They're coming for me.

One minute, Joseph had been arguing with his father in Korean over the phone, and the next, Juliette had waltzed into his room, unannounced, and started dragging him out into the night. He'd tried to object, unsatisfied with the fact that his argument had gotten cut short before a proper conclusion, but he knew he wouldn't be able to escape his cousin's insistent clutches. Apparently, Juliette's brother, Kaleb, had come into town recently, seeking to meet with the family he hadn't seen in so long. for Joseph, especially, it'd been ages since he had spoken with Kaleb - So long, in fact, that he'd somewhat forgotten what he actually looked like. All he could remember was a round face, a sincere smile, and a head of raven-coloured hair. Kaleb was a determined young man - he remembered that, as well.

After a good fifteen minutes of brisk walking in the chilly, early-spring air, the duo's pace slowed as they reached the outskirts of Rosebury. Not too far from them, gazing in sombre silence at the mountains across Lake Salacin, was a man that Joseph could only assume was Juliette's brother. As soon as he heard the two Beata students approaching, he turned to face them, and his demeanour seemed to lighten up. His features hadn't changed too dramatically, but his face had definitely slimmed out, indicative of maturity.

"Kaleb," Joseph murmured, nodding his head in greeting and allowing the end of his lips to twitch up in a faint smile. He couldn't help but wonder why Kaleb had insisted on having a family gathering at such a ridiculous hour, but he didn't bother asking. Joseph was a night owl anyhow, so it didn't particularly irritate him. He would have preferred to finish his debate with his father before going anywhere, but there was no need to mention that now. "Long time no see."

Kaleb had begun to respond to Joseph, but as both young men had anticipated, Juliette's enthusiasm came first. The Autumn girl raced at Kaleb and threw her arms around his midsection, burying her forehead into the fabric of his shirt. For a moment, Joseph had half-expected her too tackle her brother right to the ground. He hadn't actually asked Juliette how long it'd been since she herself had last seen Kaleb, but from the looks of it, longer than she would have preferred.

Once Juliette seemed to have finally satisfied her desire for a hug, she turned to Joseph, grinning. Immediately, he knew that the hug session wasn't done, and he wouldn't get out of it so easily. A moment later, Kaleb reached out and pulled Joseph into an embrace, tugging him close and squishing part of Juliette in between them in the process. Somehow, Joseph ended up in the middle of the sandwich a second later. The three of them must've looked ridiculous to all of the townspeople, hugging like excited children and making all sorts of noise. A few passerbys shot them curious looks, but Joseph didn't mind. He'd never been too fond of being physically affectionate, but if it was family, then it was alright. "God, you guys.. So touchy-feely." He sniffed in amusement, smile widening a degree.

Eventually the hugging ceased, and Joseph stepped off to the side again so there was some space between the three. It had been a while since he'd genuinely smiled. He found little enjoyment in the trivial activities of everyday life, but for family, he always had a grin or two to spare. He'd always found that he got along a lot better with his father's side of the family. Perhaps it was the background country, ot the gifts, or maybe both.

Wait, roadtrip? Since when had that been a thing?

Joseph turned his head in Juliette's direction, eyebrows lowering. Well, there was another detail she'd neglected to share with him before yanking him out of his dorm. She was probably the most spontaneous person Joseph knew, and would ever know. "Would've been nice if you'd told me that earlier." Before anyone could speak again, he was biting the end of a cigarette, and lit it deftly with his lighter. "But hey, I've got pocket cash and smokes." He exhaled a grey cloud and slipped the lighter away once more. Admittedly, her figured it would be nice to have a break from the remote community of super freaks he'd been glued to for half a year. "It's not like I need anything else for a road trip."

Joseph rolled his eyes half-heartedly as Juliette's forcibly sweet smile, but couldn't bring himself to be truly annoyed at her. The idea of cruising down a highway with two people he genuinely enjoyed the company of was far more appealing a thought than wasting away in his room, covered in cigarette ash and wayward papers from various English assignments.. Even if he hadn't really had a chance to pack for the occasion. Like he'd explained, Joseph didn't need much aside froom whatever was in his pocket already.

"Sounds good to me," he murmured to Kaleb, inhaling deeply and sighing a stream of pale grey smoke through his nose a second later.

Joseph blinked twice, surprised at Kaleb's refusal to allow him to smoke in the car. A light scoff drifted past his lips. Well, he hoped the stopping intervals between driving weren't too lengthy, then, because he wouldn't be able to go on very long without another cigarette. As pathetic as his addiction was, it was just the way things were. "Alright, whatever," he muttered, dousing the tiny embers between his index finger and his thumb, and then tossed the useless blunt to the ground. It wasn't like Kaleb would immediately get lung cancer from second-hand smoke on a little roadtrip, but alright..

The Winter grimaced internally at the mention of the accident. It'd been nearly six months since he'd smashed his car, and he'd still not totally paid off the damage he'd done to it. His parents would harp on and on about it over the numerous phone calls he had weekly with them, which was why he dreaded said calls every time his cellphone rang. It was a pretty reasonable decision not to let Joseph drive after such a ridiculous incident. With a hefty sigh, Joseph followed in Juliette's steps - only less excitedly - and made his way over to Kaleb's car. He could see the beginnings of a teasing remark on Juliette's lips as she watched her much slower cousin approach, but something suddenly caught her eye, and the words faltered on her tongue.

Joseph raised an eyebrow. "What, is my hair that messy?"

Before Joseph even had time to breathe again, seven levels of hell broke loose.

First was Kaleb. Out of seemingly nowhere, a man leapt out of the darkness nearby and threw his arms around his face, jabbing a syringe into his arm at the same time. Joseph motioned forward immediately to help but was grabbed abruptly from behind before he could even take two steps towards him. "What the f-" Strong arms roped around his neck and forced him into a tight choke-hold, cutting his remark off. He reached up and swing left arm back with as much force as he could muster, aiming to elbow the attacker in the gut, but he then felt more hands grip his torso and limbs, restricting his movements even further.

Sharp pains jut into him from several different angles. Out of the corner of his eye, the Winter could see Juliette struggling fiercely against three men, but her efforts were in vain, as well. Kaleb was nowhere to be seen. As Juliette's movements slowed, Joseph could feel his own muscles shutting down, as well. He could feel his grip around the man's arm, still firmly wrapped around his neck, weakening against his will. A furious hiss of frustration and desperation escaped him. One would have to be stupid not to realize they were being tranquillized. Who were these men? What the fuck was going on?

Joseph raised one of his legs and kicked behind him. His foot met flesh, but not without repercussions. A fist collided with his face within a second or two, and he could see stars floating in front of him whilst fresh blood trailed out of his nose. He tried to kick again but somebody stomped down on his ankle before he could. Already-bloodied knuckles connected with his face again, and he could feel the cartilage in his nose snap as it did so. And then a hard, leather boot struck him in the chest, and a splitting pain engulfed his entire frontal torso. Viscous scarlet liquid filled his throat and poured out of his nose and mouth, staining the ground below. He spluttered and choked on the blood and clawed uselessly at the arm at his throat, but with every second that passed by, energy seemed to drain out of his body, and Joseph's protests became weaker and weaker.

Seconds after Juliette's hands were cuffed, Joseph's were as well. A man wrenched his arms behind him and chained them tightly together, and when Joseph pulled at them, he received another harsh kick to the ribs. He expected a few were broken. They'd heal in time, but the thought of eventual relief didn't really do much to dull the pain. Before he even had time to spit up another mouthful of blood, a ratty sack was thrown over his head, and he was being dragged along the grass.

His head was ringing, his chest was in splitting pain, his limbs had gone numb, and he couldn't see anything anymore. Joseph couldn't have fought back even if he had the will to, so he allowed himself to be pulled limply across the ground, towards what he did not know was Kaleb's car. He wasn't hearing Juliette anymore, and he hadn't heard Kaleb at all since the attack began. He could barely think straight enough to worry about them. His mind was a hazy mess. The man who'd been dragging Joseph released him from the choke hold and tossed him forward, next to his fallen cousin. Pain radiated throughout his chest once again as he landed on the hard, stony ground, and the air in his lungs hissed out, leaving him gasping and struggling to breathe around the blood that had welled up in his throat.

The drugs had taken their full toll on Joseph's body, and he was as limp as a landed fish; useless. He could do nothing as ropes were coiled tightly around him. He didn't have as much fight in him as Juliette did, and besides, it was clear by now that there was no way he'd be able to get out in accordance with his own efforts. As the soldiers hoisted him up and tossed him, his legs felt like lead, and then he hit a plush, heavily-padded surface. He puffed and spluttered raggedly into the soft material, still half-choking on the thick liquid in his throat, and found that it was soundproof. Figured. No good kidnapping could go on without soundproof padding.

And then he heard a muffled screech, quieted significantly by the soundproofing. He knew that voice anywhere. "Jules..?" he rasped harshly, trying to keep his voice down as much as he could. ".. where's K--" Unfortunately, he'd made the same mistake as Juliette, and instantly regretted saying anything out loud at all. A bolt of electricity struck him and set every nerve in his body on fire. His drugged body shook and convulsed as the energy raced throughout him, and before a sound could even pass his lips, he slipped out of consciousness and his body ceased to twitch any longer.

Day One


At first, Joseph couldn't distinguish individual sounds or shapes. Everything was a garbled mess, both visually and audibly. It was like he was underwater, all the while looking through a lens that was too strong for his eyes. Bitter, unidentifiable scents filled his nose and throat, sometimes so strong that his eyes watered. The headache had been present since he'd initially crept out of unconsciousness, and wasn't showing many signs of weakening any time soon. It was as if his brain was hammering the inside of his skull, trying to find relief from the drugs that plagued it inside of its dark, inescapable prison -- A way out.

A way out was something Joseph didn't even know he needed yet, but something he would soon undoubtedly yearn for.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been lying there, wherever he was, but after about four instances of slipping in and out of consciousness, the Winter prefect felt the cold, stainless steel on his back, and could see a blank white ceiling above him. His senses quickly sharpened once again. The bitter, medicinal odours become all the more potent, the draft on his body, stripped of all clothing, became all the more freezing, and the rawness of his wrists became all the more noticeable.

His wrists. They were bound at his sides. Firmly.

He must have been struggling mindlessly against the restraints in his drugged state, because the skin of his inner wrists was still sensitive and pink. Joseph tightened his fists experimentally, and the chilly steel bit into him. There was no wiggle room, so perhaps he'd have to improvise. He pulled at the cuffs. And then again. The edge of the metal cut into the knobs of his wrists as he pulled and twisted his hand, and a pinch of pain raced up his arm. After a couple of seconds spent clenching his jaw and bloodying himself trying to vaguely re-enact 128 Days, Joseph's arms went limp whilst radiating with pain, and he gave up. Blood seeped generously out of the severed skin and veins and dribbled down over the edge of the table he was suspended on.

In was awfully quiet. The gentle plip-plip of the blood hitting the tiles below and the soft, ambient hum of unseen electrical appliances were the only sounds that could be heard as thoughts whirled around in Joseph's mind. It felt and smelled like a hospital room. He'd visited hospitals countless times over his eighteen years of life, thanks doubly to a reckless lifestyle and paranoid parents. Meticulously sterile. Empty. White. Devoid of any character whatsoever. He couldn't turn his head to take in his surroundings, but he knew that was where he was. Why was he here? Who'd brought him here? What had he done to warrant capture, and under such extreme security? How had he even..

And then the memories of his capture flooded back into his mind, piece by piece. Kaleb and Juliette. They'd been preparing for a road trip. He'd just been putting his cigarette out when he looked at Juliette; the smile dropping from her face as if she'd seen a ghost creeping up behind her brother and cousin.. It may as well have been a ghost, because when the attackers hit, they hit suddenly and without warning, first seizing Kaleb and dragging him off, and then Juliette, and then Joseph himself. He could still hear Juliette's screams and grunts of protest, the sound of a blunt object being smashed into the side of Kaleb's car, his own ragged breathing as his chest cavity was kicked inwards.. Nothing from Kaleb, though. And Kaleb was the one who wouldn't survive having his ribcage beaten in, or his head bashed against a metal surface. He was the only one of the three that couldn't cheat at life. Joseph hadn't heard his voice when he'd been thrown into the padded space. He was the one to truly worry about.

Swift and silent as cats, the attackers had been. How had they not noticed such a large group of darkly-dressed men sneaking around the outskirts of Rosebury? Had they just been camping out in the woods until their targets arrived?

Joseph pulled violently at the wrist restraints again, reopening the wounds that had already started to heal during his brief period of thought. Maybe this was what his mother and father had been warning him about. Ever since his powers had manifested at the tender age of three, his parents had hounded him relentlessly to keep quiet about his healing gift. If he got a paper cut, they would bandage it up immediately, even though he didn't need it. If he bruised himself while in the playground, his father would usher him off to the side and cover it up.

Nobody can know, his father would tell him. It's our little secret, alright Joseph? No one can know. Remember this every time you get hurt.

At Beata, everyone used their gifts openly on campus -- And sometimes off campus, as well. He'd never had to hide at Beata. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before someone much less-accepting of supernaturally-powered teenagers than the headmaster came along and found out what sort of establishment he was running.

Perhaps Joseph, Juliette and Kaleb had just happened to be the three unlucky gifted students that had run right into the trap before anyone else'd had the pleasure of doing so first. How fitting that would be. Joseph and Juliette, the man and woman who could not die, however much they - or others -  wanted them to, captured for what he assumed was some sort of painful government project. If this was meant to be a friendly meeting, Joseph expected he would not have been forcefully subdued with syringes and strapped to a table.. And stripped down to his skin, as well.

Joseph had not been paying attention to how much blood he was losing as a result of his damaged wrists. Coupled with the traces of the sedative drugs he'd been injected with, the blood loss was beginning to take its toll on him. He head began to spin once more, jumbling up his thoughts again, and the ringing returned to his ears. His vision blurred once more as his grip on consciousness began to slip for the fifth time that day.

No, no no, goddamit..

Jules and Kaleb. He had to get to them. He didn't care about his own well-being, but he cared about their's, and he assumed that they were in the same position he was.

He began jerking his arms around again, causing them to go a little numb as he ravaged the soft flesh against the bindings, but his body was failing him. The strain of trying to heal his ravaged forearms and the drainage of blood were becoming too much for him to bear, and no matter how hard he willed to stay awake just a little longer, he couldn't. His own healing was sapping the energy out of him too fast to cope.

Goddamit..

Joseph's world faded into darkness.

---

And then, twenty minutes later, Joseph's eyes were met with a harsh, unforgiving brightness.

Pain shot through his head like a dart and he ground his teeth together. He tried turning his face away so he could cower from the lamp, but instead choked on the steel ring around his neck that he'd forgotten was there.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, the vague figure of two people came into view - A man and a woman. Joseph could hear the clatter of small metal objects on a tray, the clink of the door closing behind the newcomers, and the swish of their coarse white clothing, but he couldn't quite see their faces. Each wore a surgical mask, and the woman closest to him had thick-rimmed glasses on that obscured the view of her eyes from where Joseph was positioned.

"Well, self-harm seems to run in the family," the woman with the glasses murmured, referencing the blood that had pooled at Joseph's sides. She reached out and touched Joseph's jaw, angling his head in her direction to get a better look at the condition of his eyes.

What does she mean? Has she seen Juliette and Kaleb already? Joseph expected Juliette to try something as extreme as Joseph had, but Kaleb.. He hoped he wasn't impulsive enough to try and cut himself free.

He recoiled instinctively at her touch and jerked his head away from her, but only ended up near-throttling himself again. He hacked dryly.

"Please hold still." The woman's voice was not what Joseph had been expecting to come out of someone with such an intimidating demeanour. Despite her dark glasses and sharp eyes, she had a honeyed, thick voice, not unlike a caretaker of some sort. Her fingers were gentle and dainty as she prodded at various parts of his upper torso and limbs. His body tensed as she touched him. This felt like some sort of fever dream. First, he had set out to go on a harmless road trip with his cousins. Then, he was being attacked in the woods and impaled from every which angle with drugged syringes. Now he was lying, bare, on a table while a masked woman inspected his physicality, and there were some suspicious metal instruments just outside of his field of vision.

"J1 has recovered from the sedatives adequately," she observed, seeming to be half speaking to herself and half speaking to the man standing behind her. "This is already going more smoothly than J2's procedure. J1 is less aggressive, as well, so we've been told. Tight--"

"Where are my cousins?" Joseph interjected venomously, voice hoarse from wringing his neck on the metal so often. "Where are Kaleb and Juliette?"

His words seemed to travel through one of the woman's ears and our the other in immediate succession. She turned to the nurse. "Tighten the restraint cuffs, please. We're all set for the procedure."

"Where are you keeping them?" Joseph repeated, but again got no response aside from the slap of thin plastic against skin - Gloves. There was a pit forming in his stomach -- a feeling he'd not felt for a very long time. Fear. It wasn't fear for himself, though. Sure, he was certain that whatever these women had in store for his near future would not be pleasant. One would have to be blind and deaf not to see what was going on. Joseph's fear was for whatever these people had in store for or had already done to Jules and her brother. Joseph didn't care how much he personally suffered. As far as he was concerned, he deserved whatever it was that was coming to him. Juliette and Kaleb did not, in his eyes.  

The steel around Joseph's neck, wrists and legs tightened. whatever wiggle room his arms'd had not been eradicated. They were pressed down against the table, numbing his hands and not even allowing ample room for the blood to seep out of his wounds.

"Lower the light towards the subject's face," the woman said to the nurse. "I'll need optimal visibility. We'll start there. Oh, and let's gag this one. J2 nearly deafened me." The objects on the tray tinkled again, and a second later, a thick leather strap was forced between Joseph's teeth and tied to the back of the table he was on.

Before he could even utter another furious protest, the woman pulled his eyelid back and a scalpel sliced into the extrinsic muscles that held his eye in place. A hoarse scream, muffled slightly by the gag in his mouth, rose past his lips and cut into the relative silence. Even with a high pain tolerance, it was impossible to just squeeze his hand shut and suffer in silence. Blood welled up in his eye socket and poured over his face, filling his mouth with its rank metallic tang and slicking the hair on the right side of his head. The women was not phased. It was clear by the vacant, almost bored look on her face that she was jaded towards to suffering of others.

In less than a minute, the eye had come loose, and was carefully scooped out of it's socket and put into a small glass container off to the side, filled with a preservative fluid. The woman promptly moved on to his left eye, not even giving him a second to breathe before she plunged her scalpel in and gouged the second one out.

All thoughts of escape had been blurred and drowned out by pain. Some part of Joseph's mind was still screeching that he needed to fight his way out and prevent Juliette and Kaleb from suffering the same hardships that he was going through, but the overwhelming swell of pain was choking out that thought like a noose. He didn't even feel his left eye leave its socket. It stung too much already to tell if anything was being prodded at or cut.

The Winter couldn't see the nurse handing the woman the saw. He felt the blade pierce his skin and tear away at his flesh and muscles, felt the blood streaming, thick and hot, over the sides of his body. His throat ran raw as he screamed and wheezed and choked on acidic stomach fluids and clotted blood, but it was all happening in the darkness for him. He didn't see the satisfied twitch of the woman's face as she carved away at his abdomen and stripped more and more of him away and tossed the pieces into bowls. He didn't see his internal organs get hauled out of his body. All Joseph knew was pain and black nothingness, and the squelching of a hand probing his open wounds filled his ears and made him sick over and over again.

When it was all done, the nameless duo left him without a single parting word, coated in half-dried blood and acid and severed bits of his own flesh, blind and unable to formulate a single, complete sentence inside his head.

Unconsciousness was a welcome friend when it finally took him again.

Day Three


It felt strange to be on his feet again after two days spent lying on a metal table.. Or, at least, he was trying to be on his feet. The minute they'd undone the restraints around Joseph's limbs and neck and peeled him off of the table, he'd just collapsed onto the cold ground below in a sore heap, legs utterly useless and feeling very much like jelly. With two large men holding him up, another strapped a plain white hospital gown over his shoulders, concealing the layers of crusty, day-old blood caking his lower abdomen. He could see the dried run-off on his legs, though, stretching all the way down to his ankles.

Joseph couldn't really tell how long it had been since his capture, but he made a rough estimate that he'd been lying around for about two days. The second day had been spent being observed and prodded at. For hours, people would flit quietly in and out of the room, supposedly documenting the way and rate at which he healed from his injuries. After their observations had been completed, Joseph had been force fed some sort of bitter, pasty food - If it could even be described as food - which he assumed was to at least keep him conscious after a massive iron depletion the day before. It took a lot not to vomit the stuff back up as soon at it hit his mouth, which was still filled with the acrid taste of blood and stomach fluid residue, but somehow he'd managed to down a mouthful. For a long time, he'd still been unable to see. At one point, somebody came by to clear the blood out of his eye socket and scrape away all the excess stringy muscle material left behind following the removal procedure. He hadn't even found the strength or will to muster up a pained reaction. It was was nothing compared to what they'd already done to him. He'd felt utterly drained, and on the third day, no better.

He had, after all, literally been drained. The best way he could describe it was like when a child stepped on a Kool-aid pack and let all the juice out. The pack was left flimsy and useless.

A little bit of feeling returned to the Winter's legs by the time he and the guards exited the room he had been in, but for the most part, he was dragged alongside them in a steel collar down a white hallway. Thought almost entirely healed over, the skin on his belly was still raw and tender after all the slicing and mangling it had gone through under the bite of the saw-blade. His eyes had grown back by now, but they were bleary and he found that he really had to strain them to focus on anything at all. It wasn't like there was much too look at, though. The corridor he was in was blank. No windows. Nothing on the walls. Just polished metal plating.

Two days, and Joseph was already broken.. Physically, anyway. Escape still lingered in his mind. He hadn't forgotten about Kaleb and Jules. They were constantly buzzing around in his head. He hoped and prayed to a god - any god, any entity of mercy that was probably not even out there - that they had escaped, or at the very least, weren't being treated the same way as him. Joseph didn't truly care for about very many people, but the imagery of the few he did care about being diced up and abused in the same grotesque manner as he'd been made him sick to his stomach all over again. He hadn't heard them screaming yet, though. The walls were likely soundproof, but it was all he had to hold on to.

Just this once, could the world give him something good? If the ones he professed to love could just be safe, or if there could be an opportunity to stop all of this, he would consider showing some gratitude towards the hopeless, festering world he spit on so often.

Joseph's poor physical state, however, kept his thoughts of escape from getting anywhere. It was completely pointless to try anything now. He expected they'd just strap him to a table and gut him again if he did anything bold. All he could do was let them haul him down to who knows where, to do who knows what -- a limp dog on a steel leash. After a few minutes of staring blankly at the shoes of the nurse walking in front of him, the troupe slowed as hey approached an iron door. Joseph didn't see the keycard, but he heard the beep, and then they pushed through.

A bathroom.

Not what he'd been expecting. Two lone shower-heads stood out on the opposing sides of the room, and the wall across from him was fitted with metal loops. More cuffs, he imagined. He'd been right. The two guards at his side shoved him forward and hooked the loops to the collar on his neck in a way that he could not wiggle himself out of, and promptly removed his 'clothing'. He half-expected acid to hit his skin, but instead, he was met with icy cold water. His breath hitched when it hit him, and he found himself struggling to breathe at the extreme temperature. He wished he could just double over and hide from the water, but he couldn't crouch. It had already been cold enough in this facility to begin with, having worn naught but a paper-thin cloth in the two or so days he'd been held prisoner, but he almost yearned to be lying on the table again. He was at least grateful that it wasn't acid, but the cold of the table held been strapped to a few minutes ago paled in comparison to this. He hung his head and shut his eyes as tight as he could, clenching his jaw all the while to keep his teeth from chattering.

Hard, brittle brushes scraped across the full expanse of his skin as the water pummelled him from both angles, eating away at the blood and vomit and flecks of loose skin that layered his body. He didn't open his eyes once as they scrubbed away at him. He didn't need to see the gore he knew was there trailing off of him and getting caught in the drain. He'd likely faint again if he lost the little sustenance they'd provided him with. He didn't even care that he was undressed, and that strangers were putting their hands all over him. All he could do was focus on not vomiting all over himself.

Joseph didn't want to accept that Juliette and Kaleb were here. He wanted to think that they were safe at home, but he knew in his heart that they weren't.

All he could think was, Please just be stronger than me. Get yourselves out of here.

Day Seven


When the guards finally dragged Joseph out of his cell, he'd been totally blinded by the lights on the ceiling, unable to see anything or anyone that lay before him. He'd been locked inside the cell, chained at the neck and cuffed at the wrists, for four days straight. No noise. No heating. He couldn't even lie down, thanks to his restraints. All he had between his body and the cold metal of the walls was the same thin hospital gown he'd been given four days ago. The only human interaction he'd got - if one could even call it human interaction - was when a guard or nurse came in to feed him the thick nutritional paste he'd become all-too accustomed to. It was strange to think, considering the fast that the paste had nearly made him empty the contents of his stomach the first time the stuff had hit his tongue, but when he found himself crouched in total darkness with nothing to do and no one to talk to, the single time of day that somebody came into the room to feed him was the only thing he had to look forward to (for all intents and purposes). The stuff was vile. The people who fed him were vile. He felt more like an underfed mutt than a person, but anything - even disgusting paste from disgusting people - was better than the choking blackness of the iron cell he'd been confined to.

A nurse had come in once to take blood samples, as well, while a pair of guards watched him carefully from the doorway. The encounter only managed to sap whatever scraps of strength were left in Joseph's body away very quickly, and he was left to rot in the dark again afterwards, his wrists and neck trapped in an endless cycle of growing raw from the iron cuffs and healing.

Now, though, he was finally back in the light, but he quickly - and unsurprisingly - found that it was going to be no less unpleasant than being hunched over in the dark. As soon as he hit the floor outside of the cell, a sharp voice commanded, "Get up and walk."

Joseph's legs were numb beneath him from sitting in the same position for so long, so he continued to stay doubled over in place, shielding his eyes from the blistering light above him.

"Get up. And walk."

"Fuck you."

Without warning, a bold of electrical energy filled him via a taser, jabbed forcefully into the unprotected skin of his back. He jerked forward and gasped hoarsely in pain, scrabbling to his hands and knees. His entire body quivered violently at the sudden rush of energy - so much so that he ended up collapsing onto his face. He clawed at his chest as he lay there, shaking, as if trying to still his erratic heart.

"Are you deaf? Get up!" Another shock cut through Joseph's torso. He screamed again, pulling his arms close to his chest protectively. Curling up didn't really do anything good for him. The pain didn't lessen, but it just felt like the natural thing to do in such a situation - Curl up and wish it all went away. It was childish and pathetic, but there was nothing else he could do. Ever nerve in his body quivered and burned as a result of the electricity. He felt like he was on fire. The man with the taser's shouts fell flat on his ears.

The guard growled. "For fuck's sake. I don't know why they're making such a big deal about you if you can't stand on your own two goddamn feet." He snatched up the collar of Joseph's clothing and began pulling him him roughly down the hallway. He couldn't still his jumpy nerves, however hard he tried. His back stung as it slid across the ground, still prickling from the shock.

The only thing worse than the pain of the electricity was how sick Joseph was with himself. Here, he'd been given the opportune moment to make his escape attempt. He could had stolen the taser and taken the guards out, found Juliette and Kaleb, and then made a mad dash for the nearest stairwell.. Or at the very least, he could have struck back. Made at least somebody in this god-forsaken facility bleed. Instead, he'd just crumpled to the ground like a god damn toddler and done nothing. Juliette might have laughed at him, looking so sorry and limp. He certainly deserved to be laughed at. Joseph was a pathetic, shivering wreck of a man. He and his two cousins - probably even more innocent students, now that he actually thought about it - had been locked inside some sort of nightmarish funhouse, and he was doing shit-all to try and help anybody out of it.

Eventually, the guard's footsteps halted. Slowly, Joseph raised his head to see why.

He wish he hadn't looked.

The surgeon.

She was smiling down at him from where she stood, clipboard clutched in one hand, but her grin was transparent. There was nothing inviting about it. No warmth. He could see the cruelty lying just beneath her upturned lips, feigning a motherly appearance. Joseph saw only the cold satisfaction of being able to do another job. No. He couldn't do it again. He couldn't lie there helplessly as she disembowelled him, screaming as he watched his own blood pour out of him and imagining all the horrors that these people had put his loved ones through. With a sudden burst of furious energy, fuelled by rage and fear, Joseph shot upwards and lunged towards the surgeon, arms outstretched. If only he could tighten his fingers around her throat and watch the life drain out of her beady fucking eyes..

Joseph's assault was, of course, cut short as the guards leaped towards him and restrained his arms just before he could lay a hand on the woman. He tried to thrash his way out of their grasp, but yet another bout of electricity cut through him and he inevitably went limp again, convulsing as a result of the shock.

"Struggle will only result in harsh consequences, J1." The surgeon's honey-soft voice sounded out, glazing over the sound of his ragged breathing. "If you co-operate--"

"Go to hell!" Joseph snarled, digging into his scalp with his fingernails, trying to make the throbbing below stop. While being shocked he'd bitten the inside of his cheek, so as he screamed into the cold tiles beneath him, blood and saliva spattered the ground. "I never did anything to you! I don't even know you!"

The surgeon's expression didn't waver at all. The creases on her face deepened as her smile widened. "If you relax, J1, this will all be over sooner." She switched her attention over to the guards standing next to Joseph. "Please prepare Tank One." Two of them immediately departed from Joseph's side to do as she bid.

Tank One? The Winter's eyes slowly trailed upwards to see what the surgeon had been talking about. He hadn't noticed them when entering the room, but there were two large rectangular objects on the opposite side of the room to him, blanketed by thick plastic sheets. The guards approached the structure on the left and unbuckled the straps on the bottom, freeing up the sheet. With one tug, the sheet fell to the ground and revealed a large glass container, filled nearly to the top with with water. Somewhere in the room, somebody flicked a switch, and the tank was illuminated with fluorescent lights on the ground and the wall. One could now plainly see the thin layer of ice that had crept across the outside surface of the glass.

Joseph's clothing was promptly torn off of him and he was forced upright. One didn't have to think very hard to figure out what this water tank was for.

That was it. He wouldn't let them do this to him.

Scraping together all of his remaining strength, Joseph whirled around and rammed one of his fists into the face of the guard nearest to him. He heard the satisfying crunch of a nose breaking under the impact, but didn't stick around to relish it. The guard reeled off to the side, clutching his face, and Joseph made a mad dash for the door, not caring in the slightest about his lack of clothes. He needed to escape this hellhouse. He needed to find Jules and Kaleb, and take them home..  

Joseph was sleep-deprived and weak, but his anger and fear was enough to spur him onward. The guards pounded after him, their boots hammering against plated metal floor. His eyes furiously searched the hallway ahead of him as he ran, praying that there was no one up ahead to block his path. As it turned out, everyone else in the facility was busy with their own cruel experiments.

Joseph's heart was thrumming madly within his chest, and his muscles burned as he dashed wildly away from his captors. Was this it? Was he about to escape? As long as they couldn't reach him with their tasers, he would be --

And then a gunshot rang out in the metal corridor.

In an instant, Joseph's entire mind went into buzzing chaos, and a splitting pain enveloped his entire head. He came crashing to a halt on the ground before him. He couldn't hear anything but a high-pitched, screeching ambience. The lights above him multiplied twenty times, and his entire body had gone numb and unfeeling. He could see blurred red splatters splayed across the tiles before him, but couldn't make out a definite shape.  He couldn't even hear himself screaming, or the guards approaching him from behind to drag him back to the surgeon. All his senses had been overthrown by a blinding, terrifying agony.

Oh god. Oh god. There was something lodged in his brain.

He blacked out.

---

The next thing Joseph knew, the surgeon was standing over him, and his hands were chained tightly together - undoubtedly to prevent him from punching his way out of the room again. The surgeon was turned slightly away from him, though, and hadn't noticed that Joseph was awake. She was inspecting a small, round object pinched between a pair of tweezers. He had to squint to recognise on the object, as his head was still scrambled.

A bullet.

They'd shot him in the head.

The woman turned when Joseph shifted in his restraints, and the false smile returned to her face, thin and reddened with lipstick. "Let's hope don't have another unfortunate incident like that, right J1?" This time, she didn't bother to mask the malice in her voice. She was clearly upset that her little lab rat - her prey - had slipped out of her clutches.

Joseph couldn't even find the words to lash out at her with as she turned to take up her clipboard. He could barely make out the details of her face with his vision continually going in and out of focus, never mind scream. He didn't even remember the bullet entering his head. It was all a hazy, incomprehensible jumble of pain. For a second, he thought that perhaps the incident in the hallway was his ticket out of whatever the surgeon had planned to do with him. Maybe the damage done to his brain was a delay in her plans, and they had to leave him to heal before they could continue their cruel experiments on him today.

But of course, he was wrong. He'd been so foolish to believe that for even a split second.

"Prepare for the Tank 1 procedure again."

Strong hands gripped his shoulders and pulled Joseph up off of the table they'd set him on. A whole new wave of dizziness hit him as he was stood upright. His legs were useless deadweights beneath him, like he'd been paralysed.. In fact, he couldn't feel his arms, either. He figured they must have injected him with some sort of sedative again as an extra caution after his sudden outburst. As he approached the water tank, he could feel the cold radiating off of the glass surface, but it was near-impossible to resist any longer. The only thing he could move was his head.

"No.." He whipped his head to the side in protest, hoping to make it collide with somebody else's, but it met nothing but chilly air. He grew sickeningly dizzy the more he moved it, but he didn't care. No way in hell he was going into the tank. His voice grew shrill and distraught as he practicaly begged them for an answer. "No, no, no, no.. Leave me alone! What the fuck do you want with me?"

As he made feeble struggles against the men grasping his arms, the surgeon came up by his side. Her expression, illuminated by the rippling glow of the water, was that of a child, sitting at the dinner table and staring at their favourite meal whilst forced to wait for  their parents to come and seat themselves before being allowed to eat. Hungry. It was a face he would never forget. "I explained this already. Co-operation."

And before Joseph could even draw another breath, he was hoisted upwards and plunged into an icy hell. Instantly, it felt as if a thousand needles were impaling his skin at once. It was a sort of cold he'd never felt the likes of before. It penetrated his core and consumed his entire being, first eating away at the feeling in his fingers and toes and then slowly creeping up the remaining length of his limbs. Joseph screamed, but only ended up producing a cloud of bubbles and choking on the freezing liquid he was surrounded by. He tried to thrash around as best as he could, hoping for his head to break the surface, but it smashed against the fibreglass lid of the tank that he hadn't even seen the guards put in place. The panic set in quickly, consuming him as rapidly as the numbness of the water had taken him.  If the sedative's effects hadn't already been bad enough in sapping his energy away, he could no longer feel his limbs at all. He couldn't feel anything. He couldn't move, he couldn't think, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't escape.

He wished he could just die.

As his lungs filled with water and he accepted the beginnings of unconsciousness, the back end of the tank was suddenly unhinged and all of its contents were dumped out into a small groove in the floor behind it. Joseph hit the ground hard and immediately began spluttering, trying feverishly to force the water out of his system. Somehow, he succeeded. A fountain of water and blood gushed out of his mouth and nose and rushed over his face, and for the firs time in what felt like a millennia to him, air filled his lungs. He wasn't given much time to adjust to the temperature change before the guards dragged him up into a table again, still desperately gasping and partially choking on all of the water he'd inhaled. The surgeon began prodding at him in various places, inspecting his face with a light, and jotting information down onto her clipboard, but Joseph didn't care. He could only focus on the shivers that were wracking his body, and the numbness that had swallowed him whole. He'd long since abandoned his shame of being unclothed and poked at against his will. Nakedness paled greatly in comparison to his recent experiences.

The sound of the surgeon's pen clicking startled Joseph. "I'm all done here," she said to whoever was standing nearby. "Take the subject back to the cell. We will conduct the second temperature test tomorrow. I have tests to run elsewhere, with J2."

J2 was Juliette, of course. It had to be.

Whatever pitiful energy Joseph'd had before being submerged had been completely depleted by now, so as he was dragged back down the hallway, he slid across the floor like a limp fish, still shivering violently. The hospital gown did little - nothing, really - to keep him warm. In no time, the Winter was chained back up to the wall of the dark metal cell and was swallowed up by darkness once more.

Why had the surgeon postponed the second test? Was she showing him.. Mercy?

No, a voice said immediately in Joseph's mind. Not mercy. She's playing with her food. Making me wait. I'll be suffering tomorrow again for sure.

Mercy. What kind of fucking stupid thought was that? Joseph laughed to himself - a dry, raspy, mirthless chuckle - at what an enormously dumb piece of shit he was. The suffering didn't end. The experiments would just keep going. As Joseph slouched over against the wall, rolling his head in different directions once in a while to relieve the sores left by the neck cuff, the same thought repeated in his head time and time again, like a sickening mantra:

Let me die. Let me die. Let me die.

He'd always wanted to die. He'd always hated himself for the disgusting advantage he had over regular people, how he could dodge life-threatening illnesses and mortal wounds as if they were nothing while people around him died sometimes for the most mundane reasons. He filled his veins with psychedelic poison and guzzled down more alcohol than a sixty year-old, PTSD-riddled wartime veteran, hoping perhaps that someday he would drop dead, but he never did. He was cursed to walk the earth while everyone he loved died, one-by-one, all around him. Joseph had never wanted to die as much as he did now, though. The pain would never end. These people would slice him into a thousand pieces, fill him with fatal diseases and plunge him into arctic-cold waters forever and he wouldn't die. He was to be their perpetual pet.. But the worst part of it all, the one thing that made him want to cease living the most, was the knowledge that Juliette and Kaleb were going through the same sick experiments as him - Or worse.

The next day, as expected, was even worse than the last. Joseph was forced into a tank of boiling water, helpless to resist as the surgeon watched with cruel, unapologetic eyes as his skin peeled away and reddened and burned, and as the searing liquid found its way into his stomach and lungs and boiled him from the inside out. And when he was finally let out, he was strapped down for the umpteenth time and screamed and screamed as his captors sliced away at him and dug into every last inch of his skin until he wasn't even recognisable anymore. He wasn't Joseph Tseung, he was their personal slab of meat with a thousand disposable parts.

When they threw him into the dark hole again, the same grim prayer looped endlessly in his mind.

Let me die. Let me die. Let me die.

Day Fourteen


The day after being submerged in the boiling liquid, Joseph was transferred from his dark box of a cell to an entirely new cell. After being thrown in and locked inside, he'd slowly picked himself up of of the ground and leaned against the smooth metal door to stare at the object sitting against the opposite wall to him.

A bed.

As Joseph lay splayed out on the stiff mattress now, he remembered how he'd gazed blankly up at the bed from his place on the ground, mouth hanging slightly ajar, as if it had been some sort of foreign contraption that he'd never seen before. It was a daze - having an actual room - albeit a crude one. The walls were fashioned out of the same plain metal plating as the floor, and in the opposite corner to the bed sat a spotless porcelain toilet and a tiny sink. Joseph found little comfort in his new surroundings, though. After being chained to a wall for who knows how long, not unlike a mad hound, it was almost too good to be true. Even as he lay on the bed - sleeplessly, waiting for the sound of the sliding door and for the cruel hands of an abysmal fate to quite literally drag him away again - he barely shifted or breathed too hard, as if he were being balanced precariously a thousand feet up and the slightest movement would send him tumbling down into a bottomless pit. The rare time he got up to use the 'bathroom', he often found himself staring at the tiny puddle in the toilet, or the stream of water running out of the tap in the sink, lightly considering choking on it. He'd never drowned himself before, so he wasn't quite certain if it would kill him, but he suspected it wouldn't. Nothing ever did. The world wasn't nearly kind enough to let him out of it's suffocating grasp, so he didn't even bother trying.

He still liked to entertain the idea that at least Juliette had escaped. She was smart. She was quick. She was strong. She was a trooper - facing similar life issues to Joseph's, like the knowledge that she would, ultimately, outlive everybody around her - and yet she could at least put on a smile every so often and kick her way through her problems, if need be. She loved more passionately and fought harder than Joseph ever could, and as much as he wanted to hope that she was free of this torturous hellhole, there was a painful prickle of doubt ever-present in his heart.

No.. No. She would get out. He couldn't stop believing in that. He couldn't let the doubt that was radiating out of his own pathetic escape attempt swamp him. It was all he had to hold onto now. Jules could get out. These sadistic fucks could beat the fight out of Joseph, but not Jules. She would get out, and she wouldn't be broken. She wasn't Joseph -  a useless, mopey, waste of air that did nothing but sulk and moan childishly about how much he hated himself, and just gave up.

Watching the clock above the doorway was doing nothing for him except reminding him how long he'd been lying motionlessly, watching the second hand make it's rounds. It had been exactly two and a half hours it had been since someone had last entered the room to take a couple of tissue samples. He didn't expect them to come back any time soon, so Joseph turned away from the entryway to stare at the wall to his left, and he realised that in the blur of the horrors he'd been put through over the course of his absence from the outside world, he hadn't stopped to think about those he hadn't seen in what felt like a lifetime.

His poor, sweet mother. He didn't even want to think about how sickeningly worried she would be about her son - her only boy. She'd often come off as overprotective to Joseph as he'd grown up - quite annoyingly so, at times. If he bumped his head or scraped his knee, she would rush to his side and give him the comfort he often didn't need, but as he reflected back on how irritated he'd been at her over protectiveness, he felt like beating himself over the head for being such an ungrateful little brat.

And his father, who always tried to pull him out of his shell for his own good. What an ass he'd been to him. Joseph had often rejected his suggestions for outings, never sat down with him to watch sports, or Korean drama shows.. No matter how much he hated the television programmes his father was into, or how unwilling he'd been in the past to go outside and play catch with him, he wanted nothing more than to be doing just that right now. Thinking of his father made Joseph realise how young he really was. Often times when deep into the cup, it never crossed his mind that he wasn't even close to being of the legal drinking age yet.. Hell, at fifteen he'd already been waist-deep in alcoholism as opposed to playing video games and going to baseball games with his father, like every other kid in his neighbourhood did.

Joseph got up out of his bed and began pacing the room, anger beginning up to bubble up inside of him. He was such a cunt. Such a fucking cunt. Instead of spending time with the people who cared about him more than anything in the world, he'd always been off guzzling vodka or sticking himself full of narcotics.

"Goddammit!" he spat, suddenly whirling around to ram his fist into the iron plating of the wall. He raised his hand to inspect the damage. The skin on his knuckles had been split open under the force of the impact, and blood was starting to run down the sides of his hands and through the grooves in between his fingers. As he stared, though, the tissue slowly began to knit itself back together again, bringing on a new wave of rage in Joseph's gut. He reeled back and punched the wall repeatedly, not wanting to let himself heal.

Once he heard the satisfying crunch of his knuckles breaking, he stopped, and pressed his forehead against the cold metal, eyes blurred with salty tears of pain and frustration.

And Kyou. Oh, Kyou.. How could he have forgotten about her? How could he have forgotten about his only real friend at Beata? And he hadn't even made the first step in getting to know her, it'd been her. She'd went through the trouble of showing him around the school, and inviting him out to a party, and texting him during the day to ask him how he was.. She put up with his antisocial bullshit - really, she didn't even seem to mind. She enjoyed spending time with him, and putting out an effort to make it so he enjoyed spending time with her. He was never bored when he was with Kyou. She could draw a laugh out of him that many of his friends back home could not. She had spent hours on the daunting task of chiselling through his emotional barrier, but here, now, felt like he'd never done anything for her - to repay her for wasting to much time on him.. Stubborn, nostalgic, immature, ungrateful Joseph.

He didn't deserve such a loving family. He didn't deserve a girl like Kyou. He didn't deserve a healing gift. He should have died in the fire with his best friend all those years back.

"Goddammit.." he repeated, only whispering this time. Joseph slowly lowered himself until he was crouched down on the floor, head still lying against the wall. The tears stung as they hit his broken, bloodied hand, but he didn't care.

Robert was sitting at his desk in his dorm room, and sorting through papers for once. He was actually doing his job and not being lazy for once. Well he was using his gift to sort through the papers instead of his hands, but that was some progress right? Ever since Jules went on her vacation or whatever it was he had all the autumn prefect work dumped on him, and he simply couldn't neglect it any longer. Staff had already gotten on his case a few times for ignoring his work and choosing to be lazy. The autumn boy let out a sigh. He pushed his chair back away from his desk, and leaned back letting himself relax for a moment, and giving his mind a break from moving so many papers. The pen he held in his hand was flicked about to keep his mind moving so he wouldn't fall asleep at this important time. After all he only had a few hours left before he had to turn these things in to Staff.

The pen rotated about his fingers as his mind went to wondering on different thing. He thought of his partner Jules and how much she was probably having on her trip, avoiding work of the prefect, and not having to deal with any of the school's drama. He let out a small sigh. He pushed his thoughts away from his friend and went back to something else, which ended up with him testing is nearly perfect memory. He was one of those special cases. One of the ones with photographic memory, able to remember basically anything. Names, birthdays, little facts about some stupid war that didn't even matter. He was basically a storage of information but too lazy to use it most of the time. He was graced with something he didn't really need. Wasn't there someone else out there that would need it more? Ah well.. He was stuck with it.. It wasn't going to change now..

A small little 'ding' pulled him out of his thoughts. His green eye scanned around for a moment before landing on his phone which somehow ended up on the floor. Using his gift he pulled it up to the desk, and set it down. Pressing a button to get the lock screen to show up, his green eye lazily looked at the dull screen, expecting some thing stupid to be on it about a notification about some thing he had on his phone but never used, instead it was a message from some unknown number. It confused him at first then he realized it was probably someone wanting to mess with him. Unlocking his phone, the message appeared on the screen. ‘Send help mountains its torture’ Well that certainly wasn't strange at all.

Rob leaned back in his chair once again. It was clearly a prank. If it was actually someone he knew in distress wouldn't they have signed a name? Or try to get as many details as they could in there? Because what this person had sent was super vague. What mountains? What was torture? Rob let out a grunt. How did this person get his number out of the thousands of numbers there were though? That was the one thing that bothered him slightly. Was it someone he knew trying to pull a prank on him? Honestly he was too tired to deal with this at the moment, and he still had to get through a good chunk of paper work. Rob reached for the phone, and lifted it to him for a moment. His green eye scanned over the message again, but nothing new came to him. It was most likely a joke. Placing his phone off to the side, his single returned to the papers in front of him. The pen back in his hand ready to take care of whatever the school needed him to do with this mess. He really didn't like them getting on his case about this stuff. Maybe he would do better next time.... maybe...

Day Forty

Forty days.

He'd been here for forty days.

One of the guards, upon entering Joseph's cell to drag him off on another freakish experiment the other night, had accidentally slipped up to his co-worker. It'd been forty days since Joseph had seen grass, and felt the wind on his face, and watched the sun set. It's been forty days since he'd felt the buzz of liquor on his lips or the burn of heroin creeping up his am and turning his mind inside out.  It'd been forty days since he'd seen his family. He couldn't think about them enough.. his dearest worrywart mother, who's suffocating hugs Joseph wanted more than anything, and his poor father, who tried so hard to integrate his son into the world, and Juliette and Kaleb.. Thoughts of what they'd gone through plagued his mind every day and rocked him to sleep at night - that was, whenever he could sleep. Most of the time, his morbid, unwanted fantasies kept him awake, waiting for the inevitable sound of the door sliding open somewhere behind him. When he did sleep, the nightmares came..

..Though now that Joseph thought about it, nightmares were preferable to being conscious.

At least when he dreamt, he didn't have to think about his current predicament -  This sick place, the pain he felt for his cousins, or the ever-present desire to simply stop existing. When he dreamt, he wasn't being peeled apart and gutted, or boiled, or frozen, or stuck full of needles like a fucking porcupine. When he dreamt, he was in another world filled with indescribable terrors, but in that other world, he couldn't actually feel the pain. When he was awake, he could.

It would just be so much easier to be dead. He wouldn't have to feel anything, or think. He'd just be gone.

Earlier in his days of confinement, in the box cell, Joseph had often wondered about what the academy thought of his disappearance. Had they been concerned about how long Juliette and him had been gone, or did they just think they were with Kaleb? Had they phoned his parents, asking them of his whereabouts? Were they looking for their missing students? How many missed assignments had collected in front of Joseph's locked door? How many unread text messages were on Joseph's phone by now, sitting on his desk and collecting dust? Were they actually looking for Joseph?

Did that actually care that he was gone?

And like that, a humourless laugh cut through the silence of Joseph's cell, and a smile - ghastly, with no traces of the joy a smile usually held - appeared on his face. He ran his fingers through his unwashed black locks as the dry chuckles escaped him, which had grown unruly and long since he'd been captured. Who the hell would care if Joseph was gone? It wasn't like he'd made any sort of impact on the Beata community. He was a waste of space and resources who did virtually nothing but lie in his dorm and ward his roommates off with the musk of narcotics. He wasn't a peach to have in class, either. He never went out of his way to talk to anyone. He never signed up for activities. He didn't work to better the world, like the law students, or the politically-inclined students, or the artists. The teachers had no opinions on him. No one gave a shit that he was there, and he didn't give a shit that they were there, so why should anyone care about him and how he was doing?

God, what am I, some sort of optimist? He laughed again, but this time, he didn't even have the energy to grin at himself. Just a hollow 'huff' and a quiver of his jagged shoulders.

No, of course they didn't give a rat's ass about him.. Everyone apart from Kyou. His parents, as well. Unfortunately, the only people that Joseph knew would care about his whereabouts were the people he didn't want coming to look for him. He didn't want the lunatics that had him locked up to get their greasy little paws on them. The only thing worse than the physical torture was the knowledge of others suffering the same fate. This was all, of course, only even possible if they could figure out where in the goddamn world Joseph was, and he was sure that they wouldn't. He didn't imagine the surgeon wanted to even consider the thought of her precious little playthings being pulled out of her grasp. This laboratory - or whatever it was - could be in the middle of the ocean, for all Joseph knew. He hadn't seen even the tiniest glimpse of the outside world since being scooped up in the forest next to Rosebury.

For the umpteenth time in the near-two months of his captivity, a horrible wave of claustrophobia hit Joseph at the thought of his long he'd been cooped up inside. He spent most of his time indoors back home, but at least there, he'd had a choice to go outside or stay inside. He couldn't do that now. He was a pet, and pets didn't get to choose when they wanted to leave the kennel. The outside world didn't even exist anymore, as far as Joseph was concerned. No, home, no Beata Academy - It was gone. Now, there was only tiny metal cells, and endless blank hallways, and silence, and choking darkness, and freezing cold showers, and scalpels, and tubes, and the surgeon, and the surgeon, and the surgeon, and the surgeon.

Joseph shut his eyes and tried to picture what the countryside on the outskirts of Rosebury was like, hoping to calm the erratic hammering of his heart against his sternum.

---

By the time the soft scratch of metal-on-metal sounded from the doorway, Joseph's claustrophobia had subsided and melted back into a grey, flat feeling of hopelessness that he'd become all too accustomed to. He was pulled suddenly from his spot on the bed and his head collided painfully with the concrete floor below. It hurt, and he could feel it swelling up immediately, but all the Winter could muster was a low groan as the guards dragged him out into the hallway like a carcass. He wasn't going to get any sympathy from these people for complaining about a stupid little gash on his forehead, so there was no point to curse them.. After all, they had already shot him in the head.

Two weeks ago, perhaps, if they'd dragged Joseph so freely around, he would have at least tried to get away. He would twisted his wrist out of their grip, stolen a taser gun and taken out a guard or three, and make a mad dash for the stairwell. He would have searched for his loved ones. He would have done something. Now, he couldn't even stand up straight for more than ten seconds. He couldn't make a second escape attempt even if he had the willpower - which he was fresh out of - to do so. His body expelled diseases and parasites, healed lacerations, soothed burns, eased bruises, and terminated rashes, but it could not cure malnutrition.

After what seemed like an eternity to Joseph of sliding across the ground and mindlessly watching the marching motions of the guards' boots in front of him, the movement came to a halt. For a moment, there was silence, and then the mechanic sound of an automatic door was heard.

An elevator. A change in the usual routine.

This was certainly new, but obviously, this wasn't a good change of routine for Joseph. Positivity had become an entirely foreign concept to him. His optimism about life had already been in complete and utter shambles before coming here. It was one of the many delightful things about depression. He hadn't ever thought it could get any worse than it had been, but it had. There was nothing left now. Joseph couldn't even begin to imagine what manners of horror waited for him once they reached their destination.

The elevator ride was tense. Joseph wouldn't look up at the guards, but he could feel their eyes boring into him as he stared at the metal surface standing in front of him. He didn't need to see their faces to know the way they felt about him. He was subhuman scum with no emotions. A filthy little lab-rat. Joseph was nothing more than an object to be monitored and delivered periodically to the surgeon to dissect. The disdain and disgust regarding him was thick in the air like a soupy fog. Briefly, he wondered how a person could get wound up in a job like this - keeping people in line so they could be tortured for weeks upon weeks. They'd all been children once, probably with dreams about having a normal job, and doing great things in the world - being someone to be admired. Almost every child thought such things. How had these men ended up here, being payed to be cruel underneath people who were even more cruel? How could they stand to see someone, another human who'd had dreams and aspirations just like they had in their childhood, who had feelings, in such a broken and deflated state?

Were they androids, with cold iron expressions beneath their tinted visors and helmets? Had they been mentally conditioned not to care about others' well-being anymore - Brainwashed against their will to work for a psychopath? Were they just drowning in so much cash that they no longer felt any guilt or shame for doing this to somebody? The world was a fucked up, disgusting cesspool full of fucked up, disgusting people. Joseph knew it better than anyone. He'd had both the pleasure and displeasure of meeting a very wide variety of people, both good and bad.

No one he'd met in his eighteen years spent on this planet before had come close to the level of cold indifference towards human life as everyone in this facility, though.

Before Joseph's mind could wander any further, the elevator came to a shuddering halt, and he was ushered impatiently out of the opening door. The hallway stretching out before him looked like a carbon copy of the one he was used to - steel plating, piercing white lights, no colour, no windows, and the promise of unimaginable suffering behind every door that lined the walls.

After another two minutes of half-stumbling, half being dragged, Joseph was pushed towards a doorway that slid ajar as he neared it.

The sight he saw was a strange one - And considering everything he'd been through, that was saying a lot.

The room would have been completely dark if not for the television fastened to one wall. It was massive, stretching across nearly the entire length of the wall, but displayed nothing on the screen. Just white light. What was more strange than the blank television was the chair placed in front of it. There was some sort of unidentifiable metalwork attached to the backboard than almost resembled a skeletal helmet, and there were cuffs bolted to the arm rests. It looked like something straight out of Nazi Germany, or from some kind of old-timey horror film.

Whatever it was, it was not good.

And of course, on one side of the chair with a tight-lipped, red grin and a clipboard under one arm was the surgeon.

"Subject J1." The twisted endearment in her voice was probably the worst part of this woman - this creature. The eerie satisfaction that sparkled in her eyes when Joseph was suffering right in front of her was terrifying, her stature was terrifying, her smile was terrifying, her total control was terrifying.. But it was her voice that truly send cold bolts up Joseph's spine. He heard it as he nodded off to sleep. He heard it whenever it was quiet. It stuck with him, because even though she knew the things she did caused him immense pain and increased his unwillingness to live tenfold, she spoke to him as if nothing was amiss. Like a mother to her son. "As is standard protocol, I implore you to stay calm during the following procedures. Failing to comply will result in consequences and extra measures to ensure that the work is completed."

At once, the guards were shoving Joseph forward again, this time in the bizarre chair's direction. As he neared it, he could feel the panic welling up in his gut again. He tried to impede his progression towards the chair by firmly planting his feet into the ground and grappling furiously at the guards' hands at his shoulders, but like always, a swift kick in the gut stomped his resistance out very swiftly. Joseph started to double over, but before he even could, he was forced down into the chair. As he wretched, coughed, and tried his best not to vomit from the collision of boot-to-belly, the metal restraints he'd spotted earlier were closed firmly around his forearms. Similarly, clamps on the legs of the chair were fastened around Joseph's ankles. His head was then pushed back against the backboard of the seat, and a thick strap tightened around his neck. It was so tight, in fact, that trying to look down at his wrist restrictions nearly choked him, so he was forced to look forward and only forward - at the screen on the wall.

The light shining directly into his face was obnoxiously bright enough to make close his eyes and try his best to block it out, but unfortunately, the surgeon had already considered this problem before Joseph had come in. Stepping in front of Joseph, she reached back behind the Winter's head and took hold of one of the metal contraptions attached to the seat. She pinched his right eyelid with the other, lifted it a little, and then attached a tiny, clamp-like specula to the thin flap of skin, effectively keeping it open against Joseph's will. The prefect spat and tried to curse at her, but he barely even manage to choke a single word out with the pressure of the strap on his neck near-strangling him. The process was repeated with the other eyelid, and once it was complete, the surgeon backed away, observing her work.

"The tray, please," she commanded to the nearest guard, not taking her eyes off of Joseph. Without hesitation, a wheeled table was delivered to the surgeon's side. Joseph couldn't see the tray, or whatever was on it. He was physically unable to look off to the side at this point, but the tinkling noise was not promising. A heartbeat later, Joseph could just barely catch the glint of a long, slender, shiny object. He strained his eyes to the right, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make out what it was.

Seconds later, however, the cold sting biting into his left arm told him exactly what it was.

"Please relax and pay attention to the screen," the surgeon instructed, setting the needle down on the tray and leaving Joseph's line of sight entirely. Well, it was hard not to pay attention when one's eyes were being forced open with goddamn clips. "The less resistance, the more swiftly the process will end." He could hear the click of her heels as she retreated to the back of the room.

Colour flickered on the screen, suddenly, and then something started playing. An old Chinese warfare film was what it appeared to be. There was a visual of a man - a fierce warrior - in chains, fighting to tear his hands out of their bonds. Others rushed towards him and tried frantically to subdue him, but he swiftly rammed his foot into the gut of one and headbutted another. No matter how hard the captors tried, the chained man would not go down. Just as the last antagonist went down, and the hero broke out of his bonds, the film transitioned to something entirely different - A modern-day prison break. It depicted hundreds of men in orange jumpsuits fleeing out of a gaping, smoking hole in the side of the facility they'd been contained in, crying for freedom and wildly fending off panicked guardsmen. The sounds of struggle and chaos on the screen echoed around the room, filling Joseph's ears like a dissonant song. Eventually, this scene ended and another different film overtook the television screen.

And this happened yet again, about two minuted into the newest scene. Joseph soon recognized that this was going to be a pattern. Why were they showing him these things? Why were his eyes clamped open? What had that needle done to him? What the hell was going on? Whatever this procedure was, it was vastly different than anything Joseph had experienced thus far.

Violent imagery was a common trait that every video clip being shown shared. This didn't make any sense. What the fuck was the surgeon trying to do, frighten him..? Observe if and when he flinched..? It wasn't like he even could flinch. His limbs had been rendered immobile, and he couldn't shut his eyes - which were starting to burn from being open so long - to shy away.

As scene after scene passed by, however, Joseph could feel a headache coming on. While the videos progressed, the headache worsened. Eventually,  it became so bad that a wave of nausea rose inside of him. Joseph uttered a weak groan. He wished, more than anything, that he could just shut his eyes and lie down. He'd never been seasick, but this must have been what it felt like. As the fifteenth clip ended, his stomach began to turn, and the nausea rippled throughout his entire body.

This, he figured, was the result of the needle.. But he still failed to see what the purpose of the television was. He'd suffered through a variety of needles before under the surgeon's hand, which was clearly to test how his body reacted to diseases and various other substances that would typically kill a normal person, but this.. He hadn't the slightest clue what the purpose of this was.

Twenty minutes later, the clips were still rolling. Joseph was beginning to sweat. The headache had become a splitting, unbearable throbbing sensation, and every time the scenes turned he felt bile rise in his throat as a result of the nausea.

And then an hour had passed by.

Joseph vomited.

And then two hours had passed by.

He'd vomited three times. By now, it felt as if someone had taken a drill directly to both of his temples and was driving a right hole into his brain. Vomit, which tasted partially like the nutritional paste he ate and partially just like bitter stomach acid, ran down his mouth in hot streams and covered his lap. It was steadily dripping onto the floor with a disgusting plip-plip sound effect. Pained moans drifted past his lips every time he wretched up more bile.

The clips kept rolling, each more intense than the last. People were firing guns, being stabbed to death, escaping brutal confinement, screeching, running, punching, kicking, battering each other.. They never stopped.

The three hour mark came and went.

There was nothing solid left in Joseph's stomach at this point. It was all acid now. His throat felt as if it were on fire. It continuously tried to heal itself, but with each bout of acid shooting out of his mouth, it became more and more raw. It hurt to scream, so all he could muster was breathy choking noises. His eyes were drier than the goddamn desert - stinging horribly every time Joseph tried to look in any direction except forward. His brain was pounding so violently inside his skull that his vision occasionally blurred and went out of focus. Every nerve in his body was quaking relentlessly as the next of several consecutive panic attacks wracked him. His lungs heaved as he hyperventilated in the midst of his crippling anxiety. All the while, violence played out endlessly in front of him, and the screams of the nameless people on screen struck him like a sledgehammer.

This was hell. This was true hell.

In his time here, Joseph had been numbed, frozen, boiled, drugged, gutted, impaled, filled with dangerous chemicals, beaten up, shot, strangled and drowned, but nothing he'd been through so far compared to this. Not in the slightest. This was oblivion. Death was teasing him like it never had before, but would never finish the job. He would never take it, hand in hand, despite how he oh-so desired it more than anything in the world, and leave his miserable existence behind him. He could be stuck here for a lifetime, strapped helplessly to this chair vomiting all over himself in a dizzying mayhem until the seasons changed a thousand times, and everyone he'd ever known was dead and under ground. He'd keep going, keep suffering, all thanks to the fucking regenerative curse that had been placed on him eighteen years ago.

"God, just please, somebody end it!" he screamed hoarsely to anyone who was listening, hot tears trickling down his face like a stream. Never before had he begged to desperately for something. Never before had he wanted something this much. In all his years of bitterly hating himself, and drinking his self deprecative thoughts away, and jabbing his veins full of every drug that had ever been available to see if one day, one of them would make his heart stop - and in all forty days of enduring inhumane experiments in this facility, he could safely say he had never wanted to die more than now. "End it, end it, end it, end it, goddamn it! Let me fucking die, goddamn it!" Despite the splitting agony beneath his skull and his neck restraint, he tried his best to bash his head against the metal back of the chair in protest against his pain. Somehow, he tore one of the scapula off of an eyelid in his thrashing, but he paid no mind to the blood that spurted out as a result. Spittle flew out of the Winter's mouth as he pleaded to his captors. "Anybody, please, please, please, please, please.."

Out of desperation, Joseph started to sob. They were loud, childish, ugly sobs that shook his entire body.

This wasn't going to end.

No one would listen.

But against everything he thought, for the first time in Joseph's life, somebody was listening to his prayers. Suddenly, the iron clamps around his wrists and ankles were opened. The remaining scapula was removed from second eyelid. The strap around his neck loosened. Immediately, Joseph fell forward, strength depleted to the point where he could not even hold himself up. The sounds of violence stopped. The screen went blank again. Joseph's head connected with the concrete floor, and he blacked out.

There was just nothing now.

Joseph didn't care how many days had passed by anymore. He didn't care about anything. All he'd been doing for however many days it'd been since the theatre room, apart from the times he was pulled from his spot, lie curled up silently in the corner of his cell, staring thoughtlessly at doorway. He wasn't thinking about Juliette, or Kaleb, or his mother and father, or Kyou, or anyone that he hadn't seen in what felt like a lifetime. He didn't wonder if anyone was worried. He didn't think about being outside of this place. It wasn't worth it to dwell on people that he would never see again, or the world he would never walk through again. This cell was home now. The only faces he'd ever see now were the people who owned him.

He certainly didn't think about getting away.

It wasn't just because it was physically impossible, though. Even if all the guards were all dead, and the surgeon was dead, and the doors were all open to roam freely through, he wouldn't be able to do it. Any time escape crossed him mind, a sickness came over him - Overwhelming nausea, panic, hyperventilation, confusion, terror, and headaches. It was all totally uncontrollable, like a hurricane. He'd faced two of these attacks since being returned to his cell after.. Whatever it was that the surgeon had put him through.

The first instance of this had occurred during an operation. The sight of blood and torn flesh had brought it on. At the time, it hadn't seemed strange. He'd experienced symptoms like this during operations before.

The second attack had just been while he'd sat on his bed, and the memory of jumping at the surgeon and punching the guard flashed through his mind. Normally, the thought would have given him some semblance of amusement. It'd been his first - and only - strike against his captors, and thinking about that rebellious act, albeit small and a little bit pathetic, typically lifted his spirits a smidgen in his sea of self-hate. Now, though, the thought sickened him against his will.

It was then that it had become clear what the purpose of the needle and the violent films he'd been shown had been.

Joseph had undergone some sort of aversion therapy. It was like a page straight out of A Clockwork Orange, down to a tee with the scapula holding his eyes open. He'd been forced to watch violent imagery and graphic escape sequences while under the influence of some sort of nauseating drug. This had caused his brain to associate 'freedom' and 'physical brutality' with piercing headaches, sickness, and panic. The surgeon had taken everything from Joseph. First, his family. Then, his health. Now, his freedom to think. He wasn't Joseph Tseung the Winter prefect, son of Chang-ho and Annette Tseung and cousin of Juliette and Kaleb Jung anymore, he was Subject J1, a product of the surgeon's cruel ministrations, who could - and probably would - fuel this facility's research for the next fifty years.

Kaleb and Juliette were probably dead, and even if they weren't, they'd never escape. There was no point in pushing against the surgeon and her helmeted cronies. Joseph had just accepted that this was going to be his life from now on - Laying in a corner, spattered with his own vomit, and being occasionally tugged around the hallways to different rooms to sit through varying degrees of agony. He was now exactly what the guards had always thought of him - an emotionally void object. His feelings, all aside from terror, had been drained out of him like water out of a basin.

The sudden sound of the door startled Joseph enough to make him flinch, and hide his face away in his hands. He could feel the all-to familiar sensation of terror swelling inside of him. For a while, Joseph had stopped caring when they removed him from his cell for something, but after the hours he'd spent in the room with the television, the possibility of plunging back into that hell filled him with dread. It'd been the worst they'd ever done to him, and he couldn't do it again. He couldn't.

But it wasn't the apathetic growl of a guard that came from the doorway.

It was a familiar voice.

Very slowly, Joseph's head rose out from his cupped palms and turned towards the person at the door. His heart stopped.

She was a mess. Blood, dirt and vomit decorated her crude attire and skin like confetti. Very much like Joseph, her face was gaunt and rather pale - clear signs that she'd been fed enough to live, but not enough to be considered 'healthy' by any standards. Her hair was in dark, ratty tangles around her face, virtually untouched for a very long time, and her chest was heaving steadily, very telling of all the hardships she'd had to face just to get to this room. Her eyes alone could tell a hundred stories of pain.

All at once, a riptide of emotions came flooding back into Joseph as he beheld her.

He could feel himself beginning to shake. It was surreal. He almost didn't believe that she was actually standing there, right in front of him. Just a moment ago, he'd given up the idea of ever seeing that face again. He'd thought her dead. Gone forever. Just a memory. Now she was here, speaking his name again. His voice was weak, and hoarse, and shuddering with disbelief, and his throat tightened as he managed to choke out a single word. "Jules?"