Hey there, welcome to chapter two^^ I am happy so many people seem to be interested in this fic, despite its rather dark themes XD I hope you will still enjoy it after this chapter *bites nails* Anyways, I thank my awesome beta chephren very much for her help and wish you fun reading!
Chapter 2: Welcome to the jungle
The second time Reno awoke, it was with a choked cough, caused by the stench infiltrating his nose and serving as smelling salt.
His head felt like it had been cracked open, and his throat was raw like sandpaper. Giving a restrained cough again, Reno moved his shoulders, because his arms felt numb. He quickly learned that this time, they were bound over his head by chains, to be recognized by the sounds they made as metal clashed against metal. And they were pretty tightly chained too, his poor arms.
He was laying in another room, alone, as far as he could tell. It was still dark, but it seemed that with every passing hour he spent here, his eyesight got better. Strange…
Since the rustling of the chains hadn´t alerted the boy –who he suspected was still around-, Reno took his time to look at his prison a bit more closely, since he didn´t have much to do anyways.
Once he got free, he´d so spank the brat till its bottom was one raw, bloody mess… Kids these days, they had no respect for their elders anymore! The runt had probably come down here, maybe with his gang, even though this place was strictly off limits. Most likely he had panicked when he had discovered Reno… The redhead had no time for this shit! And besides, it was dangerous here, that animal was still running wild!
Inwardly groaning, his eyes scanned the tiled walls, the majority of them already broken and lying on the floor in piles. There were deep cracks in the walls underneath, and they were just as stained and dirty as the rest of this hellhole.
Several rusty chains were hanging from sharp hooks, and Reno suspected that he was bound to one as well. A very unsettling feeling crept into his guts, as he recognized it to be one of the experimenting rooms, but the ones he had seen on photos had been clean, flooded with light there hadn´t been any hooks… or blood stains.
The smears on the wall weren´t all from just rust and mud; there clearly was old, crusted blood as well.
The floor was littered with trash; mostly broken tiles, dirt and rusty iron bars. In one corner Reno could spot a small bed, that had been white once, but the color was tarnished in many places and the springs were missing, only leaving the skeleton to remain. However, there were brittled leather restraints on either side, for ankles, wrists and the head…
A broken surgical light was hanging askew from the ceiling, all light bulbs gone, leaving only dark, empty sockets that stared at the ground like blind eyes of a dead insect.
The constant, chilling sound of droplets falling into small, dirty puddles on the uneven ground was unnerving him.
Shifting a bit, Reno narrowed his eyes to see what was in the corner farthest away from him. It was almost perfectly hidden in the shadows, or so Reno thought, until he came to notice that it seemed to be a fridge like box. It probably had been used to store medication or whatever, though it was distinctively smaller than an average refrigerator. The door was half open. Something was inside… After a few seconds of concentrated staring, the redhead could finally make out some old papers and blankets carefully stuffed inside.
Reno felt even more uncomfortable now, turning his head towards the black hole in the wall that lead to probably more creepy rooms, but he couldn´t see anything.
"Yo!"
Again, he tore at the chains, but intentionally so this time, wanting to get the brat´s attention. If the runt was still here, that was. If not, Reno was fucked…
"C´mon!!! Let me go, I promise there won´t be any consequences!!!" 'Yeah, right, just believe that you little shit…'
For quite some time there was no reaction at all and the Turk gave up, letting his head hang down. This was brilliant; he was god-knows-where in this maze, with no chance of connecting with his superiours and to make it even worse, there was some animal running around. And he was hanging here, like on a silver platter…
The strong, disconcerting feeling of being observed made him look up after a few minutes however, and to his shock, the boy was in the room. He wasn´t just standing by the door however; no, somehow he had managed to get past Reno without the redhead noticing him. At least now the turk got a better look on him.
The light was still bad, but Reno had a chance to see the dirtiest person he had ever seen. Long, filthy hair was framing an even dirtier, smeared face. The boy was skinny, and probably naked, but one couldn´t really tell, because his skin (or clothes) were so dark and splattered with… blood? Dear Gaia, this wasn´t one of the survivors, was he?! But Reno hadn´t read anything about a boy being part of the team...
He was cowering on the skeletal bed, easily balancing on the thin iron bar like it was nothing, his arm resting casually on the headboard. He was expressionlessly observing the chained redhead.
"Fuck, you scared me, yo!" Reno gave a nervous, hollow laugh, shaking his head. Man, that kid was so creepy…
Licking his lips, the man calmed down, and finally asked nonchalantly,
"What´s your name? I´m Reno."
He had to win the boy´s trust, so he would release him and they could get the hell out of here!
His company didn´t seem very talkative however, just blinking and stubbornly keeping his staring up.
Reno drew in a deep breath.
"Okay, listen, I don´t know what you´re doing here, or how you got in, and, frankly, I don´t give a flying fuck, yo. Just let me go, and we´ll forget about it, okay? No punishment, I promise."
He sported a trustworthy smile- or at least he hoped it was. He was pretty pissed right now, the throbbing vein in his forehead might have told the boy so.
It must have, because the runt just shifted his gaze in a languid fashion, leaning forward in an impossible angle, and picked something up from the floor Reno noticed to be his EMR.
"Wait, don´t, that´s dangerous!"
The breathed warning was ignored however, as the boy turned the rod exploringly in his hand, agile fingers accidently clicking the safety.
A white light flashed in the darkness, blinding the both of them and before Reno could even think "Told you so, yo," his captor had leapt from the bedstead, in the blink of an eye crawling into the fridge and smashing the door closed behind him.
The EMR lay on the ground, humming and sparkling, sending flashes of light through the chamber.
"… Fuck." The sound of the door bouncing against metal was still ringing in his ears, as Reno stared at the box. This thing was inhumanly fast! He hadn´t even seen him move!
A cold shiver ran down the redhead´s spine as he looked from his activated EMR back to the little, barricaded box, that seemed way too small to house a half grown youth. But still, he could see one single, glowing eye peeking out of it, cagily staring at his weapon.
What was going on here?! Coming to think about it now, the boy seemed strange indeed. Reno had been too agitated and eager to get out to notice before, but there were some incongruities here, definitely.
First off, the kid had been able to sneak up on him, a trained hitman, which was an impossibility in itself. The circumstances had been special, but even so, he shouldn´t have been able to knock Reno out. Let alone drag him here and bind him like that! Reno was at least 70 kilos, and he´d been dead weight on top! And how had the boy gotten in here anyways?! Also, there was this creepy silence thingy of his…
"…You livin´ down here?" Reno cleared his throat, to get rid of the lump that was making him sound muffled.
He had to lift his chin a bit to avoid the flashing light burning his eyes, but there was no reply whatsoever.
"… Great. Okay, either you keep hiding in there, probably breaking your back, or you come out and I tell you how to turn it off." A slightly morose edge had crept into the Turk´s voice. His arms were killing him, and he needed to report to Tseng!
Still there was no answer from the box, just that strange eye that kept staring at the EMR. And then Reno learned another worrisome fact: whenever the light sparked the boy´s pupil constricted into a thin, elongated slit.
~*~
The carnivore was comfortably hunched in its nest, where it was safe and warm. The strange device had hurt its eyes, and it had remained doing so, till the creature had shut it out entirely. There was white flashing through the thin slit where the door didn´t quite close, but it wasn´t nearly as agonizing as it had been before.
Leaning its forehead against its knees – not that it knew that there were any terms for these parts of its body- the creature quietly stared at the flashes. They seemed to get weaker; but quite some time had passed, and the strange rod probably ran out of energy. Maybe it needed food, but it wouldn´t get any here, not with being so…flashy…
The prey had become silent as well. His strange and irritating noises had died down, but he was still alive. The creature could hear him breathe. In and out, in and out, in and out…
It never had such a huge thing here breathing, beside itself of course. There was only small, soft things here, and even smaller, hard ones. They were tasty, the soft ones. The hard ones barely satisfied the beast, unless there were many of them. And here, there were many of them, always…
Sometimes, when it caught one of the soft, squeaking ones – it had to be careful and quick or it would get hurt – it let them be after it had stopped making them breathe. They would go cold, and it would go elsewhere and wait. It would sleep, or doze or watch the hard, not so delicious things quickly crawling through its lair. Sometimes it hung from the sun – it could remember that it was the sun, even though it didn´t know why; its memory was only connected to a strange noise and it was its only memory– that its long fur would sweep the ground. When it got dizzy it fell back to the ground on all four and crawled over to the non-breathing, soft thing. There were lots of smaller things crawling in and on it –it never could hear them breathing though- and it would devour them alltogether. It was the most delicious ever! Usually, however, the creature didn´t have the patience to wait; it was always so hungry…
That was, before it had found the big ones, not so long ago. Time held no meaning here, except for the degree of which non-breathing things rot. When they were past a degree that they were still delicious, it was too late… This hadn´t happened yet with the big ones however. When they had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, it had watched them from the shadows. Never before had the creature seen such things, they were so loud and strange. But quickly it had come to learn that it didn´t like them; they had attempted to destroy its lair.
So it had made them stop breathing one after another and dragged them back to its pantry.
They wouldn´t stop breathing easily, at the beginning at least. Usually, with the small, soft ones, the creature just had to put them in its mouth and they´d go open, their juices dripping down the beast´s chin and on the floor, where it licked them off later. It didn´t know where to bite the big ones, though. They had little things on their bodies too, looking very much like its own. They were soft on the outside too, but on the inside they were very hard, even harder than the small, hard ones creeping through its lair. And they´d make the loud noises when it bit them there and they hadn´t stopped breathing from it biting them there either.
They were such strange food…
The first one had been a bit messy; the beast had torn at him, trying to open him, but its prey had moved a lot and was very loud. At that point of time, the beast hadn´t dragged the big one in its lair either, because it was curious and hungry and didn´t want them in there before it had figured out how to deal with its prey.
One of the others had heard the beast and found them; he probably was hungry too. But it never shared. And so it had found out a better way to make them stop breathing: the still breathing big one had come at the creature with a long, hard thing, one of those that were lying around everywhere, and the creature had mimicked the man´s actions. Since it was faster than the clumsy, noisy biggy it had landed a hit on the intruder´s head and there it was, the juice. However, the man wouldn´t stop breathing just yet, it took another few hits to make him fall down. Once that was done, the creature went for the others, and eventually it had them all piled in its pantry.
It had been a feast!
Never before had it had so much food! It was a bit chewy, but if it tore enough the flesh and organs would come off eventually. At one point it couldn´t take anymore and just had rolled to the side, sleeping. When it woke up it had started eating again, watching from the corner of its eye how the small, soft things and the smaller, hard ones had gathered to share its meal.
Also, there had been unedible parts, but they were easily removed and piled up in one corner.
There was still a lot there now, though it was very slowly starting to get mushy, much to the beast´s dismay. It couldn´t eat so fast, even though it had tried over the last few periods of waking.
And today had come another one…
This one it hadn´t made stop breathing; it couldn´t eat him now anyway. It would save him for later (it wasn´t aware that for the first time, it grasped an actual concept of time, becoming aware of a possible future), when the others weren´t edible anymore.
tbc.
AN: Okies, I think some of it might not make sense yet, but don´t worry, it will later. Actually it is not that easy to try to get into a mind that actually isn´t really there. The beast knows no words, so its perception of things is very simple and I tried to include that into its POV Its 'thoughts' mainly revolve around food, since this is mostly its only concern... Also, the beast is an 'it' since it has no concept of humanity, and I refer to Reno as 'he' because this way it is easier to understand who is meant. Okies, I hope it was still enjoyable XD Tell me what you think please?
Review replies (Yay!!! ^__^):
S h m i l e y's He. a. rt: Haha, you think so? Lemme think; I don´t have read much fics with cannibalism in it come to think of it... I hope it´ll improve mine though XD Not telling who it is yet, we will get to know eventually ;) Soon I hope *scratches head* Thank you for reading and reviewing!
patsch: Haha, I suspect the creepy factor might have increased a bit from the previous chapter (or has it?) and I am glad you like Reno being Reno! *huggles the poor thing* Thanks for the review!
Aeriths-Rain: Thanks hun! *snuggles* I hope it doesn´t get too creepy, I am still not sure where this came from XD Hopefully you´ll enjoy the rest as well!
natzilla: Gahahaha, you are an alien, of course you find it funny when injured people get dragged down creepy corridors :P And the zoological references... I wish I could give you a deranged elephant smiley here XD Thank you very much hun, for taking the time and review again *squeals a bit*
Viette: Awww, I´m sorry! But you know, Reno is Reno, I suspect he won´t let himself get eaten so easily ;)
Soyna: Yesh, you´re absolutely right! Beasts don´t necessarily have to look like monsters... I suppose they can take any shape or form, it´s the state of mind that defines them. Yah, I suppose Reno´s thick skull is helping him out this time XD Thank you for reviewing dear!
