Chapter Text
DULCE ET DECORUM EST - WILFRED OWEN
knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
and towards our distant rest began to trudge.
DECEMBER
Chosen didn’t really believe he could run forever.
But once he got very close.
It was once a quiet, fresh winter. He’d lived well enough alone; skittering across the skirts of the outernet’s crowning city. He’d missed his siblings, certainly. Dark was likely long dead by now, he thought, a greenish-reddish charred corpse out in the distance across the trench his younger, wide-eyed counterpart had carved.
Dark was dead, and that was that. He’d thought about returning there, sometimes, but he tried once and felt this ache in his bones like the wounds were still there and this sense of death like he was being watched.
He tried going back, once. He was running out of options. Chosen wasn’t exactly keen on staying with his creator even after Second begged him. Honestly, he was scared for the little orange thing; even after everything, he couldn’t quite bring himself to look the face on the other side of the screen in the eye. He pretended whenever Second brought him over, for his sake, more than anything.
He tried going back, once.
The Outernet was never in a rush for the cold, slowly creeping in across the coast and dressing it in white and gray and red and—
It’s all brick walls and blurred.
Chosen doesn’t think he remembers any of it now.
Chosen hit the wall behind him with a crack like a gunshot. He crumpled to his knees and struggled to lift his gaze more than a few inches to stare through his eyelids, hazy-eyed and with his heartbeat in his head, at the gray figure ahead of him. He couldn’t quite place their expression; something between focused cruelty and sadistic glee. It seemed like an eternity of them simply staring; taking in the image of him heaving on the floor, before they began pacing forward, steadily. He pushed onto his knees, standing on shaky legs, fists held in front of him; If he relaxed, he thinks, the white cell he’d found himself in would fade away, and it wouldn’t gnaw at him anymore, and he would be able to focus on the task at hand, focus on staying alive.
They sped up, jarringly, suddenly, bolting towards him. Their knee met his ribs, and the force pinned him to the wall again, hardly enough time to react as fists met his face and his arms curled over his eyes. He dropped to the floor, rolled to the side as the gray stranger tried to dig their heel into his spine. They managed to get a kick in at him as he stood and staggered backward, a gray mirage running circles around him as he stumbled and struggled to get his footing— only to be shoved into a corner, blindly holding his hands as a shield and the pain started to bleed and blur until he couldn’t quite tell where the stranger was hitting him based on feeling alone. He caught their hand, a lucky draw if anything, pain shooting up his wrist. It gave the gray figure pause, looking down at him before they seemed to vanish out from in front of him. In their empty space was droplets of blood scattered on the pale floor.
He began to choke on air, hands he couldn’t see strangling him.
Around his throat, there are two places to crush; the arteries and the windpipe. Press down on the arteries, and you’ll gradually, peacefully lose consciousness as bloodflow fails to get to the brain. Press on the windpipe and the whole body goes into a tailspin, not-quite-pain, more terror, as the suffocation signal comes from the lungs and not the brain. The figure fades into view again like a thin trail of smoke, like a ghost against the cold white hell.
They are pressing on both.
He’s dragged into the air, kicking and screaming until his voice fails him.
He sees spots, his vision blurs, his limbs grow heavy and everything seems… a little farther away. There’s the distant thought that he’s going to die.
He’s dropped onto the floor with an unceremonious thud. He gasps for air.
Above him in loose cognition he can hear the air-whooshing sound of someone whipping something around. A bright lasso, glowing a faint blue, catches in the corner of his eye as he tries to sit up. He only manages a faint shuffle until he collapses back to the floor, rough hands shaking. The figure kneels by his side and loops the lasso around his throat, almost gently, and drags him, leaden-heavy, to stand on his feet. It feels like it’s burning, sharp-edged and cutting into him.
“I know you aren’t dead,” The gray figure’s words are blunt and with zero sweetness. Chosen’s vision struggles to focus, empty and heaving. They snap, a harsh clicking sound in between his eyes, commanding attention. The room seems to darken.
Chosen coughs, slurring his words before he manages to get to the point of it.
“...I-I don’t know what you want.” He strains, and the stranger’s grip on the lead around him tightens. Their eyes narrow.
They turn, whistle at someone past the white room’s borders, barking an order Chosen couldn’t quite grasp the words of. Something around him beeps and they grab his shoulders and turn him towards a metal chair seated in the center of the room. It is dark, and the only light is a singular overhead one. The air is heavy and crushing.
Chosen is limp as they drag him over and sit him in the chair, wrapping the remaining length of lasso around him. They reach into their pockets and pull out a photograph, one stained with coffee and dirt and the crease marks draw white lines in the printing. They carefully unfold it and hold it up to him. It’s a photograph of a cursor, hard-lined and jagged.
“I’ll put it simply, then.” The gray stranger taps Chosen on the cheek to keep his attention. They only speak again when his eyes are locked onto theirs. “Do you know him?”
“Wh… What?”
“Oh, don’t play dumb now.” The gray stranger seems to stare into his soul, picking him apart from the inside. Chosen swears he feels the rope tighten.
“I’ll ask again. Noogai. Do you know him?” The paper rustles.
Chosen tenses. He begins to struggle, arms pressing against his binds. They’re tighter than they seem. “No, no I don’t, I—”
“You can be honest,” they say. It sounds like hearing bells for his own death.
“I’ll find out either way, you know. But, do me a favor; save me the time.”
Chosen hesitates. Only then does everything begin to hurt, does the adrenaline begin to falter. His voice breaks in his throat. “...I do.”
“Good. Go on.”
“...I-I used to live with him, he used me. like— like a tool.”
Something in their gaze becomes sympathetic and soft before it is steeled away. They face away from him and call through the wall. It’s hardly a moment more before faceless gray figures in hardhats carry an unmarked black leather suitcase through a lowering door. It almost kindly breaks the illusion of the endless singularity that is the room, he thinks. With a practiced ease the nameless stranger clicks open the case, pulling from its inside a white plasticy… visor, it seems, with a curved screen on the inside and a blue cushy interior. A sort of half-halo lopsided and square in its build.
Chosen leans away. They turn and wait on him.
“Don’t struggle,” their voice is flat, almost cruel, if it wasn’t for its lack of being not much of anything in particular. “You’ll only injure yourself.”
Even still, as they steadily walked towards him, He couldn’t help but find himself shaking, something in his mind fraying like linen fabric, coming apart, before the gray figure. They place a firm hand on his shoulder; their grip is cold and they stare through him while waiting for him to ease, or maybe just still.
Without warning, the visor clicks over his eyes, and the world goes dark.
The visor hums to life and blinks before he can, in the blue light clouding his vision. Before him is an endless canvas of mirror-images, the same face relayed over and over and refracted. He’s staring into a screen of a screen. The gray hollow is there too, and they wave at him; an arced wave of hands follows their own.
It cuts out to black as they reach for the screen and reel back through footage; only then does it begin to make sense.
A splitting headache tears through him and when it fades there’s hardly anything at all; blurry footage and littered in dark, charred voids, a memory eating itself, bathed in gold light as a shaky hand he can’t control reaches up and burns through a pop-up advertisement. Black ash cascades down to the floor like rain. He tries to turn away but finds he can’t move; There’s a rattle of chain, though, so maybe he did. He can’t really tell.
Above him hangs the outline of something, jarring and jagged, sharp. He struggles to focus on it. Milky white ceramic-metal fades around its edges— It’s a cursor.
It reaches for him, suddenly. Static clouds his eyes and the only thing with any clarity is the pointed edge coming for his head. Maybe he was lifted into the air, he can’t tell.
He tries to move his hands over his face. He can’t. He can’t.
The footage cuts to black.
The only sound in the white cell is Chosen’s own ragged breathing.
“I’ve seen enough.” The stranger lifts the visor off him and tosses it aside with a clatter.
Chosen sways with the movement of their hand like a leaf in fall.
“Am I going to die?” He hears himself asking— the sound doesn’t sound real.
It’s not his voice. None of this is his own.
“No. I’ll make sure of it.” They look down at his shaking body. They pull the lasso from him and wind it around their hand. Chosen slumps forward as if he was already a corpse.
A thousand words break and get lost in his throat;
Why was never a good enough question.
“Who are you?”
The stranger masks a chuckle, hid behind their voice. A smile plays on their face.
“Most call me Vic.”
“—You can call me boss.”