The wiry young man succeeded in making only a muffled noise as he struggled against the bulky aggressor pinning his slim frame to the twin bed. He had been awoken with a jolt to calloused, large hands around his delicate throat, and had immediately tried to make some kind of sound. For his troubles, rough fingers covered his mouth, a voice sore from disuse trying frantically to reach out with its scratchy sound to no effect. The cold sweat had started not seconds later, and the room began to stink of adrenaline and fear. An old mug of Earl Grey was knocked from the nightstand as he struggled, and the over steeped tea fell to the nearly stainless cream rug. The brunette's hastily made bed did not even creak beneath him as he attempted to fight back and free himself. There was only so much he could do at 140 pounds, and it wasn't enough to faze his attacker. There was a strange hot pinch of pain at the base of his neck and then cold, numb cold as the substance that was being injected into his system spread rapidly with the frantic beating of his strung-out heart. The young man was intelligent, almost frightfully so, and his brain in this moment of panic managed to deduce his current state- that of being kidnapped. His eyes frantically flit around, scanning his familiar gray walls and Spartan surroundings for something he could use, and finally settling on the face of his attacker. His vision was awful, but he was nearsighted and saw the monster of a man pushing him down, one hand on his bony shoulder. The weight became painful, and the bone of his upper arm gave way with a sickening gunshot crack. The young man tried to move, or scream, but he was in the midst of the abduction and could do nothing about it as the tranquilizer spread its icy tendrils across his back and down his chest, his thought slowing and becoming more and more muddled as he inched closer to unconsciousness. He was aware of the twitching of his own fingers and his abductor's too-hot breath, reeking of drugs, in his face as he fought to stay awake. The pain from his shoulder and ice spreading through his body became far too much for the young man and black crept in from the corners of his vision before hallucinations could.
The drug-fuelled dreams of the thin brunet were a strange kind of solace from what were to face him should he awake. He dreamt of his family, of things that were normal, before. These dreams were too false for pride. Then the real bled in, and then the monsters came, horrible disfigured things with too many eyes and not enough skin to hold in their organs, and screamed relentless torturous screams for far too long. When he lacked luck, these monsters would tear at his skin and his bones, snapping them all with the deathly cracking of a machine gun aimed blindly into a crowd. This ugly noise would echo through the dead silence left behind in the wake of the yells like the young man had walked into a monastery and screamed a vow of silence. It was senseless and terrifying to all within, though somehow belonged somewhere amidst all the confusion and havoc. Too much time was spent listening to these guttural, injured sounds and the unearthly echoing silence that followed, and the man who had been taken would not wake up exactly the same.
Instead shaky, gasping, twitching like an addict begging for a hit, on a floor stained with flaky dried liquid and congealing lifeblood. It stank, the smell hanging heavily in the air like silence after bad news. The smell was that of rotting meat, vomit, feces, and other various bodily fluids, as if they had all been left to mold then dry in the baking sun for a while. The shaking, starving man was choking on his own dried blood. He retched before his stomach realized that there was nothing left to purge. The brown hair on his head, which had once been neatly kept, was long and matted, and his normally clean-shaven pale face was rough with weeks' worth of beard growth. He looked up, his vision much less than perfect but able to discern the gray walls which for a second reminded him of home, the sparse one bedroom flat with plain walls, a plain exterior, and plain interior. There was nothing remarkable about the flat, rather the man inhabiting it. He was an extraordinary creature, but currently in a situation that he'd never imagined himself being in. His arm sent pain throughout his entire body as he realized that the break had set in entirely the wrong way. It left his arm completely useless. Somehow managing to be detached, his brain calmly observed that it would have to be re-broken to set properly, a fact which would normally have turned the stomach of the man on the ground. His stomach had been turned enough in those few first disgusting seconds of consciousness, though, and skimmed over this particular fact like it was nothing. It did not take long of these oddly detached realizations before exhaustion began to conquer him, and he, after only a few minutes of being awake, went right back under again.
Even his dreams were sluggish this time. He moved through time like there was some invisible force weighing on him, dragging him down without being obvious to anyone else, like he and he alone were moving through some sort of thick gel. He began to suffocate as the substance forced its way down his throat and settled after sloshing down his esophagus into his lungs. There was a sensation of pure terror and the dream began to morph into the mindless screaming again. It was only years after this trauma did the young man realize who had been screaming the entire time- himself.
He began to hear voices in his dreams. Often they were low and rumbling, at the very bottom of the scale. Soon those deep rough voices solidified into one. He pictured in his mind a large, tall man with a knife scar across his neck and watery, pale colored eyes with no depth and no personality. He took the character of the hired muscle. After hearing this man's voice for so long, but never really hearing words, a high-pitched, unpleasant voice intruded into the captive's consciousness. The voice of a thin, displeased woman it became, a woman who always found the flaw in a situation. Someone with badly dyed hair and bony fingers, whose intelligence was marginally higher than that of the muscle but could still be compared to that of an inanimate object. She came more and more often, and with her something else came, a strange release. The pain was slowly ebbing away. The progress was so slow it was nearly unnoticeable, but it was enough for the captive to realize over time that it was for some reason going away. With the pain went what pathetic scraps of lucidity hung on. The voices were gone for quite some time.
What before were dreams were now just shapeless, somehow loud, blobs and waves of color, not unlike the spots in one's vision after looking too long at a bright light. Loud noises and harsh lights, which would normally garner outburst, were dulled, toyed with by his less than fully functioning brain. His other senses were as good as missing. His sense of smell was completely absent, and the shell of his mind where his not truly conscious state was kept did not register touch. Taste was missing as well, almost as if it had never really been there. These odd dreams, or hallucinations, went on for an imperceptible period of time. He never quite understood the passage of time while he was under. After a while had passed, or so it seemed, the dreams became less and less vibrant, and he went from possibly unconscious hallucinations to dark, normal sleep.
When he truly awoke he was finally aware of his surroundings. His vision was blurred, as his glasses were probably still at his flat, resting neatly in the case as they did every night. He could at least discern the concrete walls and floor of the room enclosing him, and deduced that he was likely underground. The room was square and gray, the concrete unpainted, and he vaguely remembered the first time he had awoken, but then observed more closely. It was a different room to the one he had first awoken in, as there was no smell in the air excepting a damp smell of basement and the metallic fog of his own blood. There was no visible door and he thought it must be to his side or behind him. He was lying down, though at a slight angle like a hospital bed. In fact, he might even be on a hospital bed, or something very similar. He felt a thin, uncomfortable mattress beneath him and the rigid frame beneath, the sheets not only a low thread count but also rough and probably not made of natural fibers. They scratched against his skin when he attempted to shift, and realized he was strapped down. The slight movement that there was caused raging pain up his arm. He remembered that it had broken and glanced over, fearing the worst. Instead of a horrible misplaced break like before, his arm had been set properly, maybe even professionally, and was in the right place for it to be healing. He came to the conclusion, from this and the fact that there was no food or waste to be seen, but he felt fine (despite the drugs), that he was receiving medical attention from someone.
Someone had been watching him, probably through a small camera that was invisible to he, with poor vision. He realized this as two blurry figures came into his sight. He recognized them immediately despite only knowing their voices. One figure was female, dark complexioned, wearing clothes that were too large and a displeased expression on her thin face. He couldn't see her perfectly, but she looked as if she might be pretty without the nasty look and terrible bowl hair cut. That was the extent of what he could see, but her face held evidence of a particularly bad case of teenage acne, as well as her left eye being set a few millimeters above her right. There was an ID card on a frayed lanyard around her neck that identified her with her picture and an alias, as well as a barcode. She held nothing and picked at her cuticles, which were all of different lengths. The second figure was a broad man with a dark, ugly tan over what had once been a smooth, light complexion. He had a scar through one eyebrow that hair did not grow through, and a nose that had been broken at least twice and healed badly both times. His hair was dark and cropped so close to his scalp that he might have just shaved his head a handful of days ago. He had muscle, almost too much of it, and he toed the line of grotesque. His hands were rough as a careless carpenter's, and his forearms and upper arms thick and veiny. There was a smudge of dark on his upper arm that suggested a large birthmark or a small tattoo. His fingernails were short, but looked as if they were picked to that length instead of being cut properly. The captive immediately recognized him as his abductor.
Oddly, he hardly felt fear, or anything at all, but this all began to change once the woman started to talk.
"We hear that you are technologically talented. This means that you'll be useful to us. You will cooperate, no matter the circumstances or the assignment. Failure to do so will result in no food or medical care. You're easily disposable." She had an accent that betrayed her as being from the United States, though it wasn't too thick. Fear started to course through him like another drug, something cold and evil rather than warm and comforting. She talked for what felt like an hour, but was probably only a few minutes. He was left to contemplate her words, drifting in and out of lightly drugged sleep for days.
His arm was beginning to heal, and the drugs almost completely out of his system despite weeks of repeated use. There was no feeling of addiction or dependence anywhere within him for whatever they had been constantly dripping into him, and he wondered about its peculiar absence. Usually drugs of that strength not only did damage to the brain of their user, but also left the recipient with twisted feelings of craving as the body shut down its dopamine production, almost as if favoring the drug for a hit of pleasure. The wiry brunet felt nothing of it, his head becoming clearer every day. Some of the effects remained, however, and the brunet's memory was not functioning at usual capacity. He remembered the briefing given to him by his abductors, or prison guards, but his brain rejected the exact words in favor of a general idea of what they had said.
You will not hesitate to command death. You will be our puppet. Or you will die.
After leaving him to think about this for a good long while, they'd given him an old laptop to mess with, and some minor instructions. He felt sick to his stomach, twisted and easily used, but he carried them out to the letter, knowing that planting viruses and corrupting important data was not the same as directly causing death. He was still a victim, still with no personal effects or food besides disgusting slop and nondescript sweats which he would have instantly traded for a checkered shirt, cardigan, and his familiar glasses. He had no true freedom, and he knew that they watched him, but he felt slightly more normal.
He was beginning to enjoy the solid, real feeling of his fingers against metal again, and the sick twisted feeling in his gut was less intense than it had been. He had not yet been given a death assignment as threatened, but he feared it more with every waking second. He didn't think he was capable of ordering or orchestrating a death, no matter how detached he was from the situation. It felt almost surreal to him, in an entirely different fashion than the dreams had been. They had been liquid, organic, with no lines to contain them, and kept a feeling of odd warmth no matter the situation. This feeling now was sharp and edged, the cold of metal against skin, far too crisp to be a dream. His fingers kept faltering as he thought of the unreal he might be forced to make possible, the death of a government agent at his hands.