Lance woke with a start. Something was wrong. Something had changed. Squinting and scrunching his eyebrows, he tried to discern the shift in his surroundings. He was still in the operating room, still restrained against the same bed. Nothing new there. Lance's eyes flicked from side to side, his neck straining as he tried to figure out what was different. In its muddled and starved state, Lance's brain couldn't figure out why his subconscious had woken him. Frowning, Lance focused on the one thing he could discern. He was alone. Every other time he'd woken, at least two faceless Galran had stood above him, their goggles reflecting the terror in his eyes. Lance didn't know how long he'd been strapped down, enduring the same cycle of electrocution and unconsciousness, but he didn't think he would last much longer. And that thought brought him hope. Though Lance had just noted the fact that he had no company, he still braced himself for the next wave of shocks. When none came, he began to worry. What were they planning to do to him next? His imagination ran rampant, effectively terrorizing him more than any of the Galra could. The unknown was ultimately much worse than the agony with which he was already acquainted. Envisioning his next torture in gruesome detail, Lance shuddered. Anxiety washed over him, and the stuffy silence of the empty operating room suffocated him. He needed someone to be with him, he was wretched when alone. He wanted his friends, he yearned for his family. But the crushing reality of his situation offered no such comfort.

Only loneliness.

And fear.

Lance waited.

And waited.

His sanity flirted with chaos, and his thoughts danced with destruction. Had the Galra completely forgotten about him? He was certain that he'd been there for days, which frustrated and confused Lance immensely. At one point, his anxiousness had led him to thrashing against his restraints in panic for several hard minutes, but his lack of nourishment prevented him from continuing his convulsions. As beads of sweat rolled down Lance's forehead, he noticed with a start just how high the temperature had risen. Or maybe that was just him. At this point, Lance didn't trust any of his senses. No, the hallucinations had properly robbed him of all faith in reality. With a body raw and fatigued, and a paranoid mind on the verge of psychosis, Lance didn't really have the energy to care about the slight discomfort of the temperature. At least, that's what he originally thought. After several minutes, the degrees within the operating room continued to climb, until Lance's heart raced at an unnatural speed and his head contracted a nasty migraine. Lance had experienced heat stroke once before, after spending days in the Cuban sun, but he'd quickly healed from his symptoms once his mom had forced him to hydrate. This time, however, there was no water. And, unfortunately, Lance's mouth was as dry as Keith's sense of humor. Oh, how Lance craved a waterfall of the precious liquid. Before he could restrain himself, Lance began to imagine dozens of forms of water, from enormous bodies of water, to rain, then to puddles. He thought of the Frozen Planet, the very one whose icy waters he and Hunk had accidentally crashed into. An entire planet of freezing cold water. Now that was a hallucination in which he'd like to find himself. But before he could continue in his delirious and desperate desires, Lance's body dragged him back to his present pain. Nausea coiled through his body, and Lance became aware of the acute fear that he'd vomit all over himself. Struggling against the bile that rose in his throat, Lance angled his head to the side out of instinct. Just as clear liquid fell out of his lips and his shoulders wretched, someone finally came into the room. Which would have given a big dent to Lance's pride, if he'd had any left. As coughs racked Lance's body, Scarface's revolting face came into view. Smirking at Lance's pitifulness, Scarface announced in a guttural voice, "You have a choice, Paladin. Activate your Lion or continue to suffer."

Despite the exhaustion in his bones, Lance decided to employ an old tactic, just to see if he could try to be himself again.

"The Red Lion just really likes to play hard to get, man. I can't do much about that."

Lance instantly regretted his attempt as Scarface pressed a nearby screen and triggered a surge of harrowing electric shocks. Lance couldn't even hear his own screams over the rash of agony that seized his body. When the sensation finally subsided, Scarface addressed him once more.

"If you will not activate the Lion, then tell us where the rest of the Resistance is."

He was repeating himself. In Lance's very first torture sessions, Scarface had asked all sorts of questions about Voltron and the Coalition. Where had Voltron been for two years? What happened to Lotor? Where were the Blade of Marmora? Lance had ended up answering all his questions, but apparently, the Galran didn't even believe the truth.

"I don't know," Lance told him.

Another phase of lightning rippling over his veins.

"What is the frequency that the Resistance uses to communicate?" He demanded, a snarl twisting his disfigured lips.

This one, Lance thought he should know. However, whenever Pidge and Hunk commented on frequencies and technical things, Lance always found himself completely lost. One of the many reasons he'd been labeled "The Dumb One".

"I don't know, 'Resistance R Us'?" Lance guessed, knowing that frequencies usually involved numbers, but not really having enough insight to come up with a random strand of digits.

More electricity.

"I thought you'd lost most of your idiotic rambling after I cut you open," Scarface noted, the expression on his face easily conveying that he didn't appreciate Lance's attempts at humor.

"Me too," Lance muttered, before shuddering vehemently at the flood of memories that deluged his mind.

Scarface regarded him wickedly, before turning the strength of the voltage to the highest level.

"You will die a thousand times before I decide to kill you," He threatened, just before Lance's shrieks drowned out the crackling of the volts across his human skin.