Four White Walls / Prologue

"Trapped in this nightmare, I wish I'd wake! As my whole life begins to shake;
Four walls surround me, an empty gaze—I can't find my way outta this maze!"
—Anthrax, Madhouse

Everything hurts.

A dull, persistent headache throbs at the back of his skull, running down to his shoulder-blades. His hands are shaking, but his limbs feel leaden, as if glued to his sides. His skin feels hot to the touch, flushed and sweaty, and strands of his hair are plastered against his forehead. His eyes ache, and his mouth tastes awful, a bitterness hanging heavily on his tongue. There is a ringing in his ears, making it difficult to hear anything else—other than far-away voices, that might be coming from underwater, as distorted as they are.

The stark white walls surrounding him are familiar, though. They might be the only constant in this place of never-ending pain, blank and unforgiving. That, and the smell of antiseptic and old mop-water clinging to the back of his nostrils. It's better than the smell of trash, and refuse, he supposes. But there is something eerie about the combination.

A quiet whimper of pain escapes his lips.

He claps a hand over his mouth, biting the inside of his lips together hard enough to draw blood. The action causes his head to spin wildly, and he slips in and out of consciousness for a moment. A few shallow breaths later, and he's back, staring at the same four white walls. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing the dizziness and the pounding inside his head to go away.

From the space behind him, a door eases open. He's given a brand new focus, then: trying not to scramble off the bed and flatten his back against the wall.

"Mr. Tenebra?" the person behind him asks. The nurse's voice is not raised, unlike so many he has heard since being brought here months ago. Has it really been months? The passage of time is confusing, here—everything looks the same. He feels like a rat trapped in a maze.

It took him some time to realize that the hospital staff was using Mr. Tenebra to address him. Even now, the name does not feel like his own. The boy raises his eyes, wincing, and stares back at the wall. It doesn't matter if he speaks, anymore. The doctors and nurses are all the same: they will treat him whether or not it's something that he wants.

The psychiatrist has to be the one responsible, he thinks, surprised to hear the voice of his own inner consciousness. It has been far too long. All he remembers was a handful of assorted pills force-fed into his mouth, a struggle, and something being forced through his nose.

Panicked, the boy reaches up to feel his face with shaky fingers, and finds a thin tube trailing out of his nose. He immediately begins trying to pull it out, but feels incredibly sick, as his insides have been agitated with the motion.

"Mr. Tenebra, we would advise you not to remove the nasogastric feeding tube. You are quite malnourished," a new voice warns. The psychiatrist, he realizes, muscles stiffening and screaming in agony as his fight-or-flight response kicks in.

"Nurse, you can leave us," she directs. "You too, Miss Nabor." From the corner of the room behind him, quiet footsteps exit into the hallway, followed by the quiet snick of the door closing. The second name belongs to the Avox, he remembers. She was there the day he was airlifted into the hospital. The day he was forcefully given the pills and the tube.

Miss Nabor, his silent shadow. Just as much a ghost as he has become.

The psychiatrist steps around the edge of the bed, lifting up the sleeve of his hospital gown. The boy flinches at her touch, but she pays him no heed. He can feel her cleanse his skin with an antiseptic wipe, followed quickly by the sharp injection of a needle. It hurts for a moment. Then his surprise is quelled as a haziness begins to creep into his mind, making him feel sluggish.

"Now, I've just administered you a sedative," the psychiatrist murmurs. "I can tell you're getting agitated already, and that's not very conducive to our… arrangement."

Part of him wants to ask what she's talking about, but his tongue feels thick, and he cannot find the words. He swallows instead, the lump in his throat growing larger.

"Do you understand me, Mr. Tenebra?" She places a cold finger beneath his chin and jerks his head so that he's facing her. Forcing him to look into her eyes. She's scowling at him. "I said. Do you understand me?" The words are harsher. He feels his chest tighten—this woman scares him, perhaps more than any of the horrors that chase him into nights of dreamless sleep.

Her eyes flick to his right cheekbone. Behind her, there is a mirror running across the width of the wall, beneath the medical cabinetry. He gets a good glimpse of his face—pale, gaunt, and hollow, with a sickly-yellow bruise where her eyes are lingering. The haze doesn't lessen its grip on him, but the boy understands.

The Capitol's first victor nods.

"With your words, Mr. Tenebra."

He doesn't respond. After all he has been forced to do, why does anyone deserve his words? He just wants to be left alone—is that too much to ask? The four white walls surrounding him may be unforgiving, but they are silent in their judgment. They don't poke or prod him. They don't pry, asking questions he no longer has the answers for.

Not with the blood of six innocents staining his filthy hands.

"Last chance, or we will repeat the process," the psychiatrist hisses, the words a threat. "I have asked you several times to cooperate. This is your last."

Nothing.

Her hand cracks across his face, sending a brief, stabbing pain through his skull. His skin stings, then throbs, the headache returning alongside it. He stares at the woman, lips pressed together to hide the shock—the first true emotion he has felt since he rose from the first haze.

Sleep? Or had they given him a sedative before?

Doesn't matter, he tells himself, still reeling from the blow. Everything is the same here. Cyclical, neverending. He could have been here for three days instead of three months, and he wouldn't know the difference. They never did give him a room with a clock.

The door opens again, causing his anxiety to spike, but he hears no one enter. "Dr. Lepidus?" someone asks, and the psychiatrist turns, leaving him for a moment. "After you're finished with the patient, would you mind doing an evaluation in the intensive care unit?" They lower their voice, a note of hostility entering it. "One of the traitors had an incident that needs to be taken care of. Immediately."

"Of course," Dr. Lepidus answers, tone cool and collected. "I'll join you once I'm finished."

After the other doctor leaves, she crosses the short space between his bed and the cabinets, pulling out a slender box full of compartmentalized pills. He watches her in his peripheral vision as she sorts out a handful of them. "Hold out your hand," she demands a moment later.

He complies, if only not to be struck again.

Dr. Lepidus places the pills in his hand. "I'm going to get you a glass of water. Then, you will take all of these, and swallow them. Or I will do it for you. Okay?"

He nods again, eyeing the half-dozen capsules sitting in his calloused palm. He can hear the psychiatrist retrieve a glass of water from the cabinet as well, taking it to the sink beneath the cabinets to fill it. When Dr. Lepidus hands it to him, she is wearing a stern expression, as if this entire ordeal has taken too long and he's displeasing her.

Raising his right hand, the victor places a pill on his tongue. Raising his left, he swishes it around with water, and makes it disappear, repeating the process until the pills have vanished and the glass is empty. Dr. Lepidus finally cracks a smile, though it doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"Very good, Velius," she tells him, the name sounding even more unfamiliar than the last they've addressed him with. "Other matters have, unfortunately, called me elsewhere. I will be back once it has been resolved to check in with you. They're thinking of putting you into a physical therapy program today. To fix you. Does that sound good?"

All that Dr. Lepidus has accomplished in her attempts at conversation is hardening his resolve to say nothing to her. He doesn't owe her that, surely. Stating a need to fix him implies that he's broken. Striking him and forcing pills down his throat implies that she doesn't care.

So why should he?

It all feels like a dragged-out nightmare. Who's to say that isn't the case? Maybe it's all just a bad dream. A bad trip. Right? It isn't real. It isn't real. I'm not real. I'm not, because… because…

…because I'm dead. I shouldn't even be here. I should be dead. I was dead. Everyone else is dead. I should be dead. I am dead. Everyone else died—everyone killed—you killed them—you're responsible, you killed them, you're dead, and…

The rest of the thought evades him, slipping into the haze, just as they have since the moment he arrived. Sometimes he forgets them, and other times he tries not to think—it's certainly easier than being plagued with the relentless onslaught of his macabre thoughts.

He may not be entirely here, but he is awake, like it or not. Trapped in this hellish place, with no sense of who he was before and no sense of who he is supposed to be now.

Across the room, Dr. Lepidus puts the cabinet doors back into place, startling him. "Dumptown scum," she mutters under her breath. The words mean nothing to him. Not anymore. He simply watches her leave, the door slamming unceremoniously behind her.

He waits with an empty gaze, staring at the walls surrounding him once again. Counts, slowly: one through sixty, measuring out a minute. It should take about that long for Dr. Lepidus to be out of the hallway—surely the psychiatric ward isn't that large.

Once he has reached sixty, the victor stands and spits out a handful of pills into the trash can, rummaging around to cover the pile of pills-and-saliva in case she comes back. It doesn't matter if the pills are supposed to help. The sedative is enough; he doesn't need to be administered all sorts of mystery drugs in the hope that one of them will stabilize his current mental state.

I'm fine.

(I'm dead.)

Exercising caution, he stiffly slides off of the bed. All of his muscles ache from the strain, as disused as they've been the past few months of treatment. He stares at himself in the mirror, haunted by the ghost that stares back at him.

It's almost enough to put him back into the bed—maybe physical therapy isn't such a bad idea. Maybe he should dig the pills out of the trash-bin, and hope that they cure the mess staring back at him. Maybe he should have died instead of the six lives he had taken, trying to put an end the game Thirteen so desperately wanted them all to play.

Velius Tenebra tears his eyes away from the mirror, pushing open the door instead. A draft of chilly air hits him almost immediately. Wearing nothing but a hospital gown, he shivers. The room, at least, was temperate. Out here, the smell of antiseptic and mop-water is stronger. He hears a pair of voices down the hall—luckily neither belongs to Dr. Lepidus—and quickly hastens in the other direction, the decision made.

Pacing around the halls, he begins to realize that everything out here looks just as similar. White walls, spotless floors. Fluorescent lighting. An air duct running across the wall opposite him. Doors. So many doors, enough to make him feel lost. If he wanted to return to the room, it is out of the question now—he's well and truly lost.

Desperately looking for any kind of signing, he picks up the pace into a full-on sprint down the halls. Doors pass him by in a blur, none of them open. The hallways are entirely empty, save for himself. No sign of Dr. Lepidus, the nurses, or even Miss Nabor. He can hear some murmuring over the hum of the air ducts, but pays it no mind.

He only slows down when he's out of breath, which doesn't take very long with the sedative coursing through his system. Bracing a skeletal hand against the nearest door-frame, Velius gasps for air, shuddering with every breath. He takes a moment to survey the hall around him. It looks slightly different. A larger walkway. Brighter lights. A thick red stripe running the length of the wall about-shoulder height.

Velius takes a few tentative steps forward, staring down the length of the hall. It is so long that he almost can't see the end. He can barely make out what the sign says, hanging above the door at the end of it. Exit. He takes off into a full-blown sprint, bare feet slapping loudly against the floor. Noise sounds from behind him, and two doors crash open, a doctor and three nurses entering the hallway with expressions of bewilderment.

Halfway down the hall, he hears footsteps take off after him. He begins to run out of breath, his mind slipping back into fogginess, but he fights it. He's always been a fighter. Velius reaches the door, wrapping both hands around the handle. Nothing. He tugs at it, chest tight and lungs full of desperation, trying to get the latch to move—and still, it does not.

The footsteps behind him slow down, and he glances over his shoulder.

Dr. Lepidus, flanked by two security officers, greets his view. "That door's always locked," she says, the words clear and dripping with venom. He continues to exert all of his strength upon the door, despite knowing it is a futile effort. It's better than turning around to face his tormentor. How did she get here so fast? Don'tlookdon'tlookdon'tlook…

"We're going to take you back to your room, Mr. Tenebra," she states. "I knew you couldn't be trusted to take your own medication."

Two sets of hands grip his frail arms, hauling Velius back from the door. He thrashes in their grip, twisting to see Dr. Lepidus preparing a syringe, undoubtedly a second dose of sedative. The fog swirling around his mind is already enough to cripple him—a second dose will likely make him unconscious. If they move me, he thinks, taking a series of quick, shallow breaths, I will never be able to escape this place.

He croaks, vocal cords raspy and hoarse from disuse. Dr. Lepidus stills, though the security officers do not stop dragging him toward her. "No. Please—"

"We gave you a choice. We're trying to fix you, Mr. Tenebra. Do be a little more cooperative this time, hm?" she asks, though it is not a question. He feels four hands like vices across his skin, and a fifth using a wipe to clean his neck.

A syringe is plunged into his skin, and the world fades into black.

A/N: Thank you to goldie031 and ladyqueerfoot for inviting me to the server. I feel quite a bit more confident about this story getting off the ground now. Thank you to Iomhar for the two lovely reviews, Radio Free Death for the very helpful critiques, TeamShadow and goldie031 for the follows, everyone who reached out to and helped me on the server, and to the people who submitted tributes or showed interest to this story since my last update! I now have two kids, meaning there are ten slots still open, six of which have interest. Don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested in submitting. :)

It may be some time between updates, as I do not have my cast yet, but I will be starting to write the introductions as I receive the rest. I will put a tentative update schedule on my profile, and I do plan to be somewhat active with writing tributes, reviewing, and all that. That said, I will see you all with the next update as soon as I get another kid and find the time to write some intros!

As always, thanks for reading. :)