~Nine~
Hojo's last remark on the discomfort Cloud would have from the mystery liquid being fed into his arm was of course understated. The pain of whatever he was administered was considerable, yet not unbearable. It took nearly three hours for the completion of the administration. When the milky substance had entered his blood stream he first only felt a burning sensation under the skin of his arm. There was also the subtle indicator of mako. The crawling feeling like insects burrowing in his flesh. But as the time dragged on he began to feel achy all over, a feeling that seeped into his joints and chilled him to the bone. It was a feeling that had him wanting to writhe and hold his own limbs tightly. It made him restless, like he needed to pace to relieve the feeling. He could only strain in his bonds instead.
The cold feeling grew to be painful on its own. He associated drugs with feeling hot and feverish but in this case he felt so cold he actually broke down and asked one of the assistants if he could cover his exposed skin with something. He was a little shocked when his request was granted. A blanket was brought out from a cabinet and draped over him. It didn't help to relieve the back of his body of the cold from the metal exam table but he would take what he could get. His mind had latched on to the comment Hojo had made about future administrations of the grey milk being given in his cell if he behaved. He didn't want to do anything that Hojo wanted of him but he couldn't take the torture of being restrained in the lab for hours at a time. It brought so many feelings for him and a few brief segments of memories he had left. He forced himself not to think of Zack, of what had occurred right before he'd woken up in the lab. The strange experience that he didn't understand or know if he should believe was real or not.
He'd kept his eyes on the bag containing the liquid that was hanging from the IV pole by his side. Watched it empty one drop at a time. Only minutes after the bag had completely emptied, Hojo returned to the lab. The professor seemed to take pause at seeing the blanket that was covering him.
"Colson," he said over his shoulder and his assistant approached. Cloud hadn't really looked at the assistant until then. He was young, not unlike assistants the professor had had in the past. Fresh college graduate. "Did you do this?" Hojo asked.
"What, professor?" the assistant asked back, glancing at Cloud briefly.
Hojo took hold of the end of the blanket and whipped it back and off of Cloud, exposing him to the lab air again. "This," he said.
"Oh," Colson replied. "Yes, sir," he admitted.
"Why?" Hojo questioned as he thrust the blanket into the assistants hands.
"I asked for it," Cloud spoke up to Hojo's surprise. He wasn't sure what made him speak for the assistant. He hadn't had time to think about it.
"He asked for it," Colson said after him.
"I'm not deaf," Hojo snapped back. "Did you note the time?"
Colson looked back at him a little confused. "The…time?"
"That you covered him?" Hojo clarified.
"No, professor," the assistant said.
"Next time you decide to alter a procedure I've put in place, I'd like you to at least note the time of it. Are you new to the experimental process?"
"No, sir, sorry. It won't happen again," Colson assured him.
"Good," Hojo said. "Go get Peter, please. C4 is going to need assistance."
As the assistant departed, Hojo turned his attention to Cloud. He moved to the side of the exam table and started to remove the IV feed, leaving the needle still inserted in Cloud's arm.
"Already working your charms, I see," Hojo commented with a smirk.
"What?" Cloud said back.
"It won't work this time, C4," the professor told him. "You're not going to be able to convince one of my employees to liberate you from this place. No matter how many tears you shed. Bargains you try to make. There's no sympathetic enforcer or doctor this time around. No one to sacrifice their life for you." Hojo smiled and went on. "Syrus. Doctor Marsh," he said. "There were serious consequences for their actions, as there will be for anyone who ever betrays me like that again," the man warned. "You should think carefully before you try to jeopardize the lives of any of my current employees, C4." Cloud looked away from him and Hojo began to release the restraints on his arms and legs.
"What no goons to assist you?" Cloud asked him when his left arm was free. "No clones to keep me from killing you right here and now?" he added, looking hard at the man again. It did enter into his mind to make a move on Hojo the moment he was free to do so. It may have been his one chance to help himself. Hojo chuckled aloud at his words.
"And what an impressive feat that would be," the professor laughed.
He didn't know why the man had found his threat so entertaining until he was told he could get off the exam table and go back to his cell. He tried to dismiss the attempts of the two assistants to aid him until he'd tried to stand up and found himself unable to do so. The aching in his joints and muscles became unbearable when he put weight on them, finding him falling to the floor where he found his arms just as useless to him.
"W-what did you do to me?" Cloud struggled to speak through the now throbbing pain throughout his body.
"Permanent nerve damage," Hojo replied without missing a beat. He laughed at his own comment and one of the assistants chuckled with him. When Cloud looked up at Hojo he could see the man wasn't serious. He hardly found the remark to be funny. "The mobility side-effects should be short-lived," Hojo told him, nodding to his assistants to help get Cloud to his feet.
Together they helped him to his cell, which he saw for the first time from the lab looking in. He was able to see that the glass at the front slid aside on a track. Once he was sitting on the bed in his cell, one of the assistants disappeared momentarily and returned with his clothing.
"Do consider leaving the IV needle in your arm alone," Hojo spoke to him from just inside the cell. "You're going to be receiving daily transfusions. It's easier for my assistants and you if it stays in. Of course I don't expect you to listen. In the end it doesn't make a difference. It's up to you. You can have your childish rebellion by removing it. Remove it and try to repurpose it in some way, however, and you'll suffer for it. I promise it." Cloud almost found himself nodding in understanding, if only to get the man away from him faster. "Dinner will be brought in an hour. Goodnight, C4," the professor said before turning his back on Cloud.
Cloud watched as Hojo and his assistants exited his cell and the glass door was slid closed, shutting out all sound from the lab. A moment later the curtain had covered the glass, leaving him in isolation once more to sit alone in pain, seemingly one of the only constants in that place. By the time the dinner tray had been slid under the cell door the worst effects of the substance he'd been given had worn off, at least those that were affecting his muscles and joints. He felt generally nauseous after that, even vomiting a few times, possibly from the mako in the compound. There was a lasting achiness throughout his body and he felt heavy from head to toe.
He could make himself get dressed and he could make himself use the bathroom but he couldn't make himself eat so he lay in bed instead, watching the minutes pass on the clock in the wall. He thought about what Hojo had said, about him jeopardizing the lives of the people working for the professor. He thought about Syrus and Marsh, or at least what he could remember and what he knew of them from what he'd read in the lab notes and files. Two people who apparently had tried to help him and Zack in the past and had paid with their lives. People had died because of them. For them. He wasn't ever going to let that happen again. There would be no more sacrifices or risks made for him so long as he had control of it. Not by anyone.
At 9 pm he heard the familiar click of one of the speakers as it came on. He knew what was coming but he didn't want to believe it. As that familiar voice asked what his name was he found his mind racing with thoughts. He'd given in to those questions in that room of coffins. He didn't expect to find himself forced to give those answers to the questions again. Did hearing the questions now mean that if he didn't answer the clones would return in the morning, ready to haul him out to the metal room for a beating?
He would find out what it meant because he said nothing in response to those three tormenting questions. He barely slept that night, though he was exhausted. His anxiety and the lingering pain in his body kept him tossing and turning in the darkness. Every so often he'd look up at the clock, seeing it drawing nearer and nearer to 6 am.
At 6 the lights clicked on in the cell and just as he'd feared the door the cell was unlocked and opened. A clone entered the cell and Cloud's body broke into a sweat immediately. He could feel the pain from the clone's fists impacting his rib cage and it hadn't even happened yet. He found himself screaming in protest as he fought with the clone trying to drag him from his bed. He felt his shield breaking in that moment. All the stubbornness of his will couldn't make him endure that process another day longer. As he was pulled to the floor finally and the clone began dragging his body toward the metal room he shouted up at the camera in the ceiling above him.
"WAIT! My name is C4!" he cried out as loudly as he could. He didn't know where the microphones in the room were, or if anyone would even be listening. The clone certainly hadn't stopped hauling him away. "I belong to Shinra! Shinra's home! PLEASE! I'm C4!"
It wasn't working. It must have been too late. He found himself out of his cell and in the metal room where he reverted to his defense mechanism, pulling his knees into his body and covering his head as well as he could. He'd already begun counting, reaching a count of seven before realizing he hadn't been hit yet. A hand took hold of his left arm instead and pulled him to his feet. The same clone who'd violently torn him from his cell was putting him back into it. He sank to the floor in shock when the cell door closed and he was left alone again. He shook with falling adrenaline and suddenly found himself crying with the realization he'd avoided being beaten. He was so relieved that he couldn't have cared less what the cost of it had been.
The guilt and shame came soon enough and deepened when he was lying in his bed, an IV pole beside him, his eyes following more of that greyish milky substance as it entered his bloodstream through a tube. When the time for the transfusion had come, the curtain over the glass of his cell had been drawn back, the glass panel slid open, and Hojo had come to ask him if he was going to accept the procedure without needing restraint. Feeling down from earlier, he agreed to compliance. It meant the difference between the cold exam table and the semi-comfort of his bed with blankets he could huddle under as refuge from the effects of the transfusion.
He didn't speak again until 9 pm that night when he was asked his three questions. That night, for the first time since he'd been trapped in that cell he answered each of the questions immediately upon being asked. C4. Shinra. Home. He didn't think as he spoke. He'd already thought enough up to that point. He was going to go crazy if he had to go on enduring those beatings and for the time being, at least, he needed his mind intact, if he had any hope of surviving.
The following morning there were no clones. Just the shower that came on at 7 and his breakfast that was pushed under the door. He slept through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon until it was time for another transfusion. Following that, there was nothing left in the day but dinner, the question period, and more sleep. He had quickly fallen into a new routine with the only difference being no clone beatings. By the fourth day things changed though. He had made big plans that day like the ones before it to sleep the rest of the morning after breakfast but his plans were interrupted at around 10 when Rand made an unexpected visit to his cell. He came in through the door at the back of the cell, from the metal room. He entered carrying something that roughly resembled a briefcase in his one hand and a folding chair in the other.
"Good morning, C4," Rand greeted him before opening the chair and setting it next to the bed, facing him. Cloud forced himself to sit up slowly, watching as the man transformed the briefcase in front of him into a small table with retractable legs. He unclipped a lid on top and pulled from inside what looked like a small folding chess board and a bunch of game pieces. "You play chess?" Rand asked him and he shook his head. In fact he'd never played, nor learned to play. He sure didn't want to learn right then.
"What do you want?" Cloud asked him as he took off his long leather coat, the same Cloud had seen him wearing previously, and draped it over the back of the chair he'd brought with him.
"A game, I thought that was obvious," the man replied smoothly. He unbuttoned the sleeves of his black dress shirt at the wrists and began rolling them up towards his elbows. "You need stimulation. Your brain suffers without it."
"So," Cloud challenged. "Won't that only help you and Hojo in your goal?"
Rand smiled without looking at him, working on setting up the chess pieces on the board between them.
"I thought I made it pretty clear I'd prefer you not be mindless," he said back.
"I'm not interested in playing games," Cloud stated firmly, lying himself back down and turning away from Rand toward the wall.
"That's fine," Rand told him. "We can talk instead. We'll be good friends in no time," he said surely.
A half hour later, Cloud found himself staring down at the chess board, trying to remember what game piece did what. When the game had first started he'd simply made random moves with the pieces, not caring in the least, but Rand had told him he wasn't leaving until he played seriously. The thought of being trapped playing chess all day was enough of a torture to make him obey.
"Starting tomorrow," Rand spoke suddenly, almost startling him, "Between eight and ten in the morning you will have access to the fitness room," the man told him.
"You gonna make me run on a treadmill for two hours?" Cloud asked without looking at him. He was thinking back on that routine he and Zack and been forced into previously.
"If that's what you want," Rand replied and Cloud did raise his eyes to look at him then. The man readjusted his dark-framed glasses he'd put on before their game had started but he didn't meet Cloud's eyes. He reached forward and moved one of his game pieces instead.
"What I want?" Cloud repeated his words bitterly.
Rand hummed in confirmation. "There is a variety of equipment in the room. You can use whatever you wish. I don't know that I'd peg you for a cardio enthusiast, though," he added with a grin.
"What if I don't want to use any of it?" Cloud questioned sharply.
Rand shrugged. "Then your body and mind suffer," he said simply.
"That's it?" Cloud asked.
"That's it?" Rand echoed with a little incredulity. "What would you be without your body and mind?" he asked. Cloud said nothing.
The following day, when his cell door clicked itself open at 8 am, out of sheer boredom he walked his way out through the metal room to that hallway on the other side. Once out there, he could see the second door to his left was open and a light was on but he still took the time to check that door that he knew led to the coffin room and Vincent. Just in case. He hadn't forgotten about Vincent, nor was he likely to as long as he was locked in that place.
When he'd finally entered the fitness room he took a slow walk around the equipment. He considered using some of it but really couldn't see the point. He would just be helping Shinra make him into whatever the company and Hojo wanted him to be. It did occur to him the possibility Hojo would just force him to exercise. He had before. But Rand had said it was up to him. If that was true, he was taking a stand. He wasn't going to do anything they didn't make him do. He was choosing compliance over willingness. That was his decision. He just had to bear the weight of it now.
