically impossible to not think it’s at least a little stupid, even if that may just be the hysteria talking: it’s kind of hard not to be at least a little hysterical when you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Time passes in a stretch of heartbeats, counted in each pulse in his shoulders. He’s lost feeling in most of his fingers by the time the scientist stops writing, looks up and calmly declares “Good.”
…is that it? No claim of anything further, no promises of rewards for future good behaviour? Just a neutral statement, said to the air more than him, and -- he's leaving. He's leaving, talking to someone outside as the door slides open and shuts just as quick behind him, and is that fucking it?
God. He feels stupid for thinking anything different, that this wouldn't be another test simple as when they take a vial full of his blood and stick it under a microscope: there's no reward, nothing waiting for him besides another day of tests closer to torture than science, just results for them and another tick on the board. Maybe the reward is not getting punished, and has he really let himself sink so far that not getting beaten is enough to qualify as a reward? Enough that he'll humiliate himself, follow orders from the man who orchestrates every goddamn second of this hell without a second thought, just for the sake of another minute of not getting fried? It seems it is, and the thought - the fact that he went along for it makes his stomach twist.
So desperate to obey. To be a good little trained monkey, sitting where he’s told to sit and waiting with bated breath for a pat on the head. A good little monster that wandered right into the waiting arms of this hellhole, toothless and stupid and trusting, thinking for maybe a moment that the people who betrayed him a dozen times over wouldn’t hurt him again. Idiot. Hopeless, trusting, obedient idiot.
Kyle curls up, lets the cold tile bleed into the fever-hot skin of his brow. Then he screams.