Re: Chapter 4: Abyss
It felt like weeks. Experiment after experiment, just like it used to be. After a few days, he had finally broken and asked a nurse about Susan. They had just looked at him. Said nothing. He couldn't get the last image of her out of his mind; lying on the floor, covered in blood, swollen with bruises. Was she all right? He ached to hear her voice. He couldn't even be glad that he hadn't seen Dr. Horrible all this time either; surely, he would have told him something about her. Probably something bad, but at least something.
He was lying down in his room, alone. He took a slow breath in through his nose, and exhaled even slower. He felt fine. Sure, he was tired and worn out. Stressed. But physically, he was fine. Totally recovered from the beating. None of the experiments had been invasive, though most had caused pain. It was like... they were trying to get him back to normal. Pretending that none of it had ever happened.
Well, they could mess with his head all they wanted. He would never stop believing in Susan. There was no way they could convince him that he'd made her up, or that she wasn't real. She was too amazing. No way could he have imagined it. His thoughts shied away from the fear that he would never see her again; of course he would. Of course he would. He just had to stay alive.
A cold shock went through him at that thought. What if... that was what they wanted, all along? To make him fight again? To live? He groaned and rolled on his side, burying his face in his hands. No! He didn't want to think this way, but now that he had, it wouldn't leave him alone. He would see her again. He had hope. He did.
A key turned in his door lock with a loud clunk. He felt a spike of terror, like he always did when he heard that sound. He remained motionless, his face covered. The door opened, and people walked in, paused to regard him. He didn't move. He wondered if they were wary; he had tried to run from them a few times now, actually knocked one guy out once. But then they stepped forward, grabbed his arms and pulled him to his feet. They were bouncers. William kept himself relaxed, his head lowered, eyes on the ground. Their grips were tight. Not buying it.
A gurney was wheeled in by a nurse. The bouncers pushed him toward it, started lifting on his arms. He started to climb up, and when he turned to lay down one of them let go of him. He tried to jerk his arm free of the other guy and roll off the other side of the gurney to make a run for it and try to find Susan, but the bouncer held on. So he lunged back and tried to bite the bouncers giant hand, but the man grabbed a handful of his hair and stopped him cold.
He struggled, but the two bouncers and the nurse managed to get the padded leather cuffs around his ankles, then a strap across his chest, then cuff his wrists too. They even secured his head with a strap across his forehead. Finally they strapped a gag onto him by holding his nose until he almost passed out. Then they tossed a rag over his face so he couldn't see, and wheeled him out of his room.
He tried to relax during the short journey. He was wheeled into a room and the rag was taken from his face. The ceiling lights blinded him. He heard another gurney wheeled into place beside him, but he couldn't turn his head to see. His left arm was untied and pulled off to the side. He fought, but they secured it again, sticking straight out from him with his palm facing up. They did the same to the person next him, except with their right arm. He could tell because suddenly he felt the other persons fingers brush his. They reached out for him, questing. So the person beside him wasn't one of the brain-dead subjects. Was it Susan? He tried to reach for the palm and draw letters like they used to, but it was too far. He tried to do it on just the fingers, but the other person wouldn't hold still. So he held still, holding his hand flat. But no letters were drawn. The other person just felt at him, tracing his fingers with theirs.
A nurse stepped up, holding a tray of tools or something. He couldn't tell. The nurse busied for a bit, then spoke. "Subject One," he said, addressing William. "You will be handed a controller with two buttons. The right one represents Subject Two. The left one represents you. I will administer burns of increasing intensity to whichever subject you indicate. If you drop the remote, you will both receive burns. To begin, superficial burns will be applied to both of you. Then, only to whom you indicate. Do you understand?"
William remained motionless. The nurse brought something close to his face, something hot. Hot enough to make him wince even though it didn't touch him. "Understand?" William nodded. The nurse turned away. A moment later he heard a slight hiss. A gasp from Subject Two, and a muffled, high pitched scream. He could tell by the noises that Subject Two was a woman. Was it Susan?!
The fingers fluttered and tried to squeeze his, but the angle was off. Still, she trapped two of his fingers in hers and squeezed hard while she screamed. Finally it stopped, and the fingers went limp. The nurse turned back, and pressed the hot something against William's arm. He gasped, but didn't scream. He clenched his hand, and felt the barest flutters from Subject Two's fingers. Quickly the hot tool was taken away, and the pain dulled from hot agony to hot throbbing.
"Superficial burns applied." The nurse picked something up and reached across William to his right hand. "Open your hand." William did. The remote was pressed into his hand, and William's thumb guided to the buttons. "Left equals you, right equals them," he was reminded. "Choose. If you take too long, burns will be administered to both of you."
What the hell kind of experiment was this? Was it Susan? So close? He couldn't see. He tried to speak through the gag, but of course he was unintelligible. The nurse ignored it, just looking down at him expectantly.
He couldn't know. If it was Susan, and the choice was up to him, he knew what he had to do. He couldn't take the chance that it wasn't her. So he pressed the left button. A red light lit up somewhere above his head.
"Subect One. Administering first degree burn." The hot tool pressed against the inside of his arm in a different place than the first time. The nurse left it for longer. Tears started to seep from William's eyes as he fought it. Subject Two's fingers kept brushing against his clenched fist.
Breathe, William. You have to breathe through the pain. The tool lifted, and he gasped. The relief was minimal; he could still feel the heat destroying his skin. He tried to wiggle his arm, to free it, but it was clamped down tight at the wrist and just below the shoulder. He could barely move it. The two burns throbbed.
"Subject One. Choose."
Staring at the ceiling through tear-fogged eyes, William pressed the left button. The red light lit up again.
"Subject One. Administering second degree burn." Subject Two's fingers were tapping at his. Once the nurse pressed the hot tool against his skin again, he stopped feeling anything else. Pain. He left it there for an eternity. William could feel it going deeper, deeper, reaching for his very bones to scorch them. He couldn't hold still. His legs jittered, making the shackles rattle. But being so tightly secured meant that there was very little writhing he could do.
When the nurse finally took it away, William tried not to sob. He could barely tell that the hot tool was gone, the pain stayed the same. And he knew it would get worse.
"Subject One. Choose."
He didn't want to. He wanted Susan. Was that really her, next to him? There was no way to tell. Her fingers told him nothing, just fluttering and stroking. But if it was her... Shaking, William hesitated before slowly pressing the left button again.
"Subject One. Administering third degree burn." He pressed the tool against William's bicep, then just got up and left. William shouted after him, screamed into his gag for him to come back, but of course he didn't. No matter how he struggled he couldn't knock it loose. It got as bad as the second degree one, then just kept burning. Deeper and deeper into his skin, his muscle. New layers of nerves were scorched and he felt them all. It seemed like it was all he would ever feel.
Eons passed. William's skin stopped sizzling. The nurse came back and William thought he would take the tool away, but he didn't. He just leaned over William's arm, poking and prodding, making his other burns hurt more too. William knew begging was useless. So he just kept gasping, groaning, sometimes shouting out an unintelligible swear word. His arm just kept burning.
When he finally took it away, William was actually surprised. He thought it would just be left there until it burned off his whole arm. The nurse took the remote from him. Was it over? But no. The nurse kept poking and prodding, talking out his notes aloud about severity and dermal penetration. Then he unscrewed something, and William felt cool lotion smeared onto his first, superficial burn. The stinging pain eased. The nurse watched in silence for several minutes. His worse burns called out for the same relief, and he shifted, tears still leaking from his eyes.
"Improved color." He poked at it, glancing at William. "Decreased pain response." He poked and prodded some more, going on about skin elasticity and what have you. William wanted to scream at him to get on with it. He still felt like his bicep was on fire. Slowly, the nurse applied the cool lotion to each burn, but it seemed to stop helping after a certain point. William began feeling sick to his stomach. He didn't want to vomit with a gag in his mouth, but it seemed he wasn't going to have a choice. He tried to signal to the nurse, but the man ignored him.
Bile rose powerfully, no chance of trying to force it back down, though he tried. Vomit exploded out around the edges of his gag, and his sinuses burned as it forced its way out through his nose as well. He thought his eyes were going to pop out with the pressure. The nurse watched him heave impassively, but when William started choking and suffocating on his own vomit, he sighed, then reached over and released the strap across Williams forehead. William turned his face away from the nurse so he could more easily take off the gag, and when it came free William vomited everywhere. When it was finally over and he could breathe through his mouth, he lay completely spent, arm burning, face burning, stomach churning. He slowly circled the dizzy drain of consciousness, and fought it so he could do one last thing. He laboriously turned his head and looked at the other gurney, whispering, "Susan?"
It wasn't her. She was too tall, her hair too dark. William couldn't see all of her face, but he knew that wasn't Susan's nose. All that, for a stranger. William wanted to cry, both from frustration, and paradoxically, from relief. She didn't have to lie there and listen to him burn. It was just some crazy fellow captive who took all the punishment for some unknown reason. True, he had suffered, but he would have anyway, Susan or no Susan. The nurse noticed him looking and threw the rag back over his face. With the sudden lack of visual stimulus, William's dizziness increased, and he quickly fell unconscious. It was a relief.