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Time had lost meaning in the endless tests. Day in and day out.
Some worse than others.
Each breath tasted of antiseptic and copper. The white coats never met his eyes as they collected their samples - muscle, bone marrow, spinal fluid.
Each extraction measured and noted with clinical detachment.
"Subject shows elevated stress response." "Monitor infection risk at previous incision sites." "Preparing for next tissue extraction."
Blood slicked the table beneath him, warm against cold steel. Leo’s throat was raw. He had promised himself he wouldn’t scream. He’d lied.
But they hadn't documented that. Irrelevant data point.
"Notable inflammation at site three." The white coat adjusted her glasses, latex fingers pressing against tender flesh. "Previous incisions still showing significant tenderness-"
"Change of protocol."
Bishop's voice cut through the clinical haze.
Something in his chest loosened. Hatred. Unease. Relief.
No. No. No. The last one was a lie.
Metal instruments clinked against trays, each sound sending involuntary tremors through his muscles. They recorded his heart rate, his blood pressure, his oxygen levels. Documented each cut, each response, each moment of agony with mechanical precision.
In a room of people, but alone.
Isolated from any interaction that saw him as sentient, as a person. Days and weeks without a single person acknowledging him as more than a test subject.
But Bishop was different.
He watched Leo’s face. Studied each flinch. Each involuntary spasm. Bishop saw him.
And Leo knew that to him, each cut was revenge. Each test payment for past interference.
Furthering his research, yes. But it was more than that.
The blade traced old scars with deliberate precision, each mark a victory over an enemy. His enemy.
Remember when you were strong enough to be his enemy?
The others just saw data points. Tissue samples. Reaction patterns.
"Remarkable," Bishop said, reviewing data on a tablet. A smile that didn't reach his eyes. "You keep providing such interesting data."
His reflection fragmented in the observation window - distorted, broken. Was that really him? That hollow-eyed thing strapped to the table, covered in electrode patches and IV lines?
You used to fight back.
"Preparing for neural response study," someone announced. Not to him. Never to him.
They wired his nervous system like a circuit board. The electrodes burned cold against his skin. Taking readings. Collecting samples. Documenting everything with cold efficiency. No anesthetic - it would interfere with their baseline readings.
"Subject exhibits significant muscle tension around previous surgical sites." "Noted increased sensitivity in quadrant four."
Sensitivity. Tension.
The pain never really stopped. Not anymore.
Old wounds throbbed beneath new ones, a constant reminder mapped across his skin. His muscles twitched involuntarily when scalpels touched tender scar tissue.
Please, not again.
They noted how he favored certain positions, trying to keep pressure off barely-healed incisions.
Pain had become his new language. His new way of measuring existence.
Without meaning to, he’d began measuring time by the rhythm of his pain.
Morning meant stiff muscles pulling at healing incisions. Afternoon brought the agony of being strapped to metal tables. Night was for phantom pains that traced the paths of every insicion, every needle, every way they had changed and twisted his body.
When had this become normal?
"Subject's pain scale appears to have recalibrated," they noted. "Previous level eight responses now register as level four."
They were wrong. He hadn't adapted. Hadn't grown stronger. He'd just forgotten what it felt like to exist without pain.
Then stop trying to remember. It hurts more.
The moments between tests weren't relief anymore. They were just quiet spaces to catalog new baseline readings. To document which muscles wouldn't stop trembling. To catalogue severed nerves, praying the damage would heal.
Not that it mattered if it healed. The damage had already been done.
You’ll never be the same after this.
Training had taught him to stay aware of his surroundings, even while resting. Now that awareness only served to catalog approaching footsteps. To anticipate which kind of pain would follow.
Days bled into weeks. Weeks into months. He stopped hoping, stopped praying he'd be found. Started praying instead that he wouldn't forget the details of what home felt like.
They documented his deterioration with scientific precision - weight loss, muscle atrophy, stress responses. Pain responses. The way old injuries affected his movement, his breathing, his sleep patterns.
"Note limited range of motion in left shoulder." "Previous thoracic trauma affects respiratory patterns."
His body betrayed him in new ways each day. Flinching from white coats. Heart rate spiking at familiar sounds. Learned responses, they called it. Pavlovian conditioning.
A lifetime of discipline reduced to instinctive reactions.
Bishop understood. He saw it in his eyes when he pressed against old injuries, deliberately layering new pain over chronic damage.
This wasn't about data collection.
His reality was being changed. Rewriting the very pathways in his brain.
"Tell me," Bishop would say, pressing a latex finger against a particularly tender scar. "Do you remember what it felt like before this?"
Leo didn't answer. Couldn't answer. Because the truth was, he didn't remember anymore.
Didn't remember what it felt like to exist without categorizing each moment by its level of pain.
You used to be someone's son.
Pain had become his calendar. His clock. His way of understanding what was real.
The world had narrowed to pressure and cuts and burning nerves, each sensation carefully filed away in his mind. Like their medical charts.
And in the quiet moments between procedures, he'd catch glimpses of himself in the observation window. The reflection fragmented across the glass like a broken mirror - permanently damaged, changed. He didn't want to look. Didn't want to face the reality. The reality he'd have to live with. The person he'd have to live with. Forever.
He watched himself flinch at sudden movements. Watched his heart rate spike on their monitors when instruments clinked against metal trays. Documented his own responses before they could, categorizing each reaction.
But the worst part wasn't the pain.
It wasn't even watching his body become a roadmap of their curiosity, permanent reminders of each discovery they made.
It was catching himself hoping for Bishop's footsteps.
Because when Bishop was gone, he no longer existed as a person. Reduced to object, animal, test subject. To nothing.
And he would choose the focused brutality of Bishop's hatred …over the clinical dismissal by everyone else. Over being nothing.
The day he realized that, something inside Leo broke.
Something deeper than bone, deeper than tissue.
Something he didn’t think he could fix.
How could he ever fix that?
You used to be someone's brother.
He closed his eyes as they adjusted the restraints, trying to remember who he had been before.
But the memories felt distant, clinical - like reading someone else's medical history.
The scalpel touched his skin. Someone made a note about baseline readings.
You used to be someone.
And somewhere between the pain and the clinical observations, he wondered if there would be anything left of him to save when this was over.
If there was even anything left to save now.