Title: The Hollow Place
Fandom: Beyblade
Pairing: Tyson/Kai
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: shounen-ai, violence, blah. the usual.
Disclaimer: Beyblade and all associated terms, characters, etc. are not mine. no money is being made off this fic.
Length: 6 100
Note: brooklyn's in this one, huzzah! i couldn't resist putting him in. broody misunderstood genius with gorgeous green eyes and the final attack to end all final attacks and WINGS…ohohoho, come over here honey! XDDDD i like to think that he's been hanging around with hiro, 'cause they're cute together. also i actually had to go wiki the name of johnny's bitbeast seeing as my sister is still hoarding all our first season DVDs. it's been too long.
He'd had this dream before loads of times: the glassy lights and the darkness and the brilliance and the roar of the people cheering, and the cameras going off and the big screen flashing WINNER – TYSON GRANGER and Kai holding him, solid and warm, his stupid annoying smug voice saying gently, It's alright. I'm not leaving. I'm here.
Then the bell went off again, waking Tyson up like a ton of cold water over his face. He opened his eyes and then closed them again, screwing them up tight. Every morning it was the same: a hard, choking ball threatening to explode inside him into panic. Every morning it was the same: he held his breath, and then he breathed out slowly, and then said aloud, "One day closer to getting out of here." And then it was OK. It got harder every time, but it was OK. For now.
Nine days was a long time away from home.
He put on the dorky grey uniform they shoved through the slot in the door every morning. It was difficult to pull the long sleeve over his left arm, which was heavily bandaged: the pain was even worse than it had been yesterday, but he got it done at last, and then yelled, "OK, OK, I'm awake! Let me outta here already, you bozos!"
This morning, though, instead of the usual warden in black, it was Boris who faced him after the door had been unlocked. "Good morning, Mr Granger. I hope you're feeling better today?"
"Oh, wow, it's the big guy himself, come to say hello," Tyson said. "How're you doing, creep?"
"Mr Granger, I'm afraid I don't have time for this. Your arm is healing well, I take it?"
"No thanks to you freaks," Tyson said.
"The medic will be checking up on it again today, of course," Boris added, graciously. "Never let it be said I don't take good care of my boys."
"Coulda fooled me," Tyson muttered.
"What was that, Mr Granger?"
"Nothing," Tyson said, innocently, and then added, under his breath, "Freak."
Boris gripped Tyson's arm and twisted it very painfully. He said, tersely, "Would you care to behave yourself?"
"No," Tyson gritted out, and pulled away with difficulty, breathing hard. He glared up at Boris. "Keep your hands off me."
"As you wish, Mr Granger, as you wish. But you will curb your insolence or else I'll expect you for a remedial session this evening. That would, of course, only cause more damage to your arm. Are we understood?"
"Shut up," Tyson said. "And get out."
"Very well. You will report for remedials after dinner. Nine o' clock, as usual. Does that suit you? Good. Now hurry along – breakfast is the most important meal of the day."
"Like you can call the stuff you give us breakfast," Tyson snorted, but only after Boris was gone. Remedial sessions – plain boring drudgery – were the worst of the worst. Presumably. They were the worst thing anyone had ever heard of happening here, but more frightening were the things you didn't hear about – like the Korean blader, who had shown up for dinner one evening with bandages all over his face and three deep gouges that extended down one side of his face from his scalp to his collarbone, and who had not spoken a single word afterwards. Or like Johnny, who had ended up losing three fingers and a lot of skin after some experiments with Salamalyon that hadn't gone well.
There were fifteen others here. Tyson knew nearly all of them by sight: professional bladers, top of the international circuit, all young and brilliant, all male. Johnny and Oliver from the Majestics were among them, along with Brooklyn, Rick, Mikhail and Raoul. There were rumours that others had been here before, of course, that the first batch of captives hadn't survived their training, but then again there were a lot of rumours like that. People getting turned into Bitbeasts, Bitbeasts getting turned into people, medical experiments, experiments involving endurance, strength, agility…you stopped believing everything you heard after a while on principle, because otherwise you'd lose it.
You don't want to get too good, people said. When you do they start pushing you. They take you out and they train you – underwater, in extreme heat, in extreme cold. They do stuff to you.
I heard they do brain scans to see how you connect with your Bitbeast, right, only they have to operate, and they put something in your head that sees what you're thinking.
Yeah, I heard that. I heard they don't bother with anaesthetics, even. Waste of money. They just cut you up while you're awake.
Yeah, right.
They do. My dorm's near the med wing. You know that door, that red one? Yeah, I swear I heard screams from behind there. And this doctor came out and he had blood all over his gloves.
This one guy said they did experiments to see if pain is an incentive for performance, like if you fight harder when you have to break free of pain. They torture you and stuff. They shock you if you don't do well.
There were a lot of stories that did the rounds.
What was almost certainly true was that the sixteen kept in this area were not the only captives. There was another larger, less intensive wing of the Abbey where younger Russian children were held and trained, just like in the old days. We get the VIP suite, Rick had said, sarcastically. Great.
Guards everywhere, of course, guys in uniform with tasers and cudgels, and then of course the med guys. Sedation was a favourite punishment for misbehaviour. Some creep would stab you in the arm with a needle and then everything would go black. You'd wake up at 2 AM, dumped in your bunk, unable to get back to sleep and with the worst headache of your life. It didn't pay to get on the wrong side of the guards. They were tough, they were tired, they didn't get paid much, they worked bad hours, and they held grudges.
It didn't pay to set one foot out of line at all.
The small canteen was almost empty by the time Tyson arrived; everyone else would be in the showers already. Tyson sat down next to Brooklyn, who was hunched over poking moodily at his food. "Yo."
Brooklyn looked up with the faintest hint of a smile on his face. "Morning," he said, and then: "The, ah…arm?"
"So…much…pain…" Tyson whispered, slumping forward onto the table and giving a long groan. "'M afraid…they're gonna have to amputate…but I'll live…or maybe…maybe I won't live…ahhhh, remember me as I was, ol' buddy!"
Brooklyn rolled his eyes and laughed softly and said, "You're crazy."
"Yup!" Tyson agreed, brightly, leaping back up to sit bolt upright. "Annnnnd I'm hungry!" He waved his unhurt arm in the air, trying to attract attention from the guards at the other end of the room. "Oi! OI! You people gonna starve us now or what?"
"Shut up!" Brooklyn hissed, the friendliness evaporating instantly.
"Scaredy-cat," Tyson shot back. "HEY! OVER HERE!"
Eventually one of the guards came striding over briskly and set down two platters on the table in front of them. "Keep it down," he said to Tyson.
"OK, sure. Maybe next you could quit beating kids up for a living and get a normal job. How's that sound, huh?"
"Right, you're being reported," the guard said. "Got yourself some more remedials to look forward to."
"Fine," Tyson said, flushing with anger. "Fine. Go crying to Boris. Knock yourself out."
The guard's hand strayed to his cudgel: just for an instant, as a warning. "Watch out," he said. "I only tolerate so much."
Brooklyn just sat and picked at his food for a long time after the guard left. Eventually, sounding a little like his old superior self, but not much, he said: "You're going to get really badly hurt if you keep up like this."
Tyson said, levelly, "They're screwing your life up, they're screwing my life up, and – and when Kai was a kid they screwed him up, too. If they think they can get away with all that then they're even dumber than I thought they were. I'm not working for these jerks, OK? I don't care what they do to me. I'm not helping them."
"But your arm – do you want something like that to happen again? Another injury like that could put you out of the Beyblading circuit for weeks."
"So?" Tyson said, loudly. "Who cares? I'm not Beyblading for them!"
"You don't think about these things, do you?" Brooklyn snapped. "You're being stupid. If you can't Beyblade then there's no reason for them to keep you here. Then they cut their losses and you're as good as dead."
"I don't care!" Tyson shouted.
"Fine. Your funeral." Brooklyn paused, and swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then he said, "You know we're not going to get out of here. No one knows where we are. Kai isn't coming to rescue you."
"I don't need Kai to get me out of here," Tyson said, lifting his chin. "I can actually do stuff by myself, you know. I don't depend on other people to fight my battles for me. Not that you'd know, seeing as my brother spends most of his time looking after you."
"What does that have to do with anything?" Brooklyn asked, in a sad, tired voice.
"It means you're a coward. You probably love this, don't you? You don't have to talk to anyone or make any real friends, you can just do whatever these freaks tell you to do."
"Stop it."
"I heard you came willingly. Figures."
"They had Hiro and Garland at gunpoint. Just like with you and your friends." Brooklyn pushed his chair back and picked up his tray. "I'll see you later."
Tyson fumed and stabbed angrily at his breakfast. He had no idea what it was and he didn't want to know, either. He rubbed his face and thought miserably of Ray's cooking.
There was a disused stairwell that led off the second arena. It was blocked up with crates and an old trolley, but if you pushed those away quietly then you could sneak into the stairs easily. Oliver, on his first day here, had sneakily managed to push the CCTV camera aside by dint of careful work with a long tube of discarded cardboard, and now the stairwell had become the one place anyone could go without being monitored.
A system had been developed among the captives that allowed everyone some free time. There was a largely unsupervised laundry session that lasted half an hour every day, and everyone was supposed to wash his own clothes and sheets; however, if one person did the work of two, then the other could slip off unnoticed. The next day they would swap. It was a good system.
Tyson clambered over the pile of old boxes, fell flat on his behind, got up, swore, and stomped up the dimly-lit steps to sit next to Brooklyn. "Hey," he said, grudgingly.
"Hello."
They sat in silence for a while. Tyson affected nonchalance, sitting with his legs kicked out in front of him and his arms crossed, his nose in the air. Brooklyn sat with his shoulders held very straight and his head bowed very low, and stared meekly at his hands. At the top of the stairs was a heavily padlocked service door, made of thick reinforced steel and painted grey, just like everything else in this place. Every now and then it would rattle, and a thin stream of icy air would blow in around the edges. This door was the last link to the outside world, and was the hinge of many excited escape plans, none of which had ever gotten very far beyond we break out of the dorms and make a run for it and then get whacked by a zillion guards with guns and tasers.
Tyson's butt was starting to hurt from the cold concrete step he was sitting on. He fidgeted, gave a loud, exaggerated sigh, and finally said, "Sorry, OK?"
"It's alright," Brooklyn said, immediately.
"And I don't want to get all touchy-feely and talk about it and whatever, alright?" Tyson continued, loudly. "I'm just pissed off. I'm sick of these creeps and doing nothing is making me go crazy."
"It's alright."
"And I don't really think that about you. You're cool. I said stuff I shouldn't have said and I'm sorry. You're my friend, bro. And Hiro –"
"Tyson!" Brooklyn interrupted.
"What?"
"It's OK." Brooklyn grinned languidly, his eyes creasing up at the corners just a little. "I'm, ah, I'm pissed off as well." He leaned back, his elbows on the step behind him, and turned his face to the ceiling. He had been here for nearly a full month, longer than anyone else. A month was enough to turn all memory of sunlight into fluorescent strip lighting, of grass into grubby concrete and grey plastic. "I miss," he said, "being outside. I miss the sky."
Tyson thought for an instant of a golden hill, of a bright glittering river and a fiery sunset. It made his chest hurt. He leaned back, too, and nudged Brooklyn's arm with his elbow. "So, Mr Ultimate Genius Super-Whammy Psychic Powers," he said, cheerily. "I saw the stuff you were doing in the Psych Labs earlier. Looked awesome."
"Eh? Oh. They're trying to figure out how to control Zeus's power." Brooklyn laughed sadly. "They're amping up everyone else but they're toning me down."
"Seriously, though, it looked so awesome. All kickass Matrix stuff, and…stuff. Reeeeally cool."
"It isn't. Not really. I mean, even I don't understand what I'm doing half the time. They don't have any idea of what they're trying to do. If something goes wrong then…well, you remember what happened to the BEGA building."
Tyson did remember. He stared at him. "You could bust us out of here in like two seconds, you know," he said, flatly.
"What I could do is get us all killed, yes," Brooklyn agreed, smiling again, but still with the same quiet sadness that never really went away. "I've gotten a lot stronger since I last faced you, seeing as I've actually been doing some work for a change. Theoretically I'm capable of destroying the world entirely. You know that, I suppose. I could open a rift and then everything would be gone. And then of course I could recreate it in an instant. It's possible that I've already have done that several times over. How would we know?"
"I think I know why Hiro stuck around with you," Tyson muttered, shivering as a thin stream of cold air rattled in underneath the door. "You're a lot more interesting than I am."
Brooklyn shifted uncomfortably at that, and then admitted, "He isn't very focused on me. He never was. I think he's still building me up just so you can knock me down again. I'm always going to be the benchmark – just something he can use to measure you against."
"Stupid jerk. All he cares about is being the best."
"Look who's talking."
"Yeah, but – but I actually like Beyblading!" Tyson waved his arms around emphatically, and then stopped, because his injury was hurting worse and worse by the minute, although he was trying not to show it. "I…it's my passion, you know? I mean, you gotta have a reason to want to be the best – like, like not just so that you can show off about it, but 'cause it means something, 'cause you've worked for it and you love it!" He grinned. "Heh, that sounded pretty cool." He waited for Kai to say actually, it was nauseating, but Kai didn't, because Kai wasn't there. He swallowed, and then forced himself to grin even wider. "Words of wisdom from Jedi Master Tyson, yup. Wise, Master Tyson is. Great knowledge of the Force he has."
"You see? That's what I mean," Brooklyn said, smiling a sad little lopsided smile. "You're the strong one. You've got years of technical training and experience that I'll never catch up, you know. You're the real hero."
"Yeah, but you can create parallel dimensions," Tyson protested, sulkily. "No fair."
"Yo," Oliver said, climbing neatly over the boxes and dropping daintily to the floor. "We've got maybe fifteen minutes. What's up?"
"The ceiling," Brooklyn replied.
"Pessimist," Oliver said, sitting down next to Tyson and punching him on the shoulder. "You dead from the food yet? Did you see breakfast this morning? I knew their standards were low, but that is beneath low. That is lower than the earth's core. Which, in fact, is where the food should be. Incinerated. Come on, back me up here. You're a connoisseur! You're my one ally!"
"How about," Tyson said, "how about, when we get out of here, you whip us up the best gourmet cooking ever, and we all pig out?"
"Sounds like a plan, my friend. Only you'd still be paying, of course."
"Hey, no fair! I'm a world-renowned food critic! You should be paying me to waste my time on you! You know how many chefs have begged me to eat their food? Please, Tyson, please, give us your wisdom! Teach us how to be like you! Your tastebuds reign supreme and know no equal!"
"You are a freak."
"Yeah, yeah, look who's talking."
Brooklyn snorted softly, but kept smiling.
Dinner time was the best time of the day: only two guards on duty, and a meal that was hot, if tasteless.
"I heard, right, I heard," some guy was saying, Haruka or someone, "I heard they keep the girls in the floor below. You know down by the service elevator, the – yeah, the one by Arena 2? Mm. Down there, that's the girls' ward."
"They don't keep girls here, never have," Rick put in. "Don't be stupid. Guys only."
"Yeah, mostly 'cause Boris is a creepyass paedophile."
"There are girls," Haruka insisted. "Ming Ming? That Ming Ming chick?" He gestured vaguely towards Brooklyn with a plastic knife. Brooklyn ignored him. He rarely spoke to anyone except Tyson. "The singer, the one on your team, with the little black dress."
"Oh, yeah, the black dress I remember," someone else remarked.
"She's here. She got taken. I heard she signed a contract with BEGA and they pushed her career up, and when she broke away from them they got angry."
"Ming Ming's not here. She's too high-profile. They'd never risk going after a celebrity."
"Pity," Rick commented. "She's hot."
"You know who was seriously high-quality? That Julia Fernandez girl, the circus performer. Strong blader."
"Heh, she could get acrobatic with me anytime."
"You shut up," Raoul snapped. "She's my sister, you jerk."
"Yo, Granger," Johnny called across the table. He was having trouble eating without the usual numbers of fingers, but some of the bandages had come off his face, which was probably a good thing. "Hey! Over here!"
"What do you want?" Tyson snapped.
"How come none of the original Abbey guys got taken? Those Russian guys, the Demolition Dudes or whatever."
"How'm I supposed to know?" Tyson rolled his eyes. "Geez, why am I suddenly the expert?"
"Figured Hiwatari would have told you something," Johnny shrugged, then winced at the motion. "Or was he too busy being a prissy little bastard?" he grated out, trying not to show the pain.
"Uh, dude? Don't know if you noticed, but Kai isn't exactly the spill-your-guts touchy-feely share-with-the-class kind of guy." Tyson shifted, trying to get his arm comfortable and not meeting with much success. "We never asked him about this place, and he never said anything."
"But you broke him out before, didn't you?" Raoul queried.
"I heard you blew the original place up," Haruka put in, leaning over the table excitedly.
"I wish," Tyson muttered.
"Hey, my brother trained with Tala Ivanov once – wasn't he the one they turned into a cyborg or something? I remember that battle, you versus him, World Championship Finals 2001. That was the year I went pro."
"Is it true you can speak to your Bitbeast?"
"Yeah. Only that one time, though. It's pretty rare for it to happen," Tyson said, importantly.
"What I don't get," Brooklyn said, in his quiet voice, "is why they took you, and not Kai."
That was the exact thing Tyson had been trying very hard not to think about.
"Tyson's World Champion, duh," Oliver said, a little defensively, and then added, "Kai's over the hill."
"He is not," Tyson snapped. "He's the most powerful blader in history and that's a proven fact. He's the best blader in the whole entire world and you have no idea how much he's sacrificed for this sport and he has fought so hard to come back after the whole BEGA thing and if you ever –"
"Hey, relax," Oliver smirked, holding his hands up in defeat. "Quite the dutiful wife, aren't you? Sticking up for your man."
"You're dead. You are DEAD. You JERK, you are SO DEAD."
"He's got a point, though," Rick cut in.
"What do you mean he's got a point? Listen, if one more person says anything else about Kai then –"
"What the hell, kid? Chill. I meant about why you're here and Kai isn't. Max said Kai was the one they designed Black Dranzer for."
Tyson shrugged, still glowering at Oliver. "Do I look like Kenny to you? I don't know everything. I mean, I know my vast and superior intellect is daunting, but even still, I'm only human."
"Shut up," Oliver advised him, lazily.
It was only after Haruka had turned the conversation at his end of the table back to girls in general and to girls who wore short black dresses in specific that Tyson added, in a low, angry voice, "Kai would have busted out of here in about a second. He'd never let these creeps push him around."
He made that remark at least three times a day, but this time, Brooklyn didn't sigh or pick an argument. Instead, he gave Tyson one of his piercing, quiet looks. He had an unsettling manner of looking at people sometimes, as though he could see right through them, as though…as though every person were just a sort of magic trick, an illusion, and Brooklyn knew how the trick worked, and wasn't fooled by it. Odd, considering that he didn't even spend that much time around people…but Brooklyn was odd. He said, softly, "Kai's quite something, isn't he?"
"Yeah," Tyson agreed, fiercely, and the knowledge was a flame in his chest. "He's amazing. He's – he's the greatest blader ever, greater than I'll ever be. I mean, don't ever tell him I said that, but…he's just…I mean, can you get any better than him? You should see him practising these days, it's scary…him and Daichi were blading this one time, and he pulled this awesome move, right when – gaaack! Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Oh, no reason."
"Well, quit it!" Tyson gulped. "It's creeping me out!"
Brooklyn grinned smugly, as though at a private joke, and said, "Quite the old married couple, you and Kai."
"HEY!"
"Always a bridesmaid, never the bride…"
"Why can I not just have a normal conversation about Kai, my friend who is male and straight, without the entire world trying to throw me a baby shower or something? Sheesh! Don't go projecting your weird fantasies onto me and Kai! And quit laughing! It's not FUNNY!"
At this point one of the lab guys entered the canteen complete with a clipboard. This happened nearly every evening. "To report for remedial sessions, please," he said, and then read off, "Tyson Granger."
"Wow, there's a surprise," Haruka drawled. "The undefeated remedials champ. Nice."
"Just 'cause I don't act like a pansy and do whatever some freaks in uniform tell me to do," Tyson shot back as he got to his feet. "Unlike some."
"Yeah, yeah," Haruka said, and, surprisingly, smiled at Tyson. "You're crazy," he said, but in an almost admiring tone.
"Mm, the voices in my head say that all the time," Tyson muttered, and then treated the entire table to his lopsided, cocky grin. "See you in the movies, guys."
"No talking," the lab guy snapped. "Mr Granger, hurry, please."
To Tyson's surprise, he was escorted not to the arenas, but to an elevator. They travelled upwards, which was also new. You only ever went down here. Up was where the personnel and staff lived. Up, it also turned out, was a lot nicer than down, involving proper tiled floors, potted plants, wooden panelling, and warmth. Tyson was shown into a large study that could have belonged to any CEO in any modern, fashion-conscious company in the world – smooth lines, wide marble-topped desk, sleek silver computers, minimalist art on the walls.
"Evening, Mr Granger," Boris said from behind the desk. He seemed to be enjoying the whole super-villain thing. He even had his fingers steepled together.
"How come you get cool places like this and we don't?" Tyson complained. "No fair. What about us? We could sue."
"You could sue me for a lot of things if you had access to a lawyer, which, happily, you don't. Now, you've been here almost two weeks, am I right?"
"Nine days."
"That'll do." He stood up. "Come along, then."
"Eh? No, wait, where?"
Boris pressed a button on his desk and a section of the wall behind him slid away. Tyson gawped, and almost admitted that it was cool. Boris stood up, entered a code into a keypad on the wall, and then smiled pleasantly as a little ting! sounded and elevator doors swooshed open. "How about a behind-the-scenes tour, Mr Granger?"
"No way," Tyson said, backing up. A guard gripped his shoulders and thrust him forward. "No way."
"It's something that might interest you."
"I doubt that. Oi, let go of me."
"You have my word that you won't be harmed," Boris said, motioning towards the elevator door. "Please."
Tyson just snorted, yanking himself away from the guard. "Whatever," he muttered, stalking towards the elevator. "Beats remedials."
"You've been using the standard practice models, am I correct?" Boris asked as they moved downwards smoothly.
"Yeah."
"Would you be interested in using something more powerful?"
"I want Dragoon back."
"We are not in possession of Dragoon. We do, however, have something far more powerful."
Tyson's stomach gave a lurch as the elevator came to a stop and the doors parted. There was an odd, singed smell on the air, the smell of burning rubber and friction, a dangerous spinning smell. They passed into a dim grey workshop, bare concrete and a few workbenches. The far side was brightly lit, and a huge vault dominated one wall. "This is the product of quite a few years' work," Boris said, conversationally, moving swiftly to the vault. He keyed in a code on another little keypad, and then pressed his hand briefly against a scanner, which flashed green. "Exponential improvements on your Dragoon, I think you'll find."
Tyson said nothing, but moved forward. His heart was beating hard. Suddenly things were making sense. "I'm not some sell-out," he said, loudly, even though he kept walking towards the heavy vault door, which was swinging outwards with a groaning of metal. "It's not about the power. What kind of blader do you think I am?"
"Oh, I know it's not about the power," Boris said. He stood aside to let Tyson pass. "It's about spirit, isn't it? It's about friendship and happiness and feeling good about yourself, isn't it? Charming."
"I can't believe you can be this stupid," Tyson scoffed, reaching out and gripping the metal casing of the vault with his good arm, feeling it searingly cold under his fingers. That same odd friction was in the air again, a deadly-dark burning. He saw, briefly and inexplicably, a singed sepia sky, felt soft satiny-soft ash smooth between finger and thumb. He hung back. "You pick me? You pick me even though you know I'd never desert Dragoon? What the hell? If you've got some messed-up super blade then give it to Haruka or someone, someone who's never had a bitbeast. Geez, you're stupid."
"We find that bladers who are strongly bonded with their bitbeasts produce the highest results," Boris said. "We were hoping you would establish a partnership with Black Dragoon."
"Keep dreaming."
"It could be very beneficial."
"Screw this," Tyson said, violently, backing away. "I'm out of here. Thanks, but no thanks."
He hadn't taken three steps when he knew that something was wrong. The colour was draining away from the world right before his eyes, and the smell of burning whirring metal was so heavy and smoky in his mouth that he gagged, his eyes stinging. He felt as though he were breathing in sand. He saw again the heavy sky, felt a blade too sharp to be seen drag at his fingers, scoring them to thick plum-bright shreds.
He blinked furiously, hacking and wheezing. Boris seemed to have backed into a corner and was talking rapidly into some sort of comlink at his wrist. There came the white snap of electricity. The room was suddenly flooded with static, so thick and invasive that sparks rebounded and flowed along every surface, staining the terrible concentrated darkness blue. After-images writhed and wriggled in Tyson's eyes. His hair was crackling, and when he moved, sparks streamed around him.
"Oh, no you don't," he muttered, thickly. "Bastard."
He staggered towards the vault, ignoring Boris, who was still squawking for back-up and emergency procedures. He gripped the metal of the door again, which in retrospect was an extremely stupid thing to do. It juddered and bit at him, making him snatch his hand away with a cry. He felt a bruised, blue-tang pain shudder horribly through his arm, and sank to his knees, breathing shallowly. "Right," he said. "Right. You asked for it. You big stupid mutated pile of junk."
He opened his palms and walked forward into the vault, careful not to touch the metal. The floor was of rubber, which was sensible, but the single metal box right at the centre was of iron. Tyson hung back, regarding it warily. "Hey," he said. "Cut it out. I'm not working with you. I know I'm crazy, but I'm not that crazy. Plus I can kick your ass any time I want to. You're just some messed-up experiment. You're not anything real."
He had the odd notion that the little metal box rocked, just as though there were a kitten or a puppy inside it. It glowed dimly, and he knew that if he touched it the resulting shock would be enough to kill any normal person, and probably to knock him out for a while; he had always had some resistance to electricity, some affinity with it that had grown greater after Dragoon had found him, but he was hardly shock-proof. Air currents were swirling about his fingers, dark and abrasive.
"I'm not going to use you," he added, loudly. "And I don't care that I'm talking to a bitbeast. You're not a real bitbeast. You're pathetic."
"That's quite enough for tonight, I think," he heard Boris call, and then the dart hit him in the back of the neck.
He woke up in his bunk in darkness, his head throbbing. The smell of burning and electricity still clogged his throat, a bright terrible dusty smell.
This sucked.
Sleep you didn't get much of. That was the rule – as little time wasted as possible. Half an hour for breakfast, lunch and laundry; an hour for dinner. Lights out at ten and roll call at six. Most of the time you were too tired to get any sleep at all. The most important thing was that you had to stop thinking, had to stop hoping. Everyone else figured that out eventually, but Tyson hadn't yet. Tyson was being his usual obstinate self and was refusing even to begin to accept the possibility that there wouldn't be some daring escape, some spy-movie-style bust-out, some break-out involving tunnels and plastic spoons and explosions.
Tyson hadn't given up yet.
It was utterly dark in the small rooms, and they got extremely cold after a while. It was a horrible cold, deep and frightening as black water; it flooded you, filling you up with a smooth glassy heaviness. Your face began to hurt because your teeth chattered so much. Tyson lay curled on his side and glared out dry-eyed into the darkness, trying to hold his injured arm as still as possible. Sometimes when he tried to sleep it felt as though his bed were moving around underneath him, slipping around and spinning. Sometimes he felt as though it were just about to tip him over, send him tumbling out into the darkness. He growled and gritted his teeth. Stupid place like this does stuff to your head. Stupid bunch of no-good cowards, messing kids around…
Gramps, back at home…he would be…Gramps would be heartbroken. And the Chief would be taking it hardest of all. Tyson worried about Kenny the most – always had, always would. What was Kenny supposed to do without him? Who was supposed to tell him to quit worrying all the time and lighten up? Who was supposed to dare him to make prank calls to Mr Dickinson? Who was supposed to get him to stop hyperventilating whenever Emily e-mailed him? More to the point, the poor guy was probably bored out of his mind. Doing all of Tyson's homework as well as his own kept him busy, right? And however much he complained and lectured when Dragoon got bashed up, you could always tell that he liked fixing it…and…and…and…
I miss you, Chief.
And…Kai.
Kai, here, years ago.
It would be the cold that killed him in the end. He knew that now, and he understood Kai better than ever before. This dangerous sharp-edged cold, this emptiness…this was the cold place under the ice, this was the grey static space where there was no friendship, no hatred, no light, no dark, no anything. Just yourself, just your own strength. This was what had made Kai.
With a curious mixture of misery and pride, Tyson thought wretchedly of that one boy, that one child who had hungered for power more than anything else…hell, Kai must've been one scary little kid, imagine having to babysit him, yikes…and to want that power, to have that glory and freedom, to be so captivated by it…and to fight so strongly, so fiercely, all for what? Power for power's sake? Or had it just been some indefinable and indomitable rebellion in that child, some steadfast arrogant knowledge that greatness lay ahead, that superiority and freedom were all that mattered?
Some kid.
Once, once, there had been a conversation: I used to fight for empty things, Kai had said, I used to fight for glory.
And now? Tyson had asked. For Dranzer, right?
Kai had answered with Yeah, and with an unbearably sweet smile, because Tyson had understood him, because Tyson had known what he meant. For love, he had said. For love.
Kai hadn't had any real friends in this place…Kai had just been a kid all on his own, without even his own thoughts in his head, with only his flame of rebellion to keep him warm…but Tyson had friends. Tyson had something to fight for: the belief that he was going to get out of here, that he was going to see his precious people again. He was going to go back to Gramps, to Kenny, to Daichi. To Kai. That was the flame in his chest, the lightning that split the cold sky. That was the thread to hold to in the dark.
That was all that mattered.
You don't realise it, but hoping is what will kill you in the end.
If you push so hard and tear yourself to pieces in an effort to be free, and if that effort comes to nothing, then you have done only what they wanted you to do. You have broken yourself, irreparably and efficiently, in a manner far more finite and damaging than anything they could ever have achieved. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, they hold all the cards. You cannot win. You cannot get out.
YAY MELODRAMA.
Thanks as always for reading. Next update might happen next week. Right now I need to study for my history finals, gah.
