Chapter 2

Rick was forced awake with a familiar jolt.

It took him less time to adjust to his surroundings compared to before. The first thing he felt was hazy relief that his body seemed to be all in one piece, although he distantly wondered why he hadn't expected it to be, and whether that said something about his current mental state.

His brain was still uncomfortably sluggish, so it took a few moments for him to realize that he was still in the same room he went to sleep in. He couldn't help but feel somewhat bitter that he remembered his last hour or so of consciousness with relative clarity; of course his mind could retain that, but recalling how he got into this nightmare in the first place was an impossibility.

Clearly time had passed while he was unconscious, although he wasn't sure how long exactly. The main differences between then and now were that the lights in the room were adjusted to be much brighter, the chair's reclining angle had been tilted forward somewhat, and his wrists had been strapped down.

Also, something heavy was clamped around his head.

The unease returned like a slow trickle down his spine. Rick would have used his limited brainpower to try to deduce what the thing on him was, as well as why he could feel a faint thrumming coming from it, but his thoughts were derailed the moment he noticed Morty.

The teenager, still wearing the eye patch, was standing in front of a terminal in the corner of the room. He wasn't looking at Rick, instead interfacing with a holographic display in front of him. From this angle Rick couldn't quite make out what was on it. There was definitely a few different tabs the kid had open, one of which looked like a chart with an irregular sine wave pattern graphed out along its axis, another containing a completed loading bar, and a third one filled with strings of unreadable numbers and text.

Rick didn't have time to decipher it, as Morty pressed a button on the terminal causing the whole thing to flicker out and close. The thrumming sensation around Rick's head faded along with it. Morty turned his attention towards Rick, walking over to the chair in a few short steps.

The boy's expression was almost bored as he undid the straps around the older man's wrists. After that, he reached up and gripped the object around Rick's head with both hands, pressing a switch to loosen it before pulling it off roughly. Rick could now see it was a bulky helmet, with thick cables attached to the top and trailing onto the floor in loose coils, eventually attaching back to the terminal.

He wasn't sure what Morty had been using it for. His first thought was brainwashing, or some other method of amplifying the kid's fucked up control over him, but he felt no different than before. If anything, he felt much more lucid, even though he still wasn't thinking at full capacity. But if the helmet wasn't for that, what else was Morty doing?

Rick tried not to let himself get paranoid about it.

Morty set the helmet onto the nearby counter before sending another mental order to Rick. It was somewhat indistinct, feeling kind of like a mixture of get up and follow me, and he felt a little dizzy for a split second as his body processed it. The delay was barely noticeable, however, and less than a half second later he stood up from the chair. Morty looked at him briefly before turning and walking out of the room. Rick followed.

They turned the corner and entered the other room that had been at the end of the hallway. This one seemed slightly larger than the other two rooms, although it didn't feel like it. This was mainly because it looked like a veritable warehouse of papers, boxes, and electronic components cluttering the floor, tall bookshelves and cabinets lined up against the walls. It would almost look neatly organized if it weren't so overcrowded. There was some sort of mattress or futon in the corner, flattened and rumpled with half-made sheets, and a door was built into the far wall, maybe a closet of some sort.

Rick didn't get a good look at everything, though, as Morty led him through into yet another room beyond that. This appeared to be the end of it, as aside from a large hatch in the nearby wall there were no other doorways. The relatively small and compact size of everything was starting to make him feel claustrophobic.

The final room had almost nothing in common with the other ones, aside from the metal walls and lack of windows. There was barely anything in it aside from a table, two chairs, and a few cabinets in the corner, although there also appeared to be a sink and a few appliances on a counter. Rick was faintly reminded of a kitchen, albeit a minimally stocked one.

Morty pulled out a chair from the table, indicating Rick to sit. With a faint mental tug the man did as ordered, and he recognized that these chairs were very similar to the first chair he woke up in, being metal and a tad uncomfortable to sit on. He wondered if Morty had simply reused one.

Rick's unsettled feeling was returning as he still had no idea why Morty brought him over here, and all he could do was watch silently as the teenager walked over to the cabinets and started digging through them, back turned to the older man.

Once again, Rick took advantage of the extended silence to try to piece together his situation, no matter how restricted his thinking was at the moment. He still had no idea what the fuck was going on, and he was starting to doubt he'd ever find out. But the immediate facts were that Morty had nearly complete control over his body and parts of his mind, and was readily abusing it. The questions of how and why were still open, and Rick was struggling to come up with answers, especially for the second one. What could Morty possibly want with him?

More importantly, resistance against the control was possible, if Rick's drone-dropping stunt from last time had been any indication. And if resistance was possible, maybe there was a way he could subvert the control entirely, break free, as long as he kept experimenting. He still felt a creeping fear at the possibility of Morty noticing, though, and he knew he couldn't be that risky in the future if he wanted to preserve what awareness he had. He'd have to be a lot subtler.

And that… thing Morty had done to him, the way his mind almost felt like it was rebooting… it was intensely disturbing and he wanted to avoid it as much as possible. Maybe he could get used to the sensation if it was forced upon him enough times, but he didn't know whether it happening repeatedly would eventually wipe him entirely. He'd rather not find out.

Morty was still intensely preoccupied with pulling things out of the cabinet and placing them on the counter top. Rick took the scene in for a moment before deciding that now was the prime time to try disrupting the control again. In a more careful manner, of course, but his apprehension made him feel somewhat jittery.

Rick Sanchez, scared of a teenager. In any other context he'd be laughing.

He tried to remember how he did it the first time, how he used a lull in commands just like this one. He recalled focusing on a loophole, but the order this time seemed to have a lot less wiggle room. You couldn't really interpret "sit down in this chair" as something else, especially something subtle enough it wouldn't gather attention. Then again, the first loophole had been a bit of a stretch too. Perhaps it was worth a shot.

Doubtfully, Rick tried imagining every loophole he could think of, including the fact he wasn't told to sit down indefinitely, the idea that he could shift around in his seat and still be considered sitting, maybe just twitching his leg a little…

But everything felt just as tight and locked in as before. If anything, the pressure only increased as he struggled to move. He tried a few more times before giving up. Damn it. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the loophole idea didn't do anything at all, he had just misunderstood it, and there was some other factor he was missing.

Or maybe that's what the helmet had been for. Had Morty fixed up the "malfunction" in some way, like uploading a patch? That made a creepy amount of sense, and Rick wouldn't even put it past him.

He warily looked at Morty again. Technically, his body had never stopped observing the teenager, since Rick wasn't really in control of his head or eyes which seemed to wander without his permission, but he could still let himself get lost in thought. Morty had paused for a moment, seemingly staring at something in the cabinet, before pulling out a few labeled cans, popping one open. Rick smelled something faintly reminiscent of beef, and he was suddenly reminded of his painfully empty stomach as it growled. It was enough to completely distract him from what he had been doing.

Morty tipped it over onto a plate, which Rick was only just noticing had other food laid on it as well. The kid picked it up and put it inside a contraption that looked like a microwave, except Rick distantly recognized it as some alien appliance that was an objective upgrade over the primitive Earth version, being able to heat up food with perfect evenness and in mere seconds. Rick always thought that the inventor must have really hated Hot Pockets.

The door reopened with a beep and steam poured out, triggering his hunger pangs harder. Morty picked up the plate and a glass of water and walked over to Rick, placing them in front of him along with a fork. There was a chunky stew of some unknown meat piled in one corner, smelling like a cross between beef and seafood, along with cooked alien vegetables that he only faintly recognized. The last thing on the plate was something that looked like mashed potatoes, except tinted pink.

The meal was rather basic but Rick didn't find it within himself to care. With his memory being as unreliable as it was, he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. Because of that, he could almost convince himself that it hadn't been an order when he grabbed the fork and started eating. Most of it had that faintly metallic aftertaste that all canned food had, but he was hungry enough that it tasted delicious anyway.

Morty watched him for a moment before walking back over to the cabinets, starting to rummage through them once again.

It took only a few minutes for Rick to clear his plate and drain his glass. He felt much better now that he had eaten, although he refused to feel an ounce of gratitude towards Morty. In a way, he supposed it made sense. If he was going to be controlled or used for something, as he was starting to suspect, he needed to be kept alive, and that meant addressing basic bodily functions. The chances of this being altruistic were laughably low.

Morty seemed to be preoccupied with assembling his own plate, so Rick decided to resume his earlier efforts. He pulled together his resolve, readying himself for a second attempt. He couldn't give up now, he had to figure out his limitations if he had any chance of getting out of this nightmare. He just didn't know what else he could try. Loopholes seemed to be out for the time being, and aimless struggling didn't seem to get him anywhere unless he was incredibly desperate, if his faint memories of moving before falling asleep were any indication. He wasn't sure if he could muster that sort of intensity on a regular basis. Part of him was currently too apprehensive anyway, he really just needed to calm himself down to figure things out, and…

Now there's a thought.

After a moment, Rick slowly forced himself to relax. It was rather hard considering he didn't have voluntary control over his breathing and therefore couldn't try the standard deep breaths, but he managed it by focusing his attention away from Morty, away from his current situation, just blankness. Like meditation. Very zen, almost.

He didn't relax too much, because if he went too far he felt himself slipping into a sort of fugue state, a mindless autopilot not unlike how he felt right after being recalibrated. He pushed down the twinge of fear at that thought and continued his attempts to remain calm. The control over him was like a cold barrier, the tip of a knife burrowing into the back of his skull, but when relaxed and focused, he could more easily find the weak points, the parts that the mind control wasn't putting as much work into maintaining.

He pushed, and for a few seconds nothing happened. Then, out of the corner of his eye, the fingers of his right hand twitched.

Hardly daring to believe it, he tried again, trying to keep calm and focused like before. After another delay, he pushed through once more and his wrist tilted to the side by a millimeter. Holy shit, it was working.

He attempted to do something a little more drastic, something more than just a pitiful twitch, but that's when his success ended. Everything seemed to freeze and the pressure around him reasserted itself, and his fingers seemed to relax back into their original position, no longer listening to him. He tried to ignore the disappointment he felt. Of course it wouldn't let him fight back that much. Maybe if he did it in incrementally small steps, he could get somewhere. Maybe if…

"You're wasting your time, Rick."

Rick froze.

Morty wasn't even looking at him, still facing the cabinets and heating up his own plate. But just when Rick was starting to pray that he imagined it, the teenager turned around, looking Rick dead in the eye. The man's stomach dropped.

He knew. Shit.

"If the hardware was that easy to circumvent, I wouldn't have installed it in the first place," Morty continued, carrying his plate over to the table and sitting down across from Rick. "You're hardly even disrupting its main functionality."

Rick was unable to do much besides stare blankly, feeling rather numb. He wasn't really surprised by the revelation, despite his wishful thinking otherwise. He only wondered at what point Morty had pieced it together. From the beginning? Just now?

Morty ate for a few moments before speaking up again, stabbing into a chunk of meat absentmindedly. "If you're wondering how I figured it out, let's just say you did a bad job hiding the fact you're conscious." His unsettling gaze locked onto Rick again. "And if there was any ambiguity left, the brainwave readings made things rather clear."

Rick loosely remembered the charts on the terminal from earlier. Guess he just learned the purpose of the helmet, then, or at least one of its purposes. The knot in his stomach twisted tighter. Rick didn't know what point the kid was building to.

"Honestly, I don't care either way," Morty said, a faint smirk slipping onto his face. "You're not the one in control here. All your cooperation does is make things easier, mostly for yourself. So," the smile abruptly disappeared. "I think you should stop while you're ahead."

It perhaps the most thinly veiled threat Rick could recall hearing. The spiteful, reactive part of himself flared up unexpectedly, and if he could twist his expression into a glare he would. Make me, you little shit, he thought, and he suddenly really hoped that Morty couldn't read his mind because that was a really poor choice of words considering the circumstances.

Morty stared him down for a few seconds, before he simply turned his attention back down at his plate and picked at it idly. He didn't seem to be in a rush to finish, but it also seemed like he had no further interest in talking. He gave no indication one way or another that he heard Rick.

The rest of the meal continued on in complete silence.