I have here that your name is Perseus Jade. Is that correct?" The man's tone was genial and belied suspicion in the same breath. He was bald with tufts of grey hair peaking from his head like a cactus. He had beady eyes and was dressed in a chalk-grey lab coat.
Perseus observed him bound from the laboratory chair. He saw the green text flowing across a black computer screen. His nostrils flared in dismay. What the hell happened?
"Mr. Jade. If you're not willing to cooperate, we're going to have to detain you further. Maybe for a very long time."
"You'd do that?"
The man smiled. It was a jovial smile but it looked sinister on the man with his labcoat and beetle face. It brought Perseus to recall all those cuckoo films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest. He flexed his muscles to see if the binding straps would break.
He saw then that his own body was pale and brittle as a cadaver. His wrist looked like a twisted sparrow body. He licked his teeth and felt dryness at the roof of his mouth. He hadn't paid attention but he felt like a vegetable.
"How long have I been here?" he asked.
"We understand you're a telepath," the man ignored him. "We've been probing your thoughts, but our understanding is limited. Were you affiliated with Charles Xavier?"
"I went to his school," Pers said.
"Do you have sympathies to him?"
"What if I did?"
"I'm just doing my job," the man said.
"Your job is to kidnap people against their will?"
The man paused. A condescending smile. Like a dentist affecting a false kindness while he pulls a tooth. "We just want to help."
Perseus's face lit up in a wildfire rage. Just want to help. Slow and then fast spreading. The man reacted with a twitch at the corner of his mouth. A nervous tic which might have been endearing, had he not been holding the keys.
He brought up the man's mind in his own and he let himself drift into it. Sometimes he found himself living vicariously through the humans. Sometimes lurid pictures would register on his frame. Sometimes he witnessed things that should've been sacrosanct.
Teachers desiring girls that were too young or rapists who pictured their conquests before they acted. He saw them like so many Kodak moments on a camera that should've never been developed. Their desires and wants and what they'd done.
He felt darker for it. He felt as though the soil of his mind had been clogged with the blood of sin. He felt as if he'd done them himself.
"I won't tell you anything," Perseus said, stubbornly.
In the end he could not read the man's mind. The man saw him shutting his eyes. The man was amused.
"Mr. Jade, we have a cylindrical device planted in your wrist to prevent this kind of thing."
"Did you know that I can throw things?" he asked.
The man's eyes slitted. It was an inconspicuous moment and something that might have went unnoticed yet Perseus still felt the emotional reaction attached to it. What about the telekinesis?
Perseus watched the man. The room rumbled in inanimate disgust and he felt his own fury erupt. It wasn't until later that Perseus realized he hadn't been breathing while the room shook violently like an angry spirit.
"You should have taken precautions, sir," Perseus said. "You should have fed me and not kept me here." The man began to back away. He turned and lunged for the door and went to grip it and the door did not budge.
The monitor heaved and fell like a giant tower of glass. Shards of glass broke from it and levitated like diamonds sparkling in the room. He smiled wanly and felt himself fading away.
When he awoke from his sleep the man was lying in a river of blood. The clear glass shards entrenched in his neck like some Darwinian fate. He heard the sirens outside and the footsteps. He saw a white paper rafting down the river of the man's blood. He read the words as he awaited his fate.
PATIENT NAME: PERSEUS JADE
PATIENT AGE: 14
TIME HELD IN CAPTIVITY: 5 MONTHS