CHAPTER 7: DESPAIR

Time is strange in prison, you have all the time in the world, but it moves slowly. Monotony blends the time together, it becomes hard to tell the days apart, then the weeks. If I was here longer I am willing to bet the months and years would blend together as well and that terrified me. Routine becomes everything, you begin to use it to judge the time of the day and the days from each other. 

But when the routine is disrupted, big or small, it is obvious and it is disturbing. My routine wasn’t just meal times, interrogations and the rare visit by my caseworker. My routine also included attempting contact with Kelly, after my interrogation or meeting with my caseworker and then talking into the night. 

One of us would remove the plug at our end of the hole and call out just loud enough for someone at the other end to hear, but no one else. It had been eight days since I last saw Ms Clark and since the day before yesterday I had been unable to contact Kelly. I could feel my my distress was growing by the rough hour.

I had spent most of last night pacing my cell, climbing onto my desk and trying to contact her every thousand or so steps. I had stood on my desk attempting to call out to her through our hole until my legs gave out.

I knew they took her out of her cell, every few days, to do things that would make a serial killer flinch, but they always returned her the same day. Always.

The first night I had just hoped that they had accidentally killed her and she was just taking longer to recover. That sounds horrible, I know, but she would survive and it would have explained her silence. The second night however I doubted that, I wasn’t hearing groans of pain or muffled weeping. Just silence.

My morning meal sat uneaten on my tray, I was meant to have returned it already, but that wasn’t important right now. I hadn’t showered or changed my jumpsuit. They weren’t important right now either. I wasn’t even counting mississippi's. I just… I didn’t have the heart to care, not while she was missing.

I guess it wasn’t surprising then given how on edge I was, but I jumped when the intercom buzzed to life for my interrogation.

“Are you ready to talk?” the crackling voice asked, my interrogator. I was sure I only had one interrogator despite the intercom’s distortion.

“Is Ms Clark coming? I want to speak to Ms Clark!” She usually came roughly every seven to nine days and I knew she could help. Maybe she knew what was going on. Maybe she had already gotten Kelly out. She could tell me!

“She won’t be visiting anymore.” The statement echoed with finality. My heart stopped. It felt like the air I was breathing had turned to water. Drowning me.

“What! Why? I need to speak with her! She’s my caseworker!” I was pleading, I need her. She was the only one who could help.

“Bad things happen when little monsters run their mouths and tell lies,” the voice taunted, dripping with smugness and cruel joy.

“She won’t be coming back, or talking to anyone…”

They knew! They knew what I told Ms Clark! Was Kelly safe? Calm down Robin, they can’t kill her permanently. They can’t right?

“Where’s Kelly!? What have you done with her?”

“She has been transferred…” the voice began, “Unlike a monster like you, she is useful. Think of all the normal people she will help once we work out how she heals and replicate it. Of course I doubt she will enjoy the scientific method. She didn’t enjoy the preliminary work we did here.” 

“Is that what we are to you? Monsters and lab rats? We’re people! You can’t do this! We have rights! We have lives and dreams!” I hoped there was a surviving shred of empathy, of humanity in his shrivelled heart.

His cold laughter, sharp from the intercom’s distortion cut through me.

“You are freaks. There are two types of freaks, useful freaks like your friend Kelly and useless freaks like yourself. I doubt anyone outside will care or miss you.”

“You’re the real monster here,” I bitterly accused, he was probably enjoying my distress. No, I knew he was enjoying my distress, he had been enjoying tormenting me the whole time. I knew his type, I met my share growing up, the type of person who enjoyed not only having power over someone, but exercising that power to hurt them. The real monsters were human.

“Think what you will. I am not the one in a lightless hole in the ground and this interview is over. I hope you enjoy the guest we have arranged,” the intercom went dead, just like any hope I had possessed.

The elevator at the end of the corridor dinged. A tiny part of me, waited for the click of Ms Clarks heels, but I knew it wasn’t her.

A flickering blue light accompanied by an electric crackle, followed by the heavy footfalls of the approaching visitor, grew closer.

The ‘guest’ came into view and began cackling with amusement when they saw me. In walked Jakob Adler  in the same type of blue prison jumpsuit as I was wearing. Resting above a cut in his hand, was a ball of crackling blue lightning he was using to illuminate the dark space. I sensed the faint charge of an electronic device attached to his chest pocket. A camera.

“Well looky what I found here! Now when the guards ask me to do them a favor, it is just business. I scratch their backs, they scratch mine. But when they told me I was going to see the person who put me in here and then gave me your file, you can guess my surprise. And well I’ll be damned, I would have never recognised ya. Here you are a little lost doe in the dark. A little John. Doe. Smith,” he taunted, dragging out my old name, one word at a time.

His face burst into a bemused smirk, “If only the Andersons could see you now, a little queer faggot tranny monster. It’s nice when work becomes play, I am going to have lots of fun with you…”

The crackling ball of lightning in his hand swelled and a cold sweat ran down my back at the predatory smile he wore. 

Things were about to get even worse...

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* * *

I was a mess. I felt like it. I looked like it. Probably smelt like it too. Probably smell like sour sweat and burnt meat.

Jakob had visited my cell daily for the last nine days. My skin was a patchwork of different sort of burns, lichtenberg figures ran under my swirling tattoos like trees in dark mist. I had been coughing up blood and my insides screamed, I doubted there was a major organ left, aside from my brain, that wasn’t burned. 

Actually take that back, I’m not sure my brain escaped unscathed. The periodic muscle spasms, leg jerks and shaking hands said otherwise.

My heart beat was still skipping the occasional beat, before pounding like the footfall of a sprinter as it caught up. Probably the result of yesterday’s torture, when my heart briefly stopped. He had been called away after that.

I was starting to think I might have some sort of slight healing ability myself, despite all the pain, I didn’t have as many burns as I should and I was still alive. For now.

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t fight back or why I didn’t end up losing control and explode again like the night I turned,  draining all the energy sources around me. Well…

I remembered back to the first time he visited my cell, the warning he gave me was fairly explicit.

“What did they say your friends name was? Nelly? Shelly? Ellie? Ah that’s right, Kelly! If you fight back, if you harm me, if  this little camera goes dark,or you lose control, I can’t promise something bad won’t happen to her. If what they say is true, there are a lot of things one can do to an immortal regenerator…” he threatened.

They really knew how to get to me and... I probably deserved it, it was probably my fault Kelly was gone and definitely my fault if something happened to Ms Clark. I had told her about Kelly. It was better a monster like me died, than cause her further harm.

I am sure there were people watching through the camera at his chest. If I fought back, used my powers, they would get to see and study them. If I didn’t then I got tortured, which I expect was perfectly fine with them. The bastards were probably still gaining data from my cooperation.

When zapped, my natural instinct seemed to be to absorb the electricity he was lashing out at me with, but that was what got me in here in the first place, eating his attacks. If I just absorbed his attacks, I might lose control again. I’m not ready to risk ending up again in an energy feeding frenzy, plus I knew what that would lead to. 

Trouble, for both me and Kelly, wherever she is.

So I did my best not to. I felt like clenching my gut in anticipation of being punched. It worked to an extent, but I am sure I don’t need you to ask you to imagine how hard it is to keep a figurative muscle clenched, while screaming on the floor in agony. And when I lost my hold on my absorption it kicked in.

Several of the sessions I felt myself grow close to a threshold, like your stomach after overeating, a bucket about to overflow or a battery with too much charge. The side of my scalp was still scabby, with weeping blood caking my hair, from when I dashed my head against the concrete floor to keep myself from losing control.

Jakob hadn’t liked me depriving him of his fun and he viciously made up for it the next day, ending with him accidently stopping my heart. I can honestly say I felt some relief as my vision darkened before he restarted it with a panicked zap.

I was barely eating, I was in too much pain to stomach more than a couple mouthfuls. I showered but didn’t clean myself, I just sat under the droplets letting them cool my burns and wash away the blood from burst capillaries. Ms Clark’s Hairbrush sat untouched, I both didn’t care enough to groom myself and it had become a memento of sorts to me.

The intercom across the room buzzed and I dragged my waterlogged corpse of a body over to the desk and sat with a wet squelch. The voice, that distorted voice of my tormentor blared into life, “Enjoying your social times freak?”

I remained silent. I wasn’t going to give the reaction he wanted.

“Not going to beg? Cry for me? You’re no fun. Still you have proven you can cooperate. Maybe there is still hope for you, unlike most you kind.” 

It seemed my interrogator was more interested in ranting about Emerged, than questioning me today. Not that I minded it was a sort of respite, maybe they wouldn’t send Jakob down today. I perked up slightly at that thought. He was now ranting on about Emerged criminal and how Emerged are a danger to everyone.

This guy seemed to pathologically hate us, not that I hadn’t already realised it.

“We’re going to round up all your freaks and classify your powers then register you so you can’t act out. No matter what any of you say. We even announced the classification system we’ve developed and been testing earlier today.”

I continued to remain silent, let him have what he wants. There is no reason to bring his anger down on me or others. 

“Still silent? Well I guess you’re learning your place. Some nobody Emerged has already sent out a manifesto on the web and to the broadcasters, in response to the announcements. Some freak going by the name Unbowed.”

“An Emerged dare threaten us normal people!? We are just doing what we need to do to prevent your kind taking over. It is only time before they learn their places like you have,” the voice sneered. 

It was all I could do not to destroy the intercom, a ball of turbulent shadows grew in my hand, struggling to be released.  I forced myself to remember he was beyond my reach out of harm's way but he could still hurt me. Or Kelly…

“A whipped dog like you is no fun,” the sound of a chair scraping as some stood, screeched through the intercom before it went quiet.

I laughed to myself in the darkness, he had given me something I had lost. Motivation. I was angry enough to do something, anything! I might not be able to fight back, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to be a whipped dog for his amusement. I needed to get out.

Fighting my way out was probably a bad idea, they had guns and I don’t think I could absorb bullets. Escape was almost impossible, every plan Kelly and I had come up with was fanciful at best, suicidal at worst.

I thought back to all the survival training my conspiracy nut foster parents had put me through. With their constant fear of nuclear wars, Government crackdowns, apocalypses, civil wars and revolutions, I had been forced to endure a unique education outside of school. Navigation, map reading, signals and communication, hunting, basic electrical work, how to find or make clean water, how to build or scavenge tools from my surrounds and other survival craft. 

It was about time this shit came in use. I would enjoy the irony later, if their training actually helped me get out of here. 

First step was to take stock of my surroundings. I was at least 2 levels underground beneath was Kelly said was the administration block. My cell was one of several on this floor, all were empty except for mine.

My cell had three concrete walls and the fourth was steel bars sunken into the concrete. There was a small drain in the floor of my cell and another in the shower. The level had no lightning or heating, the infrastructure was there but the circuits were more than off, they felt like they were disconnected. There were three circuits on the floor i could feel, the intercom which was off, a microphone near the lift at the other end of the floor and a length of emergency strip lighting running the length of the corridors floor, with only enough light to be visible rather than illuminate anything.

The furniture was stainless steel and either bolted then welded down or sunk into the concrete floor. My bed was a metal slab, no springs. My mattress was a ragged sheet of foam. I had a pile of shredded blankets and a few new ones. 

The first idea I had was to use my rags to clog the cells drains and leave the water running till they sent someone down, but they could easily turn off the water elsewhere and the other cells had drains. The circuits had limiters on them so I couldn’t use them to power myself up or overcharge myself.

I ever so slightly pulled on the strip lighting power, before stopping and letting go like a rubber band. I had an idea. It was probably as frivolous as some of Kelly and I’s earlier plans. I remembered back to my signals lessons and morse code, could I tap out a message via pulling on the circuits power? Would it travel beyond the prison without getting drowned out? Would anyone even notice it? Would they care? 

Hell if I knew, but I was shit out of other ideas. So I got started creating a message I could transmit using morse code, like a telegram. An SOS. I finished scratched the dots and dashes into my cell wall with a spike. It was time to start.