Chapter Text
Light begins to peak in from the cracks, its burning, harsh fluorescence. Their chest aches with an intense pinching that makes it hard to breathe as if your ribs have been fully fused together and made it so they wouldn’t expand. They hear a ticking, loud and piercing to the ears, coming from somewhere they can’t quite place. Their back stings with a chill making their skin feel raw from injury.
They start to hear something else as well, a shuffling, from the corner of the room. Not shuffling. footsteps. From outside of the room. They attempt to move, slowly. First attempting to pick up their knees, as if trying to tuck into themselves. They fail. Their limbs barely twitch upwards before falling to their lowered position. They realize they are lying down.
They move to something smaller. They try to move their fingers. Back and forth. Small movements. They succeed. They do the same with their feet. They start to move their arms, feeling the burning sensation of cold metal upon their skin. As they drag their left arm across the table, they realize that what they feel is not skin, but the skidding of metal across metal. It's not a direct sensation, it is a weight.
They drag it away from themselves, hoping to feel around for any items surrounding them. Instead, they feel a drop. As their seemingly metal arm leaves the surface of the table the weight pulls the rest of their upper body with them. They fall to the ground in a large metal clang.
Their breath hitches and something on their spine feels like it's cutting into their back like a dull serrated knife pressed up against the skin. The noise their vocal cord attempts to make doesn’t go very far, they feel as if they are running out of air halfway through.
They start to hear arguing outside the room. Three men. They can only make out a few things that they say. The statements are scattered.
The first man, one with a worried high pitched tone speaks. “You have to be kidding me? Do you have any idea what you-” The noises overlap.
The second deeper voice lowers to a murmur then raises again “-isn’t she? Would you rather us have let her die”
The first man doesn't let him finish his sentence, “CALL AN AMBULANCE is what i would have RATHER you done.”
The third man interrupts their argument as they begin to overlap again. “Hey! shut up what was that noise.”
They hear someone open the door, and their head can barely move far enough to see who it is, but they manage. It is a man, with short buzzed hair, glasses, and an open-front sweater. He has an incredibly concerned expression on his face. The two men that follow are less so, but they look guilty almost, compared to the first. One is tall with short-cut blonde hair, has a scruffy beard, and wears a grease-stained white shirt and jeans, the other is short but strong wearing his long brown hair pulled in an updo.
The moment the last two follow the worried man into the room they gain a look of panic on their face. The subject of this panic, laying on the floor with a proverbial knife to their spine does not react. Simply continuing to suffer through. They don’t have enough air to yell for help right now anyways.
The two men rush to their side and pick them up and place them gently back on the table, while carefully avoiding the spine and supporting them by the shoulder blades. Their head falls to the side while being lifted and they spot a small amount of blood on the floor where they landed. The men struggle to lift them, they are heavier than any of them expected.
The two start murmuring a storm of questions to each other and the subject on the table. Something that they quickly realize is futile, they don’t have the strength to answer them yet. They fall silent, the subject stares at the ceiling.
“This is useless, she can’t even talk.” says the blonde man.
“Was the blunt force trauma that bad?” says the man in the sweater.
“It was pretty rough.” the long-haired man slowly sits up the subject, supporting their back.
The man in the sweater turns away for a moment “Has she eaten yet?”
“No, not yet.” the long-haired man attempts to tend to the bleeding on their back with his free hand.
The man in the sweater seems irritated. “Okay. I’m going to go get some food she might be able to eat. I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The blonde man scoffs.
The long-haired man spots something in the corner. “Will, hold her up for a moment I'm gonna get some fresh bandages.”
“Alright,” Will says, trading positions with the long-haired man. He thinks for a moment. “I know you can’t answer vocally….. Can you move your hands?”
The subject moves their hands in response.
“Okay…. Do you remember anything from the incident, tap once if yes, tap twice if no.”
The subject taps twice. The clang of metal against metal.
Will begins to look worried. “Do you know where you are?”
The subject taps twice again.
He falls silent for a moment. “Do you know who I am?”
The subject taps twice harder. They are getting irritated.
He looks incredibly dejected at the revelation. “Okay, Okay.”
“I guess we should introduce ourselves then,” Will continues. “My name is Will, the guy over there is Percy, and the guy who just ran off is named Cecil.“
The subject taps once.
He looks the subject in the eyes for a moment and realizes something. "Do you know your name?"
The subject taps twice. Slightly calmer than the last few questions. They hadn’t considered who they were yet. They had bigger fish to fry right now, like remembering how to move.
"Oh. Um." He looks back and Percy, who is still gathering materials. He looks back at the subject. "Your name is Blair"
The subject looks confused. Percy returns to the table with his fresh bandages, antibiotics, and the works.
He starts by unwrapping bandages off of 'Blair' that they didn't even know were there. The skin underneath is more raw than what they had felt, to begin with, looking down they realize some of the exposed surfaces of their chest aren't just irritated, it's bleeding and stitched together.
Percy wipes off the blood and cleans the wound, applying the antibiotic quickly and wrapping the bandages in a way that almost feels tighter than before, despite the tightness that already sits in their chest.
For the first time since they have woken up 'Blair' has actually inspected their surroundings. It's all been a bit of a blur up until now. They are in some kind of cross between a workshop and a lab. Its kind of a wreck right now. Tools strewn all over the place, metal plating material on a lot of the counters, wiring shoved into random drawers and falling out of some of them.
Then they begin to notice some other things as well. Like a biological waste bin in the corner that seems to be full. They suddenly feel a little less safe.
They jolt forward slightly when they notice this. Which is something they didn't know they could do. Percy and will also seems confused. Percy finishes patching them up quickly.
“You can move more than i thought. Maybe you just had to ease into it.” Percy says.
“Can you raise your arms?” he asks, gesturing to 'Blair' to give it a try. And so they do. They pick up both of their arms, raise them a foot or so, and then the shaking starts, they try to hold them for longer but eventually it just drops. They are still incredibly weak. Their skin still feels like its burning off. And all they can hear is ticking.
“Okay, well. Progress is progress” Percy notes.
You hear footsteps at the door. Cecil, the man in the sweater, opens it with a bag of groceries in one of his hands. “Okay, so I got some soft foods that she might be able to actually eat in the meantime. Is she doing alright?”
“Better than before,” Will says blankly.
“Can she feed herself?” Cecil says.
'Blair' doesn’t seem to think so, and Percy seems to agree. “She could barely lift her arms for more than a few seconds without shaking wildly. If she can’t do that she certainly can’t use a spoon.”
Cecil seems to sigh slightly. “I’ll help them eat, and then we can find a proper place for her to sleep. Deal?”
The others agree, 'Blair' does as well. Although the more their faculties come back to them the more confused they are about what is going on. and the more they start to notice the settling nausea in their stomach.
Cecil approaches 'Blair', trades off with will in supporting their weight, and after quickly asking, moves 'Blair' from the table to a cold metal chair where they can stay upright on their own. Well, less move and more drop.
Cecil pulls up a chair across from them, they are seated next to the table, where Cecil had set his bags. The table hasn’t been cleaned yet, so you can still spot the streaks of red, although immediately after 'Blair' notices this, Percy seems to as well, and he quickly cleans it off.
“So, I don’t believe we’ve ever been properly introduced before now. Not the best time but better now than never. My name is Cecil. Cecil Munro. Your name is Blair right?”
'Blair' shrugs. Percy and Will seem to think it's their name but it doesn’t feel right.
“Hm. Interesting.” Cecil says, pulling out a set of plastic silverware and some apple sauce. “Are you okay with apple sauce? There weren’t many soft foods at the gas station i ran to.”
'Blair' nods to him. He looks them up and down for a moment. In an almost curious light. He asks one simple question.
“Blair, have you looked at yourself yet?”