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g a s p .
He slams back into awareness in full fight or flight mode, heart racing, breath shallow, nearly trembling with the flush of adrenaline through his body.
Up, his mind screams, up!
The last thing he remembers is the deadly, out-of-control fish-shaped machine hurtling towards him and being thrown towards the ceiling--the shock of electricity, burning and violent, that racked through him and stiffened his limbs, combined with a fall that would’ve killed him if not for his mako enhancements.
Shit. Barret.
Cloud jerks his eyes open against the throbbing buzz in his skull, tries to get his hands underneath him to push himself up and locate the hotheaded Avalanche member, but cold metal bites into him, keeping his arms trapped at his sides. Harsh white light burns down from directly above, blinding him, and a soft beeping sound pierces the silence around with monotone rhythm.
No. It can’t be. Nononononono—
He can’t breathe. He gasps, yanking at his arms, trying to force his head to turn, but to no avail. He can feel the metal bands restraining him now, a dozen or more over his legs, his wrists, his arms, his chest, his head. Too thick for him to have any hope of ripping them out, adrenaline and enhanced strength be damned. He struggles for a moment anyway, until the sensation of not being able to move is smothering enough that he’s forced to stop before he blacks out. As he lays there trying to even out his breath, he feels the pinch of a needle at his neck, ready to administer a sedative if his heart rate gets too high—he can hear it inching up on the heart monitor connected to him by wires and the icy adhesive pads on his chest.
How is he here? How the hell did he get back? Was everything… was the whole escape a fucking dream?
The acerbic stench of mako hangs in the air, burning his lungs and fraying the thin thread of sanity he’s still clinging to. He feels cold. They’ve stripped him naked, leaving him in nothing but boxers.
Footsteps approach and he goes still to listen, but the rushing in his ears is too loud for him to process anything else. A soft chuckle makes his blood run cold.
“Excellent, you’re awake,” says a creaky, slimy sounding voice that haunts every one of his nightmares.
Hojo.
Cloud freezes, his breath caught in his lungs.
Hojo clicks on a penlight and drags up Cloud’s eyelids with a practiced movement, flashing it into his eyes. His touch is delicate, even when Cloud flinches and blinks instinctively, and Cloud remembers how he yelled at interns and assistants for handling his experiments too roughly.
--But he also remembers the bite of a scalpel slicing, testing the speed of the enhanced healing granted by days drowning, half-lucid, in a mako tank designed for someone twice his size. The pangs of hunger and thirst as nutrition was forced into him intravenously, giving him no relief of water on his tongue or food in his belly, and no reminder of the humanity they were slowly draining out of him. The endless bite of needles in his arms, legs, the crooks of his elbows and the backs of his hands— the feeling of liquid far below his body temperature rushing into his system making him shiver for hours like he’d never be warm again, the feeling of blood being drawn again
and again
and again
until he was sure there was nothing left in him anymore.
He bites down hard on his lip and tastes blood. Hojo slaps his lips with hot, clammy fingers.
“It was a nice little escape plan you managed to hatch,” he says conversationally as he picks up a tablet and taps the screen with a stylus. Hojo likes to talk as he works. He’ll chat with his experiments and scream at his assistants and mumble at his computers, like he just can’t bear not to hear the sound of his own voice. “You even managed to execute some of it, although it was unfortunately doomed from the start. I suppose I’ve got you to thank for bringing back Red XIII, although it likely wouldn’t have gotten out in the first if it weren’t for all the racket you caused.”
Cloud hears Hojo set the data pad aside and return to him, hears the rattle of a heavy cart being drawn over. Plastic crinkles as Hojo starts opening packs of medical supplies.
“Quite the fascinating outcome,” he continued. “I must admit, I had not expected you to survive, much less react so marvelously to the mako treatment. A bit of a shame the other one didn’t make it out for comparison, although he turned out to be a bit more of a failure.”
“What did you do with them?” Cloud blurts out. The voice seems to come from somewhere else, croaky and gritty and disembodied.
“Your little friends aren’t dead, if that’s your concern.” There were soft snaps and squeaks of tubing being fitted to a machine, and a needle being fitted to tubing. “The one with the gun arm was handed over to Public Security, of course. I can imagine he’ll have quite the public trial to deal with the Avalanche nonsense, but his execution was already discussed in the last board meeting, so there’s no uncertainty there.”
There’s a ripping sound, and a cold swab runs over his left elbow crease. Cloud flinches, but the restraints keep him from shrinking away.
“The ancient, of course, was simply returned to her confinement--a brief interruption in her testing, but we’re not off schedule yet. And quite conveniently, she seems to care a great deal about the other girl from the slums, so I’ve kept her as well. Very useful if the Ancient decides to be difficult. Remember your friend, the First Class?” Hojo chortled, and Cloud felt a sting and a burn as a needle stabbed into his vein, beginning the slow process of draining his blood a bit at a time. “I used to use that trick on him all the time-- although I suppose you wouldn’t remember that. He was always so compliant when I mentioned you, even though you likely wouldn’t have felt a thing at all.”
Cloud’s head aches. The room is swimming and he almost doesn’t know where he is, when he is--everything is dragging him back to the lab under the mansion. His mouth is dry. His breathing is shallow and fast, laced with panic. He tries to slow it down, but it just gets worse. Almost involuntarily, he jerks, straining at the restraints again. The metal feels like it’s burning him. There’s warm liquid dripping down his skull. He hears a sound that’s like a desperate scream of frustration but it sounds far away, even as the cry is ripping at his throat.
Above him, Hojo hums displeasure, and Cloud feels the man’s sweaty hand gripping his arm like a vise. Something sharp stabs into his bicep and he almost immediately feels the effects of the sedative that’s likely strong enough to put down a chocobo.
“None of that, now.” Hojo mutters above him. “You’ll mess up the readings.”
Cloud feels himself being dragged into unconsciousness and knows that it doesn’t matter how hard he fights it. If Hojo decides he needs more he’ll give him more.
“Don’t bother dreaming up an escape,” Hojo snorts as everything fades away. “They’re all relying on you, and you’ve got no one to break you out this time.”