Background on this: The world ended 20 years ago. Bastian and his best friend Jason were 12 when it happened and have survived this whole time together, creating a little gang of other kids. Whatever caused the end of the world involved massive amounts of radiation and somehow, some survivors have started showing signs of weird 'super powers'. A shadowy group called the Organization has begun stealing people from the new, post-apocalyptic world and doing experiments on them. Jason developed a power and this group found out about it. Bastian was taken by the Organization and tortured for information, then brainwashed into believing his best friend had always been an abuser. Now Bastian is trying to find his old friends and kill them. (I'm involved in a writing group that set this post-apoc world as the setting, and we individually - and sometimes with a partner - create people and story lines within this world)
You can hear yourself screaming, the sound shrill and echoing in the testing room. Every nerve is screaming too, burning white-hot from the pain of what the doctor is doing to you. Your wrists ache from straining against the straps holding them down, and they're slick with blood beneath the tight leather, rubbed raw from your thrashing.
------flash back------
You wake up with a little scream, tangled in blankets, and you feel more than hear Jason wake up on your top bunk. He mumbles about something, and you think you hear him ask what's wrong. ”Alien queen," you pant, already feeling silly and even as your heart hammers away in your chest your lips peel back from your teeth in a smile. ”Eating me. That face..." you'd begged your mom to let you and Jason watch the movie you'd gotten your middle name from, assuring her you could handle it. 'I'm nine mom. I'm not a baby'.
Jason is laughing even though he's half asleep and the sound makes your chest warm and your stomach flop. You beg him, kicking at the bottom of the top bunk, to keep quiet about it and threaten to fart on his face while he's sleeping. Jason only laughs harder and soothes your nerves enough you can sleep.
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All you can do is keep screaming, even once he stops hurting you, until your nerves finally give up and neurons in your brain stop over-firing. You're gasping to catch your breath, vision swimming. You're so fucking dizzy. Your body is shaking, pushed to breaking and the ghost of the pain the doctor's giving you skates along your psyche like little whispers in your ears. Your stomach heaves inside you but you haven't eaten in days, the only water a saline drip in your hand, and you gag and gag and gag.
You’re asked something, the doctor's tone even, the lingering promise of pain echoing even unspoken. It takes everything in you, literally every bit of strength you have left to shake your head, eyes rolling to find your torturer. He wants to know who the powered was in your gang. He wants Jason. He smiles as you shake your head and the look rips the breath from your lungs.
You start crying, a whimper of sound at first, building in intensity with anticipation. The doctor always waits, never gives you a chance to steel yourself. The pain never comes when you expect. The fear of the pain alone makes your toes curl as you shake your head again, harder, and your sobs are gutteral now, bursting out of you in desperate, gagging sounds. You beg him. Please no. Please. I can't. I can't. The pain starts again, and you cry out on your last 'please’, all but convulsing. You want your father, beg for your daddy but he's long dead.
------flash back------
You're crying at the kitchen table over a bowl of Kix and your father sits watching, a sad little smile on his face. There's a dance at school tonight and Jason went with a girl. He explained why in detail some three days earlier, but for the life of you, you can’t understand why smiles matter when he doesn’t even know her. You offered to go with him and Jason turned you down and when you texted him an hour ago he was already gone, dressed up and dancing with some stranger. You tell your father in between gulps of air and cereal, that you don't like the girl, that she smells like a trash can, but only get so far as to insult the way she smells before you burst into hysterical tears. Your best friend picked a girl over you.
Girls don't make sense to you and you don't understand why Jason wants to talk to one. Your father tells you that one day you’ll understand and you deny wholeheartedly that you will. He tells you that your mother was the first girl he ever noticed and the conversation becomes stilted and difficult, leaving you to sniffle over your Kix as your father gets that look in his eyes whenever he remembers her. After a few moments your father gets a bowl and joins you for cereal. Between you, you eat the whole box and both of you go to bed with red eyes and over-full bellies.
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The tip of the scalpel slices deep and at first you feel nothing, even though your stomach muscles have tensed for the pain. There’s been so much pain these last days, all of it running together into a torrent of screaming nerves and your brain struggles to keep up. You feel the scalpel push deeper, a tugging in the meat of your belly, and finally, you feel the pain of it. It’s dull at first but builds. And builds. And builds and eventually you gasp, bow against your straps, wheezing, voice long gone since days ago. You stare up at the man standing over you with bleary eyes. You’ve been crying so much there are no more tears, sweating and bleeding so much that even the IV hasn’t been enough to keep you hydrated. You stopped asking for water two days ago. You beg him with your eyes, silently, even as the doctor presses the tip of the scalpel deeper, splitting your flesh cleanly. Blood dribbles down your side, wells in the concave curve of your stomach - too skinny now, when was your last meal? - as the doctor tosses the scalpel away.
A finger finds its way into the wound the doctor has made and it makes your vision tunnel, driving you into unconsciousness before he’s up to the second knuckle, only to come back moments later as the doctor shoots you up with crank to keep you conscious. He tells you that he wants a name and his fingers slides into the wound, deeper, curling and digging and you tremble as your body writhes to make it stop.
You tell yourself you only have to put up with the pain another ten seconds and let yourself think of Jason. The others. Even Levi, the bastard. Ten seconds pass and you whimper, feeling like your eyes will pop out of your head. Ten more seconds, you tell yourself. It's become your mantra and your lips move as you tell yourself ten more seconds, but your body is giving out, convulsing under the strain of having someone digging around inside you. Ten. Ten more... seconds. You begin to fade again under the intrusion of the man's finger, vision tunneling as you begin heaving - your throat hurts, your diaphragm hurts, everything hurts. The doctor brings you awake to the smell of ammonium and for a second the pain has disappeared, but only until he digs his fingers into the gash on your belly again. Ten...
The doctor demands to know the name of the powered in your gang and you think of Jason, his stupid smile and his hardheaded determination. The pain is almost a background noise now, your body lurching against the table the doctor has you on. You feel your heart stuttering in your chest and you think it's giving up. You're dying, you think. There's nothing left in you, no hope of rescue, no hope of ever getting any relief from the constant pain.
You think of Jason.
"Jason," you hear the doctor say and you're dragged to the surface of your mind again, a guttural, desperate sound warbling from your ruined throat. The doctor ignores you, tapping on his pad; you see your blood has dried on his hands, rusty stains the man seems unconcerned by. "Good." Later you'll realize what you've done, whispering his name as you tried to die, but right now all you can do is stare at the doctor, waiting for more pain.
He rewards you by filling your bloodstream with morphine, and the nerve-deep pain that has been a constant friend finally leaves you to float away into a drug induced coma.
You think of Jason.
------flash back------
”Remy, dude, if you fall I'm gonna leave you in that alley.” Your tone tells Jason you're kidding but you try to make your face say differently. He reads you like a book though, always has, and he turns to grin at your over his shoulder. Your stomach does that thing where it clenches and flops all at once and you roll your eyes to hide the way your cheeks betray you and get hot. Jason's already turned away though, balancing along the edge of the building's roof like he has a death wish.
Ever the daredevil.
The world's changed irrevocably but you rest assured in Jason's presence, in the strength he offers where you fall sort. Two years you've been alone together. He was with you when you found your dad dead in the police station at his desk. He was with you when you had your first nightmares after seeing all the death and sheer destruction, worse than any wildfire had ever been. You're in love with him you think, or at least as in love as someone like you can be, but you hide it, unsure. The world is hell, and Jason is always so focused on keeping you safe, always so damned serious and focused and you don't want to risk distracting him with silly feelings.
You imagine your dad rolling his eyes at that sort of dismissal but you can't shake the feeling that it's better for you both if everything is kept simple between you.
Jason's little moment of distraction ends and he starts across the roof looking for a way into the department store beneath you. Malls are a terrible idea these days but you have to risk it for the bounty of supply it could offer, and told Jason as much when you suggested the trip. It takes you an hour to get the metal door busted open with your axes but it leads down into the bowels of the giant space and to you, at least, survival becomes second fiddle.
When you pass a toy store you remember you're still fourteen and you're grabbing Jason's arm before you can think to leave him to his mission. ”Dude! There's skateboards. Look! We have the whole mall and there are definitely some sweet jumps.” Jason always has his mind on surviving and takes it so seriously, and you know that's why you've survived but you hate seeing the way his brows bunch in worry. He seems keen on passing up your idea and you groan, launch yourself at him and hook an arm around his neck to drag him toward the store.
Touching him is a comfort and you take advantage of it whenever you can because Jason never seems to mind it either. He follows but it takes you falling on your ass the moment you're on a board to get him to join in with your ridiculous idea. Fifteen minutes later you're racing through the mall, shrieking, and you haven't felt this good in months.
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When you wake up, you feel good, better than you have in days. You're warm, bundled under blankets and lying in a soft bed. Pain is there, under the surface of whatever is making you feel good but it's so minimal, so totally underwhelming compared to the other pain that you can ignore it and begin to drift off.
"Hello, Bastian."
The voice makes your blood run cold and you groan, the sound tearing at your ruined throat as you roll your eyes to the man beside your bed. His clothes are clean and his hands aren't stained in blood, your blood, but he stares at you like you are nothing. But he smiles, the look cold. "You did well. Six days, almost seven. And you gave me the name I asked for.” A haid raises and you flinch, your whole body tensing even under the influence of whatever crank they’ve got you on, but the hand only touches your head, petting at your hair like the man is being affectionate. ”There are more names, aren’t there?” His voice is calm but you know that he’s promising to hurt you again if you don’t talk. You think about the way his finger felt digging around in your belly and you whimper, shrink into the soft bedding and nod, staring at him with bleary, bloodshot eyes that are too dry and too wet all at once.
”Yes,” you whisper, and if you could cry you would. You know that you’ll give him any name he wants, that you’ll give him faces and places and everything the man asks for because you feel so good and you can’t go back to that table.
------flash back------
The Lost Boys are piled around a table together, hollering over who will eat what of their Thanksgiving feast.
It was a stupid idea really, and you told Jason as much the moment you proposed the idea but he didn’t shoot you down for which you were eternally grateful. You worry these days that Jason, with all the weight of leadership on his shoulders, will lose interest in you or won’t want to listen to you ramble on about stupid ideas and how he needs to fucking sleep sometimes, but he never lets you down. Even as you went on, at length, about all the food you’d have to steal, he never did anything but listen to you with a smirk on his face; your stomach flopped over itself like a gymnast at such undivided attention but you kept your composure.
Three chickens were taken from someone three doors down from your hideout in the middle of the night. Cans of peas and potatoes and carrots were slipped away into bags while you rambled at a shopkeeper about the importance of hygiene in the ‘world today’. Bread was lifted from cooling racks at the back of a shack bakery. Shine was stolen from the back of a wanderer’s truck while he got drunk in a bar.
As you sit and watch your gang eat, you feel like maybe you’ve done something to make this survival business worthwhile. You’re good enough at planning things and funneling them to Jason for his approval, but you know that there are people who dislike you and most things you say are your ideas, so this whole thing worried you. Kiran has always been obstinate and seems to dislike you, and Levi has always been a complete and utter dick to everyone, but both of them are eating and seem happy enough. At least this one thing can be looked back on as something you did that everyone approved of, and it can be remembered as one of the few times everyone was happy to get along and just be there with each other and enjoying life instead of fighting to survive.
------flash back ------
Three months later you’re still alive. You have survived every meeting with Dr. Yoon, which is something of which to be proud. He's told you that others have failed him, that most fail to impress him but you're special. You appreciate it when he praises you because it makes the work he does on you bearable. He’s cruel, and exacting, but you’ve come to appreciate him, come to appreciate what he does for you.
You no longer have to steal to feed yourself. Your bed is soft, warm. The doctor hurts you but he takes care of you, the Organization takes care of everyone, and most importantly they aren't using you like Jason did. Like the others he dragged along, manipulating to his will.
Jason.
You're sitting in a chair at Yoon's desk, waiting for him as you've done every morning for a month, and as you think of Jason you beginning humming, then mumbling lyrics to yourself. ”It’s after midnight… something evil's lurking from the dark…” it's the song that's played every time you're left alone in the examination room. Over and over. It's comforting to think about it every time you think about Jason. Before. You don't like thinking about the time before the Organization.
The ghost of a finger digs around in your belly and you lean forward, snatching up a pen from the desk to fiddle with ot and mumble-sing the song to yourself.
Yoon's in a hallway. Walking. Tapping a tablet. Ate eggs, llama sausage. Feels nothing, just emptyemptyempty...hall smells clean, bright lights, people talking, they don't matter. Emptyemptyempty.
You look around at the doctor before he even opens the door, seeing his hand touching the knob in your mind before the door ever creaks open. ”Good morning, doctor,” you say earnestly and your pulse quickens, a conditioned response to the man who has broken you so thoroughly and put you together again so succinctly. ”Was the sausage good this morning?"
He looks at you and it's like looking at yourself, makes your head spin, and you have to look at the pen as you twist it through your fingers. You're unaware that you're reading him, that the coldness you feel is the doctor's. The stoicism and the alien inability to connect.
”Did you eat breakfast, Bastian? You know you aren't allowed breakfast before we go for testing.” His voice carries disappointment but he doesn't feel anything. He sees you fiddling with his pen. Vague annoyance. He’s so empty.
”No...no sir. You had sausage for breakfast I - " you realize how that sounds, that you can't know what he had for breakfast or that he spoke to a few nurses about another subject.
Screaming. Female subject. No feelings. He cuts deeper, her bloods smells like copper. The operating theater is dark, a single spotlight over the subject as she screams. The smell of antiseptic.
Your fingers...burn. It reminds you of when the doctor used chemicals on your feet. Yoon is staring at your and he's curious. You look down at your fingers and nothing is visibly wrong… but they burn. ”Doctor…” the world spins around you and you feel yourself slipping from the chair before you're unconscious.
---
Three years later you're still alive.
Nina isn't.
You remember her in the vaguest of ways, bits and pieces of the past that came and went as you fingered the hairbrush the Empire soldiers found in the little hide away of the gang some years earlier. She had been a good thief, good at manipulating people and as you stare down at her corpse you remember her smile. Wicked and clever, she’d liked you, you think. “Cause this is Thriller… thriller night…” you whispered the song under your breath, chasing away the toothy grin of the dead woman at your feet beneath the comforting blanket that is the brainwashing you don’t know you’ve gotten.
She was glad to see you, Nina, when you found her in Hollow, squirrelled away in a bar where she’d been hustling pool for two years. Only when you’d put a knife in her did Nina realize you weren’t the little goofball of a man who had run around after Jason begging for attention he’d never given you. She asked you why and there was no answer. Nothing beyond what you’d been ordered. Find the Lost Boys. Kill the useless ones. Bring back the ones with any strength of character. Nina didn’t make Joon’s cut. One less problem for the Empire. One step closer to Jason, the real prize in all of this. You’ve told Joon you think Jason would make a good soldier, that his power is what let him use you as his scapegoat. He’s cold and calculating, you’ve told him, and Joon agrees; what you don’t know is that your assessment of your old friend has always been Joon’s, that it’s exactly what he wants you to think of him.
You start singing to yourself as you leave the bar through the back doorl.
Noah is outside waiting for you in the alley behind the bar and you smile at each other. He’s nice, Noah, has been with the Organization a long time and you appreciate the help he’s given you over the past few years. When you’re out together he helps you whenever the migraines come, when your power gets too much. Sometimes he’ll heal you but you hate the idea of him taking your pain. It’s good to have a friend. ”I’m hungry,” you say and press your lips together. You saw a noodle shop on the way into town. ”Noodles? Nina had credits so I can pay.” You finger the little bag of money a gloved hand, grateful that the barrier gives you relief… although you suppose since she’s dead now, there’s nothing to read.
You and Noah slip away into the night, well before anyone finds the body.
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