The darkness pressed in on him, as if it were trying to push him down and pin him to the metal floor. He was on the verge of giving up, and letting it.
His chest moved in and out as he forced air into his lungs, and willed his heart to keep pumping. They had beaten him hard, and his small body now bore the unmistakable evidence of his punishment, though even now it was healing. The cuts still were deep and bleeding, but either due to the partial healing or numbness, they didn’t sting as bad, for which he was grateful. He could withstand more pain than any human ever deserved to receive, but the continual stinging was setting him on edge.
His mouth twisted into a grimace when the steel door of his cell opened a crack. His hackles rose, and he was ready to spring if need be, but it was only Brian. He relaxed a little, and refused to utter the painful moan that wanted to escape his tired throat. The young man that had been assigned as his caregiver some months back slid softly into the room and closed the door behind him, all the while being very quiet.
“They really did a number on you, didn’t they?” came Brian’s quiet tenor. The boy turned away with a scowl, refusing to reply. Brian sighed, and knelt down next to his charge, setting the black bag of medical supplies down next to him. “When are you going to learn to trust me? I’m not going to hurt you like everyone else.”
“You have yet to prove that,” came the harsh growl of a wounded animal. His throat was raw from screaming, and a husky rasp was the best he could manage without coughing. Even in the darkness, the element that he preferred over all others, he could see Brian frown. The blood red implants that had replaced his beautiful blue irises allowed him to see as well as a Persian in even total darkness.
“I want to be your friend. Why would I hurt you?”
“I take no friends. Certainly not humans.”
“But you yourself are human.”
Xander turned to face the young man, eyes blazing and teeth grinding. He looked ready pounce, and Brian backed away out of startlement.
“No,” he spat, voice rough. “I've never been human! I’m a lab rat to these people, nothing more!”
Brian was silent, studying the floor between his knees with a remorseful gaze. Xander growled and rose from the corner he had been huddled in, leaving smears of drying blood across the walls and floor. He grimaced when he heard a fist slam against the cell’s locked door and Xander, always the proverbial Arcanine locked in a cage, swear harshly.
“You need those cuts cleaned up before they get infected,” he said, not looking over his shoulder. He knew Xander was listening. He heard a grunt and then a creak when Xander plopped down on the pitiful cot that served as his bed. He almost sighed in relief as he rose from his knees, taking his bag with him. Normally, there was a fight to get close enough to even bandage one wound, but the kid must be in a great deal of pain to accept his help so easily.
He couldn’t see as well in the dark as Xander could, but he knew the small room well enough that he got to the bed without tripping over anything. He found his charge already drawing the deep, even breaths of meditation, already shutting out the stinging of the eminent peroxide. That was always one kind of pain that he could never get used to, and they tended to use it quite frequently.
“I’m going to have to turn the lights on if I’m going to see well enough to clean you up,” Brian said softly. Xander only grunted approval, and Brian reached over to snap the small bedside lamp on. Light flooded the cramped metal room, and when it bathed the black-haired teen, Brian couldn’t help but gasp in shock.
“What the hell did they do to you?!” he cried, eyes wide.
“They punished me. I didn’t do as I was told, so they punished me.”
“Dear God in Heaven, they could have killed you!”
Xander opened his eyes, and fixed his caretaker with a hard look.
“I wish they had.”
Brian had to choke back revulsion when the full impact of the injuries soaked in. Xander’s arms and legs were so cut up from whip welts that he might as well not have had any flesh upon them at all. His face was bruised, both eyes were blackened, and blood was trickling down the side of his young, boyish face from one ear. His lower lip was cracked and bloodied, and his neck was completely welted from whip coils. It looked like they had tried to strangle him, and knowing them, they had. Cuts and welts crisscrossed over his bare chest, leaving strawberry red marks all across his pale skin, and his back looked much the same. It was all Brian could do to keep from wrenching.
It looked like he had no broken bones, which wasn’t surprising. Brian had been assigned to Xander’s medical care right after the boy had gone through a series of surgeries that grafted thin plates of titanium to his principle bones and skull. His task was to make sure the kid survived the harsh process, and was just lucky enough to stay assigned to him. The surgeries were really only to make sure he survived the future brutal training they had in store for him, as they were molding him into a tool. A very useful tool; both a defense and a weapon, which was what he was going through now.
Brian managed to get a hold of himself and set to work, every now and then being forced to scrub gently at a stubborn bit of blood. Xander just sat stiffly and quietly, every now and then his mouth would twist into a hard, silent snarl when the peroxide stung a little too much. When he was finished, he set the last bright white bandage in place and took a long, deep breath, clearing his nose of the sterile scent.
Xander held out an arm and tested the strength of the bandage wrapped around it, ignoring Brian’s frown. He felt a little lightheaded from the blood loss, and his wounds stung a little, but at least he wasn’t bleeding anymore. He gave Brian a nod and let his arm fall back to his side. He sat still then, staring into space while Brian packed up his medical supplies.
“You’re turning seventeen soon,” Brian said nonchalantly, trying to drum up conversation, something he strived to do every time he tended the boy. Xander effected not to notice, but Brian persisted. “Did you know that?”
“Don’t care.”
“Seventeen’s an important age, in my opinion. Sixteen’s all well and fine, but seventeen…now there’s an age where you’re truly an adult. It holds the power of freedom behind it.”
“Not for me.”
Brian gave Xander a sad smile, even now seeing the burning passion for freedom within those mechanical red irises. He rose from the thin Pidgy feather mattress and patted Xander’s shoulder, a gesture that the boy ignored.
“Someday, Xander, you’ll taste freedom and get hooked. Then, you can get your revenge on Magma for what they’ve done to you.”
Xander sat in the dark a long while after Brian left, using the wall behind his bed as a headboard and his knees as a surface to rest his chin, thinking about what the man had said.
Revenge.
Now that sounded just as sweet as its fabled taste.
There was no time piece in the small cell, but Xander knew he had been sitting like that for at least three or four hours, mulling over his clay-soft thoughts and molding them into ideas. Predawn and the beginning of another day of training was eminent, but he didn’t care. There was very little they could do to him to make him hurt worse.
It was probably four or five in the morning before he finally laid down and attempted sleep, a vow to himself in place and strong, just for when he finally tasted freedom.
Revenge?
For what they’ve done? For what his father, Maxie, allowed and encouraged to happen?
A small, unbidden smile worked its way across his lips as he slipped into sleep.
Yes.
It would be sweet indeed.
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My Life in Living Hell
Random mutterings about random subjects.
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