Lick The Pavement
Chapter Ten: The Mutant Suppression and Detainment Centre
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
//Trapped in a box of tremendous size
It distorts my vision, it closes my eyes
Attracts filthy flies and pollutes in the skies
It sucks up our lives and proliferates lies
Trapped in a box
Trapped in a box, four walls as sky//
Trapped In A Box – No Doubt
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Brian woke up to a cold floor beneath him and a symphony of agony ricocheting dully through his bones.
He briefly wondered if he'd been caught by his dad during a bad mood, before remembering that he hadn't seen his dad since he'd left home.
In fact, that he'd never see his dad ever again.
He tried to sit up, and winced, pressing a hand to his ribs as they suddenly bit with sharp pains. *Maybe broken, almost definitely bruised* he thought.
He turned slowly and pulled himself painfully to his knees, and then to his feet with the help of the wall next to him. He collapsed onto the tiny board bed, which was basically a narrow box nailed to the wall on side with a thin mattress over the top, and took his bearings.
He was in a triangular shaped room, with no windows and one solid door in the flat wall in front of him. He figured that he was in a quarter of a diagonally divided square, from the faint noises he heard to the side of him. Someone had removed his shoes, but left him in the clothes he'd been wearing before.
There was nothing else in the room except for a single toilet and a blanket over the bed.
The last thing he remembered was being cornered by some policemen... who then proceeded to take him down with some kind of drugged dart after he threw a few cars at them.
So that wasn't good. As far as he could figure, he must have been beaten while he was unconscious; some kind of retribution for injuring their team mates no doubt, and then chucked in here.
*Shit*
He was suddenly sharply aware of the new black cuff around his wrist and knew.
He'd been caught by the MSDC police.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kegan paced the length of the cell, growling under his breath about what he'd like to do to double-crossing lovers.
He couldn't believe that Aidan had turned him over to the MSDC. After all they'd been through together, you would have thought he'd have been cool with it, but no, he'd been a mutant hater all along.
He seethed and raged, but it was mainly because he was scared. Uncharacteristic of him, as he was usually more stoic, but he'd heard a lot about this place on the news.
Plus, they tended to turn the lights out after a certain time in prison, and he didn't think they'd let him have a night light.
He was in a large cage more than a cell, basically nothing more than a box with one glass side and a small bathroom area, totally exposed like the rest of the room.
In one corner, a tall, long haired boy sat on a bunk, looking composed and cool, and not a little bit nervous.
Kegan looked over to him occasional, and his anger grew. How come THAT guy wasn't feeling as shocked and afraid as he was? How did he manage to keep his composure when Kegan was rapidly losing his?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bryn sat on the cot, terrified out of his wits.
He had no idea where he was, no idea what to expect of the next few hours and there was an increasingly feral looking boy pacing a few feet away from him.
All in all, the massive uncertainty that he was now living in had shaken him more than his mother's slap had, and he tried to keep his mind off his impending nervous breakdown by forcing himself to keep his composure and behave like a member of the upper class should, even though he was currently in prison.
Bit by bit however, the silence, except for the soft sound of the other boy's bare feet on the concrete floor, began to get to him, and was permeating even the inner sanctum of calm provided by his mental discipline.
In short, he had to make conversation before he totally freaked out.
He cleared his throat.
"I'm Bryn Zeitsagen. Where are we?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Kegan stopped as the strange boy spoke, his voice sounding European, but exactly which European accent it was he couldn't quite place.
"I'm Kegan. That's all you need to call me. And we're in the mutant suppression and detainment centre, don't you watch the news?"
Bryn was affronted by the boy's rudeness, but considered that he maybe hadn't been brought up as well as Bryn himself had, and ignored it.
"I keep up to date with current affairs actually, and I haven't heard about this place before. What is it?"
Kegan sighed.
"Basically, it's a prison for us muties. Somewhere to contain us until someone comes up with a 'cure' for the mutant gene or until we stop becoming a menace to society... or until society realises it's a menace to US, whichever comes first." The sarcasm and bitterness was thick in Kegan's voice.
Bryn blinked, confused.
"Why would they want to imprison us? We haven't done anything wrong to them. Surely this can be solved diplomatically."
Kegan laughed.
"Right, sure! And maybe the police are there to 'serve and protect'. Don't bother..." He said, putting his hand up before Bryn could speak. "It's a personal grudge. Anyway, there was this incident with this 'mutant institute' in Bayville in America, led by this mutant called Charles Xavier. Mutants were exposed to humans for the first time, and they were basically massacred, all these little kids in their beds."
He stopped, soaking in the sound of silent horror and repulsion from Bryn, then continued.
"Of course, this was a few years back. After that, the government brought out the mutant suppression and detainment centre programme, or the MSDC. They employ a group of specially trained policemen to hunt down and catch mutants like you and me and keep us locked down in here. If you ask me, it's cause they're scared of us."
Bryn listened with intense concentration.
"But surely we could use our powers to break out of here?"
Kegan snorted. "Go ahead and try."
Bryn concentrated on utilising his power, looking into the future and found that he couldn't.
Kegan nodded.
"Yup. See this?" He lifted his wrist to display the black cuff. "These things stop us using our powers so we can't just snap our fingers and get out of here."
Bryn rubbed a finger over his own cuff. "Is that your power then? Teleporting?"
"Nah. My powers wouldn't be helpful for helping us walk outta here. All I can do is shut down a sense of my choice in other people. For example, I could make you go blind if I wanted to... well I could before this." He raised his arm again. "The only trouble is, I get THEIR sense as well as my own, and having more than one person's abilities in your head kinda gives a guy a headache, you know?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Rae came to dizzily, emerging from the black smog of unconsciousness to the garish light of reality.
After being abducted from the airport, she'd apparently come to in a large blank cell, which was spartan to the extreme.
Her immediate thought was to worry about her parents.
How long had they waited for her after her arrival and subsequent disappearance? Would they have been told anything by her abductees? Did they think she was still in Burma, lost and alone, or still stuck at the airport?
She looked across the cell to where two other girls were talking.
One of them, an inch above her own 5'3" with black streaked blonde hair and dressed- bizarrely- in her pyjamas was talking to an older looking girl, rubbing her back and whispering soothingly to her. THIS girl had multi-coloured hair and her face was colourless. She was shivering despite the fact that the place wasn't too cold and she had two blankets over her shoulders.
She looked to be in some kind of shock, and there appeared to be what looked like blood on her blue jeans.
Lia turned as she heard the new girl stir. When Lia had entered the cell- or rather, when she had been forcibly thrown into it- the short, brown haired girl had been laying on the bunk. Like Lia, her shoes had also been removed.
Lia had crossed to the girl and checked her for injuries, and finding none had decided that she'd probably been chloroformed and would likely been fine.
She sat huddled on her own bunk until she saw the guards approaching again with a girl moving robotically between them. She was also pushed in and she stumbled and fell, not moving from the floor where she landed on her hands and knees.
Lia watched to see if she got up, and approached her when she didn't.
"Hey, I'm Lia. Are…are you okay? Can you stand up?"
The girl sitting on the floor kept shivering, but was able to talk.
"L-liz. M-my name is Liz." She stammered out between chattering teeth.
Lia, concerned about the girl's health, grabbed a blanket from her bed, and the extra bunk and covered the girl's shoulders with them.
"Are you alright? Those bastards didn't do anything to you did they?"
Liz continued to shiver and said nothing. Lia noticed the clotting blood on the other girl's jeans.
"Are you injured anywhere? Whose blood is this, is it yours?"
Liz shook her head.
"M-my friend, my best friend was stabbed… I- I killed her killer... I killed him…"
Lia was almost certain that the girl was in shock, and turned when she heard the previously unconscious girl stirring.
"Hey." She called. "I'm Lia, and this is Liz. Who're you?"
"I'm Rae. Where are we?"
Lia stood up.
"We're in the MSDC. You know what that is right?"
Rae nodded, her heart sinking. She'd never see her parents again. She'd probably die in here.
Lia motivated her a bit.
"Can you help me get Liz up onto her bunk? She's kinda badly in shock."
Rae nodded, and pulled the older girl's arm around her shoulders, Lia taking the other one. Although there was quite a height difference, they managed to get Liz onto the bed, where she curled into a foetal position and fell asleep.
Rae looked at Lia, green eyes huge.
"What do we do now?"
Lia crawled onto her own bed.
"Now we stick together and try to see if we can't escape this modern day concentration camp."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Holly Rose splinted the tall boy's broken arm, occasionally absentmindedly running a hand through the glorious mass of fiery red hair that he had.
Although this boy was a mutant, and although she usually despised their kind, she found herself with a soft spot for this one, probably because he looked a lot like her own son back home, who would never let her stroke his hair.
She guessed that happened after they reached a certain age. However, she would allow herself this small motherly instinct while the nineteen year old on the bunk was unconscious.
The subdue-and-capture squad had beaten the boy badly after they had downed him, revenge for killing a lot of their friends. He was lucky that the broken ribs he had hadn't penetrated his lungs. She'd been allowed to give him medical attention only because he looked like he would make for a strong test subject in the future.
With this thought in mind, Holly finished off the splint and packed her kit away, cleaning up and then leaving the solitary confinement cell.
It wouldn't do to get attached to a mutant after all.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tone had been in solitary for two days now, and the boredom was making her crazy She paced the length of the cell day after day, the only break from he routine being the tray of food that was pushed into her cell from beneath the door every once and awhile.
For someone who had been used to running around and playing football a lot, she was getting extremely frustrated at her lack of exercise, and was beginning to feel unhealthy.
At that point, the door actually opened, and a woman walked in, dressed in a lab coat and carrying a clipboard.
"Subject FP-16-I, AKA Antonia Anderson, please follow me."
Scared, but not about to say anything to this woman, Tone followed her past a few more blank doors and through a pair of double doors to a corridor where she was taken down past a row of glass fronted rooms.
She saw a couple of boys in one of the rooms, and they looked at her with interest as she passed.
*Prolly as bored as I was.* She thought.
They stopped outside another glass fronted box, and she was pushed in.
She stumbled, but didn't fall, and turning, raised a fist to the woman's retreating back.
"Y'know, you people are depriving whole COUNTRIES of villages of their idiots!"
She heard laughter from behind her and turned, facing three other girls, one of which appeared to be asleep.
She leant back against the wall and grinned.
"So, I'm Tone. I'm guessing you're also part of the mutant hamster cage party?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gabriel lay on his bunk in a ball, shivering all over, eyes closed.
There was nothing comparable to the pain of heroin withdrawal, even with the methadone that the god damned sadists had eventually allowed him to have, after he'd screamed and cursed and thrown himself against the walls until he'd knocked himself out.
He ended up in solitary after he attacked some of the officers who had come in to administer the methadone.
He'd bitten two of them, one in the throat, and had all out fought against all of them until he was subdued through the same spray that they had used on him before.
He was going slowly crazy in the small space, and nightmares chased him through his unstable periods of half-caught sleep.
It wasn't enough that they'd had to take his blood, check through his personal records, take him off the heroin, put him through intensive psychiatric screening, no. They'd had to, what was it they'd said? 'Show him what his T-shirt was really saying about him'? That guy had been a real moron.
One thing was certain, when he got out of here, and he would, he'd be the first to go.
He rubbed at the cuff around his wrist, already raw and bleeding from the times he had tried to pull it off, to no avail, tried his best to ignore the seething agony rising through him from EVERYWHERE, and tried to get back to sleep.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In my opinion, this chapter wasn't very good, but I have got a viral infection so, I guess it can be excused.
Holly, did you like your cameo? ^___^
Of anyone's got any comments, please let me know. Also, pairings wise. I have the list written down, but I'd like you to tell me who you see your character together with, although I can't promise I'll change what I've already got, cause the dynamic with those characters works really well at the moment.
But yea, I leave you with this.
Min-kat- Please update. Your pictures rock by the way.
Ultramatt- Sorry that Bri's bro isn't in this, but he was superfluous to requirements.
DarkPrincessPyro- please update.
Luff you all my darlings.
DCJ