Chapter Text
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Jack hated the darkness. His very first memory was a weightless void that reached out to him with icy indifference. His fledgling emotions, at least that he could remember were confusion. *where am I?* then fear *W-who am I?* and eventually *Please, let me out!* panic. He screamed. At least he tried, what came out was a muffled gurgling. Muted by some awful unseen thing around his mouth. Then above a tiny flicker of light apeared, quavering madly and illuminating the bubbles that carried the echoes of his cries to the surface.
His mind flashed to that every time they made him go back into that damn tank. The first time he begged them not to make him go, He cried and screamed with words he knew but never remembered learning. They had given him his name, but not his voice.
“Please, don’t put me back in there!”
The men and women in white didn’t care, only sticking some thin shimmering needle in his arm. A needle that sank some awful kind of water into him that made fog in his brain and his muscles forget their meaning. Then down he went into the tank, into the cold. And finally a sick metal screech sealing off the flickering light above. Cogs ticked, steel groaned, gauges hissed. Darkness. Darkness. Cold.
Each session went along much like that. The first few Jack was dragged to kicking and screaming, his toe nails clipping across gaps in the tiled floor. If he kept screaming then out that needle came, teasing a droplet of that body and brain fog on its tip. He learned quickly to stop screaming.
Crying they seemed to tolerate, or at least not care about. They would always apply the wires and breathing mask as he sobbed silently, wiping his cheeks only so the mask sealed properly around his skin. He would shiver as they lowered him down into the water. Sometimes from the cold, sometimes from fear; often from both.
He lost track of how many times they made him go into the tank, without day or night he wasn’t even sure how long he had been there. The buzzing lights in his room were always the same and the dull whirr of air from vent slats worked tirelessly. All he knew was he would wake, be fed, go to the tank, cry, be submerged; Darkness. Repeat. That was until the changes started.
At first he thought maybe he was just adjusting to being constantly cold, that maybe it was some kind of natural build up of resistance. The tiled floors no longer burned his feet like they did before, and the shivering when going into the tank had stopped. The people in white started wearing thicker and thicker coats, the air from their breath lingering in the air.
His hair began to change, each submersion session making it fade from warm chocolate to a gleaming silver. By the time it had turned fully white Ice had began forming around the tank. Eventually creeping up the walls and hanging in hawkish spikes from the floodlights above. Jack didn’t understand what was happening to him, and the changes left him spending what felt like hours in front of his mirror. The smash proof glass giving him daily updates on his transformation.
Eventually his hazelnut eyes dulled too, then blossomed into a magnificent shade of chilled sapphire. That he didn’t mind so much. Finally his skin which was once a warm and natural cream faded to porceline, the hair on his body and limbs either vanishing or becoming camoflagued by his new tone of ivory. From how smooth he felt compared to before Jack assumed it was the former.
That was the last of the physical changes, and he remembered that time well. The ice had spread into the tanks water and was now so thick men had to smash it with metal rods before submerging Jack into it. The people in white wore coats so large it made even the most beanpole physique look obese, and yet Jack in his sleeveless shirt and pants didn’t so much as get a goosebump anymore. It dawned on him this is what the people in white want, but why? what happened next only gave him more questions.
He’d awoken from another session and was promtly served food on a tray slipped through his cell doors hatch. he took it and ate as usual, the tank always left him feeling hollow in the stomach. When he took up the paper cup of water his thoughts drifted a little, absentmindedly rolling the liquid around in the container. he thought about his transformation, the ice and how that place seemed to keep getting colder. *What do these people want?* he thought, taking a sip of water *why are they-*
His train of thought screeched to a halt as his lip bumped into something hard. Looking down Jack saw the water as it was moments ago, suspended in motion and reaching for the rim of his cup at an impossible angle. He didn’t believe it until a few taps of his finger met the same solid surface; it was frozen solid. He turned it upside down and the cylinder of ice slipped out, crackled against the concrete floor then softly slipped across the room and clacked into the wall.
It didn’t take long before there was a flurry of excitement. He always assumed they watched him constantly, either from behind his mirror or with some hidden camera. This theory was proven right as his door was flung open, the people in white coats entered, and Jack was handed another cup filled with water. “Do it again.” they instructed him, he told them he didn’t know how. And so up he was pulled by his arms, back to the tank, back to the ice, back to the dark.
When he awoke again, there sat a woman in white. A small tablestand between her and Jack laying on his bed. On the table she placed another cup of water, then scooted closer causing a teeth setting screech on the concrete. She was as blunt and to the point as her expression. “Do it again.”
Jack sat up, took the paper cup in his hand and looked at it. The water rolled as it should. “Do it Jack.” she was monitone but her voice was brimming with authority. “I can’t-” The woman cut him off “Whatever you did before, do again.” she instructed, her acrylic nails dancing up and down on the table.
Jack tried, in the same way someone without wings might try to fly just by thinking about it. *freeze.* nothing. He grabbed the cup with both hands, somehow thinking it might make it easier with two instead of one. Again he willed with his mind *freeze.* again, the water swayed in motion. The woman stood up with an almost mechanical precission.
“Perhaps another session in the tank will-” Jack ignored the threat, the fear was slowly loosing it’s grip on him, and the cold didn’t even bother- *the cold…* his mind snapped to his attention. *Ice.* He couldn’t force the water to freeze, but if he could focus his imagination on it… He tugged at that idea like a thread. *Ice* he willed himself *freezing, cold* he dug at the memory of the sensation, the feeling; physical, emotional. *What is ice? picture it* he focused. He thought. He created.
The water in the cup grew heavy, the motions becoming sleepy and drunk. Then tendrils of pure white danced throughout turning it a milky grey before fading, leaving a frozen cylinder as clear as glass. Jack half placed half threw the paper cup on the table, the solid weight causing the whole stand to rattle. The woman in white took it, upturned it and caught the almost perfect cylinder in her hands. She inspected it in the same way one might appraise an expensive ornament.
“Well done.” the praise was as cold as the ice she held in her grip, and no sooner did she say that two other white coated men came to take Jack for another session in the tank. Half walked, half dragged along Jack went through those hollow halways he was learning off by heart. His thoughts not on that metal riveted tank of water but on what this ability he had means. He has a power now, one that none of the people in white have. His mind swam with ideas, even as he was once again lowered into the tank of ice and dark one word kept echoing in his mind. As the hatch above him closed, it was all there was in Jack’s world.
Escape.