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He doesn’t know what he’s done to warrant this. Hardly ever figures out what he’s done to warrant anything.
His body is a separate entity from his mind, sensations so distant they don’t register. Like sleep paralysis, no amount of focus can break the frozen stillness locked in his bones.
He can still see. Right outside the bulletproof, frosted-over window, he watches doctors milling about like nothing is out of the ordinary. Like his eyes aren't stuck open.
The chamber rattles loudly, startling him, as a fresh burst of freezing air blows in through a pipe above his head. He should feel cold.
He doesn't.
He tries to move his mouth because his eyes can't be the only functional part of him, but his jaw is locked in place.
Fear sets in his gut. Doctors are running diagnostics right outside, filing papers and chatting over coffee as they take vials of blood, his blood , and send it into some complex machine attached to a printer that spits out blurry sheets of paper.
Everything is blurry like this, snowflake patterns crackling over the glass making it almost impossible to see.
He can't close his eyes.
-
Every night at the exact same time, the lab is vacated so quickly it's as if the building is being evacuated. Every light - aside from the emergency bulbs, glowing dark red, and the frosted, ever-present lights inside the cryo tube - shuts off the moment the room is empty.
It has been five days.
Occasionally, a doctor will glance his way as if to check that he's still unconscious, and every ounce of his non-existent strength screams at him to do something.
He counts. He thinks. He imagines noise, because the only sounds he can pick up are the constant humming of the machine and the recycled air filtering through an endless maze of tubes he can't see. He'd memorized the intervals of that noise by the second day, a sudden rush followed by almost a full minute of metallic, airy clicking that almost seemed to emulate breathing.
He lost the ability to feel his heartbeat the moment he was locked up. He imagines himself inhaling along with the machinery.
-
It only takes a week before another subject is brought into the lab, strapped down to a gurney with a technician holding his head in place as they stick wires in a device tied around his hairline. He recognizes the screaming without any sound; the reddening of the face, mouth open wide, limbs jerking helplessly against restraints.
-
All of the test subjects that return to the lab after their initial visits are practically ripping their own skin off to break free of their restraints. His eyes are incapable of closing. He watches bones broken, skulls cut open and brain matter removed, lethal injections, failing organs, electrocutions, blood loss, crushed hands.
-
When the technicians and doctors return to their posts, his thoughts race to the same plea.
Kill me.
Kill me.
Kill me.
Kill me.
Kill me.
It's been two weeks.
-
It's been two months.
-
It's been two years.
-
Thoughts escape him.
-
A new sound echoes through the space, a hydraulic press.
The door shrieks and falls open.
The instant crushing pain reverberating through his body chokes out the fresh air entering his lungs.
He screams.
A guard in body armor drags him out by one arm. He shakes violently, the cold air outside finally hitting him, and he screams.
The guard shouts at him and he screams louder, and keeps screaming after he's thrown to the ground.
Someone else picks him back up and he screams, screams so loudly his throat burns and his lungs ache.
He screams when they force him into the chair and he screams through the mouth guard they force between his teeth.
Bright white, full-body agony jolts through him as he screams and twitches and forces his eyes shut.
The pain stops.
He's silent.