Chapter Text
Pain.
White, hot, burning pain.
He woke up to it, his eyes shooting open as he tried to escape whatever was causing it.
It was all encompassing, blacking out anything except the agony flooding his body.
He couldn’t be sure how long he was suspended in this state, unable to think, to feel, to exist outside of this pain. It could have been seconds or days, there was no passing of time, only the burning.
Slowly, his senses returned to him, although the pain did not dissipate, it just made room for his returning consciousness. His vision was unable to focus, the world around him only a blur of bright white which shot daggers into his eyes. A thunderous sound echoed in his head, like the rushing of flood waters.
The pain narrowed down into a single point which sent shock waves throughout the rest of him. The outline of his body seemed to take shape in his mind’s eye, his arms and legs heavy on the hard surface he was resting on.
No, not resting. Strapped down. He could feel them now, thick restraints at his ankles, wrists, upper thighs, chest, neck, and forehead. He was turned on his side, and he could not move except for the involuntary trembling which ran down his full body.
The pain was radiating out from his hip, the one pointed up towards the roof. It was sharp, deep in the bone. It felt like someone had taken a drill and inserted it directly into the ilium of his pelvis. He could still feel the turn of the drill-bit, scraping away at his bone.
His face was wet, tears streaming from his eyes. He could feel the scratch of his throat, torn ragged from the screams which were still being ripped from his body. The sound reached his ears now, as the rushing flood dampened into a high-pitched ringing. His voice was completely hoarse, cracking every few seconds, yet he still screamed.
On either side of the sharp pain hands pressed down into his hip in a bruising grip. There was something odd about these hands, his mind cataloguing too many fingers, but he chalked it up to his brain going delirious with the pain. It explained the blurry figure which had passed into his view, breaking up the white room. The figure was tall, with two legs and four arms. He couldn’t make out any distinguishing facial features, its head obscured by a dark helmet.
He tried to move, deep-buried prey instincts activating, his body registering a threat before his conscious mind could. But the restraints held tight, trapping him in place. His fingers twitched, the rush of adrenaline trying to find some release despite his immobility. His neck strained, the restraint around his forehead giving way just enough for him to lift his head a few millimeters.
It felt like a small victory amidst the defeat he was drowning in.
Yet, this minute movement had not escaped the attention of the figure. It approached. His muscles locked, goosebumps prickled along his skin, and his stomach swooped like he’d been dropped from a massive height.
At his hip, the hands tightened, the drilling sensation stalled for a moment before restarting and seeming to dig in deeper, and a series of guttural noises came from above him. It sounded like a warning, although he could not identify the language. The figure in front of him seemed to respond, angry. It stalked forward until it was towering over him.
His eyes strained to keep its head and hands in view, his face unable to turn to watch comfortably. Something told him he did not want to lose track of those strange hands. The figure’s fingers, longer than made logical sense, brushed against his face.
Despite the warning sirens blaring in his head, he squeezed his eyes tight. The fingers, which seemed to be gloved in a synthetic, latex-like material, took hold of his forehead restraint and tightened the buckle, the stiff material digging into his skin. The sensation pulled at his scalp, his eyes wrenching open again. It seemed some strands of his hair were trapped in the restraint, because they were ripped out painfully as it was tightened.
For one fleeting moment, his mind had latched onto the pain at his scalp and dulled the pain at his hip.
It was not much, still pain rather than an escape, but he craved that dulling anyways. Thinking quickly, he squeezed his hand into a fist, his fingernails digging deep into his palm. The sharp sting helped, just slightly, to pull his brain away from the stabbing sensation in his hip bone.
It seemed the others in the room did not like this, the figure behind him letting out more guttural sounds. The figure in front of him reached away, out of sight, before returning with a strange, metallic ball which was releasing a green gas. It brought the ball towards his face, the gas quickly reaching his nostrils.
It burned, acrid. His eyes stung, tears spilling for a new reason. He tried to stop his breathing, clamping his mouth shut and forcing himself not to breath through his nose. Yet, his body, weakened from the pain, quickly relented, drawing in gulping breaths. His ragged throat stung as the gas entered his airways and into his lungs which burned, hurting nearly as much as his hip.
However, he began to grow dizzy, his head spinning. His eyes, which had never fully been able to focus, started to roll in their sockets. He was light-headed, his mind shutting down.
The last thing he felt before unconsciousness took him was the agony in his hip dissipating like a ripple in a pond.
-
Consciousness returned slowly.
His hip ached, but the agony from before had mostly dulled. He couldn’t feel the restraints anymore. He tested it with a small shift of his wrist, and finding no resistance he lifted his full arm. Exhaustion quickly brought it crashing back down, but he had at least managed to move it. Next, he tried to shift his leg, but his hip screamed out in protest, pain whiting out his vision for a moment while a gasp was torn from his lips.
So, no moving his legs. Got it.
He tentatively opened his eyes, worried he’d see the same bright room as before, but it wasn’t. The walls around him were still white, but not the same sterile shade, instead the slightest twinge of grey darkened them. The room was small and empty; except for a large rock and a shape he was pretty sure was a toilet.
His eyesight was still pretty blurry, although not as bad as before, so he hoped his assessment of the shape was wrong. A single toilet without any walls felt remarkably similar to a prison cell.
Was he in prison?
It would explain the previous restraints, although not the pain. Nor the strange figure he’d seen, with their four arms and too-long fingers. It also didn’t explain why there was a large rock in the room, but he figured that was the least of his concerns.
He didn’t know how he got here, what he might have done to end up in prison, if that was indeed where he was.
He couldn’t hear anything, except his soft breathing and the occassional tapping noise which seemed to be coming from the furthest end of the room.
He was still lying on his side, the floor beneath him cold. He was wearing clothes made of a light, stiff material which did little to protect him from the ground which sapped his warmth. He couldn’t feel any fabric on his legs, except for the edge of the material which brushed just above his knee. It felt distinctly like a hospital gown.
He wanted to get up, to look around more, although the threat of more pain in his hip stopped him from moving. Instead, he had to make do with scanning the room with his eyes.
He examined the rock as best he could with his blurry eyesight. He might have been a bit hasty to declare it a rock; it was a strange shape with five odd attachments sticking out of it. But the colour looked like a rock so until he could get a better look at it up close, he’d stick with his initial assumption.
His eyes had drifted away, searching for something else to analyse, when he noticed the smallest of movements out of the corner of his vision. He couldn’t even be sure he’d seen something, but every inch of his body was screaming at him to run, to flee. A primitive part of his brain had sensed a predator, and it was overriding all logic.
But he couldn’t run, not with his hip like it was. Even the smallest movements of his lower body made it feel like it had been stabbed twenty times. With a chainsaw.
His limbs were locked up, his eyes wide as they tracked the corner for any more movements, short breaths puffing out of his nostrils. He tried to tell himself to calm down, that there was nothing there, but nothing worked. His sympathetic nervous system was activated, and it wasn’t going to listen to him.
There.
Another movement, the slightest shift of one of the attachments of the rock. It tapped once against the floor, so light that it had barely lifted more than a centimeter, but it was enough.
It wasn’t a rock.
It was alive.
His body seemed to be paralysed, his brain screaming at him that if he moves, the creature will see and kill him. If it thinks he hasn’t spotted it, maybe it won’t attack.
The freeze response seemed set to last but suddenly the creature moved towards him.
His nervous system immediately switched to flight, uncaring of the pain in his hip, and he launched himself up and away, his back slamming into the wall he hadn’t realized was directly behind him.
Blood rushed in his ears, his eyesight whiting out even longer than before, as agony wracked his body with chills. His body, now in a seated position, curled inwards to protect his hip.
The desperate need to run was slamming full force against the wall of pain.
The creature seemed to startle at this sudden movement, jumping back. After a few tense moments, it inched its way forward again, towards him.
Unable to move further, stopped by both pain and the solid wall behind him, he could do nothing else but scream. It tore out of his throat, sharp and cracking. The creature jumped back with a scream of its own, slamming against the wall opposite him.
The two were stuck in a stalemate, both screaming and trying to flee.
It took him a short moment before his mind began to come back to him again, the pain dulling and the scream dying out. The creature wasn’t attacking him, it seemed as scared of him as he was of it, like a spider cowering under the shoe of an arachnophobe.
It did look remarkably like a spider. A giant spider made of rocks.
The creature was still pushing itself against the wall with a high-pitched screech. He felt sad for it, for its clear fear. It wasn’t a predator, it was prey.
Just like him.
His empathy winning out, he lifted a hand in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture. Instead, the creature cowered even more, shrinking down into itself.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m sorry, you just scared me.” It was the first words he’d spoken in… who knows how long, and it was directed at a creature that almost certainly couldn’t understand him. He tried to sound as calm as possible, despite his scratchy voice, like he was soothing a small child rather than a rock spider. “I’m sorry, it’s okay.”
Something in his tone of voice must have gotten through to the creature, because it slowly peeled itself away from the wall, creeping towards him carefully. It stopped a couple meters from him, and he realized the cause as his eyes adjusted to take in the glass wall which separated them. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now that the creature was standing directly behind it, he could just make out the transparent surface.
He gave the creature a tentative grin, although it cowered back at the sight. Maybe his teeth had scared it. He quickly closed his mouth, giving it a tight-lipped smile instead. It inched forward again.
“Hi, I’m…” He trailed off, his mind unable to finish the sentence. Frowning, scouring his brain, he tried again, “My name is…”
He couldn’t remember his name.
He couldn’t remember anything.